"The Vyshinsky Doctrine" Soviet Belief That War Against Non-Communist Countries Is Virtuous

Wanganui Chronicle, 21 November 1950, Page 5

"The Vyshinsky Doctrine" Soviet Belief That War Against Non-Communist Countries Is Virtuous

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 (Rec. 7 pm).—The United States had concluded that the basic motivation of the Soviet policy was a belief that war against non-Communist countries was just, and virtuous, the Republican. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, said today. Senator Lodge made his statement in his capacity as United States delegate to the United Nations. •

He said the United States had labelled this Soviet belief “The Vyshinsky Doctrine.”

Senator Lodge added: “We ask the Soviet to abandon this idea. We believe that if this doctrine were abandoned, peaceful co-existence and peaceful negotiation of differences might very well become as natural to us as life itself. We express the hope that the Soviet delegates, who are here at the United Nations, will explain to their Government in Moscow that the doctrine that it is not aggression to attack a country with a different economic social system is false as to fact, untrue in all its basic assumptions as to human existence, and highly dangerous to the peace of the world.”

Senator Lodge said this astounding concept made all previously mysterious Soviet actions clear. “It is the only way to explain the fact that, the Soviet has described as aggressors the majority of the United Nations who joined to suppress aggression in Korea. Apparently because the majority of the United Nations had non-Soviet economic social systems, they are, under the Vyshinsky doctrine, automatically branded as aggressors, even though the obvious

truth is that they are trying to suppress aggression. It is this doctrine which explains all the upside down language and double talk with which the Soviet has shown so dramatically in the past few years how not to make friends and influence people. It is this declaration, which marks the place where insofar as the doctrine is concerned, the Soviet has got off on the wrong foot.” Senator Lodge said the State Department analysis had noted that Mr. Vyshinsky, in the United Nations speech, stated that Lenin had said that wars designed to liberate people from capitalistic slavery were just. Mr. Vyshinsky said also that the United Nations Charter “enshrines and blesses defensive war—the kind of war spoken about by the great Lenin and now spoken about by the great Stalin, the teacher of the people.” Senator Lodge said the United States could not accept this principle. “There is, of course, no doubt whatever that countries with different economic social systems can live side by side without wai, but this cannot happen if one country considers it is virtue to go to war on i another country simply because that country is different.”