"Aliens From Space" by Robert Silverberg (as David Osborne)

 Three days after aliens land their spaceship in a Kansas cornfield, Dr. Jeff Brewster is 
urgently  summoned away from his cushy assistant professorship at Columbia University to join an international team of experts to handle the first contact negotiations. The long-nosed, red-skinned Morotans seem friendly enough. They offer humanity advanced technology and medicine but there is a catch: Earth must let them build a military base from which they can campaign against their enemies, the reptilian Zugloorans.

Earth has no idea which side of this intergalactic conflict they should support -- Morotans or Zugloorans? Staying neutral may not be an option. Choosing the wrong side will certainly be disastrous!

This setup of this story is in many ways the inverse of Silverberg's 1957 short story "Neutral Planet." This time it is Earth who is approached by aliens and asked to take sides in a war they do not understand. One of the key plot points is that Earth is an important race in the galaxy because, while we are young, we are advancing in technology at an abnormally rapid pace (Silverberg may have borrowed this idea from Arthur C. Clarke's well-known 1946 story "Rescue Party".)

The premise is solid, but the execution of this novel is lacking. It feels like a step backward from the author's other novels written in 1958. It lacks the satirical nuance of Invaders from Earth or the innovative plotting of Shadow on the Stars.

Brewster is a specialist in communications theory, but his skills are hardly needed as the Morotans have taught themselves perfect English. I was hoping his knowledge of linguistics would pierce the veil of just how widely the alien's thinking differs from human thought processes (akin to Louise Banks in Ted Chiang's "The Story of You"), but Brewster's contribution was usually just remarking on the obvious subtext of the alien's conversation.

The political manipulations of a U.S. Senator feel like nothing more than a transparent plot device. The President's resolution of the diplomatic standoff was unrealistic and unsatisfying.

Silverberg published two novels in 1958 under the pseudonym David Osborne (the other one was Invisible Barriers.) It has only been rereleased once in the United States. In 1995 it was included on a CD-ROM narrated by Leonard Nimoy highlighting pulp science fiction novels of the 1950's. The book is currently only in print as an e-book in the U.K. through the Gollancz Publishing Gateway Essentials imprint.  (Craig, Amazon)