U.S. MISCALCULATES COMMUNIST STRATEGY

JAMES RESTON in the NEW YORK TIMES:

THERE is more apprehension in the capital today about the conduct of foreign policy than at any time since the Korean war. This apprehension has been caused primarily by the Communist political and economic offensive in the Middle East and South Asia, and by the fear, which has been growing steadily here in the last few months, that the Administration has miscalculated Communist strategy and has no effective policy to meet it.

These considerations have given rise to the question of who runs the foreign policy of the United States when Mr. Dulles and the President are away. [There is] a widespread feeling here that Communist doctrine and Communist tactics have undergone a radical change since the death of Stalin, and that in the last year, particularly since the illness of the President, the United States has lost the initiative in the world struggle with the Communists. Congress is particularly upset by official testimony that Moscow may well be the first to produce a 1,500-mile guided missile. Reports from West Germany of the weakening of the pro-Western Adenauer coalition, reports of growing weakness in Turkey and of misuse of American economic aid in South Korea have all led to widespread demands, not merely for an investigation of the Middle Eastern situation, but for a searching inquiry into the whole purpose and machinery of American foreign policy.

The Democrats, of course, have tried to exploit these difficulties in the last few months, and one result of this has been to give many people the impression that the criticism is just so much political maneuvering in the presidential campaign. The situation here is far too serious, and the criticism far too widespread within the executive branch of the Government, however, to be dismissed as campaign carping. Officials here concede that never since World War II [has there been] a more subtle or complex international challenge for the United States.

NOBODY AT THE TOP TO DIRECT U.S. STRATEGY

Pundit WALTER LIPPMANN:

THE affair of the Saudi Arabian tanks is a ludicrous but damaging example of what can happen in a big and complicated government when it is not clearly led and firmly administered from the top. For months, this government has been faced with the dangerous problem of arms shipments to the Middle East. There have been many pronouncements about [it]. How then could it happen that the State Department had forgotten about its own approval of the sale of the Saudi Arabian tanks, that the Defense Department was operating without realizing what a mess the shipment of these arms would now cause, once the facts became known?

The lack of a high command has been aggravated by the way Mr. Dulles conceives the office of Secretary of State. He thinks of himself as a roving negotiator, who represents the President's authority to conduct foreign affairs. Mr. Dulles is not in Washington long or continuously enough to command the operations of his department.

The administrative confusion is not the only, or indeed the most serious, consequence of the way our affairs have been conducted during the past six months. There has been nobody at the top whose business it has been, or who was able, to face up to the new Soviet challenge which has confronted us since the first Geneva meeting. The President has been too ill to deal with it, and Mr. Dulles has been too preoccupied with his travels, his negotiations, and his speeches. In these past six months we have suffered the biggest setback since the Communist victory in China.

The fundamental cause of the setback is that the Soviet Union has been developing a new foreign policy since Geneva, whereas we have remained frozen and inflexible in the policy of the pre-Geneva period. With nobody at the top in Washington who can and will take new decisions, our diplomacy is almost everywhere fighting rear-guard actions.

DULLES SHOULD STOP BARNSTORMING TRIPS

The SCRIPPS-HOWARD NEWSPAPERS:

ONLY a quick glance at the headlines of recent weeks shows all is far from well in the Western world, that there is no dynamic leadership, that the West has lost the initiative to the Kremlin. There is a serious threat of war in the Middle East that could become another Korea; substantial Soviet gains in South Asia while America's relations with that area decline daily; loss of Cambodia in Southeast Asia to neutralism; serious setbacks to pro-Western Chancellor Adenauer in West Germany; alarming support in Greece for a Communist-backed political coalition; revolutions in our own backyard, in Brazil and Peru.

In the United States, officials and the people are so diverted by speculation on President Eisenhower's political plans that urgent decisions on foreign aid, foreign information policy, national defense policy, and, most important, on how to meet the new Soviet challenge are pigeonholed. Even with the threat of war in the Middle East, the American government vacillates.

Secretary of State Dulles returns from a Caribbean fishing trip to an unenviable task, but he won't be able to do much about any of these pressing problems. He will only have a week in Washington before taking off on another of his periodical trips more than halfway around the world. He will be gone until March 21--will attend a SEATO meeting at Karachi and then in the last 10 days make one-day stops in nine other countries from India to Japan.

At this critical juncture in world affairs--when the world literally begs the United States to show the way to meet the Soviet challenge--Mr. Dulles should be busier with a thorough reappraisal of American foreign policy, instead of barnstorming with one-night stands.

RUSSIANS HAVE REASONS FOR NEW SELF-CONFIDENCE

Columnists JOSEPH & STEWART ALSOP :

THE Soviet rulers are now genuinely and absolutely confident of their position. Internally, they are sure there is no shadow of a threat to their regime. Externally, they are sure that the tide of history is now flowing ever more rapidly in the direction of the world hegemony they seek.

Observers on the spot, like Ambassador Charles E. Bohlen, and Soviet experts in this country, agree that this remarkable self-confidence was the real hallmark of the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.

As Khrushchev and his colleagues look about them, they can be pardoned for self-congratulation. Their home political base is wholly secure. They have in China a dependable and increasingly powerful ally. All Asia is leaning their way, as Paul Hoffman has just sadly warned, so that there is now solid basis for Khrushchev's boast that "the majority of the population of our planet" is on his side. As Trevor Gardner has also warned, there is not the slightest doubt that the Soviets are now threatening to surpass us in the whole area of air-atomic power.

Finally, the Soviet Union is now most seriously challenging the supposedly unchallengeable industrial might of the United States. All in all, it is not difficult to understand the reasons for the public show of self-assurance which Khrushchev and his fellow oligarchs have just staged in Moscow. It is more difficult to understand the public show of complacency which still emanates from Washington.

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