47 President reassures 28 to deny that the United States planned to cut down its combat strength in Europe. In this assurance President Eisenhower was trying to show France, and Italy too, that ratification of the EDC treaty would open the way for a more considered planning phase in which American commitments to forces for the defense of Europe could be made with greater confidence that there would be a Europe to defend. In this he was relying upon the report of the principal United States military officer in Europe, General Gruenther, made a few days earlier. represented at this conference [at Panmunjom]. . . were available, Europe became so jittery that Its object is precisely to remove one of the major President Eisenhower felt it necessary on October sources of tension in the Far East. The result of this exchange was that no meeting took place at Lugano and it was not until November 26, 1953 that the Soviet Union dropped its insistence that a 5-power conference (including Red China) be held before any Big Four meeting on Germany. Following an exchange of notes, mostly interim repetitions of what had gone before, the Soviets in their note of November 26 agreed to attend a conference of the Big Four foreign ministers in Berlin early in the new year. Germany would be the first item on the agenda. The Soviet note did call for the admission of Red China to the United Nations, but it dropped the earlier suggestion that the EDC be discontinued. After these many months and wordy exchanges, the West and the Soviet Union had at last agreed to talk over the German problem on a high level, if not at the summit.48 Soviets agree Meanwhile, a number of other lines of American policy in respect to European affairs had been kept busy. On one hand there was increasing criticism in Britain, mostly in LaLesser bour Party circles, of American difficulties in foreign policy.49 And, at the same the way of time, members of President Eisenstable relations hower's own party had harsh things to say about the way Secretary Dulles and his subordinates were guiding the nation's policies abroad.(62) The French government could not come to an agreement over EDC, even when it became clear that Great Britain and the United States were prepared to keep troops on the European continent in support of EDC for as long as it appeared necessary.50 When Secretary of Defense Wilson remarked on October 19, 1953 that the United States might reduce its combat forces abroad now that atomic weapons 41 U.S. Dept. of State Bulletin, XXIX:547-48, Oct. 26, 1953. 48 Sir Winston Churchill, who had favored a meeting between Malenkov and the Western leaders, was less optimistic in November 1953. He then said such a meeting "might end in a worse deadlock than there is at present. " "The most frequent criticisms related to differences between Britain and America over Far Eastern policies. In respect to Europe the two nations were pretty much in agreement. But some Labourites distrusted the ability of the United States to restrain itself from using atomic bombs promiscuously in Europe in the event of a war there. 50 In former times, such an assurance would have received wide publicity but such has been the increased tempo of recent events that the announcement created very little stir despite its grave import. General reports on ADDRESS BY GENERAL ALFRED M. GRUENTHER, NEW YORK, OCTOBER 8, 1953: . . . It is encouraging to report to you that our [NATO] defense forces are now from two to three times as effective as they were when General Eisenhower came to Europe in January 1951. . . . the NATO forces . . . are of such a strength that the Soviets today probably do not have sufficient power in Occupied Europe to launch an attack with any reasonable certainty of success. . . . This is a much greater capability than we thought would be possible when SHAPE was ganized. . . [but] we still do not have adequate strength to defeat an all-out Russian attack. . . The outlook for EDC is better now than it has been at any time. The chances that the treaty will be ratified within the next few months are reasonably good. . or we are now confronted with the problem of the long pull, because every indication points to a prolonged period of strain. . . . The task, therefore, for the NATO countries now is to establish on a long term basis that balance between military, economic, and social factors which will make us reasonably secure both from external attack by an aggressor and from internal disintegration resulting from poverty and discouragement. . . . The build-up of military strength under NATO . . . in Western Europe is dedicated to the dual proposition: First, that without such strength we would be in great danger . . . of losing a war if it should occur. Secondly, that without such strength we would once more find ourselves in a situation where the danger that war might occur would be extremely grave. . . . Whether we like it or not, American destiny and the destinies of our partners in freedom are inextricably interwoven. We shall solve this problem of survival together and in common, or we shall not solve it at all. . . . United States and Spain sign agreements on bases Partly because of the delays experienced in effective European defense arrangements and partly for other reasons of global strategy, the United States had for some time been negotiating with the Spanish government of Francisco Franco for sea and air base facilities on the Iberian peninsula.51 On September 26, 1953 it was announced that the United States and Spain had concluded three bilateral agreements (1) for "the construction and use of military facilities in Spain by the United States, (2) economic assistance, and (3) military end-item assistance."52 These agreements made Spain eligible for economic, technical, and military assistance under the Mutual Security Program, and $226,000,000 was made available for Spanish aid for fiscal 1954. One interesting feature of the 10-year defense agreement was the provision that: "The areas which . . . are prepared for joint utilization will remain under Spanish flag and command, and Spain will assume the obligation of adopting the necessary measures for the external security."53 There was some criticism in the United States to the effect that the United States was really building air and naval bases for Spain without Aid to Spain control over the future disposition balanced by of the bases when the defense araid to rangement expired. Some observers Yugoslavia? also saw in the action an implied approval of Franco's openly totalitarian type of government. While it was not a completely satisfying reply, an answer to this complaint was the pointing out of American assistance given to Yugoslavia which was under a communistic totalitarian regime of the Left fully as abhorrent to American ideals as the Rightist regime of Señor Franco.54 In times of need, Americans were fast learning, international politics called for strange bedfellows. When mapping plans for worldwide defense of the United States. and its like-minded friends, bases and facilities 51 The negotiations had been opened in April 1952 after Admiral Forest Sherman had talked with General Franco on July 16, 1951. 52 U.S. Dept. of State Bulletin, XXIX:435, Oct. 5, 1953. 53 Ibid., p. 436. Upon the expiration of the 10-year period the agreement will be renewed for two periods of 5 years each unless cancelled by either signatory. It should be stated that Great Britain joined the United States in 1949 in offers of economic assistance to Yugoslavia. In 1951 France also became a partner in this aid program. had a way of demonstrating their value on the score of geographical location just as much as on the count of political appropriateness. (63) Plans for withdrawal from Trieste As if to keep the balance from becoming too stationary, the United States and Britain chose the period of early October to announce their plans for withdrawal of occupation troops and the return of Zone A of Trieste to Italy. The October 8th announcement brought quick reactions from both Premier Pella's Italian government and Tito's Yugoslavs. The two governments had been almost at swords points for months over claims to the Trieste area and this seeming favoritism by Britain and America toward Italy angered the Yugoslavs. The fact that the AngloAmerican announcement was linked in many minds with efforts of the two powers to induce Italy to ratify the EDC treaty did little to help soothe injured feelings. While the expressed design of the announcement was to place Yugoslavia and Italy on equal terms for negotiation of a settlement of the Trieste question, the actuality was just the reverse. In the end, nothing was done immediately about removing the troops or returning the Zone A territory to Italy. Trieste plan dropped State Department under attack at home at With the European Army stalled by the failures of France and Italy, among others, to ratify the EDC treaty; with Soviet Russia posing the problem of Red China's acceptance as a dominant world power; and with dissensions appearing among the western allies, the autumn of 1953 was made more unhappy for the State Department by by events home. Amid noisy accusations and challenges which were practically ultimata, the leadership of the Eisenhower administration's foreign policy was forced to turn its attention from world troubles to domestic politics.55 After one particularly stormy day, Secretary Dulles issued a statement defending American policy toward Great Britain's trade with Red China.56 In the course of his statement he listed some fundamental factors governing American foreign policy. 55 See note (61), p. 154, and note (62), p. 159 above. 56 Alleged shipments by British firms or by others in British ships had been attacked frequently by several prominent Republican Congressmen as a "trade in blood." SECRETARY DULLES' STATEMENT ON FUNDAMENTALS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 1, 1953: President Eisenhower and Secretary Dulles defend American policy . . . It is the clear and firm purpose of this administration to treat other free nations as sovereign equals. . . . Today it is to our interest to assist certain countries: But that does not give us the right to try to take them over, to dictate their trade policies, and to make them our satellites. Indeed, we do not want weak or subservient allies. Our friends and allies are dependable just because they are unwilling to be anyone's satellites. . . . To maintain a cooperation of the free is a difficult and delicate process. Without mutual respect and friendship it would be impossible. We do not propose to throw away those precious assets by blustering and domineering methods. . . . The fact that some marginal disagreements persist is no reason for sacrificing friendship by attempting to coerce; the more so because the attempt would be fruitless.... The following day President Eisenhower added his emphatic backing to what Secretary Dulles had said. PRESIDENT EISENHOWER'S STATEMENT IN SUPPORT OF SECRETARY DULLES' STAND ON AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY, WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 2, 1953: I am in full accord with the statements made yesterday by Secretary Dulles. . . . The easiest thing to do with great power is to abuse it, to use it to excess. This most powerful of the free nations must not permit itself to grow weary of the processes of negotiation and adjustment that are vital to freedom. . . . We hope to be able to maintain . . . [the] overseas elements of our security program as long as our enlightened self-interest requires, even though we may, and probably we always will, have various differences of opinion with the nations receiving our aid. We do this because unity among free nations is our only hope for survival in the face of the worldwide Soviet conspiracy backed by the weight of Soviet military power. . . . The spectacle of America's foremost authorities in the field of foreign policy having to spend valuable hours and energies answering criticisms by their professed followers did little to enhance the prestige of the United States abroad. However, it may editorially be remarked that other nations, some of them older and supposedly wiser in the ways of politics, not infrequently put on equally discouraging displays of Dissension may be overemphasized for the previous summer. After four days of confidential talks the three governmental leaders issued a formal communiqué. COMMUNIQUÉ ON MEETING OF BRITISH, FRENCH, AND AMERICAN LEADERS, BERMUDA, DECEMBER 7, 1953: . . . Our meetings symbolized and confirmed the unity of purpose of our three countries. . . . Confident that our united strength is the best guarantee of peace and security we are resolved to maintain our joint efforts to perfect it. . . . The North Atlantic Treaty is and will remain the foundation of our common policy. . . . In the continuing development of a United Europe, including Germany, we see the best means of achieving greater prosperity, security and stability for its free peoples. We reaffirmed that the European Defense Community is needed to assure the defensive capacity of the Atlantic Community of which it will be an integral part. . . . We cannot accept as justified or permanent the present division of Europe. Our hope is that in due course peaceful means will be found to enable the countries of Eastern Europe again to play their part as free nations in a free Europe. Our three governments will lose no opportunity for easing the tensions that beset the world and for reassuring all nations that they have no cause to fear that the strength of the West will be invoked in any cause of wrongful violence. On the contrary it is the fundamental principle of the United Nations Organization, which we serve, that the guarantees against aggression shall be universal in their application. . . Our hope is that... [an early meeting of the Big Four foreign ministers] will make progress towards the reunification of Germany in freedom and the conclusion of 57 The position of the President of the United States as simultaneous head of state and head of political party puzzles many foreigners who are accustomed to a figurehead at the top of the state, with politicians in effective control. 58 Significant, in the light of developments immediately following the Bermuda conference, was the presence there of Admiral Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Lord Cherwell, eminent British atomic scientist. an Austrian State Treaty and thus towards the solution of other major international problems. President Eisenhower at the UN 59 Returning directly to New York from Bermuda, President Eisenhower made a dramatic appearance at the United Nations where he addressed the General Assembly in a plea for international agreement on the peaceful use of the powers of atomic energy. His December 16, 1953 speech-one of the most moving and significant of the President's career to that date has already received special excerption and comment.60 As indicated the reception to President Eisenhower's United Nations address was generally favorable, except from the Iron Curtain countries. But implementation of his suggestions will apparently take more willingness to cooperate than the various nations with atomic energy resources have yet demonstrated. At the end of the year Secretary Dulles was telling somewhat the same story about NATO and EDC as he had reported when he took over the direction of American foreign affairs-NATO was progressing satisfactorily, and EDC was just around the corner. But a new note had come into the Secretary's language and he was threatening an "agonizing reappraisal" of American foreign policy. Secretary Dulles threatens an "agonizing reappraisal" of American ... SECRETARY DULLES' REPORT ON PARIS MEETING OF NATO COUNCIL, WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 22, 1953: . . . All of the 14 member nations have made important contributions toward building this North Atlantic Treaty Organization. . . . The United States has made the largest single contribution to arming and equipping the NATO forces. We have put some $11 billion into this phase of our effort. The project is so vital and the investment in it so large that it deserves careful supervision. . . . We found the Organization in good shape. It has adapted itself to a new concept which the United States brought to the NATO meeting of last April. This was that NATO should operate on a budget which the member nations can sustain for what may be a long period. . . . At the . . . meeting of last April, virtually every member nation was saying that it could not carry its allotted share of the NATO foreign policy 59 Section IV of the communiqué related to the Far East, calling for an early convening of the political conference provided for in the Korean armistice, and recognizing the importance of the defense of Indochina by French and Associated States forces. See U.S. Dept. of State Bulletin, XXIX:852, Dec. 21, 1953. 60 See pp. 108-109 above. to program without large grants of economic aid from the United States. . . . a figure which the United States itself could not indefinitely support. It seemed to us that it was justifiable and even prudent now to moderate NATO's emergency-and exhausting-pace .... Some feared that this shift, from the mood of emergency to that of a steady pace, could not be made without destroying the morale of the Organization and leading to its disintegration. Some felt that what we proposed would be misinterpreted as a loss of United States interest in NATO. . . . Today we can honestly judge that NATO is on a sustainable basis. At our Paris meeting it was generally judged ... that the danger of military aggression from Soviet Russia was less than it had been a year or two before. That, if true, is largely due to NATO's growing power. But also it is due internal pressures and discontents . . . within the Soviet bloc. .. [Still] the danger is immense and persistent. This is no time for the free world to relax and to weaken its own military capacity to defend and strike back. . . . The American people can take pride in NATO and take comfort in it. We should sustain it on the basis now planned. . . . No nation, at any cost, could get alone what NATO provides for all its members. . . . NATO has become a splendid structure. But it rests upon a foundation which is precarious and which must cause us grave concern. . . . It was contemplated by the EDC treaty that it would be ratified within 6 months. Now 18 months have elapsed and there still is no assurance of early action. . . . in Paris last week, I mentioned the importance of action soon, and said that if there was not an early and affirmative response, the United States would have to undertake an “agonizing reappraisal" of basic foreign policy in relation to Europe. Of course, if EDC fails, there will be things to be done. . . . But I do not see "alternatives" in the sense of other practical ways of accomplishing the EDC goals. . . . unless unity is achieved soon, [the]... historic moment may pass and different and devisive forces may take command. . . . We have reached one of those points where the perfect is the greatest enemy of the good. No doubt the EDC treaty is less than perfect. . . . It has become the symbol of Europe's will to make it possible to achieve a unity which will dependably safeguard our Western civilization. . . . I do not believe that there will be failure to achieve European unity. What this "agonizing reappraisal" would involve, if it had to be undertaken by the State Department, Mr. Dulles did not at once make clear. But it was evident that several of America's European allies, notably France, read into the Secretary's warning something of a threat. In this atmosphere of dissatisfaction with results and prospects, of sharp words and fancied threats, the Big Three Western allies prepared to meet the Soviet Union's representative at the Berlin conference table early in 1954. 10. The Test of America's European Policy: France Rejects EDC: 1954 most If the American people were possessed of any doubts as to the interrelation of events in one portion of the globe with those in every other sector of the world, the tangled hisAmerican tory of 1954 must have resolved foreign policy much of the confusion. But these takes on same events and this demonstrated more complex interrelation provided responsibilities clear evidence that American foreign policy had to be made and carried out with global situations in mind. And, in turn, the clarification of this fundamental led the average American into further wonderment as to how, where, and when solutions to some of the most pressing problems were to be found. The purpose of this section, therefore, will be merely to set forth some of the events relating particularly to Europe during the first eight months of 1954 without attempting to do more than indicate how these events affected and were affected by events in other sections of the world. If the reader keeps uppermost the thought that the complexities of present-day American foreign policy do not permit a rigid compartmentation in description or discussion, he should be able to relate the developments stressed in the pages which follow with those in Latin America, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, the United Nations, and in the worldwide struggle between the free world and international communism, as described in other sections of this study. With the opening of the new year, attention was focused upon the forthcoming meeting of the foreign ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Approach Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. to the The conferences had been schedBerlin uled to begin in Berlin on January conference 4, 1954, but on the 1st it was announced that the date for con vening had been postponed until January 25th. President Eisenhower in his "State of the Union" message to Congress on January 7 stressed the fact that American freedom continued to be threatened so long as the communist conspiracy went on in its current campaign of hostilities and with its potential strength. He reiterated that American policy in Western Europe would be based firmly on NATO "as far ahead as we can see." He continued: "With the coming of unity to Western Europe, the assistance this nation can render for the security of Europe. . . will be multiplied in effectiveness."61 General Gruenther, at Rocquencourt, France, on January 11, told correspondents that NATO progress in three years had been better than earlier prospects had given promise. The NATO military forces, he said, could now compel an attacker to concentrate his troops, rendering them vulnerable to allied atomic weapons. General Gruenther added that West Germany was the best prospective source of manpower for NATO ground and air armies. On this encouraging note the Western allies approached the first Big Four meeting since 1949. Secretary Dulles announces the "massive retaliation" policy Several days before leaving for Berlin, Secretary Dulles, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, gave a review of the policies which the Eisenhower administration had put into effect during its first year in office. The Secretary's address dealt with many facets of American policy, but its main importance lay in the enunciation of a new aspect of that policy -"instant and massive retaliation." For convenience, those parts of the address dealing with areas other than Europe have been omitted from this excerpt.62 SECRETARY DULLES' ADDRESS ON "THE EVOLUTION OF FOREIGN POLICY," NEW YORK, JANUARY 12, 1954: . . . It is not sound military strategy permanently to commit U.S. land forces to Asia to a degree that leaves us no strategic reserves. It is not sound economics, or good foreign policy, to support permanently other countries; for in the long run, that creates as much ill will as good will. Also, it is not sound to become permanently committed to military expenditures so vast that they lead to "practical bankruptcy." . . . We need allies and collective security. Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power. . . . We want 1 U.S. Dept. of State Bulletin, XXX: 76, Jan. 18, 1954. 62 For the text of the entire speech see U.Š. Dept. of State Bulletin, XXX: 107-110, Jan. 25, 1954. |