The Free World Is Strong
What are the implications of all this for the free world?
In the face of the Soviet objectives, methods, and recent trade activities, one can recognize the inadequacy of two extreme policies that are often urged upon Western governments. Those extremes are:
1. Complete embargo on trade with the bloc.
2. Completely unrestricted commercial relations with the bloc.
Complete embargo would be the conventional answer in military conflict. But to urge complete embargo in the present situation is to ignore the fact that the present trade situation offers opportunities to the free world. The free world, with its enormous production, can benefit from trade; the test is what goods are traded and on what terms. The free nations are stronger economically than they have ever been. Collectively they are far stronger than the Soviet bloc. They possess tremendous resources. On the whole they have solid and healthy competitive systems. Their businessmen have behind them centuries of experience in bargaining, merchandising, and servicing. With these factors creating for the free world a currently strong trading position, the free-world nations should be able to take advantage of the needs of the Soviet bloc and by hard bargaining gain benefits from East-West trade.
Completely normal and unrestricted commercial relations with the bloc seem to be equally unsuitable as a course of action.
If the free world should abandon the controls it has imposed in the interest of national security, drop its guard and permit unrestricted trade in all its raw materials, industrial goods, and advanced technology—the free world would be the loser. In view of the Communist objectives and methods, unrestricted trade would permit the bloc to increase its war potential—and specifically the all-important economic base of its war potential—faster than it otherwise could. The goods received by the free world would bring no commensurate return.
If such trade encouraged a general relaxation of the free world military defense, it would be that much more damaging to the free world. In any event, unrestricted trade would permit the Soviet traders to compete freely in Western markets for important strategic goods needed for Western military defense, thus making that defense more costly and difficult for many free-world nations.
Employing the monopoly power of the Soviet states, individually or collectively, the bloc would be able to extract economic advantages and unwarranted concessions from the weaker individual traders and nations to the net detriment of the free world.
Finally, unrestricted commercial relations, in which commercial gain is the overriding criterion, would weaken the free world insofar as they increased the economic reliance of certain free areas upon the bloc. This could be harmful by increasing the vulnerability of these areas to Soviet pressure. It could also have the effect of diverting the attention of the free world from its compelling general economic tasks such as developing bigger, better, and more accessible markets and making international financial and trade arrangements that will diminish the difficulties of sharing the free world’s vast resources and production among the nations.