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other ways, to make sure that all of the forces of the country were directed in the most efficient manner possible to the winning of the war.

Today, we are engaged in a struggle-that is the word to describe it-that is just as crucial from the point of view of the continued existence of our way of life, but we clearly are not focusing our total resources on the winning of that struggle.

For one thing, we have never taken the general activities of our country which mean governmental activities as seriously as we should in times of peace. We have regarded them with a goodnatured tolerance expressed in the phrase, "Well, politics is politics." We have thought of politics as a legitimate field for trying to promote special interests. There is a tendency to shrug our shoulders over governmental shortcomings and faults. Moreover, while we have recognized that there were foreign claims upon us which our selfinterest demanded that we attend to, we have not thought of them as being in the same category of importance as our own domestic business. Then, too, it has been hard for us to convince ourselves that human nature is not pretty much the same the world over. We hear it said that if we could only get Harry Truman to "get his feet under the same table"-that is the phrase used-with Joe Stalin, we would be able to iron out any international difficulty. Our own experience with people in our own communities has been such that it has seemed to us that good intentions must, in the long run, prevail-and if one proposition didn't meet with acceptance, all we had to do was to think up a better one.

There has been an attitude on the part of some that if things went too far we might have to "call their bluff" and possibly have a show-down.

In brief, we have felt that, somehow or other, there was an answer to our problem if only we were smart enough to figure it out.

We must realize, however, that the world situation is not one to which there is an easy answer. The only way to deal with the Soviet Union, we have found from hard experience, is to create situations of strength. Wherever the Soviet detects weakness or disunity-and it is quick to detect them-it exploits them to the full. A "showdown," in the brutal and realistic sense, of resort to a military decision is not a possible policy for a democracy. The Kremlin knows that.

We are struggling against an adversary that is deadly serious. We are in a situation where we are playing for keeps. Moreover, we are in a situation where we could lose without ever firing a shot.

It used to be said that the progress of imperialism was, first, to send out missionaries, then traders, and then colonial governors. But that is kid stuff compared to the methods that we are up against. There has never, in the history of the world, been an imperialist system that compares with what the Soviet Union has at its disposal. We have seen it in China. The Communists took over China at a ridiculously small cost. What they did was to invite some Chinese leaders who were

1

1 See A Decade of American Foreign Policy, pp. 691-728, and United States Relations with China with Special Reference to the Period 1944-1949 (Department of State publication 3573; 1949).

dissatisfied with the way things were going in their country to come to Moscow. There, they thoroughly indoctrinated them so that they returned to China prepared to resort to any means whatsoever to establish Communist control. They were completely subservient to the Moscow regime. (It is, of course, because Tito has thrown off this subservience that the Tito development is regarded with such deadly seriousness by Moscow.) These agents then mingled among the people and sold them on the personal material advantages of communism. They talked to the people in their own language. They promised to turn over the land to them. (Of course, everybody knows that after the land has been turned over to them and the Communists have gotten control they immediately take the land back under a program of "collectivization.")

But the Communists don't talk only in terms of economic interest. We have all seen pictures from China of native dances out in the fields which were put on by the local Communist organization. In many cases, they provided the only fun that these peasants had, and the peasants were led to believe that the Communist organization was the only group that provided the kind of life the peasants wanted.

The arsenal of the Communists is varied. I need not describe in detail the uses which they make of force, threats, infiltration, planned chaos, despair and confusion, and the enslavement of the people they dominate by a shrewd use of informers.

Against this threat we must have a foreign policy with two interrelated branches. First, we must be prepared to meet wherever possible all thrusts of the Soviet Union. It will not always be possible to anticipate where these thrusts will take place, and we will not always be able to deal with them with equal effectiveness. In the case of Greece and Turkey, we were able to meet that thrust effectively because the Greeks and the Turks were determined to maintain their independence. There were a lot of Greeks and Turks that did not like their government. There were a lot that did. But they were united in a common belief that they preferred it to any form of government that might be imposed upon them from outside. The Greeks were able, with our assistance, to meet military force with military force. The Turks have successfully resisted the powerful Soviet pressure brought against them. It should be borne in mind that in this case we were not dealing with threats to Greece and Turkey alone. The thrust that the Soviet Union was making in this case was directed at domination of the entire Near East and, then, at all of Europe.

It has been suggested by some people that the Greek and Turkish Governments were not our kind of democracy and therefore we should not have given them our aid. Of course, they do not have exactly the same kind of institutions that we do. But we are not dealing here with the kind of situation where we can go from one country to another with a piece of litmus paper and see whether everything is

See The Soviet-Yugoslav Dispute: Text of the Published Correspondence (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1948). See A Decade of American Foreign Policy, pp. 1252–1267.

true blue, whether the political, economic, and social climate is exactly, in all its details, the kind that we would like to have either for them or for us. The only question that we should ask is whether they are determined to protect their independence against Communist aggression and if they are, we should recognize our basic unity with them on this point.

In the case of China, the Communist thrust succeeded because the Chinese people were not convinced that the National Government was concerned with their welfare. I do not think that this thrust could have been prevented so long as the Chinese people felt that we were supporting a government that they did not believe to be serving their interest.

The second part of our foreign policy must be to create those economic, political, social, and psychological conditions that strengthen and create confidence in the democratic way of life. In Indonesia, for instance, we have been trying to make it plain to the Indonesians that we are sympathetic with their aspirations for independence. They do not want to be ruled by the Dutch or by the Russians or by anyone else. They want to rule themselves. If we are to establish a solidarity with them, we must have Americans living among them who talk their language I mean literally talk the Indonesian language who understand them and are understood by them. We must do what we can to help them make the most of their natural resources. We do this not by building elaborate plants but by such things as enabling the Indonesian farmers to help themselves, to have better tools, and to use better methods than they have known before. We must see their problems from their point of view. We must help them, so far as we can, to reach their own goals.

In areas like Western Europe where there is a fully developed modern industrial economy, we must help the countries to take the measures that are necessary to put that economy on a sound basis. One of the things that we must do is to enable other countries to buy with their own products the raw materials that they need to feed and clothe and employ their own people. This means that we must buy their goods and their services to a greater extent than at present. It is a matter of judgment as to what the level of our trade with the rest of the world should be, but probably it should be somewhere not very far from present levels. We must take that kind of action even though it requires adjustments here at home-and it will require some adjustments. Make no mistake about it, if we want to have strong allies in Europe, we have got to work out some kind of pattern of this kind. That will mean that European goods will compete with American goods and some American industries are likely to suffer. If this should prove to be the case, then means must be found to take care of any resulting adjustments.

We are going to need self-discipline in what we say and do. What we say and do has tremendous importance in strengthening or weakening this country's leadership.

It is, of course, extremely difficult to get democracies to work together. The democratic approach, by its very nature, is a varied

approach. It embodies freedom of action and freedom of decision, but if we are to win against a power that has imposed complete unity on all of its members, we shall have to achieve, in our own way and by common determination, some unity of our own.

When we have reached unity and determination on the part of the free nations when we have eliminated all of the areas of weakness that we can we will be able to evolve working agreements with the Russians. We will not have to keep our ears to the ground in order to know when the Russians are prepared to recognize that they cannot exploit a situation to their own benefit. In the case of Berlin,' when they realized that the airlift had prevented them from ousting the allies, we had no difficulty in learning when they came to that conclusion. Marshal Stalin announced it to the world in his answers to the Kingsbury Smith questions. Similar questions had been on file in the Kremlin for months. They have drawers full of questions there today that they can haul out and answer whenever they realize that it is to their interest to do so.

No good would come from our taking the initiative in calling for conversations at this point. Such an effort on our part would raise false hopes among some people and fears among others. The Russians would know that there was a public expectancy of results of some kind, and those results could only be achieved by dangerous concessions on our part. Only the Russians would benefit from such a step.

The Russians know that we are ready, always have been ready, always will be ready, to discuss with them any outstanding issue. We have discussed with them all important outstanding issues, not once, but many times. It is clear that the Russians do not want to settle those issues as long as they feel there is any possibility they can exploit them for their own objectives of world domination. It is only when they come to the conclusion that they cannot so exploit them that they will make agreements and they will let it be known when they have reached that decision.

These are some of the things that I meant when I referred to "total diplomacy." It means that all branches of the government must work closely together. Congress and the Departments of Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, and Commerce, and Interior Department, with its responsibility for our national resources, and the others, all have roles to play that are just as important in our relations with other people as the role of the Department of State.

And so it is with business, agriculture, and labor, with the press. and with the radio, with all of our great national organizations. We must agree voluntarily to concert our efforts to this one overriding task. If we do that, there can be little doubt that we shall succeed. The non-Communist countries together have two-thirds of the world's population, three-fourths of the world's economic productive power, and a potential preponderance of the world's military power. They A Decade of American Foreign Policy, pp. 934-939.

Questions submitted by Kingsbury Smith, European General Manager of the International News Service, to Premier Stalin Jan. 27, 1949, respecting a solution of the Berlin crisis, to which Premier Stalin replied Jan. 30; text of questions and replies in Department of State Bulletin, Feb. 13, 1949, pp. 192-194.

have the highest standard of living and the greatest ability to help underdeveloped areas achieve higher standards of living. They have on their side the appeal of independence and of national loyalties. They have the greatest attraction of all-human freedom. With these forces on our side, provided we use them well and wisely, the chances of victory and of peace are good.

3. PLOWING A STRAIGHT FURROW: Extemporaneous Remarks by the Secretary of State, November 17, 1950 (Excerpt)1

We have it on the highest of all possible authority that no man, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God. No nation and no group of people who wish to lead a nation. in this day and age in which we live are worthy of leadership, if at every moment they wish to tear up and examine the very roots of the policies upon which the whole future of the free world depends.

What are those policies and why is this so important? What is the whole question of foreign policy of the United States about?

In its relations with other nations this country, from its very beginning as a republic, has had one overwhelming direction in which it has gone and from which it has never varied. Its purpose and its direction, in its relations with other countries, have been to create and to maintain the environment in which the great American experiment in liberty could flourish and exist.

That is all we have asked of the world. We have no special interests that we want to achieve. We don't want to dominate anyone. We don't want territory. We don't want any of the things for which empires in the past have fought. We want only a world in which we can be free and in which everyone else can be free. And, just as the foundations of freedom in the United States are based on morality and moral purpose and moral responsibility, so relationships in the world are based on moral conviction and moral responsibility. We ask nothing for ourselves that we do not insist should be accorded to everyone. We are ready to help every nation in the world, just as we hope they would be ready to help us.

That has been the foundation of American foreign policy. There have been a lot of smart people and a lot of students who say, "Well, what are you trying to do? What is your purpose?" That is the purpose of American foreign policy. It always has been and it always will be.

There have been in our lifetime two occasions in which we have discovered that this effort to negotiate, to deal in friendliness, to deal with mutual helpfulness, has not been possible. Twice we have come to occasions when powers have decided to use force and war in order to create situations in the world where our sort of life could not exist.

1 Before the Annual Convention of the National Council of Negro Women, Washington; Department of State Bulletin, Nov. 27, 1950, pp. 840-841.

2 Luke 9: 62.

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