The Peacekeeper

During the recent election campaign, Republican politicians (led by Vice President Richard Nixon) repeatedly argued that President Eisenhower "got us out of war and kept us out of war." Few U.S. voters got the full impact of the words. Twice this year the general in the White House, in agonizingly difficult personal decisions, quite literally kept the U.S. out of a shooting war. In the final weeks before the fall of Dienbienphu and, again, when an invasion of Quemoy Island seemed imminent, the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that the U.S. roll back Communist pressure by bombing every worthwhile military target in Red China. Ike said no, and the course of U.S. policy was turned into other channels. Last week General Eisenhower was again playing the peacekeeper's role.

Promising Possibility. Only a day before Ike traveled to Boston for a foreign-policy speech, Russian MIGs stationed in the Kurile Islands shot down a U.S. B-29 photo-mapping plane off the coast of Japan, killing one crewman. The President acknowledged the provocation, but insisted in his speech that "the possibility of permanent peace is more promising than in any time in recent years." He was not succumbing to the notion that the Communists are reforming. The prospects for peace are stronger, he said, because the free world had strengthened itself through a plan to rearm Germany, a Pacific defense pact and the end of tension in such trouble spots as Iran and Trieste.

At his press conference, the President remarked that the Soviet note on the B-29 incident did not contain the usual insulting broadsides; he believed that it showed what he called a considerably different and more conciliatory attitude than the Reds had displayed in the past.

His own tone about the incident was moderate: the attack had taken place over disputed waters between the Red-held Kuriles and Hokkaido; the U.S. considered itself the aggrieved party, but the incident was not entirely clear-cut.

Continuing Problem. From Capitol Hill came cries of outrage because U.S. Ambassador to Russia Charles ("Chip") Bohlen attended a Moscow party celebrating the 37th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution after the B-29 was shot down. Again President Eisenhower took a conciliatory position: Bohlen had received only fragmentary news of the attack minutes before leaving for the party, and the President had no complaint against Bohlen's judgment or decision.*

Conflicting pressures on the President never quite cease. Last week the Joint Chiefs of Staff were still recommending air and sea attack on China at the first serious provocation. On the other hand, every bookstore was well stocked with volumes by such critics as Adlai Stevenson and George F. Kennan, who insist that the Administration does not step softly enough, panics in a crisis, blusters, bullies and frightens the rest of the world. The President's continuing, critical problem is to keep the peace without appeasing.

* Bohlen is being brought home at the end of this month for a report on recent Russian moves, but his trip was scheduled before the plane incident.

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