Meeting of East and West?

Abstract

is a trite phrase that is the art of the possible. At this moment it is perhaps equally necessary to stress that it is seldom possible in international politics both to have your cake and eat it. In initiating an exchange of visits with Premier Khrushchev, President Eisenhower has made an unorthodox and courageous move. But beneath the gesture, there is throughout the Western world deep uncertainty on the crucial question: Is this just another somewhat more dramatic move in the endless chain of attempts made since the end of the last World War to break an apparently irreconcilable and ever deepening conflict between the world's two leading powers? Or are we entering a new phase in world politics, possibly different from that of the first twelve postwar years (1946-58) the postwar world configuration was from that of 1939? It is this uncertainty which largely accounts for the spate of Western speeches and declarations, according to which nothing is to be changed, except for an attempt to melt the ice. This clearly is not good enough. If it is in fact the conviction of the powers of the Western alliance and in particular, of its four leading representatives that the strategy and the aims of Soviet Russia are essentially what they have appeared to be since the end of the war permanent war aiming at the complete conquest of Western positions and values, stopping short only of the ultimate holocaust long possible then the exchange of visits between Eisenhower and Khrushchev is certain to be a failure. Premier Khrushchev may be eager to see the world, but he is not coming to the United States a tourist. Already the value of the exchange has been somewhat curtailed by excessive U.S. consideration for what its various allies consider to be unnegotiable or even undiscussable. If the West should persist in an as you were position, mitigated only by some