The Neutrals

A cartoon appeared in The New Yorker several years ago depicting the grand council of a cannibal tribe seated around a fire. The chief was explaining: "We send out word that we're in a state of ferment. The Russians send technicians. Then the Americans send technicians. . . . When they're all here, we eat them."

If no such incident is known to have taken place, the events of the last few years have at least indicated that the Russo-American struggle is resulting in someone's terrific profit and someone else's incredible fleecing. Nasser, we said in 1956, was irresponsible. We hadn't seen Lumumba yet.

What American foreign policy lacks, in the vast neutral areas, is consistent and coordinated planning. The absence of such perspective has often been pointed out, but inertia apparently has triumphed over enlightened self-interest. To the honest neutrals America appears divided, hypocritical, and mercenary; to the slightly more Machiavellian, it seems a sucker.

The first problem, sadly is the American South. There are far better reasons for immediate integration, and it is in some way degrading to invoke international politics to justify what should be natural and obvious. But if for no other reason than the oft-prostituted "American image," the hideous race situation must be dealt with at once. "This war," American spokesmen have said repeatedly, "is for the minds and hearts of men." And yet this country's own ideals are undermined and effectively negated by the persistent atrocity of racial discrimination. Nor is race relations the only domestic vulnerable point: every Hoffa, DeSapio, and McCarthy encourages the tendency of Afro-Asian heads of state to accept United States dollars and laugh at United States propaganda.

This national inconsistency reaches outside continental borders. The U.S. refused to recognize Red China, and withdraws an embassy from Cuba, because it does not approve the routes these governments followed in gaining power. The State Department speaks of diplomatic liaisons as Seals of Approval granted only to well-behaved foreigners. Yet Chiang and Franco, and until recently Batista, Rhee, and Peron, gobble up dollars and throw their oppositions into jail without trial--or worse.

Governments that exist solely by virtue of American subsidies are effectively American colonies, and if the respectable diplomatic coercions of power politics are not applied to ensure their adherence to standards above the level of totalitarianism, we are the losers for it, as well as starving Spaniards and oppressed Taiwanese. Such a viewpoint may be unpalatable to the fringe of moralism, but closer analysis shows matters to be beyond the point where a choice exists. America must either face the responsibilities that its wealth and power have forced upon it, or see the free half of the world steadily nibbled away until it disappears.

Equally obvious is that the noble attempt at compromise on the colonialism question has pleased nobody. Neither ex-colonies nor ex-colonialists are comfortable with American shuttling on this issue. If a clear stand must be taken, let it be definitively against colonialism. Otherwise, something distinctly less aggravating to both disputing parties has got to be found.

--Again, these things ought to be done for their own sakes, not simply because "American prestige" suffers in the meantime. But the hypocritical and indecisive picture of the United States that these unsolved quandaries paint is another compelling argument for their immediate solution.

America, moreover, while practicing this laissez-faire-to-the-death policy toward its allies, also once proclaimed the immorality of neutralism. Until the United States as a nation and as a leader accepts the sincere intentions of men like Nehru and Nkrumah to build a "third force" bloc, until we loosen the military strings attached to foreign aid, until we stop driving Castros and Toures into the outstretched arms of the Soviet alliance, we shall continue to pour money into the coffers of neutrals and gain only their contempt.

The aims and intentions of neutralist leaders must come first in the direction of the aid program, a respect in which plans like the Peace Corps show admirable improvement over past efforts.

Whatever the new Administration decides will be its policy goals toward Africa, Asia, and Latin America, those goals must be consistent and coordinated. They must also be faithfully reflected in the mores of American society wherever those mores touch the neutrals directly--and where they do not. Only then will the waste and confusion and the overall futility of American foreign policy be corrected.