Containment to Retaliation

A few sentences tucked into an Armed Forces Day address by Secretary of State Dean Acheson last week seemed to be the first open acknowledgment that the U.S. has at last moved on from containment to the more dynamic doctrine of retaliation.

Acheson seemed to be answering--and accepting, in a reserved sort of way--the vigorous call of Statesman John Foster Dulles for meeting Communist aggression "by retaliatory action of our own fashioning" (TIME, May 19). Said the Secretary: "There has been a widespread misunderstanding that what we are seeking to create is a static containment situation. This is not at all the case.

"The function of the force we must build is to ensure that we shall continue to have freedom of choice . . . freedom to bring into play all the affirmative measures that have to do with the way people live, and that reflect the whole constructive outlook of America. The function of the force we must build is to prevent these opportunities from being foreclosed by the use of force from the other side . . . We believe that war will not happen if we can create in areas of political tension sufficient strength so that it will be absolutely clear in advance that any attack will run into difficulty. The strength of the free world must be organized in such a way that the aggressor would, at the outset, still be engaged in trouble at the point of attack when the full force of retaliation falls upon him. We believe, from the politico-military point of view, that this awareness on their part is the best way of preserving the security of our country, and of removing the temptation of attack."

. . .

Another sharp warning of retaliation came last week from Defense Secretary Robert A. Lovett. Angrily denouncing the Reds' "abominable, malicious falsehood" that the U.S. is using disease germs and poison gas in Korea and China, Lovett said: "The Communist techniques . . . have usually been to charge someone else in advance with the crime they propose to commit." Then he added: If he Reds try bacteriological or poison-gas war, they will "open up a vast area which the decent world has abstained from using, [and] if they do, they'll lose just the same--they'll just wish they had never been born."

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