The Grand Alliance Hesitates

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STALIN died, if we accept the official announcement, on March 5, 1953; and within a matter of weeks his successors began a series of conciliatory moves toward the West. Western statesmen at once warned that these probably did not represent any change in Soviet objectives but simply a new strategy. Their diagnosis was nearly unanimous: Moscow aimed to disrupt the Western alliance by pretending that Communist tyranny, imperialism and expansion were being modified and that the costs and pains of joint defense were therefore no longer necessary.

Within three months most of them had forgotten their own warnings, and in every Western government there were officials who acted or prepared to act as though the Soviet menace were actually on the wane. Public opinion was overjoyed, of course, to think that the clouds were parting and that, in the new light of Soviet reasonableness, defense expenditures and efforts could be reduced and taxes cut...