Neutrality: Varying Tunes

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"NEUTRALITY" means different things in different places and at different times. It can even mean different things in the same place and at approximately the same time. In a press conference on June 6, President Eisenhower defended the right of nations to be neutral and remarked that a decision to keep clear of military alliances could be accepted as natural and even prudent; on June 9, his Secretary of State said that neutrality is "an obsolete conception and, except under very exceptional circumstances, is an immoral and shortsighted conception." Within three days, that is, the United States Government issued two descriptions of what it thinks about neutrality, one of which surprised and annoyed our allies, the other of which annoyed the uncommitted states even though it did not surprise them. The explanations, restatements and revisions that followed did not matter except as ex post facto self-discipline; second thoughts seldom catch up with the first headlines.

Something more than a failure to compare and reconcile viewpoints was responsible. The President and Mr. Dulles were talking about different things. The President was speaking from his heart and, knowing more about human psychology than international law, was expressing his instinctive feelings about the relations between peoples, and especially weak and powerful peoples, in very general terms. Mr. Dulles, preoccupied with the conflicts of interest involved in specific problems of those relations as they lie today on his desk, was speaking within the practical confines of policy regarding them as it has been developed thus far.

That is not very far. The State Department is in a quandary, poised on a historic divide. Behind lie the broad trails of the past ten years, with markers recording the bold decisions that saved the world from imminent catastrophe--Truman Doctrine, Marshall Plan, Berlin, NATO, Korea. These measures of succor or defense were very largely American in initiative and execution, and even if some of the beneficiaries received them with mixed feelings and even if other nations thought some of them reckless and provocative, they accomplished what we had to accomplish in that period--they checked the Communist advance and, in effect, won the first phase of the long holding operation called the cold war...