Prometheus Bound
MEYER, KARL E.
WASHINGTON-U.S.A. Prometheus Bound By Karl E. Meyer The crisis in South Vietnam is a conspicuous example of the ebbing influence of the United States in countries where dollars are supposed...
...copes with similar problems...
...But the sense of frustration is not confined to Vietnam...
...There is little disposition as yet to heed the French suggestion to withdraw U.S...
...Nations getting help from America have become adroit at setting one arm of the U.S...
...Not long ago, State Department officials assured reporters that President Nasser was heeding American advice to concentrate on internal affairs instead of foreign adventures...
...only a few months ago, criticism of Diem was brushed aside with the impatient argument that the war was going well and that besides there was no alternative to the existing regime —a self-fulfilling prophecy that has come true with a vengeance...
...But Diem seems grandly oblivious to the laws of economic determinism, and he has succeeded in making Washington look ridiculous while he continues to receive his daily retainer of more than $1 million in Yankee aid...
...In Brazil, President Goulart was personally instructed on the evils of inflation by Attorney General Robert Kennedy...
...Thus present policy is to whistle in the dark and hope that something will come along...
...Former Ambassador Nolting, who has been succeeded by Henry Cabot Lodge, virtually became an honorary member of the Diem clan and referred to "this Buddhist thing" as if the matter could be waved away, like an annoying gnat...
...officials speak with bitter bluntness...
...As of this writing, American policy is a mass of contradictions...
...Last week, the Korean dictator jailed his most prominent critic and shrugged off the scolding sermonette that issued from the State Department...
...The time is gone, it is keenly felt, when a Secretary Dulles could order the CIA to squash a Leftist regime in Guatemala...
...Prometheus Bound By Karl E. Meyer The crisis in South Vietnam is a conspicuous example of the ebbing influence of the United States in countries where dollars are supposed to purchase power...
...bureaucracy against another...
...Both sides are living in the twilight of imperial power...
...In Asia, besides Vietnam, there is South Korea, another country heavily dependent on American help...
...Last year, when a military coup occurred in Peru, President Kennedy took the unprecedented step of issuing a strong disapproving statement...
...On the subcontinent, Washington has been arming both India and Pakistan and is involved now in the military metaphysics of deciding which aircraft can be sent to Nehru without outraging Ayub Khan...
...There, General Park has increasingly come to resemble Diem in his attitude towards Washington and his contempt for freedom...
...is in the paradoxical position of supplying economic or military aid to all sides—Arab kings, Arab revolutionaries and Israel—while its influence often seems marginal...
...Smaller countries have learned to use the United Nations and to play off the big powers—especially since Nasser first showed that it was possible to get guns from Russia and still throw local Communists behind bars...
...The failure of the Cuban invasion confirmed the moral of Suez—that the gunboat and big stick have ceased to be acceptable methods of persuasion, and that even if these methods were acceptable, the incompetence of intelligence agencies makes certain success doubtful...
...In the Middle East, the U.S...
...From the outset, American policymakers have subordinated political considerations to what have been regarded as military realities...
...Then came Yemen...
...But after Washington huffed and puffed, Dr...
...In private, U.S...
...There are no glib answers in Washington to the dilemmas of the new power relationship...
...Yet beyond the particular circumstances there is the prevailing wind of change in relations between the superpowers and erstwhile client states...
...Two years ago the President told a visitor that his most chastening discovery as chief executive was the unexpected feebleness of American influence on the domestic affairs of other countries...
...The ruling clique is conservative, Catholic and dictatorial—the archetype of the kind of regime the U.S...
...In its own hemisphere, the United States was unable earlier this year to unseat President Duvalier, unsavory dictator of the poorest and worst-governed Latin American country...
...has tended to support uncritically...
...Everywhere in the world, in varying measure, the U.S...
...Plainly, specific local blunders contributed to the debacle...
...forces and settle for a unified, neutralized Vietnam on the model of Laos...
...For a decade, the Communists have scornfully derided President Diem and his family as American puppets dancing to the Wall Street tune...
...As in Vietnam, embarrassment was compounded when the White House hinted that something dramatic was about to happen in Haiti...
...The tour d'horizon could be extended to Europe, but the purpose is simply to set South Vietnam in a general context...
...The irony is that Kennedy can force Khrushchev to take missiles out of Cuba in a confrontation that imperils the world, but the President cannot get Diem out of Saigon though every bullet in the Vietnamese army is made in America...
...Dismay, bafflement and anger— these are the emotions that Administration officials convey...
...President Diem once ordered an American Ambassador from his office when the diplomat strongly urged that the Nhus be sent out of Vietnam...
...but the junta survived and finally yielded power only when it was certain that an army-approved candidate won the presidential election...
...Diem's contempt reflected his knowledge that the Americans who counted in Saigon were in the military mission and the CIA, not in the State Department...
...President Kennedy mildly chided the Diem regime last week for its repression of Buddhists and stressed that the persecution jeopardized the war against the Viet Cong guerrillas...
...Nonetheless, Goulart has defaulted on his pledges to slow down inflation and the U.S...
...But continuing disintegration might alter this mood as it did two years ago in Laos...
...is currently debating whether to suspend aid and thereby risk losing friends and influence in Brazil...
...They see no hope of winning the war so long as Diem clings to the Nhus—and they see small hope that the President will purge his brother and sister-in-law (Rasputin and the Dragon Lady, as they are called here...
...Karl E. Meyer is a member of the editorial board of the Washington Post and Washington correspondent for the British New Statesman, where this article also appears...
...Duvalier was still in his palace...
...Economic aid to Peru was momentarily halted...
...Moreover, Pakistan, once the peerless ally, has confounded the Administration by flirting teasingly with Red China...
...It is noted that Khrushchev is encountering similar strains in Cuba, where Fidel Castro refuses to sign the limited test-ban treaty and ignores Russian economic advice—even though the Soviet Union is pouring in an estimated $1 million a day in aid to Havana...
...It is also widely felt here that ranking American diplomats in Saigon have done a better job of representing Diem in Washington than vice-versa...
Vol. 46 • September 1963 • No. 19
