Policy Politics

Weekend speeches by two leading Republicans clarified the alternative to the Administration's foreign policy they are offering. The specific programs outlined by Herbert Hoover and Senator Taft differ in detail, but agree in their estimate of Russian expansion and their critique of Truman's Korean policy. And as developed last weekend, their arguments showed a glaring self-contradiction.

Both Hoover and Taft claim that the Administration has greatly overestimated the threat of Russian expansion. Consequently, Hoover feels that we should withdraw American troops from Europe--leaving the Europeans to build up what ground forces they care to. Taft echoes this view as shown by his consistent voting record against aid to Western Europe since 1948, against the Atlantic Defense Pact, against appropriations to the Voice of America, and his attack on the Point Four Program. In view of the Senator's disastrous underestimation of the German and Japanese intentions in 1940 one might question his present evaluation of Russian capabilities and intentions; at any rate he has the advantage of consistency here.

But while their programs call for a withdrawal of troops slashes in our economic aid programs, the two men blame the Administration for Russian successes. Taft in particular points toward Administration stupidity as the source of Russian power; for instance, he terms the Korean War useless because it could have been prevented by leaving American troops in Korea after the war. Yet four years ago, the Senator turned a deaf ear to Secretary Acheson's plea for military and economic aid to Korea.

As a political program, the Taft-Hoover position has the advantages of contradiction; its soothing view of Russian expansion implies welcome cuts in our expenditure for foreign aid. At the same time it explains any actual Russian expansion in terms of someone else's failure to act. But as a foreign policy, it dissolves into a mixture of self-contradiction and political opportunism.