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Our steady policies have proved their worth. We believe in holding fast, and reinforcing, that which has proved good.

(5) Does this last Geneva conference mean an end to future negotiation with the Soviet Union?

It need not be an end and neither the President nor I believe that it will be an end. It would of course be foolish to attempt new negotiations if everything remains as it was when this last conference came to an end.

We know, however, that conditions will change because change is the law of life.

At this Geneva conference the Soviet Union had to face up concretely to the cost of achieving the larger results which it says it wants in terms of European security, disarmament, and increased contacts between East and West.

On this occasion no positive results were achieved. But I recall that President Eisenhower, after returning from Geneva, said that he was "profoundly impressed with the need for all of us to avoid discouragement merely because our own proposals, our own approaches, and our own beliefs are not always immediately accepted by the other side." And he pointed to the difficulty of bridging the wide and deep gulf between individual liberty and regimentation, and between the concept of man made in the image of God and the concept of man as the mere instrument of the state.1

That gulf has created obstacles so great that they could not be overcome at this recent Geneva conference.

That does not mean that our efforts at that conference were wasted. The proposals we advanced were basically sound and respected the legitimate interest of all. When solutions come, they will have to take into account the principles which we sought to apply.

The Soviets pride themselves on being realists. They have shown in the past that they will adapt their policies to facts and realities once they recognize them. We believe that the free nations, by maintaining and strengthening their unity, can make it apparent to the Soviet Union that solutions such as we proposed are in its real interest and will benefit them more than the local and temporary advantages to which they now seem to attach overriding importance. Of course the Soviets will not change their policies if they believe. that the free world is going to fall apart. That is why continuation of the present partnership of the independent nations is indispensable to a peaceful solution of present problems.

It is vital that all free nations, including ourselves, clearly understand this basic truth.

The statement which I made to you tonight follows extended conference with President Eisenhower. He authorizes me to say that he fully shares the evaluation which I have made of the Geneva conference and of its impact upon our national policies. That evaluation stems from the President's ruling and life purpose for a fair, just,

1 Supra.

and durable peace for the world, a purpose which I share and which, with him, I strive to implement.

And now, in closing, let me read from my verbatim notes of our conference at Gettysburg this morning. As I was leaving, the President turned to me and said:

"I know that no setback, no obstacle to progress will ever deter this government and our people from the great effort to establish a just and durable peace. Success may be long in coming, but there is no temporal force so capable of helping achieve it as the strength, the might, the spirit of 165 million free Americans. In striving toward this shining goal, this country will never admit defeat."

26. THE FOUNDATION FOR A FIRM PEACE: Address by the Secretary of State, December 8, 19551

We are, it seems, in a new phase of the struggle between international communism and freedom.

The first postwar decade was a phase of violence and threat of violence. There was the continued Soviet military occupation of northern Iran,2 the Communist guerrilla war in Greece, the Soviet blockade of Berlin, the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia under the menace of armed invasion, the war against Korea, the war against Indochina, the warfare in the Formosa Straits, and the hostile threats against Western Europe when the German Federal Republic acted to join the West.9

7

5

Since last spring, this phase of violence seems to have undergone an eclipse. But we should remember that one of the doctrines taught by Lenin and constantly emphasized by Stalin was the need for "zigzag." Repeatedly Stalin drove home the idea that it is as important to know when to retreat as when to attack, and that when blocked in one course it is necessary to find another.

Stalin is dead. But for 30 years his writings have been the Communist creed, and Stalinism in fact, though not in name, is still a potent influence in Russia. In prudence, therefore, we must act on the assumption that the present Soviet policies do not mark a change of purpose but a change of tactics.

1 Before a meeting of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association, Chicago; Department of State Bulletin, Dec. 19, 1955, pp. 1003–1007.

2 See supra, p. 48, footnote 4.

3 See A Decade of American Foreign Policy, pp. 753-782, 1252-1267.

4 See Germany, 1947-1949: The Story in Documents (Department of State publication 3556; 1950), pp. 204–274.

5 See Communist Takeover and Occupation of Czechoslovakia (H. Rept. No. 2684, 83d Cong., 2d sess., Part 14).

Infra, Part XV.

7 Infra, pp. 2363-2398.

8 Infra, pp. 2448-2510.

See the Soviet Government's notes of Oct. 23 and Nov. 12, 1954 (Department of State Bulletin, Dec. 13, 1954, pp. 902-907) and the Western Powers' reply thereto, infra, pp. 1881-1883.

We do not, however, want policies of violence to reappear. Therefore, it is useful to have clearly in mind what are the free-world policies which have caused the Soviet Union to shift from tactics of violence and intimidation as being unproductive.

The free nations have adopted and implemented two interrelated policies for collective security. The first policy is to give clear warning that armed aggression will be met by collective action. The second policy is to be prepared to implement this political warning with deterrent power.

The first major political warning to the Soviet Union was expressed in the North Atlantic Treaty,' a product of the Democrat-Republican cooperation of 1948 and 1949. By the North Atlantic Treaty, the parties told the Soviet rulers that, if they attacked any one, they would have to fight them all. If the Kaiser and Hitler had known in advance that their aggressions would surely bring against them the full power of the United States, they might never have begun their armed aggression. As it was, they did what despots readily do-they miscalculated. The North Atlantic Treaty left no room for such miscalculation. That, said Senator Vandenberg, was "the most practical deterrent [...] to war which the wit of man has yet devised." 2 But the North Atlantic Treaty was not enough. With that alone, it might be inferred that we were relatively indifferent to what occurred elsewhere, notably in Asia. And, indeed, less than a year after the North Atlantic Treaty came into force, the Communists attacked the Republic of Korea.

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5

But now, except for countries of South Asia which choose "neutralism," the gaps in the political warning system have been closed. The United States with bipartisan cooperation has made mutual security treaties with the Philippines, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and with the Republic of China on Taiwan. We have entered into the ANZUS [Australia-New Zealand-U.S.] Pact. We have joined with seven other nations to make the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty. There is the Balkan alliance of Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey and the Baghdad Pact, which includes the "northern tier" of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan.10

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All of these treaties are made pursuant to what the United Nations Charter calls the "inherent right of collective self-defense."" Together they constitute a worldwide political warning system. They prevent the despots from miscalculating that they can use Red armies to conquer weaker nations, one by one.

1 Infra, pp. 812-815.

Address of July 6, 1949; Congressional Record, vol. 97, part 11, p. 8897. 3 Infra, pp. 873-875. Infra, pp. 885-886. Infra, pp. 897-898. Infra, pp. 945-947. 7 Infra, pp. 878-880. Infra, pp. 912-916.

Infra, pp. 1235-1239.

10 Infra, pp. 1257-1259.

" Article 51 of the U. N. Charter; infra, p. 146.

It is, however, not enough to have a political warning system. It must have backing if it is effectively to deter. That poses a difficult problem.

With more than 20 nations strung along the 20,000 miles of iron curtain, it is not possible to build up static defensive forces which could make each nation impregnable to such a major and unpredictable assault as Russia could launch. To attempt this would be to have strength nowhere and bankruptcy everywhere. That, however, does not mean that we should abandon the whole idea of collective security and merely build our own defense area. . . . Fortunately, we do not have to choose between two disastrous alternatives. It is not necessary either to spread our strength all around the world in futile attempts to create everywhere a static defense, nor need we crawl back into our own hole in the vain hope of defending ourselves against all of the rest of the world. . . . As against the possibility of fullscale attack by the Soviet Union itself, there is only one effective defense, for us and for others. That is the capacity to counterattack. That is the ultimate deterrent. . . . The arsenal of retaliation should include all forms of counterattack with a maximum flexibility. . . . In such ways, the idea of collective security can be given sensible and effective content.

What I have just been saying is what I said 5 years ago.1

That program has now become a reality. We have developed, with our allies, a collective system of great power which can be flexibly used on whatever scale may be requisite to make aggression costly. Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression. But if we have to use that capacity, such use would be selective and adapted to the occasion.

To deter aggression, it is important to have the flexibility and the facilities which make various responses available. In many cases, any open assault by Communist forces could only result in starting a general war. But the free world must have the means for responding effectively on a selective basis when it chooses. It must not put itself in the position where the only response open to it is general war. The essential thing is that a potential aggressor should know in advance that he can and will be made to suffer for his aggression more than he can possibly gain by it. This calls for a system in which local defensive strength is reinforced by more mobile deterrent power. The method of doing so will vary according to the character of the various areas.

What I have been saying is from an article I wrote about 2 years ago.2

Our mutual security arrangements help provide the local defensive strength needed to preserve internal order against subversive tactics and to offer a resistance to aggression which would give counterattacking, highly mobile forces time to arrive.

Thus we have collective defense policies which, on the one hand, are calculated to deter armed aggression and which, on the other hand, we can, if need be, live with indefinitely.

The two elements I have described on the one hand, a political warning system and, on the other hand, selective retaliatory powerconstitute in combination a firm foundation for peace. If we want peace to continue, we must preserve that foundation intact.

We earnestly strive for some dependable system of limitation of
Until we succeed in such efforts, however, we and our

armament.

1 In an address before the American Association for the United Nations, New York, Dec. 29, 1950; Department of State Bulletin, Jan. 15, 1951, p. 85.

Foreign Affairs, April 1954; see also Department of State Bulletin, Mar. 29, 1954, p. 459.

allies must constantly maintain forces, weapons, and facilities necessary to deter armed aggression, large or small. That is an indispensable price of peace.

But we dare not assume that the only danger is that of armed aggression and that, if armed aggression can be deterred, we can otherwise relax. There still exist grave injustices to be cured and grave dangers to be averted.

President Eisenhower, speaking last August,' pointed out that

Eagerness to avoid war-if we think no deeper than this single desire-can produce outright or implicit agreement that injustices and wrongs of the present shall be perpetuated in the future. We must not participate in any such false agreement. Thereby, we would outrage our own conscience. In the eyes of those who suffer injustice, we would become partners with their oppressors. In the judgment of history we would have sold out the freedom of men for the pottage of a false peace. Moreover, we would assure future conflict!

And the President went on to point to the division of Germany and the domination of captive countries as an illustration of the injustices of which he spoke.

We shall not seek to cure these injustices by ourselves invoking force. But we can and will constantly keep these injustices at the forefront of human consciousness and thus bring into play the force of world opinion which, working steadily, will have its way. For no nation, however powerful, wishes to incur, on a steadily mounting basis, the moral condemnation of the world.

This force was a potent factor in bringing Austria its freedom. Last May, after 7 years of delay, the Soviet Union signed the Austrian Treaty, the Red forces were withdrawn, and Austria was liberated. We face a similar problem with respect to the reunification of Germany. The July meeting of the Heads of Government at Geneva had brought this problem to the forefront. There the four Heads of Government had explicitly agreed that "the reunification of Germany by means of free efections shall be carried out." However, at the second Geneva conference last month, the Soviet Union repudiated that agreement, despite Western offers which gave maximum assurances that a reunified Germany would not create insecurity for the Soviet Union and any of Germany's neighbors. Apparently the Soviets realized that all-German elections would surely remove from power the puppet regime which it has installed in East Germany. This, in turn, would have repercussions throughout the Soviet satellite world.

Therefore, the Soviet Union took the rigid position that it could accept no proposals for Germany, however reasonable, if they might 1 Before the American Bar Association, Philadelphia, Aug. 24; ibid., Sept. 5, 1955, p. 375.

Infra, pp. 643-675.

3 For the Geneva Conference documentation, see The Geneva Conference of Heads of Government, July 18-23, 1955 (Department of State publication 6046; 1955) and supra, pp. 111-114, and infra, pp. 1887-1897, 2009-2016, and 2841

2843.

See the July 23 directive to the Four Foreign Ministers; infra, pp. 1896–1897. 5 For the Foreign Ministers Conference documentation, see The Geneva Meeting of Foreign Ministers, October 27-November 16, 1955 (Department of State publication 6156; 1955) and supra, pp. 115-122, and infra, pp. 1897-1927, 2018-2039,

and 2844-2850.

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