The Trapeze

Said the President of the U.S.: "The Soviets now possess a stockpile of atomic weapons of conventional types and we must furthermore conclude that the powerful explosion of August 12th last was produced by a weapon, or a forerunner of a weapon, of power far in excess of conventional types.

"We therefore conclude that the Soviets now have the capability of atomic attacks on us, and such capability will increase with the passage of time."

Without a Net. With this statement last week President Eisenhower recorded the entry of the U.S. into a new phase of its history. From the beginning, U.S. foreign policy was conducted with a kind of circus net under it: the worst that could happen did not include wholesale devastation of the country by an enemy. The British, controlling the seas, could blockade and raid the coast (as they did in the War of 1812), but distance prevented any European enemy from dreaming of forcing a decision on the U.S. by sending major forces to this country. As technology narrowed the distance, lessening its protective value, U.S. strength was rising. The worst that the U.S. faced in World War II was the possibility that Europe and Asia, in the hands of its enemies, would be able slowly to weaken the U.S., or to force it to fight without allies on distant and unfavorable battlefields.

That has changed. The U.S. now faces the kind of threat of major devastation which for centuries has hung over Poland and France. Eisenhower knows himself to be the first President without a net under policy.

There is another change, corollary of the first: President Truman had open to him a course of action not open to Eisenhower. If the international situation degenerated too far, Truman could have threatened the Soviet Union with atomic war, forcing a showdown that might have included atomic disarmament and/or control. Eisenhower cannot do this because a U.S. threat of atomic attack can now be met by a Soviet atomic counterthreat.

Atom-Shaped. The President in his last week's statement went on to say: "It is my hope, my earnest prayer, that this country will never again be engaged in war." This hope, which has a meaning of urgency new to Americans, rests in practice upon two pillars: 1) U.S. defense policy and 2) U.S. foreign policy.

Defense policy (see below) will have to be recast, shaped around the atom--the U.S. atom and the Russian atom.

But the atom, without which the U.S. would be lost, cannot alone save the nation from the Russian atom. The immediate emphasis must fall on foreign policy, which includes the strengthening of alliances, and the construction, through U.N. and otherwise, of institutions fostering international peace and justice.

The decisions of foreign policy are not easy. Last week, after eight years of procrastination, the U.S. and Britain came to a decision on the Trieste issue (see INTERNATIONAL). It may be hard, in the face of Tito's bluster, to make the Trieste verdict stick. But on this and a thousand other points, the danger is too great for continued vacillation. With no net below, the trapeze requires caution, but it also requires an alert eye and a quick, unfaltering hand.

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