PEACE BRIDGE IN DANGER
PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" Peace Bridge in Danger rpHE WAR in Vietnam, Senator J . W. Fulbright gloomily observed the other day, is...
...Its Foreign Relations Committee approved the treaty by a vote of nineteen to five in 1965, but the Johnson Administration, fearful of defeat and too timid to make a fight, failed to press for a showdown in the Senate where a two-thirds majority would be required for ratification...
...Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, painfully aware that the fears and frustrations generated by the war in Vietnam were being exploited by the right-wing extremists, pleaded with his colleagues not to let "the tragedy of Vietnam prevent rational consideration of legislative steps to improve East-West relations...
...Moreover, after several somersaults, he is not quite so sure that his FBI would be overwhelmed by a dozen Soviet consuls and clerks...
...After five years of intermittent negotiations, the treaty was signed by both countries in 1964...
...The result has been to place this pitifully modest step toward "peaceful engagement" with the Soviet countries in the gravest jeopardy...
...Despite the absurdity of the Liberty Lobby's case, it is taking its toll of Senators who are everlastingly sensitive to their mail...
...Drawing heavily on earlier pronouncements by Hoover, the Liberty Lobby's mail bombardment hysterically charges that ratification of the treaty would allow Soviet diplomats to smuggle atomic bombs into the United States "in wholesale lots within diplomatic pouches...
...Eisenhower and Mr...
...As a result, the Johnson Administration's pursuit of a major breakthrough to better relations with the Soviets is in grave danger...
...Ratification of the consular treaty does not of itself involve considerations of cosmic importance...
...The notion that the vast apparatus and the limitless resources of the FBI could not cope with ten to fifteen Russians bunched in a Chicago consulate seemed ludicrous to Americans who have thrilled to FBI exploits on television, but right-wing Senators who opposed the treaty knew that with Hoover on their side they could smear the supporters of the treaty as pro-Communist or, at the very least, innocent dupes under the spell of the Kremlin...
...Both Mr...
...Nixon continue to support the treaty...
...The consulate agreement establishes a legal framework for resuming consular relations between the two countries and provides that consular officers would receive the same diplomatic immunity as embassy officials...
...consulate in Leningrad and a Soviet Union consulate in Chicago or Los Angeles...
...The Administration's chosen instruments for pursuit of that goal are 1) Senate ratification of the consular treaty with the Soviet Union, and 2) Congressional enactment of East-West trade legislation that would grant the President discretionary authority to extend "most favored nation" tariff treatment to the Soviet Union and the Communist countries of Eastern Europe...
...The Administration's fear of a setback in the Senate was not altogether groundless...
...Ratification of the consular treaty would be a modest but significant step toward moving that hope into the realm of reality...
...PROGRESSIVE "YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE" Peace Bridge in Danger rpHE WAR in Vietnam, Senator J . W. Fulbright gloomily observed the other day, is poisoning every aspect of our political life...
...When the treaty takes effect it would mean, for the immediate future, a U.S...
...It is the war in Vietnam that has made it possible for the forces of the far right to fan into flame once more the embers of the primitive and self-defeating anti-Communism that seared the nation in the era of rampant Mc-Carthyism...
...But the battle was far from lost as we wrote this in mid-February...
...Senator Thruston B. Morton of Kentucky, whose mail was also running one hundred to one against the treaty, said: "There can be no doubt that this avalanche is largely the result of a carefully planned and well financed 'big lie' operation designed by the paranoids and fearmongers...
...Senator Mansfield's strong speech, followed by a hearty "amen" from the President, demonstrated the Administration's willingness to make a fight for the agreement this time...
...Thoughtful Americans can make a decisive contribution by writing their Senators and thus help to reverse the one hundred to one mail count against the treaty that the lunatic fringe has achieved up to now...
...What the hucksters of hate fail to mention is the fact that the Soviet Union now has normal diplomatic immunity for its pouches directed to its Embassy in Washington and to its United Nations offices in New York, that it now has 452 employes in the United States enjoying diplomatic immunity, and that the addition of ten to fifteen more would not measurably increase the cubic content of pouches loaded with atomic bombs triggered to destroy the United States...
...But it would be far more perilous, in our pursuit of peace in this nuclear age, if the United States failed to recognize and respond to the dramatic possibilities for peaceful engagement that are implicit in the great and hopeful changes in the Communist bloc...
...Rather it was initiated in 1959 by President Eisenhower, with the support of Vice President Nixon, as a means of improving relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and of protecting U.S...
...But the opposition to the treaty he generated two years ago has been taken over by the Lunatic Lobby which masquerades under the sobriquet of "Liberty Lobby" and by kindred collections of kooks bent on torpedoing the treaty...
...Now, two years afterwards, the treaty is before the Senate as part of the Administration's policy of "building bridges" to the East...
...J . Edgar Hoover had armed the hard-shelled conservatives with ammunition to oppose the treaty: The director of the FBI warned that ratification would create baffling new problems of espionage and he was not sure the FBI was prepared to grapple with this new menace...
...President Johnson set the stage for the current drive to batter down some of the barriers that have divided East and West when he proclaimed, in a memorable speech last October, that the American purpose is to achieve "peaceful engagements" with the Soviet world...
...Significantly, many of the Senators who refused to be intimidated by the torrent of hate mail were Republicans...
...It would be dangerous nonsense, of course, to conclude that all our problems with the Communist camp have been solved as a consequence of the shattering of Communist unity...
...Senators have been swamped with an avalanche of mail demanding defeat of the consular agreement...
...It is the consular treaty that now occupies the center of the stage in the Senate...
...The sheer volume of the hate mail, contrasted with the silent apathy of the rest of the populace, has produced a one hundred to one verdict against the treaty in the mail count of many Senators...
...But the Senate has failed thus far to ratify the agreement...
...The hard truth of the Senator's reflection is borne home to the Johnson Administration every day on many fronts, most notably now as it seeks to "build bridges" of peace to the Communist nations of Europe even as it bombs bridges in Communist North Vietnam...
...As a symbol, however, ratification is profoundly significant in determining whether we have matured in our approach to the Communist world, whether we recognize and are prepared to act creatively on the central fact of this decade—the fragmentation of what was once regarded as the grim and disciplined monolith of international Communism...
...citizens traveling to the Soviet Union...
...The Soviet Union consulate in the United States would employ ten to fifteen Russians...
...Hoover, in his self-delegated role as maker of U.S...
...Senator George D. Aiken of Vermont noted that he had been "deluged by professionally inspired hate mail" and he asserted he would support the treaty "if for no other reason than to tell these professional agitators that they don't run this country...
...And Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania declared: "I am not going to be moved by the Liberty Lobby or Nervous Nellies, or hysterical people who cry about Communist danger every time we try to do something reasonable...
...Some Senators dared take the floor to expose and denounce the hysteria of the Liberty Lobby and associated extremists—and, affirmatively, to argue the case for a more flexible relationship with the Soviet countries...
...foreign policy, is somewhat less awesome now than he was two years ago...
...Contrary to the hate-motivated humbug circulated by the right-wing extremists, the consular treaty is not a new and sinister plot hatched in the Kremlin to facilitate Soviet espionage in the United States...
...The "tragedy of Vietnam," he warned, "will be compounded if it causes us to shrink from the rational consideration .. . of these faint but authentic lights of peace...
Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3
