Priorities of State
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
PERSPECTIVES Priorities of State By William Henry Chamberlin From a recent visit with the top echelon at the State Department, I took away a list of priorities in United States...
...On what rational ground could the Soviet government, with its enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons, its huge conventional forces, be afraid of the Federal Republic, with its medium-sized Army and its singular vulnerability, because of its dense urban population, to nuclear attack...
...Try to understand their feelings...
...This is a striking case of advice to the wrong address, based on a patently mistaken assumption...
...Of course, it is easy to see why Vietnam is the principal concern...
...In the Indonesia-Malaysia conflict American leverage is also limited...
...Contingent planning for prompt, effective reprisal in the event of such a development is in effect...
...military forces in Germany, does not figure prominently among the worries of the policy planners...
...The Russians are fearful...
...To put down an irregular insurrection in a country that is exhausted by almost 20 years of internal strife, that is exposed to infiltration and reinforcement of the enemy from three directions—North Vietnam...
...And one notes a curious paradox that is not limited to Vietnam: There as in other partitioned countries, such as Germany and Korea, voluntary movement has been overwhelmingly away from, not toward, the section under Communist rule...
...PERSPECTIVES Priorities of State By William Henry Chamberlin From a recent visit with the top echelon at the State Department, I took away a list of priorities in United States foreign policy...
...Cuba and Cyprus run a close race for second place...
...In Cyprus there is little we can do, apart from urging moderation and restraint, barring the possible employment of the Sixth Fleet as a peace-keeping instrument in the Mediterranean, should the worst happen and Greece and Turkey actually become involved in war...
...For here the U.S...
...The President also said he had urged Chancellor Erhard to do everything possible to establish better relations with the Russians "and above all to allay their concerns...
...is committed to a war which it cannot lose without a grave decline of prestige in a sensitive part of the world, and for which no one has come up with a prescription for victory...
...The chronic crisis between Indonesia and Malaysia follows...
...Further down the line are Kashmir, Yemen, with Nasser's threat to Britain's position in Aden and Southern Arabia, and the impending Chilean election, which could conceivably bring into power a near-Communist government...
...It is interesting that Europe, despite the cross-grained tactics of General de Gaulle in NATO and the European Economic Community, and the heavy concentration of U.S...
...In Cuba the principal danger is that Castro might shoot down a U.S...
...Number One, by an easy margin, is Vietnam...
...It is the kind of war in which U.S...
...If anyone in the Pentagon could devise an effective means of interdicting the inflow of men and reinforcements from outside, he would deserve a high decoration...
...the amount of American aid to Indonesia is not enough to use as a means of pressure...
...Although Europe does not seem to figure much in State's present concerns, a serious blunder by President Johnson in regard to Germany deserves more attention than it has received in this country...
...In an interview with a German journalist the President said: "When the Chancellor [Erhard] was here, I told him: Put yourself in the place of the Russians...
...There will be no stoppage of the flights, despite the letters of protesters who, in magnificent disregard of the state of hostility between the U.S...
...Yet, for some reason, the Communists' will to fight seems stronger than that of the non-Communists...
...The danger is not of an overwhelming spectacular defeat, such as Dienbienphu was 10 years ago, but of a crumbling from within of the South Vietnamese will to fight...
...surveillance aircraft...
...and the Communist world, ask plaintively whether we would permit Cuban overflights of America...
...Laos and Cambodia—is the most difficult military problem imaginable...
...They are worried about the Germans, and that is understandable...
...superiority in air strength and firepower is of minimum advantage...
...And what could the Federal Republic be expected to offer to a Soviet Government that has not only detached between a fourth and a fifth of Germany's prewar territory but, by maintaining a profoundly unrepresentative puppet government in its Zone of Occupation, created an unnatural partition of Germany...
...Two political upsets have added to Vietnam's administrative confusion and paralysis...
Vol. 47 • June 1964 • No. 12
