Eisenhower Delivers His Chance for Peace/Cross of Iron Speech, II
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
― Joseph Stalin
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”
― Joseph Stalin
“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.”
― Joseph Stalin
In March 1953, Joseph Stalin—the dictator in the Soviet Union for the past thirty years—died. What difference was that going to make to anything?
President Eisenhower started his first formal speech to the American people since his election—the Chance for Peace/Cross of Iron speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953—with a look back.
“In this spring of 1953,” President Eisenhower said,
the free world weighs one question above all others -- the chances for a just -- just peace for all peoples. To weigh this chance is to summon instantly to mind another recent moment of great decision. It came with that yet more hopeful spring of 1945, bright with the promise of victory and of freedom. The hopes of all just men in that moment too was a just and lasting peace.
Ike refers here to “the free world.” That was us and other Western European countries, but also Spain, I think, which was firmly in the grip of a dictator named Francisco Franco. So maybe it would have been better to call us the “anti-Communist world.”
The Soviets didn’t call us the “free world”: they called us the “colonizers” or “imperialists.”
But Ike looks back to remember the moment when we and the Soviet Union, allies at that time, had defeated Nazi Germany, which had surrendered to both of us in May 1945 when we reached Berlin. The Soviets had come there from the east, we’d come from the west.
Referring back to that moment in May 1945, Eisenhower went on to say,
In that spring of victory, the soldiers of the Western Allies met the soldiers of Russia in the center of Europe. They were triumphant comrades in arms. Their peoples shared the joyous prospect of building, in honor of their dead, the only fitting monument -- an age of just peace.
It wasn’t clear what Ike thought would make the peace “just,” but it’s being “just” was clearly important to him. “Justice” is important to pretty much everybody, though, isn’t it? Or we at least always say it is.
Quickly, though, Ike said, there had been a turn. The “common purpose” had been lost.
This common purpose lasted an instant and perished. The nations of the world divided to follow two distinct roads. The United States and our valued friends, the other free nations, chose one road. The leaders of the Soviet Union chose another.
So here, in his speech, Ike divides the world. Was it really as divided as he made it out to be? Even if the Soviets also thought it was?
“The way chosen by the United States,” Ike said, “was plainly marked by a few clear precepts, which govern its conduct in world affairs.”
He went on to set out those precepts. Let’s look at them.
First: No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and fellowship and justice.
I don’t think the Soviets would have disagreed with this, do you? They did seem to feel that “capitalism,” and “colonialism” and “imperialism” were enemies of peace and fellowship and justice, but those are “-isms,” not “peoples.” The “-ism” their rulers seemed to be committed to was something called “communism.” The “free world” saw that “-ism” as the enemy. The enemy was not, it was often said on our side, the Russian people.
It’s all too easy, of course, to slip from seeing an “-ism” as the enemy to seeing the enemy as the people who are under under the sway of that -ism, one way or another. Either believing in it, or being under the control of those who claim to believe in it.
You can’t fight “-isms” with armaments, can you?
Second: No nation’s security and well-being can be lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation with fellow nations.
This seems right. But did we really believe it? We certainly had missed some opportunities to pursue “effective cooperation” with the Soviets in our development of atomic weapons. Just ask Niels Bohr, who, even before the first atomic bomb had been tested, had proposed approaching the Soviets, our allies, whom we hadn’t told about our efforts to develop this bomb, to see if we might cooperate in achieving international control of atomic energy.
More recently, President Truman had declined to propose cooperating with the Soviets on a test ban on Super weapons as had been proposed to him by the State Department’s Disarmament Panel.
We were still imposing strict secrecy on everything to do with atomic energy. That’s a kind of “isolation,” isn’t it? We might consider it a necessary isolation, but they might consider their isolation necessary too, as a defensive measure. Against the forces of imperialism, they might say.
It’s important to remember, of course, that “cooperation” can be slippery. When someone like a policeman or a city code enforcer asks you to “cooperate,” he’s usually not inviting you to do something, he’s telling you. What’s wanted is submission, not cooperation.
It’s true, though, that the truer kind of cooperation would not involve isolation.
Third: Any nation’s right to a form of government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.
Did we believe this? If the people of a country like Iran or Cuba chose “communism,” or even a milder thing called “socialism,” was that going to be okay with us? Or would we assume that a people would “choose” such a government or economic system only if they weren’t in their right minds or were being forced to?
Fourth: Any nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.
Okay, but did that include dictating certain “forms of government” that other nations would not be allowed to have? Let’s say a country like Iran or Cuba decided to follow communism, or socialism. Would that be okay with us? If not, why not? What were we afraid of? We could still choose what we wanted for ourselves, couldn’t we? Didn’t we trust ourselves to do that?
And fifth: A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations.
Right. Here finally was something about the “race in armaments” we knew to be going on now with the Soviets and the limitations of it. This statement had to be true, I guess. “Just relations and honest understanding” were necessary to lasting peace.
But what were we doing now to achieve “just relations and honest understanding”?
Sometimes we seemed more concerned about “security” or “national security” than about “lasting peace.” “Security,” we would say, was a pre-requisite for “lasting peace” and “armaments,” or being “strong” in that kind of way, were what we believed offered “security.”
Is that so? When are we more “secure”? When we have “just relations and honest understanding” with another nation? Or when we have lots or armaments but don’t have just relations and honest understanding?
“Security,” rather than “lasting peace,” seemed to be all we both were trying for at the moment, “submission” rather than “just relations.” “Lasting peace” might require “just relations and honest understanding,” as Ike said, but how was he proposing we get to those? A “race in armaments” certainly wasn’t going to do it. What might?
In his speech, President Eisenhower demanded “deeds” from the Soviets, not “mere rhetoric.” Fair enough. But I’d say his speech so far was “mere rhetoric,” wouldn’t you? Were any “deeds” by us being offered?
In 1948, we had offered to include the Soviets in the European Recovery Program, also known as the Marshall Plan, where we would give quite a lot of economic aid to the badly beat up European countries. The Soviet Union was also badly beat up, very badly beat up, but they had declined to accept the offer. A point of pride? A defensive measure? I don’t know.
Of course, “rhetoric” is not necessarily “mere,” if you mean by that something that has no effect. If you can get your rhetoric to set the terms for a debate, as Ike seemed to be trying to do here, you can accomplish a lot. The terms he was setting were the free world versus, by implication, the not-free world. Terms that were either/or. Not both/and. Let alone both/and either/or and both/and.
The terms being set by the Soviet leaders also seemed to be either/or. That didn’t mean we had to go along with this way of framing things, did it?
What about the “candor about the meaning of the nuclear arms race” that had been urged in the Armaments and American Policy report now being considered by his National Security Council? Was Ike showing “candor” about that in this speech?
Not so far. Nuclear weapons hadn’t even been mentioned.
Let’s take a look at the Cross of Iron part of his speech and see if he does it there.
Next: Eisenhower Delivers his Chance for Peace/Cross of Iron Speech, III