PROBLEMS FOR EISENHOWER

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27192, 9 November 1953, Page 9

PROBLEMS FOR EISENHOWER

Home And Foreign Policies (NJS. Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 7. A year after his election, President Eisenhower was this week confronted by Republican defeats and divisions at home, and frustrated hopes, deferred decisions and suspended programmes in the foreign policy field, says Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent. • Harassed, and at times short-tempered under cross-examin-ation, the President at his recent press conferences seems to have lost much of the confident cheerfulness and certainty of direction which won him an overwhelming majority in th* Presidential elections. Privately he is under persistent pressures from Republican political leaders, alarmed at this week’s Republican local election defeats, to execute his reformist programmes which are still in the study stage. As in his career as Supreme Military Commander, Mr Eisenhower has devoted the first nine months of his regime to organising a careful study of national problems by expert commissions. These are in many cases not scheduled to make recommendations until 1954.

However, as in the history of military warfare, “the enemy” has not waited for the opposing commander to complete and polish his plans for a fully supported advance on all fronts. The course pursued both by Communist opponents and non-Communist friends abroad, the fortunes of war, both cold and hot and the-exigencies created by uncontrollable droughts and the fluctuations of prices at home, have demanded immediate action and improvisations of policy which have sometimes not produced the desired results and have sometimes been successfully blocked by special groups and legislatures both at home and abroad.'

In the field of foreign affairs many proposals put forward by Mr Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, Mr Dulles, in the first flush of the Republican election victory early this year, have now either been tacitly dropped or postponed, or are hanging fire.

Formosa Decision The highly publicised “deneutralisation” of Formosa, the island headquarters of the Chinese Nationalist Government, failed to produce any visible evidence of pressure upon the Chinese Communist mainland, and is now seldom referred to in administration speeches. Next followed the effort of Mr Dulles last March to use the threat of reconsidering United States European aid programmes as a means of speeding up .the ratification of the European Defence Community Treaty to establish an intranational European Army with German components. The threat has not been carried out,, when the French and other European Governments have still failed to ratify the treaty, and it has not been repeated since. , • In succeeding months visiting European statesmen have put up a number of proposals and programmes before the new Administration. They included the British proposals to expand world trade and restore currency convertibility, to provide security guarantees against the revival of German aggression, and to restore British and American co-operation in the atomic energy field. Upon the British proposals the Administration sought, and obtained, postponement of any decision until 1954.

A proposal by Sir Winston ChurchiJl for an early top-level meeting with Mr Malenkov has been, and still is, directly opposed by the Eisenhower Administration.

The Administration’s efforts to use its influence to bring about a settlement of Italian and Jugoslav differences over Trieste and French and German differences over the Saar have also met with disappointments. Like a good deed in a naughty world, the ouster of the anti-Western Persian Prime Minister (Dr. Mussadiq) has offered , a hope of settlement of the British and Persian oil dispute, but. elsewhere in the Middle East, Arab and Israel and the British and Egyptian disputes remain unresolved. There has beep nationwide satisfaction at the end of combat in the Korean war, but hopes of ever negotiating a permanent political peace settlement in that area, or the Far East generally, now are at a .very low ebb. On the Home Front On the home front' the Eisenhower Administration has met. difficulties in its attempts to resolve the differences of American consumers and farmer producers over prices and price supports; of foreign trade interests and manufacturing interests over tariffs; and of tax reducers and budget balancers over taxes. This he has been able to do with some success during nine months of study and planning in which major decisions have been deliberately post* poned. but some of the problems demand that he must now side with one group or another. It is not the kind of situation that appeals to a man, famed as a general and as President, fpr reconciling the differences of his friends rather than siding with one against another, but many believe that unless a more decisive line is taken by the President his party may lose control of Congress next year.