Turning the pages back... April 18, 1953 (04/16/00)

Turning the pages back...

April 18, 1953

"Containment or Liberation?" was the headline on a commentary that appeared in the April 18, 1953, issue of The Ukrainian Weekly. It referred to the title of a newly published book, "Containment or Liberation?" - subtitled "An Inquiry into the Aims of United States Foreign Policy" - by James Burnham that mapped out a decisive new U.S. policy in foreign affairs.

The Weekly commented:

"The president we now have in the White House [Dwight D. Eisenhower] has declared that we must try to win the Cold War. Our new Secretary of State [ John Foster Dulles] has advocated a dynamic new policy of liberation ...

"The policy of containment, Mr. Burnham pointed out, has been 'the bureaucratic verbalization of a policy of drift.' ... the containment policy 'has failed to comprehend the revolutionary nature of the Communist enterprise.' ...

"Because it seeks to 'contain' the Soviet power at the borders of the recognized Soviet sphere, it has created the nightmare of the 'protected sanctuary' familiar in connection with Korea, Indochina and northeast India. ... Worst of all, it has permitted the Soviet Union to proceed unhampered with the consolidation of what she has already conquered. This consolidation alone, Mr. Burnham underscores, is enough to assure Soviet world victory."

The Weekly further quoted Mr. Burnham: "in the language of political action, the program of containment tells East Europeans that the West has abandoned them and Washington is ready to come to terms with Moscow on the basis of the 1947 - or even the 1949 world division: that is on the basis of the Communist enslavement of Eastern Europe and China."

Therefore, Mr. Burnham argued: the policy of containment must be superseded by the new policy of liberation, whose goal is "freedom for the peoples and nations now enslaved by the Russian-centered Soviet state system."

Source: "Containment or Liberation?" The Ukrainian Weekly, April 18, 1953.

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