For more than two years the bonds of the Western Alliance, forged when the cold war was hotter, have been slackening. In Europe during this time tendencies toward a “third force” movement began to develop, while Washington on its side seemed more and more anxious to separate itself from British and French overseas interests; any association with “colonialism” was felt as an embarrassment by the administration in its efforts to strengthen American prestige with the Afro-Asian world. Alliances, unless they evolve and grow stronger, tend to do the opposite. So it has been with this one. And though it was the mitigation of Russian truculence and aggressiveness after Stalin’s death that made the need for Western unity appear less urgent, the Alliance was also weakened by the fact that same of the Eisenhower administration’s attitudes and decisions troubled the U.S.’s European partners deeply and made them feel less and less confident of America.
In 1949 George Kennan, who then headed the State Department’s planning staff, had prepared a policy paper advocating a closer and more intimate Anglo-American alliance than was then in existence. Neither the American nor the British government took the proposal seriously. American policy aimed at encouraging the establishment of a European union that would include West Germany, and in which Britain would be an associate rather than full member, with America confining her own participation to political, economic, and military support of the union. Eisenhower, and to a lesser extent Dulles, confirmed this policy when the Republicans took office in 1953. But when France rejected the European Defense Community, the idea of which General Eisenhower, as commander of SHAEF, had helped originate, Washington felt it as something of a psychological as well as political shock.
A reappraisal, even if not an immediate or “agonizing” one, began—and has continued, quietly, ever since. At this juncture, with the Allies tending to draw apart, the absence of creative and determined political leadership in both Washington and London let the initiative pass to the “forces of history”—with all that such an abdication involved in the way of inertia, muddle, misunderstanding, and disorientation.
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Developments in Russia after Stalin’s death were a primary influence in weakening the Alliance. Ironically, these developments were at first taken much more seriously by London and Paris than by Washington, and it was on the initiative and insistence of Britain and France, it will be remembered, that the United States agreed to the so-called Summit Conference at Geneva in the summer of 1955. Against expectations, this conference ended in a personal triumph for President Eisenhower. It enhanced his stature as a peacemaker throughout the world, and his own belief in his efficacy as a moderator between contending forces on the international scene. Thus he came home from Geneva satisfied on the whole; the British and French statesmen, however, returned disappointed. The conference had proved to them that there was no short cut to a settlement between East and West, and they were more convinced than ever that the policy of building up Western European strength—above all political and economic strength—had to be pursued with greater vigor.
But to post-Geneva Washington the unifying forces in Western Europe continued to seem weak. France, and to a lesser degree Britain, had their hands full in their overseas territories, and West Germany was thinking more about German reunification than about an active role for herself in NATO. President Eisenhower, to the surprise of some European statesmen, maintained a personal correspondence with Soviet leaders. The hope and expectation of American policy-makers was that the stalemate resulting from the polarization of power between the United States and the USSR might sooner or later lead to some arrangement more definite and reassuring than mere coexistence. This perspective lulled the administration into a false sense of security.
President Eisenhower had said that there was “no longer any alternative to peace.” This would have been correct had the basic assumption of American military planning been correct: namely, that any future war must involve the use of atomic weapons. But there was also the possibility of non-atomic, limited warfare, which was what Europeans preferred to envisage. American reluctance to arm for both conventional and atomic warfare, and the apparent shifting of emphasis to the latter, made Europeans afraid that American military intervention would everywhere entail the use of atomic weapons, or at least—as in Indo-China and Formosa—an inclination to toy with the idea of using them. This, too, put a strain on the Western Alliance. And reported plans for drastic cuts in the size of the armed forces of the United States made Europeans fear that there would be a considerable withdrawal of American troops from Europe. The drive, moreover, to reduce American military aid abroad at a time when Russia was extending her own aid program was extremely disturbing.
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President Eisenhower may have been right in thinking that Russia had become less bellicose, but it did not follow from this that she had become more reasonable. As a result, Washington was caught unprepared when the Soviet Union suddenly shifted the theater of the cold war to the Middle East, in hopes of finding a breach there through which to expand her power, and being willing to accept the stalemate in Europe at least temporarily. Britain and France took immediate alarm: they saw their lifeline to Middle Eastern oil, as well as their prestige as great powers, threatened. When the Anglo-French attack on Suez came, it dealt a jolting blow to the idea entertained in Washington since Geneva that the United States, as the greatest single power in the world, could play the role of umpire and mediator between her West European allies and the rising nationalisms of the Middle East. And the Red Army’s suppression of the Hungarian revolt jarred the idea that America could play the same role between the USSR and its restive satellites.
Dulles’s refusal to give any kind of support to the Anglo-French intervention in Egypt was based on the honest conviction that military force would cost the West the good will of Asian and African nationalism—the winning of which is a main long-range aim of American policy. Behind this aim was the assumption that unless Asian and African nationalism were kept friendly it would throw itself into the arms of Russia and China, or at least collaborate with them against the West (as if it did not have its own interests to defend against the Communist powers). But Dulles seems to have underrated the extent to which Nasser had sold his soul to the Kremlin. And having once got their foot in the Mideastern door, the Russians were bound to try to force it wide open. Subsequent events have shown that they now attach more importance and value to their new foothold in Egypt than the United States does to her own extensive and concrete interests in the area. They have also shown that Russia views the fate of Israel with supreme cynicism.
Public opinion in America, which had been unaware of, if not indifferent to, the growing differences between London and Washington in recent years, showed itself more charitable than the Eisenhower administration in the matter of the Suez intervention. (It had been the other way around during the Korean war, when American public opinion was more outraged than the American government—which quite understood the British predicament—by Britain’s continuing to recognize Red China and trade with her in non-strategic materials. That, indeed, was a more threatening time than now for the Anglo-American alliance; in the long run, relations between the two countries depend much more on how their two peoples feel about each other than on official and diplomatic relations.)
Washington, when it learned of the Anglo-French attack on Suez, was not only eager to teach its allies a lesson, but to use the occasion to win more favor in Asia and Africa. Whereas the European experts in the State Department warned that any further weakening of the Western front in the Middle East would only tempt the Russians to make more mischief in Europe, the Middle Eastern experts argued that now was the time to cut loose once and for all from the “colonial” powers. As one of these experts put it to me, “This is our second 1776, the American emancipation from British and French colonialism in the Middle East.”
For some time these same experts had been assuming that Britain and France had lost all influence in the Arab world, and that the United States could only weaken herself by backing them. People like Chester Bowles, the former American ambassador to India, had for an even longer time been making that point. “How realistic have we been,” he wrote recently, “largely to ignore the powerful and inevitable growth of nationalism in Africa in order to avoid differences with our Western Allies?” Only by cutting loose, he and like-minded critics maintained, could the United States successfully compete with Russia for the sympathies of the underdeveloped peoples.
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This sounds very good in theory. But whatever the United States may do to appease the Arabs, or buy their sympathies, she will always be handicapped by the fact that she—along with Russia—is one of the two dominant powers in the world today. And countries that have only recently gained their complete independence are hesitant about committing themselves too far to so great a power. On the other hand, they do not feel uncomfortable with Britain in the Baghdad Pact—she is no longer so big as she was.
The assumption now prevalent in America, that Britain has lost all her influence in the Middle East, and that there consequently exists a vacuum which America must fill if Russia is to be kept out—and fill by policies quite different from those of Britain—may thus be a dangerous oversimplification, if not an illusion. I doubt very much that Britain has lost all her influence in the Middle East. What she has lost is the illusion of an influence in certain Arab countries—Jordan, Egypt, and to some extent Iraq—an influence that in fact had dwindled or vanished to nothing before the Suez intervention. This has made London take a much more realistic view of things—which should be all to the good. London’s new realism at last acknowledges the anti-British direction of Nasser’s Egypt and the extinction of British influence in Jordan. The questions now remaining are the real, rock-bottom ones: how shall Western interests be protected in the Middle East? How stave off Russian penetration? How pacify the area?
It may be doubtful whether the Baghdad Pact is the best instrument for guarding the Middle East against Russian intrusion; a larger grouping would be preferable. But it is remarkable how well that pact has stood up in spite of the adverse reaction throughout the Middle East to the Anglo-French attack on Egypt. Turkey and Pakistan, especially, have made it obvious that they feel they have a great stake in the Baghdad Pact, and they have actively and publicly defended it, even attacking those who wanted to squeeze Britain out of it.
The American hope of winning the support of the Arab world by combining a political policy of pacificism with an altruistic economic policy of large-scale aid is bound to fail. Few experts really believe in it. The United States cannot escape the responsibilities of leadership, and these involve taking sides. Taking sides can win sympathies as well as provoke animosities, as any real leader knows. Nor can she have real influence unless she takes sides and assumes responsibilities.
It would be quite futile, for one thing, to try to develop a coordinated and constructive policy in the Middle East without first settling the Arab-Israeli dispute. This is understood in the State Department. Vice President Nixon recently mentioned three points which should form the basis for a permanent settlement: a guarantee of the sovereignty of both Israel and her neighbors; “a progressive limitation of the armaments of the nations in the area”; and “generous aid” to help solve economic problems. But the reaction of other countries, including India, who could be especially helpful in influencing the Arab bloc, will depend in part on how determinedly the United States presses for the kind of settlement she favors.
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Turning to Europe, American policy-planners say that Western Europe must unite in order to resist successfully the political and economic pressures which the Russian economy, growing by leaps and bounds as it is, will exert on Europe. They argue that the only way to strengthen Western Europe economically is to create a common market and pool all Western European projects for atomic power. Washington experts are not unaware that such a movement for unification might create a “third force” psychology in Western Europe, but they say that, in view of the advantages to be gained by a self-reliant Europe, they would not object as long as this “third force” did not acquire an anti-American color.
Before Britain embarked on her ill-conceived military adventure in Egypt, potent forces inside and outside the British government had begun seriously to plan for setting up a free market area in Western Europe that Britain would join. The idea was more revolutionary than anything since Cobden and Bright, yet, surprisingly, there was relatively little resistance to it either from industry or labor. The realization had obviously grown in England that Britain could no longer stay aloof from the Continent, that she had to help strengthen Europe or else go down with it; that if she did stay out, Germany would dominate Western Europe.
Whether the abortive intervention in Egypt, whose failure revealed how weak Britain and France were when unsupported by the United States, will encourage or discourage European unification depends largely on Washington. If the United States actively encourages union, it will come to pass. But new delays will be inevitable. The economic crisis caused by the closing of the Suez Canal, aggravated by Washington’s delay in arranging oil shipments to Europe, has shaken the financial position of several European countries, but especially Britain’s. And not until her economy has regained its stability will Britain be able to experiment with economic union with Western Europe, which involves new risks for herself.
The ultimate effect on the Western Alliance of the tremors and shocks it has suffered in the last few months remains difficult to assess. But the air on both sides of the ocean may well have been cleared of the fog of sanctimonious, routine platitudes about Western cooperation, so that it is possible now to appraise more soberly the functions and meaning of the Alliance.
The British and French have learned that they cannot act without consulting the United States. And the United States has had a lesson insofar as she overrated the extent of her control over the Alliance. And, as so often before when the West was rent by internal quarrels, the Kremlin itself is doing much to make the Allies forget their differences. The ruthless suppression of the Hungarian revolt, Bulganin’s threat to use rockets against Britain and France, the reported troop concentrations along the borders of such satellite countries as Poland and Bulgaria, and the public warnings by Tito, who knows better than any other foreigner what goes on inside the Kremlin, that the Russian “demi-gods” are in an unpredictable mood—all these have had a sobering effect on the West. There are increasing signs that the fabric of Soviet society is beginning to be strained dangerously under the new pressures generated by the de-Stalinization policy of Khrushchev. This, in turn, has revived the fear in Western capitals that one day the Kremlin might reach the conclusion that the only way to avoid loss of control over its empire would be through a major war.
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This fear has persuaded a country like Iceland, which was restive under her NATO commitments, to withdraw her objections, and Mr. Dulles is trying manfully—as are the French and the British—to restore that mutual confidence in the West which was lost, partly because of a failure of personalities, but primarily because of the growing feeling in Europe that the United States was not exerting the kind of leadership commensurate with her position and the needs of the world situation. For it is not American domination that has caused a waning of reliance on the United States, but the very lack of it. President Eisenhower’s tendency to behave more as a tranquilizer than a stimulant has caused impatience and lack of confidence in American leadership, and a feeling that he is avoiding rather than facing up to the issues that will ultimately fortify or undermine Western influence in the world. He has been able to elevate the virtues of moderation into supreme political assets in domestic politics, and is now trying to do the same in international affairs. But power politics does not lend itself to this treatment.
The President’s policy of acting through the United Nations to stop the Israeli, British, and French invasions of Egypt helped to strengthen the world organization and kept its prestige from suffering serious damage by the unauthorized use of force. But whether Eisenhower’s all-out reliance on the UN will ultimately lead toward a pacification of the Middle East, or whether the United Nations on the one hand, and Western interests on the other, lose out in the end, will depend largely on his willingness to exert strong leadership outside as well as inside the UN. The Allies have suspected for some time now that President Eisenhower’s policies may be leading toward a new kind of isolationism—not expressed, as of old, by refusing to make commitments abroad, but in the draining away, through the UN, of the spirit and meaning of existing ones. This may be a sign of maturity—almost sedateness—and the world may well grow nostalgic for the American youth and adventurousness that it used to treat at times with condescension. Or it may be a consequence of that inhibiting awe of the “nuclear stalemate” which so strongly influences the President. Or, finally—and there is a growing suspicion of this in Europe—it may be that Eisenhower, for all his high ideals, does not have the grasp of foreign affairs he was thought to have.
The President has tried to play umpire between the Allies and rising nationalism in the Middle East, and between the rebellious satellites and the Kremlin. That policy has now failed. It led the Allies to try to go their own way in the Middle East. And the effort to reassure Russia that the United States is not seeking “military allies,” but only “friends,” as Mr. Dulles put it, and to warn the satellites that “Titoism is good enough,” has been frustrated by what seems the inexorable internal evolution of the Communist world, which seems to permit neither the Kremlin nor its satellites to stand still. A half-and-half policy designed to satisfy everybody is no policy at all, and will cost America many dollars without winning her any influence. Fundamentally, of course, influence depends not on what a country says, but on what it is prepared to do; American influence will be weak unless the Eisenhower trend toward withdrawal from commitments in the world is reversed. Only then can Western security be preserved.
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