No More Learning

Anglo-American military alliance against the Soviet
Union.
President Truman, however, never noted for his
forcefulness of personality or independence of mind, fell
in readily with Churchill's anti-Soviet rhetoric and apol-
ogia for a cold war. Moreover, being unsure of himself
on international issues, Mr. Truman has consistently
leaned on others in the formulation of American foreign
policy rather than assuming leadership himself. And he
has often taken very bad advice, as in accepting the idea,
first put forward by "Mr. X" in the magazine Foreign
Affairs in 1947, of the "containment" of communism
through armed force and the heightening of pressures
against the U. S. S. R. Even "Mr. X," universally recog-
nized as George Kennan, now U. S. Ambassador to the
Soviet Union, has become rather doubtful of his orig-
inal thesis.
Also President Truman, despite his dismissal of Gen-
eral MacArthur for sabotaging American policy in Korea,
has on the whole relied heavily upon the military mind.
Writing in the New York Herald Tribune about the
powers of the National Security Council, composed
chiefly of military men and defense secretaries, Mr.
Sumner Welles, former Under Secretary of State, asserts:
"No President since General Grant has had such child-
like faith in the omniscience of the high brass as the
present occupant of the White House. It is no surprise
to learn that President Truman invariably approves every
decision of the Council. . . . The Council passes on all
important questions in this country's international re-
lations and decides the policy to be adopted. It has now
been given authority by the President to determine our
political objectives in every part of the world. . . . But no
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
emergency can justify the control of this country's foreign
policy by a Council which reaches its decisions from a
military standpoint. "5
Generals and admirals, secretaries of war and navy
and air, have traditionally been in favor of continued
expansion of the services in which they function. Such
expansion increases their power, prestige and sense of
mission. Furthermore, they tend to look for the solution
of international tensions in terms of war rather than of
diplomacy. These are some of the reasons why civilian
control over the U. S. defense departments is of such great
importance. But there are many indications that the
White House bows in general to the Pentagon. And one
unhappy sign of this is President Truman's willingness
to spur on a dangerous armaments race, to foist Universal
Military Training on America and to encourage wild
war scares as the occasion demands. Even an anti-Soviet
stalwart like Congressman Joseph W. Martin, Jr. , leader
of the Republican minority in the House of Representa-
tives, has stated: "Down through the years the high
officials of this Government uttered time and again the
direst warnings of bloodshed when a particular piece
of legislation they wanted was before Congress. "
In September, 1951, as reported in The New York
Times, President Truman signed a "measure authorizing
a $5,864,301,178 global military construction program,
including a ring of secret overseas bases close enough to
the Soviet Union so that the Air Force could retaliate
against attack and neutralize the enemy's war potential.
It was the largest amount ever voted for military con-
struction during peacetime. "6 Although the stated rea-
son for this vast appropriation was that it was essential
for defense, obviously the air bases alluded to could also
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
be used for a sudden A-bomb onslaught against the
U. S. S. R. The acknowledged U. S. policy of building a
round-the-world network of air bases, now several hun-
dreds in number, as near as possible to the frontiers of
Soviet Russia and its allies, makes the Soviets understand-
ably nervous.
There are grounds for believing that Harry Truman
hopes to go down in history as one of America's greatest
Presidents because of his militant crusade against com-
munism. Be that as it may, he will certainly be remem-
bered as the Chief Executive who engineered through
Congress the largest peacetime budgets on record through
his second term of office. For the fiscal year of 1952 he
obtained Congressional approval for a budget of almost
71 billion dollars, with 49. 7 billions earmarked for
military purposes, exclusive of payments to veterans. For
the fiscal year of 1953, running from July 1, 1952, to July
1, 1953, the President demanded, shortly after new Sov-
iet peace overtures, a budget of over 85 billions. *
Of this budget, which the Wall Street Journal termed
"so monstrous as to defy reasoned comment," approxi-
mately 76 percent or 65. 1 billions were for national
security,? including 52. 4 billions for the armed forces
and 10. 5 billions for international security (aid to U. S.
allies). This does not include 4. 2 billions for veterans
and 6. 2 billions for interest, chiefly on loans which
financed past wars. Fourteen billions of the new budget
were to go to the building of airplanes, while 1. 7 billions
were for speeding up the stockpiling of atomic weapons
as part of a 5- to 6-billion dollar program over the next
? This budget, announced in January, 1952, was reduced by President
Truman in August by 6. 4 billion dollars, leaving a total of approximately
79 billions.
? f For comparative Soviet figures see p. 391.
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few years for mass production of America's "fantastic new
weapons," including the dreaded hydrogen bomb.
These astronomical Truman totals mean that the
President was asking the United States to spend approxi-
mately 180 million dollars a day on defense, which is
about 3. 7 times the entire 48-million budget of the United
Nations for 1952. Let that sink in: Mr. Truman expected
the U. S. to expend for military purposes in a single day
over three and a half times what the U. N. can devote to
international peace during a full year. Or, to make an-
other comparison, the U. S. was to pour into defense
every day more than twice as much as the total endow-
ment of Columbia University, America's fourth wealth-
iest educational institution. These colossal armament
figures seem alarming not only to the Russians, but also
to some of America's own allies.
The skyrocketing U. S. armaments outlays of the past
few years have kept the American economy booming and
headed off the depression that many competent econom-
ists think would otherwise have taken place. A brink-of-
war economy, with government spending on a huge scale
stimulating business and bringing enormous profits, is
one way of temporarily overcoming fundamental eco-
nomic difficulties in a capitalist economy. Government
expenditure on weapons of war is the favorite form of
public works for capitalist businessmen, since it results
in very profitable contracts and since the end product
is something that does not compete, like public hydro-
electric developments, or public housing, with private
capitalist enterprise.
As a larger and larger proportion of American busi-
ness becomes geared to the manufacture of arms and the
servicing of armies, it grows harder and harder to turn
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIO7V
back from a brink-of-war economy to a peace economy.
It is for the time being more expedient, especially from
a political viewpoint, to accelerate the armaments boom
than to put the brakes on it. And the terrible Communist
blunder in Korea played directly into the hands of those
powerful groups in America which had been agitating
for an expanded armaments program.
That program has become so prodigiously enlarged
over the past few years, and so interwoven with the basic
fabric of the economy, that government leaders, private
businessmen and even trade union officials are anxious
lest the general cold war and the little hot war be con-
cluded too quickly and peace break out. Typical was the
reaction to talk of peace in Korea as reported in the Wall
Street Journal of May 16, 1951: "Stock prices experi-
enced the sharpest decline since March 13. Brokers
ascribed the break to widespread peace rumors. . . . Trad-
ers are fearful that the end of hostilities might also halt
rearmament and catch leading companies with swollen
inventories unbalanced for peacetime production. "
As Mr. Norman Thomas, an outspoken anti-Soviet
crusader, has said: "Millions of Americans, despite their
best hopes, have acquired a vested interest in the eco-
nomic waste of the arms race. Its sudden end would be
greeted with an outpouring of joy, but it would be fol-
lowed by economic panic -- unless we were ready with
constructive plans for a cooperative war on hunger,
illiteracy and disease. "7 Such plans the powers-that-be do
not have, although vastly extended government spend-
ing for great economic projects at home and for the
development of backward nations abroad (Point Four)
could obviously be just as much of a business stimulus
as shovelling unending billions into the maw of Mars.
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In his 85-billion budget, Mr. Truman assigned only
$600,000,000 to the Point Four program as contrasted
with the approximately $19,000,000,000 needed annually
according to a report of five U. N. experts in May, 1951.
Resilient as it is, even the American economy will
not be able to stand indefinitely the strain of such enorm-
ous arms budgets and staggering government deficits as
those imposed by the Truman Administration. And if
the people as a whole finally start to offer serious objec-
tion to the armaments burden, reckless political leaders
may be tempted to overcome popular opposition by ac-
tually plunging America into a world war. When war
preparations, and in the last analysis war itself, seem to
the rulers of a country the easiest way to maintain pros-
perity and full employment, the danger is that they will
choose the path of international conflict in preference to
facing an immediate economic crisis and running the risk
of becoming discredited.
The disturbing distension of armaments has already
inflicted on the American people a spiral of inflation,
with rising prices and rising taxes cutting drastically into
the consumer's income. As ex-President Herbert Hoover
stated in his address of January 27, 1952: "The outstand-
ing phenomenon in the United States is the dangerous
overstraining of our economy by our gigantic expendi-
tures. The American people have not yet felt the full
impact of the gigantic increase in government spending
and taxes. Yet we already suffer from the blight of infla-
tion and confiscatory taxes. We are actually in a war
economy except for world-wide shooting. We are divert-
ing more and more civilian production to war mate-
rials. . . .
"Since the end of the Second World War the purchas-
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? CO-EXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTION?
ing power of our money, measured in wholesale price
indexes, has decreased 40 percent. . . . It is the average
family who pays the bulk of taxes, both income and hid-
den. Among them are corporation taxes. These are ulti-
mately passed on to their customers or the corporation
would quickly go bankrupt. . . . These huge taxes are
also overstraining our economy. "8 In addition, President
Truman's reckless program is using up America's limited
natural resources, such as iron ore and oil, at such a
furious rate that coming generations, under whatever
form of economy, will be seriously handicapped. The
Washington spendthrifts are robbing future Americans
of their birthright for a wasteful mess of bombs and bat-
tleships, guns, tanks and warplanes.
The burgeoning American armaments economy has
brought the United States to a condition, as described by
Walter Lippmann, "of gigantic, almost explosive, indus-
trial expansion which draws tremendously and competi-
tively on the available supplies. "9 America's accelerating
need for raw materials, scrap metal and finished goods
to meet the insatiable demands of a defense policy run
wild has made it increasingly difficult for Britain, France,
Italy and the Benelux countries to find the necessary
imports for their own needs; to pay the inflated prices
asked, most frequently by American manufacturers; and
to put across their vast rearmament programs, in con-
formance with American foreign policy, without more
and more lowering their own standards of living through
domestic inflation, crushing taxation and a sheer lack
of consumers' goods.
Mr. Aneurin Bevan commented most persuasively on
the situation in his speech of April 23, 1951, when he
resigned in protest as Minister of Labor in the British
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? SOVIET CIVILIZATION
Labor Government: "It is now perfectly clear to anyone
who examines the matter objectively -- the lurchings of
the American economy, the extravagance and unpredict-
able behavior of the production machine, the failure of
the American Government to inject the arms program
into the economy slowly enough has already caused a vast
inflation of prices all over the world. It has disturbed the
economy of the Western World to such an extent that if it
goes on more damage will be done by this unrestrained
behavior than by the behavior of the nation the arms are
intended to restrain. . . .
"I say, therefore, with full solemnity of the serious-
ness of what I am saying, that the ? 4,700,000,000 arms
program is already dead. It cannot be achieved without
irreparable damage to the economy of Great Britain and
the world. . . .
The fact is that the Western World has
embarked upon a campaign of arms production and upon
a scale of arms production so quickly and of such extent
that the foundations of political liberty and parliamentary
democracy will not be able to sustain the shock. "10*
In December, 1951, Winston Churchill, soon after
he became Prime Minister for the second time, declared
frankly in the House of Commons that Britain would be
unable to complete on schedule its three-year $13-billion
rearmament program. He said that he was giving Aneu-
rin Bevan "honorable mention" for having, "it appears
by accident -- perhaps not from the best of motives -- hap-
pened to be right. "11 Early in 1952 Churchill's Con-
servative Government launched a new austerity program
"to avert national bankruptcy. " Measures included a
drastic curtailment of the social services, cuts in the civil
? In his challenging book, In Place of Fear, published In the spring of
1952, Mr. Bevan expanded this thesis in detail.
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOW
service staff, a sharp reduction in manufactured goods
for the home market and a record low foreign travel al-
lowance for each individual annually of $70 for Europe
and $14 for the United States.
The remarks of Bevan and Churchill raise the por-
tentous question of whether the long-range effect of
American policy will not be to force Western Europe
farther and farther to the left instead of rescuing it from
the Communists. A most significant report issued in
March, 1952, by the ultra-conservative U. S. Chamber
of Commerce puts the issue squarely: "There is little
surplus fat in Western Europe to permit the luxury of
large armies. It will take decades fully to repair the
destruction of the recent war. . . . Further sacrifice would
inevitably drive many into the already large Communist
and Socialist Parties. It would seem the part of wisdom,
given these trends, not to overlook the political and eco-
nomic problems of Europe. Heavy emphasis upon the
military may well backfire. "12
The only sound way, of course, to prevent the spread
of Communist regimes is to institute far-reaching social
and economic reforms which will do away with poverty,
unemployment, depression, currency crises and the other
ills which have afflicted Europe over the past few decades.
But the heavy-handed Truman Administration, insisting
everywhere on the warfare state in place of the welfare
state, has offered no effective plan for permanent eco-
nomic well-being and is, on the contrary, depressing liv-
ing standards in the nations it purports to be aiding.
The careening American economic juggernaut has
affected for the worse not only England, France and
Western Europe in general. A staggering rise in prices
has taken place during the past few years in most of the
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nations having a close economic relationship to the
United States. If President Truman had studied his own
reports more carefully, he would have been more con-
scious of the unhappy consequences of his policies. For
example, his Mid-Year Economic Report of 1951 stated:
"The enormous price increases which have occurred
constitute in some countries a danger to political and
social stability, and to the security program of the free
world. . . . Because the economies of these countries have
been under great strain and because in some of them the
political and social situation is tense, inflation raises not
only the question of equitable distribution of the eco-
nomic burden of defense; it also raises the grave question
of the ability of their governments to carry through the
needed defense programs and maintain economic stabil-
ity. "13
With the economic situation steadily deteriorating
in the very nations the American Government proclaims
it is saving from the Soviet menace, the Truman Admin-
istration has all along insisted that its allies follow its
own lead of drastically curtailing trade with members of
the Soviet-led bloc for the purpose of weakening Com-
munist military potential. The U. S. Congress reinforced
this policy in 1951 by passing the Battle Act, under which
any nation selling strategic goods, very broadly defined,
to customers in the Communist bloc loses all American
economic and military aid. The over-all result has been
a severe decline in commerce between Western and East-
ern Europe, and between Japan and China, which has
traditionally been Japan's best customer as well as its
main source of raw materials.
The lack of normal trade relations with Western Eu-
rope has indeed been some handicap to the Soviet Union
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIOH?
and the smaller Eastern European countries in their post-
war economic reconstruction; but it has been consider-
ably more of a handicap to the Western European eco-
nomies. This is because Soviet Russia and its allies, with
their far-reaching economic planning, have been better
able to adjust to the falling off of commerce than the
West.
Furthermore, the American-imposed barriers against
economic relations with the East have forced the North
Atlantic Pact countries to attempt to fill the vacuum
through trade with the U. S. This endeavor is impossible
of fulfilment because European exports run into the
barrier of America's high tariffs and because European
imports must be paid for in dollars. These difficulties
have combined to create throughout Western Europe a
critical and continuing dollar deficit. And it is my belief
that the U. S. "get-tough" policy towards the U. S. S. R.
is toughest of all on the hard-pressed Western European
peoples.
In July, 1951, the American Government took the
extreme step of breaking off its formal trade and com-
mercial agreements with Soviet Russia and the People's
Republics of Eastern Europe, despite the fact that these
nations have been most desirous of maintaining trade re-
lations with the West. American business of course loses
out economically from this short-sighted policy. The
total value of exports from the U. S. to the U. S. S. R. fell
from $149,504,000 (including $50,540,000 in aid and
relief) in 1947 to $27,879,000 in 1948, to $6,617,000 in
1949, to a trickle of $621,407 in 1950 and $55,000 in
1951.
Walter Lippmann makes some pertinent and pene-
trating remarks about the all too successful American
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campaign to dislocate international trade. "A dominat-
ing part of Congress," he writes, "which Mr. Truman
and Mr. Acheson have felt it necessary to appease, is
demanding a virtual embargo and blockade of the whole
Communist orbit. The reasoning of these Congressmen
is that an embargo and blockade of this kind would hurt
the Communists more than it hurts the United States.
That, considering our immense self-sufficiency and
enormous financial power, is no doubt true. But from
this truth they have jumped to the quite unwarranted
conclusion that the embargo hurts the Communists more
than it hurts our weak and stricken allies. That is not
true, and we shall be learning more and more, but in the
hard way, how untrue it is. "
Mr. Lippmann analyzes the situation further: "The
great problem looming on the horizon is how to keep the
large, congested, industrial populations of Britain, West
Germany and Japan at work and at a standard of living
which they will accept as reasonable for themselves. To
deal with this problem we are compelled -- as things
stand now -- to replace the markets and sources of supply
which they have lost by finding markets and sources of
supply within the world which is dependably in the
Western political orbit. This is perhaps the most radical
reconstruction and rerouting of the trade of the world
which men have ever dreamed of trying to bring about. "14
Although Mr. Lippmann does not say so, the chances are
slim that this drastic and unnatural alteration in long-
established trade patterns will succeed.
The reference by Mr. Lippmann to appeasement
on the part of the Truman Administration reveals the
extent to which American foreign policy, in its aspects
of combating and denouncing the alleged Communist
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? CO-EXISTENCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIO^?
menace, has been formulated, not for the benefit of the
American people or the world, but to enable the Demo-
cratic Party to stay in power by outdoing the Republican
Party in anti-Soviet and anti-Communist declarations
and deeds. President Truman's announced determina-
tion to "contain" communism was far more successful in
containing the Republicans than in its original goal.
The Chicago Tribune is not my favorite newspaper, but
it hit the nail on the head when it stated "it may be sur-
mised that if Russia did not exist, it would be necessary
for Truman and Acheson to invent her. "15
Unfortunately, current in Administration and Con-
gressional circles is a strong feeling that an armed conflict
with the Soviet Union is inevitable. Mr. Demaree Bess
corroborates this fact in The Saturday Evening Post:
"A fatalistic feeling has pervaded both major political
parties that we can solve our own and the world's prob-
lems only by overthrowing the expanding Soviet Empire
by force of arms. This fatalism has spread so widely that
we no longer pay much attention to the most belligerent
statements by our representatives in Washington. "16
One of the most disturbing -- and threatening -- fea-
tures of American foreign policy is that the U. S. has
lined up as allies an incredible assortment of fascist or
semi-fascist governments dedicated to violence, terror
and tyranny. The so-called "free world," supposedly
banded together to extend the blessings of intellectual
liberty and political democracy, includes seventeen Latin
American dictatorships or quasi-dictatorships (I exclude
here Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay); the royal fascist
regime of Greece; the cruel police state of Turkey; the
Formosan remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's bloody and
primitive fascism; the Union of South Africa with its
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horrible racist laws; Franco's Falangist Spain, established
with the help of Hitler and Mussolini and perpetuated
in their image; the Nazi-tending republic of Western
Germany; and still semi-feudal Japan with its thin veneer
of democracy. This roll-call obviously shows that "the
free world" is a propaganda myth.
Mrs. Vera M. Dean of the moderate Foreign Policy
Association makes clear in the weekly Bulletin of that
organization the strange double standard characteristic
of American policy: "In Eastern Europe Washington
has urged free and unfettered elections and has de-
nounced the establishment of dictatorial governments
dominated by Communists. Yet at the Bogota conference
of 1948 the United States proposed recognition of gov-
ernments in Latin America without inquiry into their
character and without the requirement of prior elections.
In the opinion of many observers, this doctrine has en-
couraged seizure of power by military juntas in Peru,
Venezuela and El Salvador at the expense of the kind
of middle-of-the-road regimes we have urged for Eastern
Europe and the Balkans. "17
The efficient manner in which the United States
Government has enlisted in its coalition well-nigh every
reactionary force and gangster government throughout
the world indicates the possible use of such elements in
the unscrupulous rough-and-tumble of aggressive warfare.
Certainly the make-up of the American-led bloc must in
itself awaken grave apprehensions in the Soviet mind.
And when in addition the Truman Administration in-
sists on the provocative rearmament of Western Germany
and Japan, both the Russians and all other peace-loving
peoples have a right to be anxious. Let us remember that
already coming to the fore in post-war Western Germany
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and Japan are the same sort of economic and political
groupings which so ruthlessly unleashed the Second
World War.
The Japanese Peace Treaty, forced upon the world
by the United States at San Francisco in September, 1951,
summarily violated the Cairo Agreement, which prom-
ised the return of Formosa to China; and the Potsdam
Declaration, which guaranteed that there should be no
revival of Japanese militarism. The Treaty provided for
continuing American military occupation of Japan and
for numerous U. S. bases for land, sea and air forces.
With India and Burma refusing to attend the San Fran-
cisco Conference because of their opposition to the
Treaty and with the Chinese Republic deliberately ex-
cluded, representatives of two-thirds of the people of Asia
took no part in this settlement directly affecting that half
of the earth's population living in the Orient.
Closely related to the Truman Administration's col-
laboration with and support of reactionary regimes is its
reversal of America's traditional attitude of sympathy
towards the aspirations of colonial peoples for self-determ-
ination and independence. Americans are themselves a
proud and freedom-loving people who threw off the yoke
of empire through revolution. But today the United
States has become the great champion of Western im-
perialism, resorting to dollar diplomacy, political intimi-
dation and military intervention in taking over the sup-
pressive functions of faltering empires.
The Tunisian crisis -- to cite but one example -- re-
vealed plainly the unmistakable direction of American
policy as regards colonial struggles for liberty. In April,
1952, eleven Asian and African members of the United
Nations appealed to the Security Council to put on its
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agenda the question of Tunisia, the French North Afri-
can Protectorate where France's violent suppression of
the independence movement was, according to the com-
plaint, threatening international peace and security. The
motion for Council discussion was lost owing to the ad-
verse votes of Britain and France, and to the abstention
of the United States and three of its associates in the
North Atlantic bloc.
The fact is that the American Government preferred
not to offend its two strongest allies, the imperialist Pow-
ers of Britain and France, by supporting even a discussion
of the right of a long-suffering colonial people to self-de-
termination. As Thomas J. Hamilton, chief correspondent
at the U. N. Bureau of The New York Times, further ex-
plained: "In the case of such areas as North Africa which
are of such strategic importance . . . it is vital for the
United States to have the right to maintain bases in them
against the Soviet threat. "18 Apparently the alleged Soviet
menace justifies any betrayal of principle whatsoever.
The effects of American foreign policy, then, since
Mr. Truman took over the White House, have been such
as to cause deepest misgivings throughout the globe. The
apparent readiness of leaders in the United States Gov-
ernment to risk blowing civilization to smithereens for
the sake of political advantage, the bellicose attitude of
many American journalists, radio commentators and
other prominent citizens, the stratospheric sums spent
on atom bombs and other weapons, the expanding global
ring of U. S. air and military bases, America's alliance
with outright fascist or old-fashioned military dictator-
ships, the rearming of Western Germany and Japan -- all
these things raise the question whether American policy
is not directed towards war rather than towards peace
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? CO-EXISTEHCE OR CO-DESTRUCTIO^?
through preparedness. Even the conservative London
Economist states: "In large measure the present Ameri-
can program is designed for fighting Russia, not for stay-
ing at peace by deterring a Russian aggression. "19 And
some of the missteps that Soviet Russia and other mem-
bers of the Communist bloc have taken in foreign policy
are attributable in no small degree to fear of American
intentions and a sharp defensive reaction to them.
Most of these deplorable developments flow from a
policy that has been worked out and put through as the
answer to the danger of "Soviet aggression. " Returning
to this theme a moment, let me again cite a man who, in
the American community, is as respectable as the Wash-
ington Monument and who was denouncing the Soviet
Union and all its works for years before Harry Truman
even became a Senator. I refer to Mr. Herbert Hoover,
who, in his speech early in 1952,* noted that Western
Europe, in its judgment as to the risk of a Communist
invasion, takes a view "profoundly different from the
attitude of Washington. "
"There is in Europe today," asserted Mr. Hoover,
"no such public alarm as has been fanned up in the
United States. None of those nations has declared emer-
gencies or taken measures comparable with ours.