Acheson v. Kennan

Next to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, the U.S. foreign policy expert who has caused the greatest stir in Europe's capitals this season is George Frost Kennan, 53, former State Department policymaker and U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, now a visiting professor at Britain's Oxford University. In November and December, Democrat Kennan fanned European neutralism when he proposed, over the British Broadcasting Corp., that the West start up negotiations with the U.S.S.R. leading to the neutralization of Germany and later of Europe (TIME, Dec. 23), and just before the NATO conference he came perilously close to undercutting the U.S. position by implying that NATO was an obstacle to reaching a settlement with the Russians. One factor that gave added weight to Kennan's pronouncements: he was billed in Europe as a Democratic Party foreign-policy expert and a potential future Democratic Secretary of State.

Intimidation Threatened. Last week the Democrats, willing to take such guilt by association no longer, rolled up their biggest gun to shoot down Pundit Kennan. The big gun: Dean Gooderham Acheson, 64, Harry Truman's Secretary of State (1949-52) and Kennan's old boss, who in 1949 signed the NATO Treaty. Said Acheson in a special statement to the American Council on Germany, Inc.: "These opinions are not now made by Mr. Kennan for the first time. They were expounded by him within the Democratic Administration early in 1949, and rejected. They are today contrary to the expressed opinion of Democratic leaders in the Congress and outside of it."

Any neutralized Europe next door to Soviet land power, said Acheson, would be incapable of 1) building up confidence and economic health or 2) fending off Russian conquest by infiltration. "In many, perhaps most cases, an attack by Soviet forces faced with only token resistance would not be necessary, as it was not in Czechoslovakia in 1948 or in Poland today. Soviet purposes could be accomplished by intimidation, with the lesson of Hungary in everyone's mind. Can one doubt that, were it not for the American connection, there would be no more independent life in Western Europe than there is in Eastern Europe?"

Power Misunderstood. "The only deterrent to the imposition of Russian will in Western Europe is the belief that, from the outset of any such attempt, American power would be employed in stopping it, and, if necessary, would inflict upon the Soviet Union injury which the Moscow regime would not wish to suffer. The regime will not believe that this will happen if the U.S. and Western Europe are separated and stand alone.

"Mr. Kennan has never, in my judgment, grasped the realities of power relationships, but takes a rather mystical attitude toward them. To Mr. Kennan there is no Soviet military threat in Europe."

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