World Events: Who Leads the World?

Abstract

Every United States schoolboy and most members of Congress know the stock answer to the above question: America! President Eisenhower stated it baldly in his inaugural message of January 20, 1953: "Destiny has laid upon our country the responsibility for world leadership." To the Newspaper Publishers Association on April 22, 1954, the President said: "History has decreed that responsibility of leadership shall be placed on this nation." Secretary Dulles in the policy statements following his speeches of December 14, 1953, in Paris and December 22, 1953, in Washington asserted that if the world did not answer this important question of world leadership to Washington's satisfaction there was to be instantaneous and massive retaliation. The Eisenhower-Dulles program calls for United States world leadership—with bombs.

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