Momentous Warning

Across the nation and around the free world this week the headlines blazed a New Year's warning to world Communism: the U.S. would tolerate no Communist move into any part of the Middle East, and would fight, if necessary, to prevent it. President Eisenhower intends to 1) request standby authority from the newly convened 85th Congress to send U.S. forces to help any Middle Eastern nation repel Communist attack, 2) draft a new program of economic aid for the Middle East to build up its stability and anti-Communist potential. Congress will almost certainly approve the Eisenhower plan, and probably by joint resolution--just as it approved, and thus strengthened, the President's 1955 decision to defend Formosa by force, if necessary.

Under the new policy the U.S. intends to cast its protective cloak over Israel and over the Moslem world from Morocco to Pakistan. Any Middle Eastern nation that asks for help against a Red threat will get it. Any threatened nation that does not request help will not get it. The new policy will be a voluntary and cooperative endeavor. In effect, the U.S. is moving into a power vacuum left by the decline of British power and the depletion of the British treasury. Moreover, the British and French, by attacking Suez, have all but wrecked their political acceptance in the area; the U.S. therefore took its move last week on its own.

In no way did the new policy lessen U.S. support of the United Nations. By setting up new safeguards against the external Soviet threat, the U.S. hoped that the U.N. would be able to grapple more freely and more effectively than ever before with the region's internal problems, e.g., Israel v. the Arabs. And as for subversion, Dwight Eisenhower was already on the record that he would oppose the entry into the Middle East of any Soviet "volunteers."

Thus the U.S. last week proclaimed its ready acceptance of responsibility for the peace and stability of the Middle East.

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