Foreign Policy Debate

Two ranking rivals on U.S. foreign policy, Democrat Averell Harriman and Republican John Foster Dulles, sat down before the cameras in a CBS Manhattan television studio one night last week for half an hour of what television likes to call political debate. They began in the gentlemanly manner of statesmen, wound up at sign-off time panting like lady wrestlers. In between, they managed to touch on more pertinent--and fascinatingly impertinent--points of U.S. foreign policy than the nation has seen or heard in any single half an hour of the 1952 campaign to date. Excerpts:

Dulles: I believe our policies in Europe as regards NATO on the whole are pretty good policies, [but] take the rest of the world. Can anybody claim there's been success in the Far East where China with 450 million people has been lost? In the Middle East? In Africa where unrest is seething against us, [and] South America where Communism is building up and where we have the worst relations we've had in many, many years?

Harriman: The Middle East is a situation that has been centuries in the making, and it's very interesting since 1948 there has been no progress of the Communists in the Middle East . . . It's very interesting those Republicans who are critical of the tragedy of China are now unwilling to appropriate the relatively small sums of money needed to protect India from going the same way. So, therefore, I can see no hope in the Republican Party of any improvement in any of the policies, and I think they'll only be retrograde. You've got to look at not only Eisenhower but the group with him.

Dulles: This Administration came into power after the victory in World War II seven years ago, and at that time we were not challenged nor threatened anywhere. Today in seven years we have gotten in such a position, Mr. Harriman said a few days ago, that the danger is so great our national survival is at stake.

Harriman: Just a minute! You're a Republican and you know better than that. The Republicans are inclined to give the Democrats credit for . . . the Kaiser, Hitler and Stalin, and the whole Communist movement. That's really too much for anyone to accept.

Dulles: I believe this danger was visible long ago. We have been blind to it . . . That's why we are in what you call a condition where our very national existence is at stake.

Harriman: That was in relation to the carrying through of our mutual security program and urging Congress to appropriate the money which they did not do largely due to the majority of the Republican Party.

Dulles: I think first we have got to be clear that we cannot carry on with the old policies that got us into this mortal peril. The Democratic platform says America must not deviate from these policies. I say, unless we deviate from those policies, we are lost . . . The first thing I would do would be to shift from a purely defensive policy to a psychological offensive, a liberation policy, which will try to give hope and a resistance mood within the Soviet empire . . .

Harriman: Those are very fine words, but I don't understand the meaning of them . . . The policy of the Administration . . . has been an affirmative policy, and therefore we have the initiative in many parts of the world . . . It's very dangerous to talk about liberation because liberation in the minds of Europeans means war, and I can assure you that the word "liberation" terrifies the people who are under Communist propaganda that we are going to be the aggressor. We don't want to be the aggressor . . . When the time comes, when we are strong enough, then I believe there will be a beginning of the weakening behind the Iron Curtain . . .

Dulles: I'd like to get back to this Far East business just a little bit, because Mr. Harriman says the usual Democratic reply, we haven't spent enough money. He says the Republicans haven't appropriated enough money. I say . . . what the people of the Far East want is a sense of moral equality with the U.S. And when the Secretary of State of the U.S. goes on 19 trips to Europe and never sets foot once in the postwar period in any Asiatic country, that is the kind of thing that cuts them to the quick. They think that we look upon them as second-rate, expendable peoples. One trip of the Secretary of State to the Far East would do far more than hundreds of billions of dollars, which is the only thing the Democratic Party thinks of.

Harriman: Certainly the policies which we have adopted [in the Far East] are wise and working. The Point Four program is one of the most enlightened policies any nation started. It is a working miracle and it is giving hope to those people for a decent life in freedom. It's a tragedy to see those relatively small--

Dulles: May I ask Mr. Harriman another question? If you believe the Democrats really believe these policies are so fine, why was not your Secretary of State invited to Chicago and why was the name of the Secretary of State never once mentioned in the whole course of those proceedings? In 1944 and 1948, you boasted about your Secretary of State. This time you did all you could to forget him. Why --if his policies are so perfect and fine?

Harriman: Well, that is a matter which has nothing to do with policies. I did not--

Dulles: Why, if you were so proud--

Harriman: I have been proud of the action of the Secretary of State.

Dulles: Why didn't you bring him to Chicago and show him--

Harriman: You showed some people that weren't a very great credit to the Republican Party, and I think your array, beginning with MacArthur and Hoover and Dirksen--

Dulles: Disgraced yourself--

Harriman: No, I do not. I would like to have seen--

Dulles: Those other--

Harriman: And I did not have anything to do--

Dulles: I think it was a disgraceful performance, and I believe that the party which has not got the courage and guts to stand up for its Secretary of State has not got the guts to stand up to the Russians.

Harriman: That's very unfair because the President and all of the Democrats have stood up for Dean Acheson, one of the great Secretaries of State.

CBS Moderator Walter Cronkite (sadly): I'm sorry we didn't get on that 20 minutes ago. And now a word from Betty Furness.

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