RESISTANCE TO AGGRESSION

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25736, 23 February 1949, Page 5

RESISTANCE TO AGGRESSION

Lippman Examines U.S. Policy CONTRADICTION SEEN (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) NEW YORK, Feb. 21. There is a deep contradiction between American strategical planning and American diplomatic planning for resistance against possible aggression, and President Truman and the American Chiefs of Staff have very different ideas on how such resistance should be organised, according to Walter Lippman, writing in .the “New York Herald Tribune.”

Lippman says that the Royall incident emphasises the hardest and least clarified problem of American foreign policy. It is the test of the policy of containment otherwise known as the Truman Doctrine, which says: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.” Lippman says that this doctrine, as it is understood by General MacArthur, the Japanese, Marshal Chiang Kai-shek, the Greek Government, Western Germans, Western Berliners, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, is an American commitment to defend them, to give them an automatic guarantee that American force would be available on their frontiers to contain the Russians. / He adds: “That has never been the view of the American Chief? of Staff. They have known it was an absurdity to suppose that an adequate local force could be developed on the whole vast periphery of the Soviet Union in Europe the Middle East, and Asia. They have known always that a Power like Russia cannot, if it wishes to make war. be contained by local defences—it can only be held in check by the deterrent' power of the overall force of the United States. There has therefore always been a deep contradiction between American strategical planning arm American diplomatic planning. “Mr Larfge. the Norwegian Foreign Minister, was right in coming to Washington' to discover whether the United States would and could defend Norway against invasion. This is also the issue between General . MacArthur and Mr Royall. It is not whether the United States will go to war if Japan is attacked but whether in case of war Japan is to become another Bataan.”