Contradiction in the Capital

Aside from the mutual security pact with Formosa, U.S. policy in the Far East last week was the object of continued confusion and contradiction in the face of Communist boldness. The boldness crack led out of Peking as the Chinese Communists rejected the U.S. protest against imprisonment of 13 Americans as spies. The confusion and contradiction whirled up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.

On Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader William Knowland demanded a U.S. blockade of China in an effort to force release of the 13. Said Knowland: "We should serve notice on them that no vessel can get in or out of China until these Americans are released. I believe we can make it so expensive to them that our men will be released."

At the State Department, Far East experts were far less certain than Knowland about the effectiveness of a blockade. They pointed out that Red China still would have a free and important channel of commerce by its overland routes into the Soviet Union. There was serious official doubt, too, about whether allies of the U.S. would join in a blockade.

Then Secretary of State Dulles pointedly demonstrated that Senate Leader Knowland was speaking for himself and not for the Eisenhower Administration. Rejecting blockade at this time, Dulles promised that "Our nation will react, and react vigorously, but without allowing ourselves to be provoked into action which would be a violation of our international obligations and which would impair the alliance of the free nations."

Three days later, President Eisenhower personally threw his weight behind his Secretary of State and against his party's Senate majority leader. A blockade, said the President, would be an act of war.

A more cogent reply to Knowland would have been that under present circumstances a blockade would not be an effective act of war. Knowland's proposal would have made sense when the U.S. was fighting the Chinese Communists in Korea. It may make sense at some future point, if the U.S. should undertake efforts to topple the Peking government. But a partial blockade with the goal of forcing the Reds to give up 13 prisoners is almost certain to be a fiasco. When Knowland forces the Administration to repudiate his proposals, he further weakens U.S. prestige in the Far East.

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