Ike and Nehru

At a time when the world is indeed out of joint, it is fortunate that the leaders of the two largest democracies are getting together on a Gettysburg farm to chat about setting it right. Between them, certainly, President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Nehru share more popular support than any other two men in the world, and in their conversations this week the two great leaders are undoubtedly conscious that many of those supporters are laying great odds on the good that can come of the historic meeting.

No one, of course, is expecting that headlines from Suez or Hungary or Iraq or South Africa are going to change overnight. But even if the President and the Prime Minister have no pat solutions to the world's dilemmas--and the chances are they do not--a more realistic relationship between the two nations is likely to evolve if each leader teaches the other a few of the facts of modern life.

President Eisenhower might well begin by drumming into the Prime Minister's intelligent head the simple fact that there's dynamite in those Russian peace-pipes and that while Soviet smiles may do the trick in Asia, only thousands of tanks will work in Budapest. The real point in this lesson is not to force Nehru to condemn Soviet aggression--he has done this already, even if the condemnation was painfully slow in coming; the point is to emphasize to India's leader that the problems of Europe are different from those of Asia, and that the NATO alliance, backed by rifles and regulars, is one key to the containment of Communism in Europe. Asians have always been slow to accept the fact that the Soviet Union's satellites are satellites, and if the former military commander of NATO can help to change this attitude, it will have been a lesson well worth teaching.

Prime Minister Nehru can teach a few lessons, too. He can say that the problems of Asia are not the problems of Europe, and that America's insistence upon applying in Asia and the Middle East the principles of collective security which worked well in Europe has greatly damaged U.S. prestige and has caused more instability than it has prevented. Nehru might well point to the South East Asia Treaty Organization as an agency that is missing most of South East Asia, and to the Baghdad Pact as the impetus behind Russia's offer of arms to Egypt, and thus behind the whole series of tragic consequences which finally culminated in the British-French-Israeli attack on Suez.

Nehru might add that, just as he should accept the fact that the Soviet Union is what it is, so the United States should accept the fact that China is what it is. Chinese Communism is in the world to stay, and the quicker this country accepts that fact, diplomatically and practically, the better. The Prime Minister might point out that in the long run, he fears Chinese power more than Soviet power, but that the only way to mold the new China is to accept its existence. He could say to the President that with such an overwhelming popular mandate behind him, Eisenhower could effect a changed national attitude toward Red China without great political repercussions.

Basically what could result from these Nehru-Ike conversations is a new attitude toward neutralism on the part of this country, and a new attitude toward the U.S. on the part of India. India will have to realize that her attempt to be a neutral bridge between two forces depends upon India's understanding of the nature of the opposition between those two forces. And similarly, the United States will have to realize that just because India is not 100 percent for us, she is not 100 percent against us, and her role in trying to bridge the Soviet-American gap can be a constructive one.