ADDRESS BY HAROLD E. STASSEN, DIRECTOR FOR MUTUAL SECURITY, BEFORE THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION, RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, MAY 5, 1953.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 19, 2003
• Sequence Number: 29
• Publication Date: May 5, 1953
• Content Type: SPEECH

Approved ForZeJease 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065 0 0300040029-0
EX CUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDED,
Office of the Director for Mutual Security
Hay 5, 1953 DMS No. 38
For .e e .se Morning Papers Nay 6, 1953
ADDRESS BY HA COLD E. STASSEF,, DIRECTOR FOR MUTUAL SECURITY, BEFORE
THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION? RI CIS-1OTID VIRGINIA MAY 5,-1953.---
President Eisenhower this morning sent to the Congress a message requesting
the legislative authority and the funds to carry forward. the new Mutual Security
Program under his administration. The President's request is based upon an in-
tensely realistic assessment of the world situation and the position of the
United States.
From the start of our history as a nation we have always tried to be real-
istic. Realism is the hard job of trying to keep our knowledge and our actions
in step with the inexorable march of events in order that progress may take place,
We, in the United States, know that lasting progress can be based only on peace,
prosperity and individual freedom.
The facts of international life today require that- if the peace is to be
kept, if prosperity is to be maintained, if freedom is to be preserved- there
must be outside of the Soviet bloc strong, confident nations who are able and
willing to work together for peace and progress. The United States must have
well equipped allies in the central struggle of our time.
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved For ease 2003/06/03: CIA-RDP80-010651,0300040029-0
r2r
Our present position requires us to help other nations preserve their free-
dom and to help them create, through their own efforts, conditions of economic
and social progress. In part we can do this through grants by the United States
Government; but more importantly we can do it by maintaining and expanding out
own prosperity and our own trade with the rest of the world, This is the essence
of the foreign policy of the Eisenhower Administration, as laid down by the
President and by the very able Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. To help
carry out this policy within its sphere in the most effective manner possible
is the task of the i4utual Security Program.
In his State of the Union Message the-President said: "no single country?
even one so powerful as ours, can alone defend the liberty of all nations
threatened by Communist aggression from without or subversion within. Mutual
security means effective mutual cooperation. For the United States, this means
that as a matter of common sense and national interest, we shall give help to
other nations .in the same measure that they strive earnestly to do their full
share of the common task." In his Inaugural Address the President said:
"Assessing realistically the needs and capacities of proven friends of freedom,
we shall strive to help them to achieve their own security and well-being. Like-
wise, we shall count upon them to assume, within the limits of their resources,
their full and just burdens in the common defense of freedom." These state-
ments by the President are two of the broad guidelines of the realistic foreign
policy of the Eisenhower Administration.
As the President and his advisors- especially the Secretaries of State,
Treasury and Defense and the National Security Council- examined the problem
of building the conditions for peace, two facts become clear. We face years
of grave danger during which no one can say that one certain month or year is
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved For_ease 2003/06/03: CIA-RDP80-01065,0 0300040029-0
.3-
the time of greatest danger. We need sound economies to sustain over a long
period the powerful position of strength needed to deter war and maintain nation-
al security.
Ten days ago Secretaries Dulles, Humphrey, Wilson and I returned from a
meeting, in Paris, of the NATO Ministers. At this meeting we presented the
views of the United States and worked with our colleagues from the other 13 i?ATO
nations at a problem which seemed composed of contradictions: the need to
achieve immediately more effective strength for defense and the need-to set an
economic pace which could be held and perhaps expanded for the long pull ahead.
Much was accomplished at this meeting. Many decisions were made. Senior mili-
tant' advisors state that as a result of firm programs adopted in Paris there
should be a 30 per cent increase in the effectiveness of VATO forces by the end
of this calendar year.
Part of this increase in strength will result from efforts made by Secre>
tary of Defense Wilson and Under Secretary Eyes to speed the delivery of certain
critical items from the United States to our i7ATO allies. Other increases in
effectiveness will result from improvements in quality of existing defense
forces. There will be an increase in supporting units. In addition, contracts
were signed calling for production and delivery, during the next few years, of
two types of planes which our on Air Force considers to be the very latest
and best of jet aircraft- the British Hunter Hawker and the French Mystere-IV.
A number of ITATO members are taking part both in the production of these planes
and in the paying of the bills.
The President has requested 1'?'2.5 billion to carry on the United States
portion of the NATO military build-up. Much of this will be used directly in
Europe to help these nations produce weapons for defense, to help them broaden
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved For
Release 2003/06/03: CIA-RDP80-010650300040029-0
QW,
their military production base and, incidentally, to help ttlem earn dollars
which they need.
The President has requested also about 14~03. billion to be used to help some
of our European allies to meet critical situations in their own production of
military items for the joint defense forces. The funds requested are essential
to our own defense.
For other areas of the world, the President has requested funds to assist
people,who are now subjected to Communist attack and aggression. I refer es-
pecially to the Associated States of Indochina. He has requested money to be
used in helping to increase the strength of the defenses or the strength of the
economies, or both, in the.Middle East and in Asia.
I have devoted much attention to the problems of the military build-up and
to the job which the United States can do in that build-up. As the President
and the Secretary of State have made abundantly clear, the only reason we, and
our allies, are engaged in any sort of military build-up is because this course
of action has been thrust upon us. If the free world is to remain free, it
must have military strength,
We have learned well the lesson which the history of the first half of this
century has taught in a most tragic and compelling manner: a world that is not
safe for little nations is not safe for big ones. We cannot afford to close our
eyes to the forceful imposition upon any nation by any other nation of patterns
of economic, political or social organization. These institutions, we believe,
must be developed freely from the traditions, experience and hopes of the nation-
big or small- which will use them.
Those of us in the free world know that progress develops most swiftly when
men are free to experiment- free to ask questions, free to try something new and
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved For RIease 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-010650300040029-0
r5-
different- free even to fail, but always free to keep on trying. This we have
learned from our own experience. We, in the Western world, have learned also
that we can ill afford to be tied down by stale and outworn customs or to pledge
allegiance to a withered dogma. Through the United States program of technical
assistance, and through similar programs carried on by the United Nations and
other organizations, many people in the so-called underdeveloped areas of the
world are learning that fate is not inevitable and that they, themselves, through
their own efforts, can create conditions of progress.
The President on April 16 offered to all the world, including those nations
presently within the orbit of Soviet domination, a thrilling vision of hope for
peace and economic development. The reaction to the President's speech was
instantaneous. Statesmen in the free world hailed its inspiring hope for the
future. The President's message was even reprinted in the Soviet Union and in
other Communist areas. In the capital of one satellite country people lined up
14 deep and read the President's message with tears in their eyes.
The President said: "I know of only one question upon which progress waits.
It is this: What is the Soviet Union ready to do? Whatever the answer be, let
it be plainly spoken."
There has been no reply by the Soviet Government. But a long editorial
has appeared in PRAVDA. Mr. Molotov has sent a message to a Communist peace
front organization in Paris. But neither of these moves constitutes an answer
to the question asked by the President of the United States.
Nowhere in the PRAVDA article is there any clear evidence that the Soviet
Union has modified its position on the grave issues which have long divided the
Communist nations from the free world. Throughout the PRAVDA editorial and a
related speech by Soviet Defense Minister Bulganin ran the familiar theme that
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved Forlease 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065iW300040029-0
w6w
the Communist nations represent peace-loving doves and that it is the other
nations who have dragged the world into an armaments race. Let these other
nations disarm, the Communists say, and everything will be fine.
4eanwhile, the Communists keep on fighting in Korea and stall the truce
talks along from day to day and week to week. Communist armed forces continue
their bloody insurrection in Vietnam and Malaya and a new invasion has occurred
in Laos in Indochina.
It may be that they fear that only in a state of crisis can the leaders of
the Soviet Union maintain their domination over the Soviet people. This alleged
hostility of the world outside the Soviet Union is not something that was
thought up recently. Lenin used it and so did Stalin, who tried to apply this
theme to the Marshall Plan even though the Soviet Union and the Eastern European
nations had been invited to participate in it.
As the President has indicated, we in the United States are not hostile'to
the peoples of Russia, nor do we covet their possessions nor their resources.
Our greatest desire is to create conditions of a just and lasting peace,
Must the men in the Kremlin keep their people in a state of isolation and
ignorance and fill the resulting intellectual and emotional void with massive
doses of propaganda?
Are they afraid to expose the Soviet peoples to truth and freedom- which
are apt to be contagious?
Clearly in the present state of Soviet Communist deeds we must continue the
two jobs which we have set ourselves through the Mutual Security Program. We
must work with other free nations to build-up strong defense against aggression.
We must work with other nations to create healthy and strong economies which
will benefit the peoples in the free world but will also hold out light to those
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0
 Approved F ,,r;~R lease 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-0106f 00300040029-0
within the darkness of Communist rule.
The free world has learned much since the 19th century. This, the 20th
century, can be the century of freedom.
Let us pray that the Communist rulers realize that their own positions and
the welfare of their peoples can be enhanced if Soviet statesmen seek, in good
faith, to create the conditions of peace. Let them join in positive actions
which will make it possible for all of us to help build, as the President said,
a world in which all peoples can be productive and prosperous- to lift from the
backs and hearts of men the burden of arms and fears "so that they may find
before them a golden age of freedom and of peace".
Approved For Release 2003/06/03 : CIA-RDP80-01065A000300040029-0