Force Without Recourse

In the great debate over U.S. internationalism, Republican Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg of Michigan crossed the aisle last week. In bold, constructive terms, the No. 1 Republican spokesman for foreign affairs, long an isolationist, told the U.S. Senate that it was time for the U.S. to stop talking about world collective security and do something to make it real.

If Arthur Vandenberg's speech did, as it might, set the U.S. off on a new and energetic course in foreign policy, it might well prove to be the most important speech made by an American in World War II.

Silent Partner. Senator Vandenberg began by recognizing a fact which has disturbed Americans for many months: a trend toward Allied disunity. His statesmanlike conclusion: the trend cannot be checked by U.S. silence. Said he:

"I do not know why we must be the only 'silent partner' in this Grand Alliance. There seems to be no fear of disunity, no hesitation in Moscow, when Moscow wants to assert unilateral war and peace aims which collide with ours. There seems to be no fear of disunity, no hesitation in London, when Mr. Churchill proceeds upon his unilateral way to make decisions often repugnant to our ideas and ideals."

What should the U.S. do?

"Honest candor." said the Senator, compels the U.S. first "to reassert in high places our American faith in [the principles] of the Atlantic Charter. . . . These basic pledges cannot now be dismissed as a mere nautical nimbus. They march with our armies. They sail with our fleets. . . . They sleep with our martyred dead. The first requisite of honest candor ... is to relight this torch."

Together or Separately? Then the U.S. can ask its Allies to face the postwar alternatives of acting separately or together. "The first way is the old way which has twice taken us to Europe's interminable battlefields within a quarter-century. The second way is the new way in which our present fraternity of war becomes a new fraternity of peace. I do not believe that either we or our Allies can have it both ways. They serve to cancel out each other,"

Senator Vandenberg cited Russia's political activity (e.g., in Poland and the Balkans) as one example of the "old way." Said he: "Russia's unilateral plan appears to contemplate the engulfment, directly or indirectly, of a surrounding circle of buffer states, contrary to our conception of what we thought we were fighting for in respect to the rights of small nations and a just peace. Russia's announced reason is her insistent purpose never again to be at the mercy of another German tyranny."

But if the U.S., pursuing its present foreign policy, accuses Russia of failing to cooperate with her Allies to end Axis aggression forever, Russia has a perfect right to reply: "Where is there any such alternative reliance until we know what the United States will do? How can you expect us to rely on an enigma?"

"Now," said Senator Vandenberg, "we are getting somewhere! Fear of reborn German aggression in years to come is at the base of most of our contemporary frictions."

Union without Spoils. To meet this problem, he offered a concrete solution: let the U.S. dispel her Allies' fear by making a treaty with them guaranteeing the use of force to keep Germany and Japan disarmed forever. Said he: "Surely we can agree that we do not want an instant's hesitation or doubt about our military cooperation in the peremptory use of force, if needed, to keep Germany and Japan demilitarized. Such a crisis would be the lengthened shadow of the present war. ... It should be handled as this present war is handled.

"There should be no more need to refer any such action back to Congress than that Congress should expect to pass upon battle plans today. The Commander in Chief should have instant power to act, and he should act. I know of no reason why a hard-and-fast treaty between the major Allies should not be signed today to achieve this dependable end."

Having done this, the U.S. would have "the duty and the right to demand that whatever immediate unilateral decisions have to be made in consequence of military need . . . they shall all be temporary and subject to final revision in the objective light of the postwar peace league." Said Senator Vandenberg: "I am prepared by effective international cooperation to do our full part in charting happier and safer tomorrows. But I am not prepared to guarantee permanently the spoils of an unjust peace. It will not work."

Atmosphere Cleared. Inevitably, there were some weaknesses and some omissions in the Vandenberg plan. Russia is not at war with Japan and therefore presumably would not sign a treaty regarding her. The plan does not specify the machinery for enforcing permanent disarmament of the Axis. Nor does it guarantee that Britain and Russia, having committed the U.S. to use force to keep Germany and Japan disarmed, might not then decide to junk the Dumbarton Oaks proposals as an unnecessary obstacle to their future freedom of action.

But the main fact was that the man most qualified to dispel the world's doubts about the U.S.'s intentions had spoken up. U.S. Senators who believe in international participation by the U.S., many of whom could scarcely believe their ears, were amazed and, generally, pleased. U.S. press reaction was also favorable--save for the grumpily isolationist New York Daily News, which thought that the Senator had delivered a mortal blow to the Republican Party; the Daily News demanded a new "nationalist" (isolationist) party. Pundit Walter Lippmann thought it one of the few speeches likely to "affect the course of events." John Foster Dulles, internationalist lawyer and Thomas E. Dewey's foreign policy adviser, praised the speech for divorcing the problem of controlling the Axis from the larger problem of keeping the peace.

Even the Administration, which has proposed no plan half so forthright, was pleased. Franklin Roosevelt invited Senator Tom Connally (who had tried to soft-pedal the speech by asking everyone to be quiet and put his trust in the President until he returned from his meeting with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin) to bring his bipartisan Foreign Relations subcommittee to the White House for a talk.

There the President beamed, told "Van" that he had read the speech and found it good, that it helped clear the atmosphere. Thoughtful citizens, aware that Britain and Russia are already well along on the work of fixing Germany's postwar boundaries and on laying out their own kind of postwar security, hoped that the atmosphere had not been cleared too late.

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