MUTUAL SECURITY ACT EXTENSION WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 1953 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D. C. The committee met, pursuant to call, in room 262, House Office Building, at 10:35 a. m., Hon. Robert B. Chiperfield (chairman) presiding. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. The committee will come to order. Mr. Secretary, I understand you are ready for questioning? STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN FOSTER DULLES, Mr. VORYS. I do not know how far you are ready to go into the details of the program in public session, Mr. Dulles. I would like to ask you about the new infrastructure agreement which was made in April at Paris. Is the amount and plans of that agreement open to public discussion? Secretary DULLES. It is; but you can discuss it more effectively, I think, with Mr. Stassen than you can with me, and perhaps with the representatives of the Defense Department. It is an extremely complicated affair, as you know, and I think a subcommittee on this has made a very careful study of it, and I think a very useful study of it, as far as I can judge, but I do not believe you would find me very well qualified to deal with it in detail. As you know, at the time, we have arrived at a 3-year agreement for calendar years 1954 to 1956, which we believe will permit a much better planned progress than has been the case heretofore when they have been operating on a sort of year-to-year basis, and there has been a good deal of squabbling about that and difficulty in getting agreement. There is now this agreement which will operate for 3 years. I am told that it will bring about, for example, the addition of airfields at the rate of approximately 50 a year for a little while, which will very greatly increase the security and the mobility of the forces in Europe. I can only speak of it in such general terms. Mr. VORYS. I only know about it generally from reading the very fine report of our subcommittee, but as far as I can tell from reading that report, this was a 3-year program, added on top of the program that they studied, and is to continue for 3 years after fiscal year 1954. I note that the legislation, here, runs up to 1961. I have been perplexed about making agreements that far in advance at a time when we are still uncertain as to whether EDC, or the European army, is going to be a reality. It seems to me that it is a little difficult to plan that far in advance when our allies in Europe have not made their plans firm for a European army, which is so important and so imperative in our planning. How can we expect Congress to make such plans when we do not know that they are going to have a European army? Secretary DULLES. Of course we have to plan on certain assumptions. We have to make the best agreement we can as to whether or not those assumptions are sound. I am not happy, as you all know, about the progress that has been made with reference to the creation of the EDC. It has been somewhat slower than we had hoped for because of parliamentary difficulties. As I tried to bring out in my statement yesterday, the leaders of the cabinets in Europe feel just as strongly as you or I would feel as to the importance of EDC. I am convinced that they are exerting every possible, practical pressure upon their various parliamentary bodies to get action taken. I do believe that there will be such action taken. However, I do not now believe that it will be taken in time so that Congress can know, before it has to act finally, that is in the month of June. I doubt whether we would know definitely by the month of June whether or not EDC will be realized. There can be some favorable developments by then which will give us a further clue on this matter, but we probably would not know definitely. That does raise a very real problem. The probability is, as I say, that the wisest course is to proceed with this infrastructure, 1954-56, 3-year agreement. If there is a failure to carry out EDC, if that whole program collapses, then I believe there should be some kind of an escape clause with reference to it. I do not think that is going to happen. I do not think we should alarm the situation by seeming to take for granted a failure of EDC. I think it is much more apt to happen if we take its realization for granted and plan on that assumption. Mr. VORYS. As you know, the Congress, with language originating in this committee, has increasingly urged increasing unification in Europe year after year. It is somewhat discouraging to find that we are asked to plan so many years in advance for Europe, on a basis that has not yet been realized. That is the problem we face, and of course the problem which our country faces. Thank you very much. Chairman CHIPERFIELD. Mr. Richards Mr. RICHARDS. Mr. Secretary, I want to congratulate you on your very fine statement yesterday at the joint meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations Committees. It was a statesmanlike statement, there is no doubt about that. Secretary DULLES. Thank you. Mr. RICHARDS. I wanted to ask you 2 or 3 basic questions and will have more questions later on, when you are before the committee in executive session. You support this bill, as is; is that right? Mr. RICHARDS. You have been a student of foreign affairs and our foreign policy for a long time. Just to get your basic thinking on this thing, Do you think the United States made the right move when we moved into Europe with the Marshall plan? Secretary DULLES. Yes, sir. Mr. RICHARDS. Do you think that we were following the proper policy when we moved in to help arm European nations before NATO was organized? Secretary DULLES. Yes, sir. I was a joint author of the first bill to do that when I was in the Senate in 1949. Senator Vandenberg and I, we wrote and introduced and backed the first military-assistance bill. Mr. RICHARDS. That is correct. Do you think the United States Government made the proper move when we went into Korea to stop Communist aggression? Secretary DULLES. Yes, sir. Mr. RICHARDS. Do you think a proper foreign policy should be a bipartisan foreign policy so far as our two great political parties are concerned. Secretary DULLES. Yes. I do not believe we can have a successful foreign policy unless in its broad outlines it has bipartisan support. Bipartisan support in the Congress, bipartisan support in the country. Mr. RICHARDS. I have just one more question. Do you think that this Mutual Security Program should be administered by an independent agency, or should it be placed back into the State Department under your supervision? Secretary DULLES. It is my very strong preference, Congressman Richards, that it should be put into a separate agency. I realize that from a theoretical standpoint it is possible to argue, and very forcefully argue, that it should be kept under the State Department. There are those who say that is the only way of assuring that actually the foreign policies of the State Department would govern the operation. The other side of the picture is this: The State Department has grown so rapidly and is bogged down by so many responsibilities; its personnel have expanded so as to create very great organizational problems. It has been to such a degree that under present conditions the State Department in my opinion has not been adequately performing its first function, which is making foreign policy. We are dealing with all sorts of things other than that. As you go around the world today, and look at the different areas of the world-which I have done with you ladies and gentlemen here, before you can see that there are vast areas of the world where there are very grave problems and where we do not yet have any adequate policies to deal with those problems. The situation is just bursting out at the seams and we just have not got the needle and thread ready to sew it up. I would like to see the task of the State Department, at least for this persent period, simplified so we can study what our foreign policies ought to be and that we shall not be bogged down with these terrific organizational problems. You could in theory have the State Department to be the counterpart of the Defense Department, where in effect you have a Secretary of State and then you would have three Under Secretaries of State, let us say, 1 for policy and 1 for economics and another for public information. That might be a good design on paper, but I believe that the result of it would be that actually the capacity of the Secretary of State to make foreign policy and advise the President with reference to foreign policy, would diminish under those conditions. I believe what we need at this juncture in history, more than anything else, are good foreign policies. I do not feel that I have had time yet to do the job that I ought to do in that respect because I have had so many other things to do largely organizational problems. I am constantly being questioned about one thing or another and most of those questions relate to activities which I do not think are a necessary part of the work of the State Department. To get the time, the environment, and the conditions necessary to do the best possible job in making foreign policies, which are lacking, I believe, today, I would like to see the State Department job simplified as much as possible. Mr. RICHARDS. Thank you, sir. I have just one more question: I gathered from what you said yesterday, that you feel the authorization sought here to be just as important to the defense of the United States of America as any like amount in our own defense appropriation bills, is that correct? Secretary DULLES. Yes, sir. I would even go further and say that, by and large, cuts in this bill would require in the very near future the expending of more money in terms of our purely national defense than could be cut out of the bill. In other words, I believe that cutting this bill will not in the long run involve a saving, but will involve additional cost. I believe that the defense value that the United States gets, for example, out of divisions of other countries, which cost far less to maintain than do United States divisions, which are already located perhaps in a more strategic position to deter aggression than would our forces if they were kept here at home, that to round that out with some additional end items and military equipment from the United States is the cheapest way in which we can get defense. If we do not do it that way, we will have to do it in a more expensive way. That is, broadly speaking, my view. Now, I do not want to say-in fact I said yesterday that there are possibly some items here which the future events may indicate can be somewhat cut. There could be developments, some good, which would make it unnecessary to spend some of this money. There could be developments of a bad character. For example, I do not think this is going to happen, but I give it as an example. If Indochina, for example, would be irretrievably lost, there would be no need for this money to be spent in Indochina. We do not plan on such a contingency. There could be a good development. There could be a collapse of the aggression in Indochina which would make it unnecessary to spend the money that is now required. We have made the most painstaking study. |