The Proper Goals of Our Foreign Policy
Rostow, Eugene V.
Eugene V. Rostow The Proper Goals of Our Foreign Policy (77.ns essay is adapted from a speech given A'Ir. Rostole befor,? the Los Anfrorld Affairs Council on April 4, 1975.) Despite the.'...
...itgrc ed...
...The Declaration of Principles and the Communique issued at that time proclaimed that in conducting their relations the two governments would proceed from the common determination that in the nuclear age there is no alternative to peaceful coexistence...
...indeed he ominous, for the ride of events is running strongly against our national interests in world affairs...
...For the century between 1815 and 1914, the United States did not really need a foreign policy...
...and North Vietnam would evacuate Laos and Cambodia, withdraw in effect from South Vietnam, and refrain from any interference, military or political, in the affairs of South Vietnam...
...As a student in London 35 years ago, President Kennedy wrote a hook called idn,tvzird,Vtipt...
...In any event, I am certain that we must try with all our might to do so...
...Bun the Western powers, including the United States, arc walking in their sleep, as they did during the thirties...
...We are at a point where Amery's cry should be heeded again...
...Religion re-rains an inseparable component of culire, debate, and the mind's search for ltimate things...
...They remained silent, and hoped for the best...
...That nation continues to pursue programs of expansion hacked by military budgets which have been increasing at the rate of five percent a year, in real terms, and have no parallel in modern history...
...Soviet behavior before, during, and since the Middle East war of October 1973, like their failure to carry out their promises with regard to Indochina, made nonsense of the pledges the Soviets had given to Nixon during his Moscow visit of May 1972, and their later reiteration of those pledges...
...For every one of us who speaks, or writes, or votes on issues of American foreign policy today, the only rule should be "Speak for America.- ^ • Thomas Molnar Religion and the Urbanized Continuum • There is no reason why religion should le incompatible with life in cities...
...Kissinger has told us that Soviet behavior before, during, and after the October war was "not unreasonable," and "less obstructive than in 1967," and that our "detente" relations with the Soviet Union contributed to an agreed settlement...
...Jinn our willingto dc...
...I should make it clear that I reject such formulations of the problem...
...Finally, beginning at least in 1949, we have sought, year after year, to separate China from the Soviet Union...
...The main theatre they chose for their first attack was the Middle East...
...The only changes that have occurred have been in the realm of public relations, not of diplomacy...
...Until that happens, we shall not eruct the- post-Nixon era...
...The Soviets have never pretended that the 1973 agreements for peace in Indochina were being carried out...
...and painters...
...We are living in the midst of a comparable process today...
...It may he that we are hopelessly caught up in a mood of irrationality and illusion like that which dominated the thirties, but I do not believe it...
...We must finally liberate ourselves from this dream...
...on Ow basis of reascin alone, te prevent :Another world catastrophe...
...On a trip to East Asia during that summer, I found that to be the first question on the mind of every government in the region...
...Soviet forces in Siberia are still increasing in size and power...
...It contributed immeasurably to the decay of the bipartisan approach to foreign policy, whose consequences we see today...
...We are witnessing a rapid secularization of the clergy, even of the heretofore strict orders, and the transformation of religious institutions (seminaries, schools, universities) into hotbeds of revolution and immorality...
...Vietnam in Perspective I have no desire to reopen old wounds, or to engage in a great and bloody battle of recriminations over the tragic subject of Vietnam...
...It is undeniable, on the other hand, cat our urban life corrodes religion and 'uses it to deviate toward distorted irms: esoteric sects, pseudomystic gath-ings, curiosity for and commercializaon of the occult, the rush for Orientaltechniques, the cult of gurus, the popularity of neo-gnostics like Heidegger and Hesse...
...Ainericals basic secnrity position isi strong-- stronger in many wa - than has been the case since 10-15...
...And none of us would have it otherwise...
...es, and decelopiog now'LaIons of it-our:ration with mane other countries...
...lifetii,e ions to those who would \X"c- are retreating `,Own we- should lit, 'standing fast .--when should be consolidating ,iur JIlkith...
...Our two broad oceans are no longer enough to protect us...
...optimism, pra...
...shall be unable to head off the war that looms unless we come together quickly around a bipartisan foreign policy based on realities rather than dreams, and achieved by open, serious, and responsible debate...
...That decision was difficult for the Chinese Communists to make, even as a tactical zig or zag...
...Foreign policy, like other kinds of policy, is always a matter of adjusting our hopes to our capacities...
...And our government, weak and unCertain, did not even protest strongly against the fact that it was being cynically double-crossed by the Soviet Union as well as by the North Vietnamese...
...In the shadow of Watergate, Nixon and Kissinger were prisoners of their own "detente" rhetoric...
...To accomplish this goal will require a great national and international effort—in the first instance, an effort of thought, a debate, and then a series of votes on defense, and aid, and other hard subjects...
...Thereliire must still talk of the Nixon-Ford-Kissinger foreign police, Anil not vet of N Ford-Kissinger foreign v. Thy atmosphere of our domestic li;-fill dominated by the strange and intsleading ittiguagc Nixon used Lifted to us aboor foteign afAsa result...
...First, in General Stillwell's immorta phrase, our policy has taken a terrrible licking...
...We may choose to ignore them, for shabby reasons of domestic politics...
...What conclusions, then, should wt draw from the fall of Indochina...
...There is blame enough, Heaven knows, on all sides...
...As South Vietnam was collapsing the President and his subordinates still talked of our obligations there as if they stemmed from the executive agreements and secret diplomatic talks of 1973...
...To me the ;ink' pdssible tricaning for that magi,: work condition ;if \\add politics dorrinaR,i by the habit (if full respect for die a thy Uniied Nation Ch:irter tae international usc of -force...
...The essence of the American national interest in world politics is a world order in which we can live and prosper as a democracy at home—a world of wide horizons, and not a nightmare...
...The first, which we used to call the policy of containment, is that we should seek to prevent the balance of world power from being irreversibly altered by the outward thrust of Soviet policy...
...That is not the case...
...nota hi\ the war of October 1973 in the Middle Fast...
...Soviet forces in Siberia rose from about four divisions in the mid-sixties, to 12 in 1969, and to something like 40 or...
...JerusatJn was the center of Judaism, and :hristianity conquered the urban centers )ng before it managed to permeate the ountryside, as the term "pagan" haganus, peasant) clearly indicates...
...But the constant themes in their policies have been far more important than the variations...
...The magnetic field of world politics is being redefined...
...Soviet policy is exactly what it has always been, except that its pressures are greater and more diverse than ever, and more difficult to deal with...
...also violated the principles ^)I democratic ethics which should govern he lefi Lill-hip hemmer...
...The second is the policy of economic reconstruction and development...
...To fulfill that principle, they promised to work together to achieve peaceful solutions for situations of tension in many parts of the world, to exercise restraint in their mutual relations, and to negotiate and settle all differences by peaceful means...
...I am convinced that foreign policy is a serious subject, a necessity and not a matter of choice, and, in these troubled times, the first and most urgent of our national priorities...
...A new constellation of shared interests was manifest, based on fear rather than hope, but not less real for that...
...I have iimplete faith in the fortitude and good judgment of the American people, their instinct for reality...
...qty explanation for the paradox is that the prevailing American perception of world politics, still reeling under the impact of Korea and Vietnam, has been deeply confused be the Orwellian vocabulary President Nixon and Secretary of State Kissinger have employed in explaining foreign policy to the American people...
...The crystallization of a sound public opinion in any democracy, and especially in our democracy, requires a frank dialogue between the government and the people—sustained, intense, detailed, and thorough...
...President Ford has not vet liberted himself from this feature of his inheritance...
...Detente with the Soviet Union in this sense is a state of affairs every American President has sought since the time of President Franklin Roosevelt...
...That dire event was a clear signal of Hitler's intentions in the thirties...
...Duman...
...We are the only people on earth who can arrest that process in time to prevent war, by pro, a.o.0 z-,L,aully the pattern of firmness and conciliation which has characterized our foreign policy since President Truman's time...
...It itthese questions that the shape ot out hit tire depends \Ve hac,e had several warnings ;dread\ quite as clear as Pearl Harbor...
...The basic cause of war, as Thucydides pointed out many centuries ago, is fear...
...If we fail, the future will...
...Yet the United States is m danger, and the danger is increasing with every passing day...
...Christianity, the faith which has shaped the worldview of the majority of Americans, has from its beginning displayed a wise mixture of other-worldly and this-worldly, or, as we might put it, of vertical and horizontal elements...
...But for the last sixty years, we have learned once again what we knew so well when the Republic was young—that peace is not a gift of nature, or a blessing conferred on us by our two oceans, but the painful achievement of politics and law...
...It has always been the pattern of Soviet policy, when disappointed or frustrated on one front, to move ahead on another...
...kill h lhatt a Ifat iLail foreign poiFeta State rel ail "A t horny-\\ hit lhr thtt .lent o; the world tire suffering I do not agree...
...That option is not available either to out friends or to our adversaries abroad...
...President Nixon, indeed, proclaimed that such an equilibrium had already been achieved...
...In my opinion, effective programs of action on all these subjects are within our reach, if, but only if, we soon come to a common and agreed answer to these fundamentalquestions: What is our foreign policy for...
...Christians are good citizens, the author added, because they are in society but not of it...
...why we should he firm ',old strong...
...45 in 1971, when the Chinese move occurred...
...A more stable equilibrium in world politics seemed distinctly possible...
...But the promise of "detente" has not been realized...
...The ideal of law has been the organizing principle guiding the evolution of American democracy at home...
...Witt ergitte OM iii my judgment Richard Nixon's only offense against the mond code ;if ticir constitiltiOnal order...
...This degeneracy is especially alarming because almost all our institutional and private life is patterned after an implicitly recognized religious valuation...
...And what means should we use to carry it out...
...The nineteenth century is over...
...As early as the second century, while Christians were subjected to periodic persecution, the anonymous author of the "Letter to Diognetes" pointed out that Christians behave as better citizens than their pagan fellows: they are disciplined soldiers, conscientious workers, pious housewives, and well-liked teachers...
...Our collective unconscious preserves a beautiful vision in our minds—the vision of nineteenth-century America, isolated and aloof, without entangling alliances, and entirely neutral in the various conflicts of world power politics...
...Ii is nearly impossible lot public opinion to understand the patterns beneath the flow of events unless our leaders trust the people, and explain the world with which they have to deal in the direct and torzarnished language oil-lair...
...Will it take another Peari larhor to wake us up...
...There has been no improvement in our relations with that country...
...The best diplomatic signal we could give, in the face of these events, would be a sharp increase in our defense budget, particularly for the Navy, for our ready forces, and for research and development...
...Until President Ford takes that indispensable step, there can he no foundation for the confident...
...hut a crisis of understanding, of will...
...The hollowness of that claim is now obvious everywhere...
...The nations which maintained the general peace of the nineteenth century no longer have the power to do so...
...For Nixon, the event of overriding importance was China's decision to turn to the United States for protection against the Soviet Union...
...From the days of Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and the Point-Four program, we have tried to build a progressive worldwide economy, embracing the developed and the developing countries alike, and, more recently, the Communist countries as well...
...They have differed in ability, in temperament, in eloquence, and in luck...
...and their willingess to accept any burdens for the sake of the nation...
...S The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 197' The main lines of American foreign policy have been constant since President Truman's time, and they will remain constant, for reasons rooted in the nature of things, unless we should suddenly decide to commit national suicide...
...Thus since 1945 the goal of American foreign policy has been not simply to achieve and maintain a deterrent balance of power, but on that indispensable foundation to help restore a system of peace—a system at least as good, and hopefully even better than that of the nineteenth century which came to an end in 1914...
...That turn will not come in time to prevent war unless we face the issues directly and soberly, without partisanship, in the spirit of civic responsibility which is the genius of our democratic society...
...Some discuss the problem as if foreign policy were a luxury, an optional activity we can turn on and off at will, a form of philanthropy through which we help democratic nations whose policies we approve, and refuse to assist other nations, even against aggression, because we find their social or political systems unattractive, their leaders unsympathetic, or their habits corrupt...
...No President, however gifted, can carry out an effective foreign policy for long with(»Jr the support of public- opinion...
...From the American point of view, those agreements were entirely satisfactory—on paper...
...It would be easy to argue that in our society (twentieth-century, industrial, mass, democratic, pluralistic) erosion of such civic virtue has set in at both ends: religious faith has slackened under the weight of hedonism and atomization (the "lethargic yet tumultuous society" anticipated by Tocqueville...
...Each of our postwar Presidents has had a different style...
...We lived in a system of peace maintained by the Concert of Europe...
...The only rightful source of American policy is an informed public opinion...
...everywhere--an unir-rtaintv which will not be overcome by brave words alone...
...But it became taboo to mention the SEATO Treaty as the basis for our policy in Vietnam and that taboo has continued under President Ford...
...President Kennedy was surely right...
...That condition—the state of peace—will be realized when world politics is characterized by the expectation that the basic rules of the United Nations Charter with respect to the international use of force will be generally,and reciprocally, obeyed and enforced...
...The third has been the effort to control nuclear weapons...
...on the firm Iiiotolation Mir( d sectait...
...Nixon did not at lent( vvith the Soviet 1!t ion...
...The trahison des pretres is an even more serious sociointellectual act than that of the clercs...
...Nixon responded well to the Chinese move, at least in the first instance...
...and I should therefore like to discuss Vietnam from that perspective...
...bile world is becoming smaller and more bipolar...
...Second, we must move rapidly an, with conviction on the diplomatic front t repair the damage to world politics in...
...Southeast Asia is an importan region of the world—not so vital, stra tegically, as Europe and the Middle East—but important in itself—importan to naval strategy...
...Given the Chinese and Soviet rivalry for leadership of the world's revolutionary impulse, China perceived the Soviet military buildup in Siberia as a mortal threat, and turned to us as the only force on earth that could deter a Soviet attack...
...On that basis, we should withdraw from South Vietnam, and peace would return to that tortured land...
...The only modern analogy for Soviet behavior in relation to the Indochina agreements of 1973 is the invasion of Czechoslovakia in contempt of the Munich agreements of 1938...
...The Soviet Union promised once again to carry out the agreement it had made with us in 1962—the agreement, that is, finally to get the North Vietnamese out of Laos and Cambodia...
...Row can it be that we are stronger, but feel weaker, and indeed are allow ing our advantage to erode...
...Despite a few minor ambiguities around the edges, they confirmed the positions for which we and other nations had suffered so bitterly in attempting to carry out our obligations under the SEATO Treaty and the Charter of the United Nations—North Vietnam and South Vietnam were separate states, and the war in Indochina was therefore an international war, not a civil war...
...Each President has had to cope with a different configuration of events...
...As Sir Robert Thompson suggested in his bitter and passionate article in the New York Times, the events in Indochina will convince many people that the Soviet Union is a more reliable ally than the United States...
...Fot them American treaties and the othet commitments are the cement of the world political system—the only cement there is...
...In this setting, the brave promises of detente were made, in May of 1972...
...Specifically, both nations undertook to bring peace to Indochina, and the Soviet Union promised to cooperate fully with Ambassador Jarring in negotiating a political settlement in the Middle East, pursuant to the principles and provisions of the Security Council's Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967...
...World War II, and all that flowed from it, could have been prevented...
...Certainly no one could draw such a conclusion from the elections of the last decade...
...Region, far from being the fare of the intelctually backward or of the isolated cystic, is a mental and spiritual stimlant, as is shown by the presence of 'any brilliant theologians and churchlen in the Western tradition and by the ersistent and ubiquitous discourse on od in the works of philosophers, novel;ts, poets...
...Can we expect a reversal of the trend...
...The state of tension in the Soviet-Chinese-American triangle and the success of our military efforts and those of the South Vietnamese forces during 1972 led to the Indochina cease-fire agreeWe are learning again that peace is not a gift of nature, or a blessing conferred on us by our two oceans, but the painful achievement of politics and law...
...The dangers before us demand a sharp and dramatic turn in the -direction of our policy...
...Thus it is no accident that under all our postwar Presidents, our foreign policy has had the same four guiding ideas...
...In my view, our foreign policy should be dominated by a concern for the national interest, and only for the national interest: our national interest in the safety, prosperity, and honor of the nation, and the democratic character of its institutions...
...On that basis, we could hope to move with conviction to restore the confident solidarity of our alliance relations, and sobriety, shall we say, in our relations with the Soviet Union...
...Aild -.,v(.• are bitted,, divided, be a titiiied gra\ e flit tali problems to gelliery itlh a l flu energy...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1975 9 ments of January 1973, which were "guaranteed" by the major powers in the Declaration of Paris in March 1973...
...We out military strength, at a tic when ^ and political capabilities in world politics should be in, ceasing...
...we are passive and timid...
...And, at the end, they threatened to intervene themselves in order to prevent the total destruction of the Egyptian and Syrian armed forces...
...I see no reason to doubt our ability to restore a strong and realistic bipartisan consensus about foreign policy...
...Speaking to us about Vietnam, for example, President Nixon told us over and over again that the Democrats had puthalf a million troops into Vietnam, and that his task was to get them out with honor...
...Unless we take our share of responsibility for the process of peace, there will be no peace...
...So far as I know, President Nixon never explained to American and world opinion what everybody on earth has suddenly remembered recently—that we entered the Indochina war pursuant to a solemn treaty of the United States, promulgated by President Eisenhower, and approved by a bipartisan vote while Nixon presided over the Senate as Vice President...
...X/e etc indeed in .1 L It is not a crisis of dui horitv...
...Amery's words helped to precipitate a new state of resolve in Britain, and throughout the free world...
...They were glad to forget the Treaty and the other national commitments we had made over the years to help South Vietnam protect itself against aggression...
...plicit in the demonstration that a American treaty can he made worthies: There is a new doubt, a new uncertaint) The only modern analogy for Soviet behavior in relation to the Indochina agreements of 1973 is the invasion of Czechoslovakia in contempt of the Munich agreements of 1938...
...Its thesis was that it Britain, France, and the United States had roused themselves in time...
...Starting with the Baruch Plan proposals in 1947, we have never stopped pushing for international agreements that would take nuclear weapons and nuclear science out of world politics...
...The continuity of our policy reflects the continuity of our national interests, and the necessities of world politics...
...in my view...
...Speak for England," he shouted...
...In the later phases of the Vietnam war—when public opinion, very sensibly, reached the conclusion that we should win or get out—many Democrats were all too happy to fall in with Nixon's way of talking about the problem...
...That statement, repeated a thousand times, was gall and wormwood to every Democrat, as indeed it was intended to be...
...Wc• an hole to reach that goal nnle he building and maintaining a stable balance of power, on the basis of which we could deter Soviet expansion and ultimately persuade the Soviet Union to respect the rules of the Charter of the United Nations...
...The will of our people cannot be mobilized unless the President, every official of the Executive Branch, every member of Congress, and every citizen addresses these issues with words and deeds adequate to their gravity...
...When that attack failed, Nixon was enthusiastically received in Moscow, in order to make quite certain that China and the United States were not in fact secretly allied against the Soviet Union...
...The goal we must seek, however, is not order alone, but peace...
...Our problems in Portugal today, for example, are far more complex than those of the Berlin blockade, or the threats to Greece in the late forties...
...NiIr Nixon's Way of talking to us about 1oreig3 polici...
...and important above all the dynamics of the Soviet-Chinese American triangle whose stability is the most powerful foundation for a possibly structure of peace...
...Thus ended the last vestige of deterrent uncertainty about America's will to insist on the enforcement of the agreements for peace in Indochina...
...But treaties of the United States cannot be so easily exorcised in world affairs...
...To this development, the Soviet response was clear-cut...
...The key to the possibility of success in that effort is simple, but not easy...
...We are stronger 1)c-cause the increasing pressures of Soviet policy and the implacable logic Of the nuclear weapon have forced Western Furope, China, .Tapan, and Many other countries to te«ignize that their security interests and our own are indivisible, and will remain indivisible for the indefinite future...
...The Soviet mobilization on the Siberian border is the most important fact in world politics today...
...He ex-plained both to China and to the Soviet Union that we wished to have equally good relations with each, and that we did not wish to enter into an alliance with one against the other...
...As Lord Salisbury remarked a long time ago, speaking of the Boer War, "the money will have been well spent if it teaches the British public they can't have the moon just because they want it...
...important economicall^ and politically...
...Negotiation- has not replaced -confrontation" in the policies of the Soviet Union...
...We opposed hegemonial dominance in Asia as we did in Europe, and for the same basic and eternal reasons of national security...
...It was a response to the steady Soviet military buildup in Siberia, and the military and political penetration of South and Southeast Asia by the Soviet Union...
...Today, they have shrunk to the size of brooks...
...But understanding is, and so is responsibility...
...The questions that this brief analysis sets out to answer are: What, in our urbanized milieu, are the causes of religious erosion...
...It should always be a major goal of our foreign policy...
...Nixon claimed that he had hrought the Cold War to an end, and reached a new and,stable siistern of world peace...
...And, Nixon made clear, there must be no war...
...At some point during 1973, once we had withdrawn our troops from Vietnam, perhaps not until the late summer, when Congress had passed and the President had signed the resolution forbidding all American military involvement in Indochina, the Soviets decided to strikeagainst the risk that the Chinese-American rapprochement might genuinely restrain their ongoing programs of expansion...
...and life in the State and he Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1975 11...
...e hesitate...
...Blame is not our problem...
...How should we define the American national interest in world politics...
...We are not living in a condition of "detente- with the Soviet Union...
...Or coin we responci in time...
...Until President Ford frees us from the incubus of President Nixon's excessive claims about what he accomplished, the agony and the triumph of Watergate will have been in vain...
...I think I can claim to be the only bureaucrat who ever went up and down the country making official speeches to the effect that our most important foreign policy problem was to resolve the Jungian tension between our collective unconscious and the facts of life...
...And, finally, is it proper to speak of an "urban milieu," or should we speak rather of an undifferentiated and vague "society," even of a "public," an open society closed on itself, self-sufficient, autarchic...
...What made the Peloponnesian War inevitable, Thucydides wrote, "was the growth of Athenian power, and the fear which this caused in Sparta...
...and bipartisan foreign polic y 'it: must- re-store a5 the predicate for effective national action...
...First, the Soviets tried to show the Chinese how futile their move had been, by their full support for the spring offensive of 1972 in Vietnam...
...Speak for America" Our foreign policy agenda is formidable in every field, from monetary and energy problems to those of nuclear weapons, alliance relations, and food...
...The United States should be the master, not the victim, of its fate...
...Indeed, they never were...
...In this small, contracting, and turbulent world, it is the only possible first principle for the foreign policy of a democracy which aspires to remain a democracy...
...at art rate, we have refused ti recognize those events as Pear larliors...
...China's rapprochement with the United States is the most significant and potentially the most constructive change in the structure of world politics since 1949...
...Instead of pressing for a diplomatic settlement in the Middle East in accordance with the Security Council Resolution, as they had promised, the Soviets helped to prepare and equip the Arab aggression of October 6, 1973, supported the oil embargo, and urged distant Arab states to enter the fray...
...Despite an importan tactical defeat, we cannot abandon the region...
...with the bark on, without hedging tit fudging, cold abuyt "Hui" partisan bias...
...the Pi esident of he Lnited States and the American p The Failure of Detente the news makes !fore obvious with every passing day, 'rout Portugal mind the lAliddie Fast to the hill of Southeast Asia...
...The interests of a great powe must be protected despite setbacks...
...Some of you will recall Leopold Amery's great outburst in the House of Commons in 1939, to a speaker who was dithering about Britain's response to the invasion of Poland...
...In the grim Watergate summer of 1973, President Nixon even signed the resolution forbidding all bombing or other military activity in Indochina...
...As Churchill said in 1940, if we turn our minds to fighting over who was right and who was wrong in the period behind us, we shall have no energy left for solving the problems we must face together in the period ahead...
...The fate of the Indochina agreements of 1973 has the same significance to the policy problems we face today...
...their faith and virtue make for civic loyalty and constructive participation...
...We can be certain, after Vietnam, that the Soviets will soon move again—in the Middle East . or the Persian Gulf, in Portugal, or in some area we are not particularly worried about at the moment: South Korea, for example, whose independence is essential to the security of Japan, or China itself, or Western Europe...
...and of civic responsibility...
...World politics will degenerate into conflict after conflict until we and other nations react, as we did four times in this century, when we felt threatened by hostile forces that would become overpowering unless we struck out against them...
...If China, with a formidable nuclear arsenal, needed an ongoing security relation with the United States in order to prevent Soviet aggression, the lesson for Western Europe, Japan, and many smaller states was obvious...
...Again, as they did in Indochina, Nixon and Kissinger concealed what was happening from the American people...
...The decision to use force to help South Vietnam resist the armed attacks of North Vietnam was backed by vote after bipartisan vote of the Congress, and supported by editorials and other expressions of public opinion throughout the nation at the time...
...Thus far...
...In order to preserve the illusion of "detente," they covered up the Soviet role in the October war, both by what they said and by what they did not say...
...10 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 197...
...Despite the.' flirt c of had I1( 'WS during die last IL', months...
Vol. 8 • August 1975 • No. 10
