COLD WAR

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 125, 11 March 1950, Page 5

COLD WAR

SOVIET POLICY MR DEAN ACHESON’S VIEWS (N.Z.P>A.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, March 9. The United States Secretary of State (Mr Dean Achesoni) recently * expressed the belief that the Soviet Union did not want to settle important outstanding issues with the United States so iong as Communist propagandists could use such issues to help to win worldi domination. Mr Acheson made the statement when he was speaking to the Advertising Council, a private organisation which frequently helps the Goqvernment on public causes. The State Department issued a summary of the speech to-night. Mr Acheson said that the United States was ready, and always had been ready, to discuss issues in dispute, but the United States would not take the initiative in any new talks, because that would give the peoples of the world false hopes that could be. realised only by granting huge concessions to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had developed the most dangerous imperialist system the world had ever known. By contrast all other imperialism was “kid stuff.” Mr Aciieson ruled out the idea of a preventive war to solve the Russian problem. He said that a “showdown” in. the brutal, realistic sense of resort to military decision, was not a possible policy for a democracy. “The Kremlin knows that,” he added. ' “We are in a situation where we could be lost without even firing a shot.”

• The only way to deal with the S - vie* Union was to create “situations pf strength.” If the non-Communist countries stood together for that objective the chances of victory and peace were good. To meet the Soviet threat the United States must have a foreign policy with “two inter-related branches.”

The first point was to meet wherever possible all the thrusts of the Soviet Union. He cited American aid to Greece and Turkey as examples. The second part must be tp create those economic, political, social, and psychological conditions that strengthened and created confidence in the democratic "way of life. The European Recovery Programme and American help to the Indonesian independence movement were examples of that, tut they were not enough. Other countries must be able to sell their products in order to buy things they needed to feed, clothe, and employ their people. 'That would mean a volume of American imports from abroad.