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Mr. Allen Dulles thought that Soviet aggression through
recourse to limited wars presented the United States with much less
of a problem than was presented by developments such as those in
Indonesia, which the Soviets could effectively exploit to weaken
the Free World. Secretary Dulles commented that in the three situations which most greatly concern the United States today--namely,
Indonesia, North Africa, and the Middle East--the directing forces
were not Communist, but primarily forces favorable personally to a
Sukarno, a Nasser, or the like. Developments in these areas had
not been initiated by Soviet plots.
General Cutler replied that, in short, ‘the Soviets were
not obliged to do the work themselves; it was being done for then.
The President took vigorous exception to this interpretation by
General Cutler, and in turn, Secretary Dulles insisted that the
Soviets would not dare today to repeat again what they had done
in Czechoslovakia. If they did so, the facade of respectability
which they had so assiduously built up would collapse. Mr. Allen
Dulles expressed disagreement with this view of the Secretary of
State. He said he felt that the Secretary's argument might apply
to what the Soviets would not dare to do in Berlin, but he felt
obliged to point out that the Commmnist take-over of Czechoslovakia
had not involved any Soviet troops. Secretary Dulles agreed that
this was so, but insisted that in general the Communist take-over of
Czechoslovakia had been the result of heavy Soviet pressure and of
fear of Soviet power. The President expressed hearty agreement with
this diagnosis, and said that he could speak from personal experience that fear of Soviet Communism was what had induced the democratic leaders of Czechoslovakia to cave in before the demands of
local Commnists.
Against Secretary Dulles' argument that the Soviets would
now no longer dare to repeat what they had done in Czechoslovakia
for fear of losing face in the world,.Mr. Allen Dulles cited the
ease of Hungary. Secretary Dulles replied that this was somewhat
different, because in the case of Hungary the Soviets were not seizing territory which they had never controlled, but were rather holding on to something that they had previously had under their control.
Secretary McElroy intervened to state that his really great
concern related to the question as to whether in a democracy like the
United States we could successfully engage in real economic competition with the USSR, expend the necessary resources to do this, and
still be assured of popular and Congressional support. Secretary
McElroy felt that this kind of all-out contest with the Soviet Union
was much more likely in the future than was general war. The President commented that he couldn't agree more, but there would be very
few votes in Congress in support of such competition. Secretary
McElroy agreed, and said he wondered whether we were not approaching
a time when we will have to do a little packaging of such a program,
as we had done in the Marshall Plan, rather than meeting Soviet economic competition in a piecemeal fashion.
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The President replied
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