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University Daily Kansan Monday, Feb. 18, 1963
Broaden The Corps
President Kennedy has proposed that we expand to 13,000 our present overseas Peace Corps limit of 9,000 volunteers. This is well and good, for a recent United Nations report estimates that nearly half the world's population remains underfed. But, faced with such a situation, it would be wise to consider working on the problem from both ends.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
Exporting American progress to underdeveloped nations through the Peace Corps is working well, but an important area is being neglected—that never never land between the Peace Corps in the field and People-to-People on the domestic scene. Why not import promising young farmers from underdeveloped countries and give them a one-year sample of American agriculture here at home?
THERE SURELY ARE competent and potentially capable persons within the so-called underdeveloped countries who could make a real contribution to solving their own agricultural problems if they had the opportunity to observe and assimilate some of the know-how that has made this country the most productive nation in the world.
This is not to infer that we can export our technology along with our practical agricultural ideas, or that short cuts and better ways of doing things can overcome the innate lack of fertility or rainfall endemic to many underdeveloped nations. Any import of foreign farmers should be directed toward our smaller and less sophisticated farms.
Even though he may be headed for extinction, the American family farmer is generally a hardy, practical and warm-hearted man. He still knows how to work with his hands, and he is nearer the land than the rising "agribusinessman" who views the land as a place to grow money and is sometimes a little contemptuous of anything which is not completely mechanized.
IT MIGHT BE surprising to discover how many small-scale American farmers would respond favorably to having a young farmer from an underdeveloped nation in their households for one month out of a year. Twelve volunteer families could provide a year of practical observance and enlightenment for one young farmer. Kansas alone has 105 counties. Surely there are twelve families in each county which would accept such an idea—if not, there is a lot of idle chatter being bandied about under the guise of a concern for humanity.
It would not be easy. There would be problems on both sides, but the practical machinery for putting such an idea into effect is not one of them. American Peace Corps volunteers now serving in the back country of the underdeveloped nations should be competent to select and recommend potential candidates for a "Peace Corps for the Underdeveloped Farmer." And in the United States each county has a Department of Agriculture extension agent who could find farms where young foreign farmers would be welcome.
WE ALREADY HAVE youth exchange programs, but too many of them are little more than mutual admiration societies which become bogged down in intellectual togetherness. Too many American-educated foreign students are reluctant to give up the sweet life. They return to their countries and join the indifferent upper class instead of fighting the real problems of their people.
It is time to take a second look at both the Peace Corps and our exchange programs — not with the idea of abandoning or even drastically modifying them, but with the knowledge that they could be broadened to include people who live by their hands as well as those who live by their wits.
Bob Hoyt
Sound and Fury
Editor's note: Particularly well-written expressions of opinion submitted by Kansan readers will be published on the editorial page in a column entitled Sound and Fury. Contributions for this column must be typewritten, double-spaced and no more than three pages long. The contribution MUST be signed. No major editing will be done without prior verification with the writer. Consistency with the opinions of the Kansan editors will have no bearing on whether or not the contribution is published. Subject matter is at the discretion of the writer.
Great Wall of Containment Extends Deadline
By Zeke Wigglesworth
Two hundred years before the birth of Christ, the Ch'in Dynasty rulers erected the Great Wall of China to repel invaders from Mongolia.
Today, there is another "Great Wall," one much longer than the 1.500-mile Great Wall of China. It stretches from the Arctic circle to the Persian Gulf, from the Mediterranean to the Congo, from Berlin to Cuba and the straits of Tierra del Fuego.
LIKE THE GREAT Wall of China, the new wall is designed to repel invaders—not wandering Mongol tribes, but Communism in general and the U.S.S.R. and the People's Republic of China in particular. But unlike the Ch'in wall, built of stone and mortar, the new wall is constructed of defense pacts and
treaties and mutual assistance agreements.
Work on the new wall began in the years immediately following World War II. The United States, which had emerged from the War as the acknowledged leader of the West, saw danger in the Soviet advances in Eastern Europe, and decided to do something about them.
President Harry Truman was one of the first to suggest a containment wall around Russia. He told Congress in his "Truman Doctrine" speech in March, 1947, that aid to Greece and Turkey was necessary to halt Soviet imperialism. And, he told Congress, "The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration."
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SOON AFTER the emergence of the Truman Doctrine came the Vandenburg Resolution which gave support to a 50-year collective security treaty between France, Great Britain and the Benalux nations. Congressional approval of the resolution, in effect, gave approval to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which came a year later.
NATO was the first large section of the containment wall. It formally came into existence on Aug. 24,1949,and was signed by Belgium, France,Luxemburg,the Netherlands,Great Britain,Canada,Denmark,Iceland,Italy,Norway,Portugal and the United States,Germany,Greece and Turkey joined later.
NATO stipulates that an attack on any member of NATO will be considered an attack on all the member nations. It is a direct challenge to the Soviet Union, and a clear statement that any further advances by the U.S.S.R. in Europe will be met with armed resistance.
IN THE YEARS since NATO became a fact, the containment wall has been expanded and reinforced. Many holes in the wall have been filled in by organizations similar to NATO, as well as separate defense and aid treaties. One of the most important was the Manila Pact (Southeast Asia Collective Security Treaty), signed in 1954 by Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and the United States. It provides for mutual defense similar to that of NATO.
with the Formosa Resolution, established in January, 1955. It established the United States' support of the Chiang Kai-shek regime and served as a warning to the Communist Chinese that further advances in Southeast Asia would be met with force.
Another hole was filled in
In this hemisphere, the wall has been extended south of the Rio Grande by the Organization of American states. This body, composed of the United States and every American state except Canada (and now Cuba) was established in 1948 to implement the Rio Treaty. The Rio Treaty had been formed in 1947 and carried the same agreements for mutual defense as NATO and SEATO.
THE FINAL hole in the wall was filled in by the CENTO pact (Central Treaty Organization) signed in 1959. Originally, this organization had been called the Baghdad Pact and was composed of Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan and Great Britain. The United States was only affiliated with the Pact. After the coup in Iraq in 1958, that nation withdrew. When CENTO was formed, the United States became an official member.
This is how the great wall around the Soviet Union and Red China was built. It is loosely formed in some areas, strong in others, but the principle of containment is uniform.
Shortly before President Truman presented his "Doctrine" to Congress, George K. Kennan, described as "the most learned of our officials, the most experienced of our scholars," presented his argument from the containment of the Communist
Bloc. He said that such a wall of containment would frustrate the Communists, and that "no mystical, Messianic movement—and particularly not that of the Kremlin—can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs..."
LOOKING BACK over the 15 years since Kennan made his plea for containment, it appears that he was correct. The U.S.S.R. has "adjusted in one way or another" to the fact that it is surrounded by armed forces of the West, and that further overt expansion is impossible without full-scale nuclear war.
The Great Wall of Containment has fulfilled its objective. It has forced the U.S.S.R. to find new ways to expand its influence.
The most recent example of the Great Wall in action was the Cuban crisis. The Soviet Union, trying to enter Latin America overtly, extended itself beyond the Wall. The resulting actions by the United States made it clear that such Soviet activity would not be tolerated.
THE GREAT WALL of Containment may not last as long as the Great Wall of China, but there is hope its effects will be more beneficial. By limiting Communist advances before the United States was backed into a corner and forced to resort to nuclear war, and before Russia became confident enough to risk initiating such a war, the Wall has extended the deadline before which man must either solve his problems or die.