TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/52elect/52elect.012

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                                                                                October 6, 1952

THE CAMPAIGN

Foreign Policy



Foreign Policy: Ike

     The Nixon excitement almost drowned out Eisenhower's best
speech to date on the paramount issue: the Democratic handling of
the world crisis with Communism, the crisis on which hang war and
peace. As if to answer critics (including Stevenson) who say that
Senator Taft is now in charge of the Republican campaign, Ike
picked Taft's home town, Cincinnati, for a speech that Taft
could not make.

     "We declare," said Ike, "that we, the free of the Western
world, can never find our salvation in any attempt to stand apart
and live completely alone in this world." But at the same time he
called for a change from the "unhappy record" of U.S. foreign
policy during the last seven years, in which "we have been losing
whole nations to the enemies of freedom."

     "Dollars and guns," he said, "are no substitute for brains
and will power." He made a thinly veiled attack on President
Truman and Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson: "It is not hard
to find men long on courage and short on brains. But this is not
time for boldness without reflection and purpose. It is not hard
to find men of fine intellect and faint heart. But this is no
time for men of refined and elaborate indecision. The American
people," he went on. "have been condemned (by Administration
foreign policy) to live in a purgatory of improvisation."

     The record of the last seven years, he charged, "finds its
climax in Korea . . . In January of 1950 our Secretary of State
declared that America's so-called 'defensive perimeter' excluded
areas on the Asiatic mainland such as Korea. He said in part: 'No
person can guarantee these areas against military attack. It must
also be clear that such a guarantee is hardly sensible or
necessary . . . It is a mistake . . . in considering Pacific and
Far Eastern problems to become obsessed with military
considerations.' Five months later, Communist tanks were rolling
over the 38th Parallel."

     Train of the Future. "I proudly salute the gallant American
fight in Korea . . . What I deplore in (the )cases of Berlin and
Korea is this: the incompetence of political leaders which made
military action necessary. Democracies cannot afford the luxury
of assigning armies of soldiers to go around 'picking up' after
their statesmen.

     "A deadly result of this playing by ear has been to
frustrate the free world's quest for unity. I mean this in three
specific senses. We have no single, coherent policy in Asia . . .
We have failed to use our influence to the fullest to bring about
unity in Western Europe . . . We have failed to achieve real
unity of spirit with our allies. The truth is that . . . our
relation with them has remained too much that irksome bond which
binds debtor and creditor . . .

     "The record of our failures . . . to this date is sobering
enough in itself. But consider the smugness with which the
Administration policymakers have accepted their failures . . . It
takes smugness to try to stifle critics, as the Democratic
candidate did last week, with the epigram that "A wise man does
not try to hurry history.' every American knows the answer to
that one. Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the
tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over
him."

     This Defensive Way. "(U.S.) policies have become shadowed by
doubt and indecision . . . The Democratic candidate gave us in
his recent San Francisco speech a dismaying example of this
faintness of heart, this curiously defensive way of thinking. He
said: 'With 85% of our budget allocated to defense, it is the
Soviet Union which now fixes the level of . . . our tax rates.'
It is true of course that the . . . taxpayer is burdened heavily
by the Soviet threat. But what the Democratic nominee confessed
was that, under the present Administration policy, the taxpayer
is dancing to the Soviet tune . . .

     "I cite these smug evasions because they suggest what I am
fighting for in this campaign. The American people need a
government that knows enough about arms and armies to work out
the most defense at less cost with the least delay. It needs a
government that recognizes the Korean war as a critical problem
demanding solution. It needs a government willing to call upon
all its members for absolute loyalty . . . It needs a government
that is in a hurry to face its problems, however tough they may
be.

     "If we do this, we will save America from becoming a
beleaguered outpost of a weary democratic world. We will proclaim
America to be -- what she must ever be -- the headquarters of
freedom."


DEMOCRATS
Foreign Policy: Adlai

     At Louisville, Adlai Stevenson's campaign took on a new
tone. In bitter terms, the usually restrained Stevenson expressed
his growing anger at the opponent he had once admired.

     "The opposition," charged Stevenson, ". . . is laying down a
barrage of ugly, twisted, demagogic distortion." Immediate cause
of the Illinois governor's wrath was Ike's accusation that the
Administration had "bungled" the U.S. into the Korean war. If the
Administration had underestimated the Soviet threat, declared
Stevenson, so had Ike. "In November 1945 (Eisenhower) even told
the House Military Affairs Committee: 'Nothing guides Russian
policy so much as a desire for friendship with the U.S.'"

     Shaky Ground. Eisenhower was on equally shaky ground,
Stevenson continued, when he condemned the Administration for the
rapid demobilization of U.S. military forces after World War II.
"Although the general warned against too rapid demobilization, he
later said -- in September 1946 -- that 'Frankly, I don't think
demobilization was too fast.'"

     To Eisenhower's criticism of the withdrawal of U.S. troops
from Korea in 1949, Stevenson countered: "The general acts as if
this were the result of some secret White House decision. I would
call his attention to the fact that while he was Chief of Staff
of the United States Army, the Chiefs of Staff advised that South
Korea was of little strategic interest to the U.S. and
recommended withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

     "Next, my distinguished opponent has recently begun to
parrot the charges of the Republican irresponsibles that the
Administration abandoned China to the Communists . . . But he
still must know in his heart, even if he does not admit it, that
in the past six years nothing except the sending of an American
expeditionary force to China could have prevented ultimate
Communist victory."

     Indignantly, Stevenson echoed a complaint by Dean Acheson
that Ike had unfairly accused the Secretary of State of "writing
off" Korea in a 1950 speech. "I am frankly astonished that my
opponent stooped . . . to the practice of lifting remarks out of
context . . . Why did he skip the Secretary's further pledge that
if there should be an attack on these countries, 'the initial
reliance must be on the people attacked to resist it and then
upon the commitments of the entire civilized world under the
Charter of the United Nations'?" Far from "writing off" Korea,
said Stevenson, Acheson's speech had served notice that the U.S.
"would seek United Nations action against aggression."

     Tough Talk. Then Stevenson turned to the offensive. Ike, he
said, "has now adopted the theory of Senator Taft, who
unsmilingly states that the greatest threat to liberty today is
the cost of our own Federal government." Later Stevenson
described the Taft argument as "the dreary obsession that we must
fear above all, not the Kremlin, but our own Government." This
theory, he went on, implies a defense effort adjusted to an
arbitrary budget, and by accepting it Ike had reversed Teddy
Roosevelt's advice to speak softly and carry a big stick. "The
new advice is to talk tough and carry a twig" -- a policy which
"would demoralize the free world, embolden the Soviet Union to
new military adventures and, in the end, pull down the world into
the rubble and chaos of a third world war."

     Returning to his attack on Eisenhower "distortions,"
Stevenson urged: "Let us not place victory in a political
campaign ahead of national interest, and let's talk sense about
what we have gained . . . in Korea." The outstanding results of
the Korean war in Stevenson's eyes: the setback to Communist
plans for conquest of other Far Eastern nations, the
strengthening of U.S. defenses around the world and the growing
ability of the R.O.K. army to take on the burden of South Korea's
defense.