HUNGARY: Doing It Themselves

As the British and French, bowing to the U.N., began withdrawing their forces from Suez with consequences which may in time bring down both their governments, a new wave of fighting broke out in Hungary, and the U.N. showed itself impotent to stop it.

In the U.N., as in the U.S., no one but a Communist could be happy about the world's inability to help Hungary more. Most Americans understood, if not all others did, that the U.S. failure to respond decisively in Hungary was not out of indifference or cowardice, but from the conviction that all-out assistance to Hungary ran the risk of starting World War III.

Taking Chances. Some argued that if the U.S. had made a determined armed intervention, the Russians would not have gone to war over Hungary. It is a possibility. But had these critics sat in the National Security Council, responsible for the decision, could they have said: "There is a 40% chance—maybe even 50%—that the Russians will not strike back. Therefore I will press the button"? Such a decision would involve not only American skins, but the lives of all the men and women of Moscow, and the lives of all those Europeans who live in between, including the Hungarians.

This kind of fear of war, if it guided every American action in places remote from vital Russian interests, would paralyze decision and leave no alternative but to surrender every time Bulganin blusteringly threatened trouble in the Middle East or vowed to send guided missiles over the English channel. Such a fear did not paralyze U.S. policy in the Middle East, as Eisenhower's reply to Bulganin showed. It is only in the area now Russian, where the Communists might be expected to fight for what they could not risk losing, that the assessment became subtle and difficult.

This consideration was the reason for the measures which the U.S. took: airlifting of refugees, relaxation of immigration laws, donations to rescue committees and the Red Cross, pressures in the U.N. All of these may be unsatisfactory substitutes for armed aid, but the U.S., acknowledging their inadequacy, still found them all well worth the doing.

But what were the people of the satellites to think? Had they nothing more to hope for and no one to count on? There were many who had heard the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe lending them encouragement. A close scrutiny of propaganda broadcasts would undoubtedly show that no promise had been made to come to their aid if they started something, but desperate people might not have noticed this final omission. The real lesson of the June 1953 revolt in East Germany and of the Poznan riots in Poland last summer was that the U.S., for all its sympathy (a quality easy to ridicule when it is not backed up by something stronger) was not prepared to go to the rescue of an armed uprising in any satellite. On the technicalities the U.S. might not be guilty of false encouragement, but could hardly be happy to leave it at that.