FOREIGN RELATIONS: In Our Interest & Theirs

In the Grand Ballroom of Manhattan's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Vice President Richard Nixon rose one night last week to deliver a major U.S. foreign policy statement. Before him sat 1,500 members of the Automobile Manufacturers Association in town for the National Automobile Show (see BUSINESS). The Vice President had a twofold mission: 1) to answer the weeks of criticism of U.S. policy in the Middle East, and 2) to lay new groundwork for the strengthening of the Atlantic alliance and the whole free world.

With a text that had been discussed with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Nixon began by reviewing the 40-day world crisis. There had been "some observers of world affairs . . . the critics of despair and the prophets of doom," who had proclaimed a massive Soviet victory in the Middle East. These critics, Nixon believed, were taking "a shortsighted and, if I might respectfully say so, immature view of the issues." When Israel, Britain and France attacked Egypt, the world wondered whether the U.S. would stand by its principles, or because its friends were involved, would "conveniently look the other way." If the U.S. had supported the British-French-Israeli position in Egypt, they "might have won a military victory in that area. But they and we would have lost the moral support of the whole world . . . Because we took the position we did, the peoples of Africa and Asia now know that the U.S. has no illusions about 'the white man's burden' and 'white supremacy.' The military victory our friends might have won in the Near East would not have solved . . . the problem. Lasting solutions are rarely forged in the ruins of war."

"Eternal Credit." Linking the U.S. position on the two menacing arms of world crisis, the Vice President said that the U.S. stand on the Middle East made the U.S. fit and qualified to condemn Soviet barbarity in Hungary. Such condemnation was the U.S.'s sole weapon, "since the alternative was action on our part which might initiate the third and ultimate world war." The Freedom Fighters of Budapest, said Nixon, won a great victory in the battle for men's minds. "The lesson is etched in the mind and seared in the souls of all mankind. Can it be seriously suggested that any nation in the world today would trust the butchers of Budapest?"

Then the Vice President moved on to the next logical phase of U.S. foreign policy. From the first day of Suez, President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had insisted that the U.S. difference with its allies over Suez should not obscure the long-term values and meanings of the Atlantic alliance.* Nixon urged his listeners to give the British and French "eternal credit" for eventu ally accepting the U.N. resolutions on the cease-fire and withdrawal of troops. He urged less attention to fault-finding and more to seeking a long-range settlement in the Middle East.

Nixon then ventured into a politically delicate area by speaking of "the financial plight" of Britain in a way that seemed to suggest big new U.S. economic aid. Said the Vice President: "I believe it is in our interest as well as theirs to assist them in this hour of difficulty."