East-West Trade: Road to Peace
It is a part of the economic defense policy of the United States never to lose sight of the vital need to keep open all paths that might lead to a sounder basis for peace in the world.
We not only recognize the economic benefits that free-world nations can get from an expanding East-West trade in peaceful goods; we also bear in mind the possibility that trade contacts can help to improve relations among peoples.
But in hoping for and working toward that end, we are not thereby accepting the belief that international trade inevitably and automatically leads toward peace. Hitler’s Germany expanded its foreign trade right up to the outbreak of World War II. We must view with skepticism the Communist propaganda line on trade and peace, for we know what their trading objectives and methods are. East-West trade as now constituted is carried on not with private individuals in the Soviet bloc but with agencies of Soviet-bloc governments.
International trade in general can be a broad highway toward better living standards and more peaceful relations. It has served humanity well. There should be more of it. But it takes two to trade, and trade is not necessarily a road to peace unless both parties wish to make it so.