BREAK-UP OF THE TWO-POWER SYSTEM

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27094, 18 July 1953, Page 6

BREAK-UP OF THE TWO-POWER SYSTEM

CHANGING WORLD

[By

WALTER LIPPMANN

in the "New York Herald Tribune”]

(Reprinted by Arrangement)

Even so serious a reason as Churchill’s inability to go to Bermuda would probably not have caused another postponement had the governments believed there was important business which they had to do and could do. But since the President first suggested the meeting a rush of events has disclosed a radical change in the world situation. The change is deeper and more significant than personalities, policies, strategy, or tactics. It has to do with the decline of the abnormal influence exercised by the Great Powers during the post-war years. Rhee’s rebellion and the East German riots have been the most spectacular signs of a radical change which is in progress inside each of the great coalitions. There is a growing doubt whether the Big Four are still big enough to make a world settlement. This is casting a bearish light upon the prospect of high-level meetings. For they belong to an era when the heads of the three big survivors of the NaziJapanese onslaught could make decisions that bound their lesser allies. Most of the governments for which they could speak so decisively were at that time, as a matter of fact, occupied by somebody, or incapable of independent action. Growing; Independence But the Big Three or Four are less and less able to bind their smaller allies, even their dependents or satellites. Hardly a day passes without new evidence of independence and ungovernability within the two orbits. Could the President have spoken for Rhee at Bermuda, the French Prime Minister for the Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia, Churchill for any part of the Middle East, or the three of them severally or jointly for Germany? And if the Big Four were assembled, who could now speak for Germany, or for China, or indeed for Japan? What we have come to, I believe, is the appointed break-up of the postwar structure, which was built upon the division of the world at the time of the armistice into the two military orbits—the one dominated by Moscow and the other subsidised, protected and led from Washington. The break-up of this structure was predestined and foreseeable because the excessive predominance of Russia and America in world affairs reflected an abnormal, and altogether temporary, balance of powers at the end of the war. Russia and America are great nations, no doubt, but they have been such superpowers since 1945 only because all the other Great Powers were for the time being exhausted, defeated, occupied, or just liberated. The time was bound to come when the two-Power system of 1945 would give way to a system of many Powers. For more than a year there has been growing evidence that the two-Power system was breaking up. The time of the break-up has now arrived. All

along the vast border land on k. sides of the iron curtain it is ’ fest in a variety of ways, some oft apparently contradictory, a ii common element. That common V ment which we need to grasp f u n, **• to fix clearly in our minds for future and for our own policy i, r the growing recalcitrance. resistaa. rebellion to regimentation under oL? Powers. Rhee may wish to go on s? ing and the King of Cambodia » wish to stop fighting. But the mJ suit is that m Korea and in Indo-rL; Washington and Paris are no Inn so big as they used to be. Revolt Behind the Curtain We have been more consciouj erf unruliness of our own coalition wT ready to believe that the Soviet iS? Sire was not made of iron and ut of mortal men, subject to to change. Yet on the other side of iron curtain resistance had come overt in Tito’s rebellion savage purges in the other ’saffli 2 have shown that the Staling was meeting elsewhere the national resistance to alien dolin'* tion and exploitation. " nra, ‘ The recent popular uprising! in pGermany and Czechoslovakia are pv more significant. Almost certainly th? are important evidence of the change through which we are frS? For there is no reason to think t? the oppression and exploitation become greater recently, and th these uprisings were provoked bv and unbearable tyrannies. What 2 uprisings indicate is that* the DtmS directly in contact with it have h! come aware that the imperial power* Moscow is relaxing its grip. * As many historians have observe uprisings are most likely to occur S revolutions are most likely to «übS when the regime against which ttoare directed is beginning to falter aS is felt to be passing. The full fun 5 the French Revolution, for exanku broke out after the king and the nobla had instituted far-reaching reforms the redress of the main popular friw ances.

If the post-war system of the two. Power world is breaking up. it is not because there is a change of heart J purpose, of policy or of tactics in t£ Kremlin. It is not because the hower Administration has underSS our adversaries by its brilliant dynamism, or because it is alienate our allies and friends by its deplorable indecision and self -abasement. The post-war system is breaking because mankind has outgrown it, b? cause the nations arc recovering frorr the exhaustion and the prostration, the regimentation and the terror of the world war. This is the context of the present. These are the times in which we are living and have to act The prudent way to estimate any of heart or policy on the other tide and to make plans for the future on our side, is to measure all against the basic change in the historic situation