An Asia Policy

FOREIGN RELATIONS An Asia Policy Will Russia blunder into war? Probably not in Europe, where allied defense lines are already drawn and few power vacuums exist, said Tom Dewey last week. But in the Pacific, the Kremlin can still make the fatal miscalculation. Dewey's solution, arrived at during a two-month tour of the Pacific: "Start immediately to build a well-rounded and complete Pacific mutual-defense alliance."

In Korea, said Dewey to the Manhattan convention of the American Bar Association, "the United States issued an engraved invitation to Stalin to launch his conquest . . . Normally, Stalin does not need more than one engraved invitation . . ." The new mutual-defense treaties with Japan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand are welcome, but do not go far enough: "We are going about this business by bits and pieces and getting ourselves as a nation into a dangerous position . . . What about the Philippines? The island of Formosa is essential to the defense of the Philippines [yet] our national Government has been on-again, off-again on Formosa four times in two years.

"Southeast Asia is the cornerstone of the defense of the Pacific. But at this moment, there are areas in Southeast Asia where a power vacuum exists [e.g., Malaya, Indonesia, Indo-China] ... We must make . . . one single treaty--all for one and one for all ... With such a program ... we would have actually more human beings [850 million] on our side . . . than there are in all the miserable slave states under Communist control. . . Such tremendous might on the side of freedom . . . would be more than any tyrant would dare attack. It would be the greatest alliance in history for peace."

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