From Labor Action, Vol. 14 No. 22, 29 May 1950, pp. 1 & 8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Vice-President Barkley probably put his foot in it, from the point of view of Washington’s diplomats. Responsible government officials are not supposed to let cats out of bags. But what he said in his New Orleans speech at the Armed Forces Day dinner last Sunday, May 21, was the truth – the truth about the U.S. government’s plans for a permanent garrison in Europe and all over the world.
He said: "There seems little prospect of a peace treaty, so we must maintain armed forces all over the world and we may have to occupy more countries before the cold war is ended.
This breath takingly frank statement is a full confirmation of the charge which Labor Action has twice made in lead-headlined articles which aroused some skepticism.
Only last week was once. We said so for the first time just over a year ago, April 18, 1948, under a headline which read Truman Waves A-Bomb; Leaders Plan U.S. Garrison in Europe.
Neither story was based on guess, rumor, or “inside information.” Both were political conclusions based on press reports which, in our opinion, pointed unmistakably in that direction despite official doubletalk, protestations and denials.
It is easy to predict that Barkley’s indiscretion (especially the blooper about occupying more countries “before the cold war is ended”) will be shushed up as quickly as possible. But Barkley has some explaining to do!
Nor is it a question of Barkley personally. Everyone above the feebleminded level must know that the vice-president was merely repeating what he had heard at the very top of the government, right at Truman’s elbow.
What other countries will “we” have to occupy before the cold war is ended? TURKEY? IRAN? GREECE? Which of these or which other is the subject of the conversation behind the doors of the White House and the Pentagon building?
Have they gotten to the point of discussing what pretext will be used for public consumption if it becomes “necessary” to trample over the independence of some nation or nations whose sovereignty is supposedly the dearest concern of the paladins of Western democracy?
Have they figured out. in anticipation, what the United Nations is supposed to do while the operation takes place? Or is the UN, or mythical UN control, scheduled for the role of figleaf and camouflage for the international crime of which Barkley spoke so casually as a possibility?
Barkley’s almost incredible words cannot be recalled now. They’re in print. Washington can only hope that they will be forgotten by the next day’s or week’s headlines. But if the conscience of those who purport to be labor and liberal leaders has not become so calloused and atrophied under the strain of being “practical” and “hard-headed realists” that the Barkley threat passes unchallenged, here are two things to be remembered:
Let us suppose – just for an instant – that those words had been spoken by a top leader of Russian totalitarianism, one of the despots of the Kremlin – a Molotov, for example, to take Barkley’s approximate governmental opposite number within the Moscow hierarchy ...
Would not this be unanswerable, positive, irrefutable proof of the oppressive, aggressive, imperialistic and tyrannical policy of the Russian Stalinist dictatorship?
The only difference between the Russian leaders and Barkley in this respect is that it is doubtful whether the former would be so stupid as to frankly declare their intention and motivation in advance. They HAVE done precisely what Barkley talks about for the U.S., and have advanced just as “democratic” pretexts for their crimes as no doubt Washington would find for its own.
A second thing to be remembered: Barkley’s statement, as we said, may be glossed over here. But in Europe and Asia and among the Moscow satellites it will be a boon to the Kremlin’s propaganda and political offensive, a free gift to them.
And the Barkleys will continue to wonder why and how the Russian tyranny maintains its hold over the people under its heel. It is not ONLY through terrorism and police control, which have their limit of efficacy. It is also because the Russians can demonstrate, . not only by their well-known lies but with a damning admixture of TRUTH, that the Western alternative to their rule is also an oppressive imperialism.
The Russian empire can perhaps be blown up along with the rest of the world with A-bombs and H-bombs, but it can be blown up from WITHIN only by the dynamic appeal of a force which fights for the socialist alternative to both imperialist war camps.
That is why the-socialist struggle is the only progressive road to peace and the overthrow of Stalinism. BECAUSE it is also the struggle for the abolition of capitalism and capitalist imperialism.
If the Barkley blooper is stupid, as it is, that is only because he told a TRUTH inconvenient for American editorial writers and preachers of peace-through-total-diplomacy. Its stupidity should concern Barkley’s boss; its truth should concern the country’s working people.
As we indicated, U.S. imperialism’s desire to garrison the world popped its head out of the bag a year ago, in speeches from less highly placed sources which indicated at that time that there was at least a strong movement in top-level government circles in that direction.
In a speech on April 5, 1949, Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley made a fervent plea to “funnel the great strength of our new world to the ramparts of the old" and “thus challenge the enemy where he would transgress.” (In this speech Bradley explicitly tied up his views with the State Department.)
Picking this up, the New York Times on April 1 dotted the i’s: “we must ‘funnel the great strength of our new world to the ramparts of the old’ by stationing in Europe a team of army, navy and air forces strong enough to keep any aggressor in check.”
The next day Secretary of the Army Royall made a speech in Chicago which “was an obvious sequel to that delivered in New York last night by General Bradley,” according to the AP. Speaking even more openly, since he was no longer encumbered by government responsibility, ex-Undersecretary of War William H. Draper “stressed the prospect that U.S. forces will have to stay in Europe for d long time after the occupation period is over in order to stand guard against any lightning aggression.” (AP)
General Clay made a speech of similar implications as he stood reviewing U.S. troops in Germany at the same time.
This program of the military men is what was echoed by Barkley in New Orleans, not because he has been reading last year’s papers but because he was repeating this year’s total-cold-war strategy adopted by the Truman government.
This program for a U.S. permanent garrison in the world is represented as a guard against a Russian “lightning aggression." A moment’s thought is sufficient to pose two alternatives for its real meaning.
“A team ... strong enough to keep any aggressor in check.” is what the N.Y. Times called for. If this means what it says, it means American forces in Europe at least as numerous as at the height of the Second World War. The Russians, by good report, can throw 170 divisions (“equal to most Western divisions in armor, artillery, heavy equipment”) into the field, according to the U.S. News (May 26, 1950). “They are opposed by 43 Western divisions, of which only about 25 can be used in Western Europe.”
It is to say the least, doubtful whether the N.Y. Times, or even the most arms-mad militarist thinks that the U.S. can even dream of doing this as long as the war is cold. The talk about U.S. forces stopping a “lightning aggression” is fantastic.
More to the point, we suggested last year, is another purpose. In this war-weary world, for all of the whooptip of propaganda for the next war to make the world safe for something or other (spelled capitalism), “the problem before the Washington war planners is in the first instance political and not military: how to make sure that the U.S. jumps into the war on the FIRST DAY. Atlantic Pact or no, the start of hostilities between Russia and NORWAY is not going to stampede Congress into declaring war. at least not easily. As Professor Beard proved [in his completely documented President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War], Roosevelt deliberately set about drawing blood.”
It took Pearl Harbor to accomplish what he had already decided: getting the country into the war once it had started. There were no U.S. troops then in Europe to be attacked.
As the N.Y. Times said in its editorial of last year already quoted: “our military frontiers are ... at the Iron Curtain itself, which means Berlin, the Elbe, the Danube, and Trieste. They are there, for one reason, because that is where our occupation troops stand today.”
We repeat our charge, now that, its premise has been confirmed. We repeat also the conclusion from it. The U.S. screen of troops along the Iron Curtain is not Europe’s defense against the Russian dictatorship. It is a cold invasion of Europe, threatening the national independence of the lands and resented by their people – feeding the troughs of Russian propaganda. Opposition to the Third World War means: Demand the withdrawal of Washington’s garrison over the world!
Last updated on 7 January 2024