标题: 1959.9 国际分歧可以以某种方式得到解决 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-8-7 01:58 标题: 1959.9 国际分歧可以以某种方式得到解决 The Atlantic Report on the World Today: Washington
SEPTEMBER 1959 ISSUE
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AMERICANS, by nature, believe that international differences can somehow be worked out, that a compromise will in some way be possible. Americans feel that the purpose of negotiations, such as those in Geneva, is to reach a settlement and that a settlement ought to bring stability so that we can all go fishing.
By all the evidence, however, this is not the fact. In one of the endless streams of radio and television interviews which take place in Washington, Representative Walter Judd, the Minnesota Republican, took a dim view of negotiating with the Communists. “We lost ground every time because we went there and laid our cards on the table and assumed they wanted a settlement. They don’t want a settlement. . . . They want victory. We want to end the struggle; they want to win the struggle,” he said.
That is indeed the view of those who spend their time either inside or outside the government living with the problems of the cold war. The President has been saying increasingly of late that the free world, Americans especially, must realize that we are in for years of struggle with the Communists. But he has never put it so bluntly as did Judd. And Eisenhower’s actions often seem to belie his words. His rejection of any moves which would “alarm” or “frighten” the American public, his tendency to see the hopeful side — however small the glimmer may be — his almost fanatical devotion to budget-balancing, all have undercut the small but growing group of American leaders, in and out of public office, who are trying to make the public face the facts.
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In the two years since Sputnik heaved into the skies, every indication has been of a shifting balance of world power, a shift increasingly disadvantageous to the United States and the free world. It may be difficult to measure this shift in military terms with any precision. But it is plain for all to see that Khrushchev believes in the shift and is acting to take advantage of it.
Khrushchev’s brinkmanship
For many months after Khrushchev first created the Berlin crisis last November the standard view among top Administration foreign policy officials centered on two themes: he was bluffing, or he had overextended himself and needed some device to get off the hook. Initial policy decisions in the West were designed to offer Khrushchev a means of backing down.
This attitude has slowly changed to the extent that in the summer the State Department felt it necessary formally to deny a columnist’s report that top officials were “shaken and alarmed” by Khrushchev’s tough language to former New York governor W. Averell Harriman. In fact some were so affected, but they were the minority.
The Administration has reached the conclusion that Khrushchev was trying to frighten rather than entice the President into a Summit conference. The Russians worked hard and effectively at wringing each minute concession from the West on Berlin, knowing that the West is divided on how to negotiate with the Kremlin.
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Probably the East-West negotiations will continue, in one form or another, at one level or another for many months. There is still little disposition in Washington to believe that Khrushchev wants war; the Soviet leader thinks he can win in the long run in what he calls peaceful competition. He has staked too much on the success of his seven-year plan to narrow, and subsequently to close, the economic gap between the two major powers to risk it all in war. But, it has been increasingly accepted in Washington, Khrushchev is playing at brinkmanship, and that always is dangerous in a world where the weapons which could go off by miscalculation are so terrible.
On top of the Soviet pressures on Berlin, there are rumblings of coming troubles in Asia, Few in the Capital would be surprised at a new outbreak over Formosa. No one knew tor certain whether Khrushchev was telling the truth in boasting to Harriman that Russian rockets have now been sited in Red China aimed at Formosa. But Washington has learned to respect the majority of Khrushchev’s boasts. A combination of Communist pressures in both Europe and Asia or in Europe and the Middle East could produce the most dramatic confrontation of power yet in the East-West struggle.
The foreign aid squabble
Those who have been worried about these trends, especially in the past six or eight months, are troubled by the lethargic American response in terms of government policies. Not only has the Administration refused to make any but a minimal increase in the arms program in order to close the missile gap, a gap which is widening rather than narrowing, but its economy drive has badly hobbled the program for economic aid.
When Arkansas’ J. William Fulbright this year took over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairmanship, one of his resolves, stated in his committee report on the foreign aid bill, was “to effect a major transformation in the mutual security program.” Fulbright knew that the aid program has constantly suffered from being on a hand-to-mouth basis, subject to annual cutting when Congress got around to voting the actual money bill. This has been especially true in the House Appropriations Committee.
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Two years ago, at the Administration’s request, Congress had set up the Development Loan Fund to put long-term loans on a basis which would permit rational planning both by the United States and by the recipient nations. Year after year foreign governments have said that the greatest impediment to their use of American aid has been their inability to schedule long-term capital projects because they never knew whether the subsequent installments would be forthcoming from Congress.
The DLF in two years has proved a success, so far as it goes, and has won plaudits from Congress. Fulbright decided that the time was ripe to put the fund in business in a way which would give the free world a real economic weapon in the vast areas of Asia, Africa, and Latin America where selective Soviet aid is growing more and more effective politically. Fulbright won his committee’s approval to grant the fund a billion dollars a year for five years.
More important, and to prevent cuts in this authorization in the appropriation bills, Fulbright proposed exactly what Eisenhower himself had asked Congress to approve when DLF was set up in 1957: authority to borrow the money directly from the Treasury without subsequent votes by Congress. For weeks the President indicated coolness to the idea, though he favored the long-term proposal. And when the chips were down in the Senate vote, White House pressure whipped all but six Republican senators behind a vote to kill the Treasury borrowing power. The GOP votes were decisive, and on the key vote Fulbright was beaten 48 to 42.
Fulbright called the action “one of the most disastrous” ever taken by the Senate. That may be a matter of judgment, but no one who has hoped to see some order brought out of the foreign aid program, conceded all around as unpopular politically in the United States, could disagree with Fulbright’s statement that rejection of the longterm proposal was “further evidence that we have tied our hands so that we cannot plan an effective program.” Republican Senator Aiken of Vermont put the blame squarely on the White House.
Ironically, while White House agents were pressuring the Republican senators to reject what the President himself had proposed two years earlier, State Department officials were quietly lobbying for the Fulbright proposal. The senator was not revealing any secrets when he said on the Senate floor that he had no doubt that both Secretary Herter and Undersecretary Dillon supported the plan. What has happened, he added, “is that the Administration has permitted the Secretary of the Treasury to override the Secretary of State and the whole Department of State on the determination of foreign policy.” The facts fully justified the statement.
Faced with such Eisenhower policies, it is not hard to understand the bitterness of Northern and Western Democrats when they read an earlier comment by Vice President Nixon praising the Eisenhower budget-balancing drive. Said Nixon: “As far as the Republicans arc concerned, never have so few done so much for the country. As far as the Democrats are concerned, never have so many done so little.”
The power of the presidency
Since the President began to press his budget issue, and since Majority Leader Johnson responded with a policy of trimming Democratic measures in an effort to escape vetoes, there has been a lot of argument in Washington. Many who have been calling Eisenhower a weak President whose chief aim has been to preserve the status quo have begun to wonder if they were wrong. In fact the President is using the vast power of the presidency in a way he did not use it before. He began to make a fight on the budget issue, an issue which touches nearly all segments of government because money is basic to governmental programs.
As Walter Lippmann has aptly pointed out, Congress can deny funds to the President but it cannot force him to spend when he does not want to spend. Thus even a limited use of the presidential powers, coming after nearly six years of relative nonuse, has demonstrated to the President what force he can have if only he will act. Of course such action requires an issue of substance. The issue here is real, but it is not a balanced budget perse. It is inflation. Every housewife at the supermarket is acutely conscious of the cost of living, of trying to make the family budget meet the family needs. Constant hammering at the budget issue, and relating it more and more to inflation as Eisenhower has been doing, touches a responsive chord around the country.
In short, though the public wants more schools and highways, better housing and hospitals, and all the other things needed for the growing population, it has not been sold on paying for them. Some in Washington, though they are the minority, believe that the public would respond to presidential leadership which worked for such improved services and faced up to the tax rises necessary to pay for them. But that will not come in this Administration.
The Eisenhower veto, and threat of veto, has the Democrats on the defensive. The President, at cabinet meetings, talks about “my veto pistol” as though it were a newly discovered toy. Johnson remains determined to get as much as he can through Congress and past a presidential signature. He argues that the record in the end will be one of accomplishment, with a clear public picture that even more would have been accomplished except for the President’s veto. After all, he argues, in the years since 1952, since Republican control of the White House, the record has been good enough to lead the voters to replace some twenty sitting Republican senators with Democrats. It is an impressive argument. But will it lead the voters in November, 1960, to bring a Democrat into the White House? The Northern and Western Democrats cannot help wondering whether Johnson is right.
Mood of the Capital
The fire directed at Senator Johnson from the Democrats on the left and from the White House on the right has, in the opinion of political observers in Washington, considerably damaged whatever chances he had for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Hubert Humphrey boom, after his much-publicized talk with Khrushchev, has not died out, but it has been drooping. Contrariwise, Senator Kennedy’s relentless drive makes him more and more the man to beat. The consensus in Washington is that, largely because of his religion, Kennedy will have to take on some of the favorite sons in next year’s primaries. Wins against Governor DiSalle in Ohio and Wayne Morse and others in Oregon, plus a couple of other victories in lesser states such as Maryland, would make it hard to deny him the nomination. A victory over Humphrey in Wisconsin also would be a big help. But Kennedy is holding off, until fall at least, the decision on whether to take the big risk.
On the Republican side, the polls look better for Vice President Nixon. But Washington finds it very hard to believe that Governor Rockefeller will pass up the chance to challenge Nixon at Chicago.
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东西方的谈判可能会以这样或那样的形式，在这样或那样的层面上持续许多月。在华盛顿，人们仍然不愿意相信赫鲁晓夫想要战争；这位苏联领导人认为，从长远来看，他可以在他所谓的和平竞争中获胜。他把太多的精力放在了他的七年计划的成功上，该计划旨在缩小并随后消除两个大国之间的经济差距，而不是在战争中冒所有风险。但是，华盛顿已经越来越接受，赫鲁晓夫在玩边缘政策，而在一个因误判而可能爆炸的武器如此可怕的世界上，这始终是危险的。
当阿肯色州的威廉-富布赖特（J. William Fulbright）今年接任参议院外交关系委员会主席时，他在关于对外援助法案的委员会报告中表示，他的决心之一是 "实现共同安全计划的重大转变"。傅尔布莱特知道，援助计划一直受到手忙脚乱的影响，当国会对实际的资金法案进行投票时，每年都会被削减。这在众议院拨款委员会中尤其如此。