Offensive Weapon

The day after Nikita Khrushchev was anointed Premier and dictator nonpareil of the Soviet Union (see FOREIGN NEWS), he was back in business at the same old cold-war propaganda stand, ready with another thick slice for all comers, especially the U.S. Ignoring the fact that Russia had just completed a smashing series of nuclear tests, Khrushchev's government protested the U.S. tests scheduled for April through August in the Marshall Islands.

Washington was ready. The U.S.'s response: it will go ahead with its tests. At his press conference, the President had already invited the world to watch the U.S. demonstration of a "clean" bomb.

Then Washington braced for Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko's announcement this week before a cheering joint session of the Supreme Soviet that the U.S.S.R. will unilaterally suspend nuclear tests. The move will serve the double purpose for Russia of making-peace propaganda for the credulous and avoiding the bothersome problem of the inspection system needed to make any test suspension worth more than a tinker's curse.

Burial Plans. It was clear, if it had not been before, that Nikita Khrushchev was a nimble-footed dictator who could skillfully play the cold-war game all the way across the board, from rocket rattling to peace-dove cooing, from the Summit to an all-out economic offensive. "We will bury you,'' he said boisterously in November 1956 at a Moscow reception, and the burial plans are many. And it is equally clear that against Khrushchev's threats the U.S. cannot be satisfied with mere counterprograms to Soviet programs, counterploys to Soviet ploys, counter-propaganda to Soviet propaganda.

In the life and law of free men. earning their own rewards in their own ways, lie the great strengths of the non-Communist world, the powerful promise that goes beyond the grim necessities of deterrent military power. In programs with the shopworn names of "foreign aid" and "reciprocal trade." for example, lie important chances for mobilizing the free world and fighting on U.S. terms the economic cold war declared by Nikita Khrushchev.

Among the Apostles. Yet it is a fact of savage irony that, at the very moment in history when they could do the most good, foreign aid and reciprocal trade are in deep trouble in the U.S. Congress. "We are the last great outpost of free-enterprise capitalism." said Adlai Stevenson last week at a reciprocal-trade rally in Washington (see Foreign Relations). ''Yet here we are striving to keep alive a significant phase of free enterprise in its homeland; to keep a significant phase of capitalism functioning in the country of the capitalists; to keep competition alive among the apostles of free competition."

Later, at the same Washington meeting, President Eisenhower made the vital point that the U.S. economic system is not enough as a shield--but through liberalized trade and the effective use of a world economic policy, it can be forged into a war-winning offensive weapon.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.