STRATEGICAL PLANNING OF AMERICA AGAINST AGGRESSION HELD TO BE CONTRADICTING ITS DIPLOMATIC POLICY

Grey River Argus, 23 February 1949, Page 5

STRATEGICAL PLANNING OF AMERICA AGAINST AGGRESSION HELD TO BE CONTRADICTING ITS DIPLOMATIC POLICY

(Rec. 9.15) NEW YORK, February 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 Mr Walter Lippniann, the well-known columnist, writing in the New York Herald-Tribune.

Mr Lippman refers to the recent incident of Mr Royall (Secretary for Defence) who was reported to have indicated at Tokio that the American forces in Japan would be curtailed, but who denied this.

.Mr Lippman says: The Royall incident emphasises the hardest and the least clarified problem of American foreign policy. It is the test of the policy of a containment, otherwise known as “the Truman Doctrine”, which states: “It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting'attempted subjugation by armed minorities, or outside pressure”. Mr Lippman says: This doctrine, as understood by General MacArthur, by the Japanese, by Marshal Chiang Kaishek, by the Greek Government, by the Western Germans, by the Western Berliners, by Norway, by the Netherlands and 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.

Mr Lippman adds: “That has never been the view of the American Chiefs of Staff. They have known that it was an absurdity to suppose, that adequate local force could be developed on the whole vast periphery of the Soviet Union in Europe, in the Middle East, and in Asia”. Mr Lippman continues: “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 and American diplomatic planning. Dr Lange, 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 the case of war, Japan is to become another Bataan”.