Rockefeller Calls For More Arms Spending

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29262, 21 July 1960, Page 13

Rockefeller Calls For More Arms Spending

CHICAGO, July 19. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York State called on the Republican platform committee tdday to support a 3500 million-dollar increase in military and civil defence spending, a point on which President Eisenhower has disagreed.

The Governor said in a prepared statement: “We can and must spend whatever money is essential for full future defence. There is no such thing as an economical alternative to survival. There can be no price tag on peace.” President Eisenhower said recently he did not agree, that United States defence problems necessarily called for more money.

Governor Rockefeller told the platform committee: "This may well be a decisive moment in the history of America . . . we have nothing to lose but our fears.”

Rockefeller also called for a “grand design” of nations of the free world. This, he said, “would serve to define common purposes and common actions.” Governor Rockefeller, regarded as a possible Republican nominee for the Presidential elections in November, was one of several prominent Republicans addressing the body preparing an election platform.

Mr Rockefeller called on the Republican Party to adopt a hardhitting, liberal platform and to give the American people the leadership they needed to meet “the clear and present challenge” of Russian Communism.

“It is a time for zeal,” Mr Rockeller told the platform committee. “It is a time for faith. It is a time for daring.” Mr Rockefeller proposed a fivepoint programme tailored to fit himself in the unlikely event of the Republicans nominating

him for President at their national convention beginning next week, United Press International said.

He called for a strong plank guaranteeing “civil rights, the increase in defence spending, Federal aid to education, and ‘soundly-financed’ health insurance for the aged.” In proposing his “grand design” Mr Rockefeller said there must be a new form of political structure to do what the empires of an earlier day did—to provide direction, law, and order. While the Communists sat in the United Nations, it would be unrealistic to attempt to create the grand design through that organisation, he said. He mentioned the six-nation Common Market in Europe as an example of the sort of thing he had in mind. The individual national state, going alone, had no greater chance of indefinite survival, “than the city-state of ancient Greece.” Mr Rockefeller said.

On the defence issue, Mr Rockefeller said he believed the Republican Party “must recognise conditions as they exist.” The balance of military power had shifted from the West to the East, and this bad made possible Mr Khrushchev’s threat to support the Cuban Government of Dr. Fidel Castro against United States interests. “I don’t think Khrushchev would have made his threat to support Castro unless the balance of power had shifted to Khrushchev from ourselves,” he said.