New Drift?

The engines that might be driving U.S. foreign policy are silent. Nevertheless, U.S. official attitudes seemed to be shifting last week. Perhaps they were turning on a current of news. And perhaps the news reflected realities to which U.S. policy had to conform to be effective.

Stalemate in Europe? The biggest and worst news concerned the parlous state of EDC. Whatever the Brussels Conference (see FOREIGN NEWS) or subsequent plastic surgery might salvage from the Mendes-France amendments, EDC's future was highly limited. From its beginning, EDC had two aspects. The larger was a long step toward European unity. As such, it represented the positive side of U.S. policy, the hope for a more rational and orderly world. EDC's other aspect was more modest: a device for making German rearmament palatable to French politicians. This objective was part of the old containment strategy in the cold war.

The years of pretense that France had a free choice on the question of whether or not Germany should be rearmed came logically to a close with last June's U.S.-British announcement that Germany would be given sovereignty (and the right to rearm) whether France liked it or not. But even after that, Western policy for Europe continued to remain in abeyance, while EDC, in both its aspects, was left half-dead and subject to further clawing in the bear pit of French politics.

The French are quite sure that an "agonizing reappraisal" by the U.S. will not result in the Americans' abandoning Europe. On the other hand, the virtual end of EDC leaves for Europe no vigorous forward step, no policy of the future, no high hope that can be immediately and practically furthered. Germany will (somehow) be rearmed; France will (perhaps) survive her economic and colonial troubles. The Communists will (possibly) not make spectacular gains. But all this is containment at best, and the Eisenhower Administration is committed to something better than containment.

How could this "something better" now be applied to Europe? The State Department had few if any answers. Asked if the U.S. would prefer Mendes-France's emasculated EDC to no EDC at all, a State Department official replied: "That is like offering us the choice between the guillotine and the electric chair."

In fact, the choices in Europe were not that frightening. But in terms of forward motion, they were not bright. Years of procrastination and U.S. containment had allowed European attitudes to congeal into wait-and-seeism.

Opportunity in Asia? Meanwhile, Asia had not congealed. The political turbulence from Tokyo to the Red Sea represented grave peril to the U.S. It also represented opportunity.

Last week Washington, which did not know how to react to events in Europe, was busily reacting to events in the East. Most of what was said and done was within the limits of the old containment'policy, but at least it was containment with a firmer tone. And here and there were flashes of another, newer kind of thinking.

A press-conference question about open Chinese Communist threats to "liberate" Formosa (TIME, Aug. 23) drew from President Eisenhower last week the slow-spoken comment that if the Reds tried to invade the Nationalist island, they would have to "run over" the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

Also, Admiral Felix Stump, U.S. Navy commander in chief in the Pacific, turned up in Taipei, having inspected the Nationalist fleet and Nationalist-held Tachen Island. Asked if the Seventh Fleet's role would be purely defensive, the admiral said: "No commander likes to sit back and wait. Sometimes you have to go out and start shooting."

In the same vein as Stump's statement was the U.S. order withdrawing four of the six divisions guarding the containment line in Korea. The U.S. could have reacted to the Indo-China debacle by freezing its strength in Korea. Instead, it now proceeded on the premise that what deters the Reds from further aggression is the general U.S. power of retaliation, not the policeman on a particular corner.

This more flexible approach does not mean that the U.S. in Asia has passed from the hopeless effort at on-the-spot containment to a positive policy of rolling back Communism. But at least it is drifting, if not driving, in that direction.

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