Uproar Over a Brink

Secretary of State John Foster Dulles last week found himself--surely without surprise--in the center of a new national and international uproar. It began when the Secretary gave TIME-LIFE Washington Bureau Chief James Shepley, in an exclusive interview in LIFE, his interpretation of how the Eisenhower Administration has kept the peace. There have been three times in the last three years, Shepley reported, when the U.S. "was brought perilously close to war, and when the new policy of deterrence instituted by Dulles preserved peace." Shepley reported Dulles' interpretation:

Korea, June 1953. Dulles warned Red China through India's Prime Minister Nehru that the U.S. was prepared to attack Manchurian bases with atomic weapons if the Communists did not sign a truce agreement at Panmunjom. Although South Korea's President Syngman Rhee subsequently and illegally released 22,000 Chinese and North Korean P.W.s, the Communists decided to sign.

Indo-China, April 1954. Dulles flew to London to advocate united action to save the French fortress at Dienbienphu. Dulles returned believing the British had agreed to support him, but two weeks later "the British had had a change of heart." Nonetheless, Dulles now contends, his readiness to intervene in Indo-China gave the British and French a basis of strength from which they negotiated the truce agreement at Geneva. Shepley wrote: "Dulles had seen to it that the Chinese and the Soviets knew that the U.S. was prepared to act decisively to prevent the fall of all of Southeast Asia."

Formosa Strait, 1954-55. Dulles felt that the Communists were deterred from attacking the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu by the resolution, framed by himself and passed by the Congress, giving the President a free hand to use U.S. forces against the Communists if they attacked Formosa and related territories. Shepley added: "Dulles has never doubted, incidentally, that Eisenhower would have regarded an attack on Quemoy and the Matsus as an attack on Formosa."

Dulles summed up the historical argument: "Nobody is able to prove mathematically that it was the policy of deterrence which brought the Korean war to an end and which kept the Chinese from sending their Red armies into Indo-China, or that it has finally stopped them in Formosa. I think it is a pretty fair inference that it has."

"Verge of War." Dulles explained to Shepley that his concept of retaliation did not mean the starting of World War III, but the fitting of the punishment to the crime. Limited targets in the Korea and Indo-China crises, for example, were selected in the event that retaliation became necessary. "They were specific targets reasonably related to the area. They did not involve massive destruction of great population centers like Shanghai, Peking or Canton. Retaliation must be on a selective basis. The important thing is that the aggressor know in advance that he is going to lose more than he can win. He doesn't have to lose much more. It just has to be something more. If the equation is such that the outcome is clearly going to be against him, he won't go in."

Dulles pointed out that such a policy of deterrence inevitably involved great risks. "You have to take chances for peace, just as you must take chances in war. Some say that we were brought to the verge of war. Of course we were brought to the verge of war. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost. We've had to look it square in the face--on the question of enlarging the Korean war, on the question of getting into the Indo-China war, on the question of Formosa. We walked to the brink and we looked it in the face. We took strong action. It took a lot more courage for the President than for me. His was the ultimate decision. I did not have to make the decision myself, only to recommend it. The President never flinched for a minute on any of these situations. He came up taut."

After publication of the LIFE article, Dulles affirmed that he stood by his statements "from the standpoint of their substance."

"A Planned Mistake." The hostile criticism passed over Dulles' reiteration of the passive tense ("We were brought to the verge of war") and concentrated on his seemingly active mood ("The ability to get to the verge without getting into war is the necessary art"). Some of the attacks took off from the word "gambled" which appeared nowhere in the article but was used in the promotional headline on LIFE'S cover: "How Dulles Gambled and Won." Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson said: "I am shocked that the Secretary of State is willing to play Russian roulette with the life of our nation ... On too many occasions the Republican Administration has acted unilaterally without adequate regard for our allies." Senator Hubert Humphrey made three formal statements in which he accused Dulles of "hocuspocus . . . fraud . . . callousness toward world opinion." The New York Times's James Reston concluded: "Mr. Dulles has added something new to the art of diplomatic blundering. This is the planned mistake. He doesn't stumble into booby traps: he digs them to size, studies them carefully, and then jumps."

From London to New Delhi, diplomats and editorial writers pounced on Dulles. The British Foreign Office in effect challenged Dulles' interpretation of the end of the Indo-China war, denying that Britain had ever told Dulles it would intervene. British newspapers reflected concern that a revival of "tougher" U.S. diplomacy might now be in store. "A dance of death," cried the London Daily Mail. "Heaven protect us from this edgy gambler," said the Daily Mirror, "and his careless way of making his risky throws known to all the world."

Eagerly the Communists jumped into the fray. "The ignoble . . . theoretician of the policy of strength," Moscow Radio called Dulles. Peking Radio hurled a Chinese proverb at him: "A man who has had his face slapped into a bloated shape can only pretend he has gained weight." Headlined the U.S. Daily Worker: DULLES.

AGAINST THE WORLD.

Keeping the Peace. Two weeks from now the U.S.-British rift will come up for mending, when Prime Minister Eden visits President Eisenhower in Washington. The fears and feelings of U.S. allies are important, but against them must be balanced the necessity of keeping before the world's mind the central fact of the peace: Communist aggression has been deterred only by the willingness and the ability of the free world to go to war rather than cringe before the threats.

At week's end Vice President Richard Nixon restated Dulles in simple terms that may survive all references to "chance" or "brink" or "art." Praising Dulles, Nixon said: "The test of a foreign policy is its ability to keep the peace without surrendering any territory or any principle. And that great fact about the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy will stand out long after the tempest in a teapot over the expression [brink of war] is forgotten."

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