The Soviet Challenge and American Policy

by AVERELL HARRIMAN

1

IT IS not certain whether on the day this article appears in print Bulganin and Khrushchev will be smiling or frowning: whether on that day they will be flattering President Eisenhower for his truthfulness and peaceful intentions or excoriating Secretary Dulles for belligerence; whether on that day they will offer to us a new peace pact or some new affront, or to some other country trade and aid, or arms, or threats. But regardless of the tactic of the day, they are pursuing a consistent strategy.

This strategy was expounded and adopted by the Kremlin in October, 1952, and it has been operative since that time. Its aim is destruction of all we believe in and eventual world domination by Soviet Communism. This is “peaceful coexistence,” Russian style.

The coincidence of new teams in the Kremlin and the White House three years ago and the significance of the changes in policy and method which occurred at that time have received far too little attention in the United States. Stalin, undisputed master of the Soviet Union for a quarter of a century, died on March 5, 1953. Five months earlier he had delivered what turned out to be his last will and testament in the form of a justification for a major shift in strategy. Six weeks before his death the Democratic Party, twenty years in power, had yielded to a Republican Administration. These momentous changes in the direction of the world’s two greatest powers have had profound consequences which are today only beginning to be widely recognized.

Stalin’s death undoubtedly weakened the Kremlin behind the Iron Curtain. No new regime could equal Stalin’s single-minded and ruthless efficiency. Yet his death opened the way for a more effective execution, by his successors, of the foreign policy of “peaceful coexistence” which he had had the sagacity and cunning to proclaim shortly before. Stalin had too often in his long career smiled destruction upon too many men and nations for the world to believe in his benignity and peaceful intentions. With his death there came into power a multiple leadership less known for cruelty and deceit (except for Beria, whose subsequent execution by his peers redounded to their credit). This gave rise to the hope that their hearts might not be so hard or that mutual distrust among them might weaken their capacity to do harm. This hope the men in the Kremlin have nurtured by discreet and well-timed concessions. Thus, they have carried forward the policy of “peaceful coexistence” with more adroitness and effectiveness than Stalin could have done.

The rationale of this policy was spelled out in letters written by Stalin and published in Bolshevik on October 2, 1952, three days before the opening of the 19th Communist Party Congress. These letters were praised by all the Congress speakers, and their theory was expounded at great length by Malenkov, then Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party.

Stalin’s letters are especially meaningful in the light of the world setting at that time. The Kremlin’s drive after World War II — by means of aggression, pressures, threats, and subversion — to extend its control and influence in Europe and the Middle East beyond where its armies were found at the war’s end had clearly failed. The West had become so strong and united that further advance by these crude methods was stopped in that area. Soviet Communist control had been averted in Iran, Greece, Turkey, Berlin, and Trieste, as well as in South Korea; and subversion had failed in Western Europe. The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, the North Atlantic Alliance and the building of a NATO army in Europe, and United Nations action (vigorously led by the United States) in the case of Iran and South Korea — these had helped build effective situations of economic, military, and political strength and free world unity, in 1952 the rising strength of NATO armies began to develop confidence that they would be able to prevent a sudden overrunning of Western Europe. In Korea, Stalin’s expectations for an easy victory had been thwarted, and Communist aggression had been thrown back.

Stalin shifts the offensive

It was in these circumstances that Stalin shifted the offensive to economic, political, and psychological grounds and transferred the center of attention to Asia and other underdeveloped countries. Here in a nutshell was his reasoning, repeated and elaborated upon by Malenkov: —

The disintegration of the single world market is the most important economic consequence of the Second World War. There are now two parallel and competing world markets — the Soviet Communist bloc extending from East Germany and the Balkans to North Korea, and that of the other [free world] “camp.” The Soviet bloc is large, strong, and self-sufficient; its members are mutually “coöperative,” and they maintain a rate of economic growth far higher than that of the West, so that the West’s margin of industrial and economic superiority will inevitably narrow and disappear.

The Soviet system can over a period of years out-compete the free in economic growth, political stability, and military strength. The economic progress of the Soviet bloc will have a superior attraction to formerly colonial and underdeveloped countries which are progressively throwing off the yoke of “capitalist imperialism.” War between Communist and capitalist countries is not necessary, but war among the capitalist countries is probable. In the scramble for progressively declining markets they will compete destructively, weaken each other, quarrel, fall out, and eventually war against each other.

Implicit in this Stalin-Malenkov analysis was this intention: the Soviet Union will use its diplomacy, propaganda, and economic power to the fullest to attract new subjects, to weaken and divide the free world, and to isolate the United States. Eventually, as a consequence of an intracapitalist. war, the Soviet Union can take over without too much trouble. Meanwhile, it is basic to the success of Soviet policy that there be a relaxation of tensions and a growth of confidence in the peacefulness of Soviet intentions.

In concluding his address at the Communist Party Congress, Malenkov turned on “peace” full blast. Among other things, he said: —

The Soviet policy of peace and security for all nations is based on [the premise] that the peaceful coexistence of capitalism and Communism and coöperation are quite possible. . . .

The Soviet Union has always stood for and now stands for the development of trade and coöperation with other countries irrespective of differences in social system. . . .

We are confident that in peaceful competition with capitalism the Socialist economic system will prove its superiority over the capitalistic economic system more and more strikingly with each passing year. . . .

Five months later Stalin was dead, but his successors have in foreign policy hewed to the “peaceful coexistence” line. This line has been compounded of protestations of peaceful Soviet intent; a persistent effort to portray the West as warlike and imperialistic; a campaign in underdeveloped countries of blandishment, attraction, and trade and aid; and efforts to divide, weaken, and make trouble for the West.

Khrushchev’s timetable

It was clear in 1953 and 1954 that this was increasingly happening; for example, enormous capital was made out of the Soviet offer to build a steel mill for India, and even the sale of wheat to India. But in 1955 the Kremlin broadened its campaign to a full-scale offensive, as these events will show: —

April-May, 1955 — Agreement, after ten years of obstruction, to a peace settlement for Austria (to show a change of heart and to hold out bait to West Germany).

April — The attempt, through Red China, to turn the Bandung Conference into a demonstration of Asian and African solidarity against the West.

July — The Summit Conference at Geneva (a week of bogus joviality in which agreement was reached on not a single issue of substance but during which a “relaxation of tensions” — and a letting down of the free world’s guard — was accomplished).

September — The Communist arms deal with Egypt, and Soviet offers of aid to Egypt in building the Aswan Dam (opening guns of a general drive to extend Soviet influence and make trouble for the West in the Middle East).

November — Second Geneva Conference (arrogant rejection by the Russians of Western proposals for settling basic issues in Europe, while blaming the West for the failure of the conference).

November-December — Triumphal tour of Bulganin and Khrushchev through India, Burma, and Afghanistan, spreading promises of Soviet trade and aid and talking peace while stirring up hatred and distrust of the West.

January, 1956 — Open adoption by Soviet representatives in the United Nations of a pro-Arab and anti-Israel line.

January — Bulganin offer of trade and aid to Latin America.

January-February — Bulganin offer of a “peace pact” to President Eisenhower.

February — Bulganin offer of trade and aid to Pakistan, conditioned on withdrawal from military alignment with the West.

February — Soviet overtures to Turkey.

Since 1953 the Soviet Union has steadily attempted to gain political advantage through negotiations for surplus commodities, such as Burma’s rice and Pakistan’s jute.

The 1952 “peaceful coexistence” strategy of the Soviet Union was confirmed and brought up to date in the speeches by Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders at the 20th Communist Party Congress in February of this year. The 20th Congress was essentially one of continuity, as the 19th Congress was one of change.

The Congress speeches were a continuous play upon the theme that the Soviet Union and its allies are the nations of “ peace.” In addition to stressing the idea of “peaceful coexistence” between the Communist and the “imperialist” nations, they minimized other kinds of conflict. Wars between the “imperialist” countries themselves are no longer to be considered inevitable, since imperialism itself can be eliminated by the peoples still in colonial status — with the aid of the Soviet Union of course. Civil wars are no longer necessary for Communists to attain power; they can come to power through parliamentary means — suggesting a revival of the “popular front" strategy of the 1930s and the early postwar years. In both these instances, Khrushchev and his associates completed the revision of MarxistLeninist dogma that Stalin had begun.

Companion themes of the conference were “friendship” and “trade.”A large part of Khrushchev’s speech was devoted to offers of friendship and trade to virtually all countries. We in America know the hidden traps contained in these proffers of friendship and trade, just as we know that professions of peace are tactical maneuvers. They reflect no basic change in the Communist objectives of world domination. But it would be the utmost folly to think that these bland appeals do not have a strong attraction for people who are weary of war, tensions, and the burden of armaments and who are hungry for the higher living standards that increased trade and economic development promise.

It is ironic that the same 20th Congress which re-emphasized the very points of dogma and tactics that Stalin himself had offered three years earlier was also used to continue the destruction of Stalin himself — a process that his successors had begun with surprising promptness shortly after his death. Among the errors charged to him were those which he had himself repudiated at the 19th Congress, and the new leaders gave him not a particle of credit for the change in course.

But throwing off Stalin makes the new line more plausible everywhere abroad. It enables the new leaders to maneuver much more freely, as they are doing — and more dangerously.

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THE Eisenhower Administration took office in January, 1953, just as this shift in Soviet strategy was initiated. Attention has been called publicly and repeatedly to the shift during the last three years: its nature has been analyzed and the government urged to take action to cope with it. Yet for three years the Administration in Washington took no important action to head off the Soviet offensive, or to alert Congress or the public to its nature and its dangers. It was only on January 12, 1956, with the consequences of the unopposed Soviet drive swirling about our ears, that Secretary Dulles publicly recognized that we are in a “bitterly competitive contest” in the field of economic development of underdeveloped countries. He said that defeat in this contest would be disastrous, and that “we could lose this economic contest unless this country, as a whole, wakes up to all its implications.”

Since this contest had, in fact, been initialed three years before, one can only wonder who had been asleep. Even now, weeks after the belated reveille blown by Mr. Dulles, there is little evidence of adequate action on his part to cope with the danger. This might have been predicted. The fundamental split in the leadership of the Republican Party and the inability of one of its wings to recognize the realities of the twentieth century make it difficult for that party to launch or sustain foreign economic policies that are adequate to protect vital American interests in the world.

Clearly, our country has great potential advantages in the economic field. And clearly it is the responsibility of the Administration to marshal and apply our unique abilities and our resources to speed up free world economic growth and development. Unhappily, the Administration failed to act and the Kremlin was permitted to gain the initiative. The President has on occasion uttered solemn words about our economic responsibilities in the world, but the blank pages in the record of his government are more significant.

Dulles’s policy slogans

It would be less distressing if the Administration’s performance in the face of the Soviet challenge had been confined to inaction. Unhappily, we have to take account of a host of Administration words and actions on non-economic matters over the last three years, of which the kindest thing that can be said is that they have unwittingly but powerfully facilitated the new Soviet offensive. It is tiresome to rake up for collective exhibit Mr. Dulles’s policy slogans and other unfortunate remarks. I would not do so here except that they are directly pertinent to my subject.

It is essential to the success of the Soviet offensive that the peoples of Asia and elsewhere be convinced that, on the one hand, Soviet intentions are peaceful and that, on the other, the United States is militaristic, reckless, colonial-minded, and helps other countries only because it wants their support in a new war, a war in which we would loose nuclear destruction upon the world.

Consider, then, the psychological effects of such slogans as “unleashing Chiang Kai-shek,”“agonizing reappraisal,” “massive retaliation,”and “brink of war.” According to reports of competent observers in Asia, they have been disastrous. In a public opinion poll in India’s West Bengal, 31 per cent of the people questioned said they thought the United States was preparing for aggressive war. Only 2 per cent feared the Soviet Union. Whether or not the poll exaggerates the situation, there is no question that even our best friends in Asia have become doubtful of our intentions and are repelled by the image of us which they see.

For three years, while the Soviet Union has been cultivating the themes of peaceful coexistence, trade, and economic development, Mr. Dulles has been flying about the world in the glare of publicity, negotiating military alliances and demonstrating remarkably little interest in helping promote that economic and social progress essential to the political stability on which the alliances depend. Two thirds of our economic aid to underdeveloped countries has been in direct support of military programs in South Korea, Indochina, and Formosa, leaving little for all other countries. Early this year our Ambassador to Pakistan made a public speech in that country in which he implied that the United States has little interest in aiding those countries that do not sign up with us in military alliances. He was not recalled or even rebuked by the State Department.

Another thing. Even while Bulganin and Khrushchev were touring India, charging our country with being colonial-minded and imperialistic, Mr. Dulles gratuitously issued a statement associating our country with Portuguese colonialism in Goa, a tiny enclave on the west coast of India. This deliberate and unnecessary affront to Indian sensibilities will long be remembered. The New York Times correspondent in India says without qualification that Mr. Dulles’s statement “did the United States as much word for word harm as any declaration ever made.”

It has often seemed, in the last three years, that Mr. Dulles has been determined to prove to the Asians precisely the points the Russians have been trying to make about us.

Geneva smoke screen

It remained, however, for President Eisenhower himself to give unwitting but powerful support to the point which the Russians had for three years been trying to make about themselves: namely, that their intentions are peaceful. The President, with his enormous prestige, went to the famous Summit Conference in Geneva last July with the eyes of the world focused upon his every word and gesture. It was without question right and proper that he should have gone there to negotiate with the Russians. But it was of the greatest importance that he make no mistake.

The Russians went to Geneva saying that what they wanted was “a relaxation of tensions.” During a single momentous week there, although no agreement was reached on any of the vital issues at stake, the impression was conveyed to the world that the cold war was over and that a new era of peace was at hand. The President gave every evidence of personal trust in the Kremlin leaders, and even went so far as to credit the Russians with a desire for peace no less earnest than that of the West. The headlines flew around the world. Upon his return home the President spoke, with some reservations, about “the spark ignited at Geneva" and “the most shining opportunity that lay ahead.”

Tensions relaxed immediately all over the world, and along with them efforts to build strength and unity against the Communist threat, which is what the Russians were after. Throughout Europe and Asia, neutralists and pro-Communists were confirmed and strengthened in their positions. The free world was psychologically disarmed. It is clear now that the “spirit of Geneva” was a smoke screen behind which the Russians have made a major breakthrough. Within three weeks Chancellor Adenauer had been induced to accept a Soviet Ambassador in Bonn without getting any commitment on German reunification. Within six weeks, the Russians had intruded into the Middle East. Within four months Bulganin and Khrushchev were being hailed in India, Burma, and Afghanistan as apostles of peace and economic development. Today the Kremlin is pressing its advantage with propaganda offers of peace pacts to President Eisenhower, the entirely justified refusal of which the Russians are using as another propaganda stick to beat us with.

The extension of Communist control

I have long stated my belief that the Kremlin does not want a major war in which it would be involved. But to say that what it does want is “peace” is to make a travesty of the word. The men in the Kremlin have made it clear that their aims are to stir up animosity, strife, and even war among other nations, to break up the North Atlantic Alliance, and to extend Communist control over the entire world through economic and political maneuvering, propaganda, and deliberate troublemaking. This is not peace.

Yet, in his State of the Union Message last January, the President, while outlining things that need to be done, gave the reassurance that “our country is at peace.” Looking about the world and considering the current Soviet political, economic, and psychological offensive, we are forced to take issue with him.

The conclusion is inescapable that our leaders have not understood the dangerous nature of the Soviet challenge. Until they do, hardly a start can be made toward meeting it. It is of equal importance that they explain it fully and carefully to the American people in order to arouse the necessary response and support. The President, by virtue of his office, is the one person in the country who has the prestige and moral authority to do this. Mr. Eisenhower did very little of this before his unfortunate illness, and has done less since.

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THE Soviet challenge is far more than the bitter economic contest that Mr. Dulles has belatedly recognized. It is a challenge to our basic attitudes in dealing with the underprivileged peoples of this world. It is primarily a political challenge; it uses psychological and economic weapons. It is one of the most subtle problems our country has ever been called upon to deal with, as it involves at its core our own political moralily.

It is necessary to face unflinchingly the fact that the great tradition of our people, their generosity, their sensitivity and concern for the feelings and needs of others, their devotion to the principle of self-determination, their profound dedication to peace, are simply not being reflected outward to the world. On the contrary, notwithstanding the esteem and affection with which the President may be held personally, to judge by the evidence what is being reflected to a large part of the world by his government is egotism, arrogance, unconcern for others, support of colonialism, and reckless militarism.

That this is true is one of the saddest things that could be said. And not only sad but profoundly disturbing. No one thing has brought it about, but an accumulation of those day-to-day decisions, actions, statements, and conversations that add up to the conduct of our foreign affairs. It is no longer possible to dismiss all this as Russian propaganda. The baffling thing about it is that it cannot be corrected by those responsible for it, for it is a reflection of them.

The irony of this situation is that President Eisenhower so often, and I believe genuinely, speaks of the importance of moral strength. But moral strength is of no avail in foreign affairs unless it is communicated to the people we want as friends and allies through actions and attitudes, policies and programs. We are not today in effective communication with the newly independent and aspiring peoples of the world.

And we will not be, until we succeed once again in identifying ourselves with anti-colonialism rather than with colonialism; with peace rather than with reckless use of our great power; with genuine respect for the national dignity of all peoples rather than with arrogance; with consistency in word and action rather than with impulsiveness; and with a steadfast program dedicated to world economic growth and applied with a conscious effort to help each country achieve independence from economic colonialism and to assure its people greater opportunity.

Russia’s economic offensive

Today, in regard to the economic development of underdeveloped countries, we are in the undignified and profitless business of running around behind the Russians trying to trump their aces. This is bad economics and fruitless diplomacy, and it tempts a continuous courting of new Russian offers. No amount of money spent on foreign aid will in itself win for us the loyalty of those we seek as friends and allies, or check the current Soviet offensive. We must cease thinking of economic aid as a short-run political tool which calls for a military quid pro quo. The progress of underdeveloped areas, and the loans, grants-in-aid, and technical assistance which help make that progress possible, are good and profitable in themselves and are, in fact, essential to the growth of our own economy.

We must realize that Soviet state control over both its internal economy and its foreign trade gives it extraordinary freedom of maneuver. It can buy and dispose of Burma’s rice surplus for political reasons; it can buy Egyptian cotton and if need be reduce its own production and divert the land to other purposes. There is nevertheless no reason to be defeatist about the economic offensive — providing we face squarely up to it and take effective measures.

The need for public capital

We are in urgent need of a new American — in fact, a free world — approach to the problem of economic growth. The basic obstacle to free world economic growth today is the shortage of long-term, low-interest loan and investment capital available to underdeveloped countries. The capital requirements of the underdeveloped countries are estimated in a statement by the Committee for Economic Development at $500 million to $1.5 billion a year beyond what is now available to them. This capital is needed for building the irrigation, power, transport, and other facilities essential to agricultural, mineral, and industrial development. It is also needed for building industrial plants. There is reason to believe that as basic facilities and services are created with public capital, and as progress gets under way in industrial development, private capital with proper encouragement will increasingly participate. But under the conditions which prevail today private enterprise cannot do the initial job or the whole job.

There is another and important reason why the solution must be found in terms of the whole free world. The capital-equipment-producing industrial countries of Western Europe and Japan are in a perpetual state of deficit in their normal trade and balance of payments with the United States. They buy from us more than they sell us — a gap that has been filled since the war by Marshall Plan aid and by military aid and military expenditures of the United States abroad. At present, the extraordinary American dollar supply to Europe is a one-way street economically (although necessary for military reasons) because it does not carry with it a method of correcting the basic difficulties in the world economy.

At the same time, trade between Western Europe and Japan, on the one hand, and the underdeveloped countries, on the other, is not increasing as it should to meet the common need. A natural basis exists for its healthy development but it is dependent upon the investment in lessdeveloped areas of far more capital than Western Europe and Japan are in a position to make available.

Our objective must be to harness more effectively for mutual benefit the productive capacity and capital of the United States, Western Europe, and Japan with the resources and efforts of the lessdeveloped countries.

Here is an opportunity for the United States to initiate another bold, new program. This program can be one that will electrify world opinion and mobilize the energies of the participating countries as did the Marshall Plan in 1947. It can help to make good the dramatic promise of Point Four.

A new international lending agency

Establishment of a new form of international lending authority is one step that needs to be taken — an authority with some of the organizational features of the World Bank but with greater flexibility to help underdeveloped countries carry forward development plans and programs that have been agreed upon. Such an authority might well assist regional efforts such as the Colombo Plan. There should be provision for making possible the servicing of loans in local currencies or other currencies available to the particular country. Conscious efforts to encourage private investment should be made by our government as well as by the countries needing the investment. In general, there should be a transition from bilateral to multilateral arrangements.

We would have everything to gain and nothing to lose by inviting the Soviet Union to participate in such an international lending authority, to the extent that it is willing to coöperate and contribute. If the Soviet Union should come in, it would not be able to gain special political advantage. If it did not come in, the ulterior motives of Soviet promises and offers would be effectively exposed.

American leadership and action in a world economic development program would have a powerful, built-in psychological impact. It would automatically impress on peoples around the world the American sense of responsibility and our concern for the well-being of all peoples. It would be tangible evidence that we are able to think not just in terms of our own narrow interests, but also in terms of the needs, desires, and aspirations of others. Supported by information programs adequate to explain our point of view and by a sensitive, understanding diplomacy, it should bring about a marked change in the psychological situation which allows the Soviet Union such easy victories today.

The free world, with its tremendous moral and material resources, must not remain on the defensive in the face of the Soviet challenge. The economic and psychological spearheads of the Soviet drive can be countered and rolled back by creative thinking and imaginative effort on our part. This thinking and effort must be world-wide in scope and commensurate with what is at stake — our very survival in freedom.