A New Consensus
BARNES, PETER
WASHINGTON-U-S-A A New Consensus By Peter Barnes Washington It might have been thought that the day was long past when the Johnson Administration could find warm endorsement from Congress for...
...A simple resolution supporting aid to Latin America could not make it through a Senate rankled by earlier "blank checks...
...No More Viet-nams...
...Thus it is especially noteworthy that President Johnson's handling of the Middle East crisis has met with broad acceptance on Capitol Hill...
...But in fact it was a policy and it coincided closely with prevailing sentiment on the Hill...
...and Robert Kennedy (D.-N.Y...
...Militarily, the U.S...
...In areas such as Latin America, however, where Russian influence is minimal, Washington may yet persist in derring-do...
...was ill prepared to lend anything except air support to the Israelis, and the sentiment in Congress, which Johnson heeded closely, was anti-interventionist...
...new ones are steadfastly being shunned...
...Later he reminded a rally of pro-Israel New Yorkers in the Senate caucus room: "We know that an exchange of nuclear weapons with Russia would mean 100 million dead within the first few hours...
...involvement in Vietnam and support for decisive American action in the Middle East were not, in their minds, contradictory...
...This is what Washington has come to appreciate in the past few weeks of the Middle East crisis...
...After the Israeli victory, when it was clear that U.S...
...Morse's and Gruening's opposition to U.S...
...Johnson's low-key response to the Middle East crisis meshed well with this new mood...
...The U.S...
...Instead they rested their position on two rather disparate pedestals: a firm belief that important legal principles as well as long-standing U.S...
...The President's nominee for the post of deputy administrator of aid came within a single Senate vote of being shelved...
...Certainly, the prevailing mood makes the Vietnam war seem almost a relic of the past...
...I am unalterably opposed to unilateral intervention anyplace," said Richard Russell...
...We should do all we can to bring the United Nations into this," was Fulbright's more urbane way of saying the same thing...
...The last thing we want is to get unilaterally involved in another shooting mess," was the gist of the message communicated to Administration officials by key members of Congress with widely varying views on Vietnam...
...Interestingly, their reasoning was not that one trouble spot was within the U.S...
...That the Johnson - Fulbright - Russell -Kennedy consensus happened to jell over the Middle East, rather than some other trouble spot, is largely an accident of history...
...The Administration, too...
...Always, anywhere in the world, we should do everything we can to avoid a miscalculation that might lead to such an exchange...
...New York Republican Jacob Javits, though naturally sympathetic to Israel, went along with the Administration's cautious diplomacy...
...on one side, and Richard Russell (D.-Ga...
...Our old alliances and commitments are weakening...
...It seems clear, too, that the broad consensus reached amid the Middle East turmoil will, with minor ups and downs, be a lasting one...
...If other Senators shared Morse's and Gruening's proclivities before war broke out, they hardly made themselves conspicuous...
...There was none, and the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee kept his tongue...
...military support would not be needed, members of Congress were generous in their appeals for a settlement that would guarantee Israel's existence and its shipping rights...
...policy and on world order could be vast...
...on the other...
...Thus the Administration sought to restrain Israel while it secretly exchanged "let's not fight each other" notes with Moscow and attempted to convince the Soviets that the right of passage through strategic straits —a vital Russian as well as Israeli interest—was all that Washington wanted to establish when eventually, with whatever allies it could muster, it would run the Aqaba blockade...
...diplomacy continues, chiefly through the UN, but Johnson is content to let the Arabs and Israelis settle things themselves...
...The repercussions on future U.S...
...What the emergent consensus portends for Vietnam is not easy to say...
...None of this is meant to imply that an area of Soviet-American duopoly, which is already seen or hoped for by many neo-isolationists in Washington, is now at hand...
...The Pentagon's request for fast deployment logistic ships—huge floating arsenals posed for world-wide instant intervention—was stoutly denied, nato troop strength is repeatedly questioned...
...Foreign aid this year faces its toughest fight ever...
...But even then United States military involvement would have been slow and reluctant at best...
...Congress' slaps at Johnsonian foreign policy have been explicitly or implicitly at the over-extension of U.S...
...and Soviet propensity unilaterally to apply naked power in pursuing national interests that occasionally converge but more often than not remain in conflict...
...Equally important is the fact that the United States is drifting toward a new foreign policy consensus—a consensus that might be characterized as neo-iso-lationist or simply...
...Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D.-Mont...
...If we could have rounded up an ally or two to make an Israeli rescue effort look multilateral, there might "possibly" have been a majority for intervention...
...The Administration's first problem will be simply to make people care again about Vietnam, now that the Mideast has drained us emotionally and General Dayan has put Marshall Ky in pitiful perspective...
...commitments were at stake in the Middle East, and a pragmatic appreciation that "a stitch in time saves nine...
...viewed Arab recognition of Israel's existence as essential to an overall settlement and, for domestic purposes, began to color itself moderately Jewish...
...Soviet arrogance was jolted suddenly by the shock-effect of the Cuban missile crisis...
...Should not the same extreme concern for avoiding a confrontation with Russia be applied to China?or should it apply only when China's nuclear arsenal gets heftier...
...Robert Kennedy, despite intense pressure from Jewish constituents, remained thunderously silent...
...Vietnamese policy continues to receive its steady share of brickbats...
...Even if Israel had wound up on the short end of the fighting, it is questionable what the United States would have done...
...arrogance is being sapped slowly and bloodily in the steamy jungles of Vietnam...
...forces to thank...
...For this smooth Congressional sailing, Johnson has not only General Moshe Dayan's amazingly swift Peter Barnes, a previous contributor to these pages, is a member of Newsweek's Washington bureau...
...sphere of influence while the other was not...
...The soil in which the root took hold and flowered was Vietnam...
...In the longer run, though, the Administration and the Vietnam supporters in Congress will have to answer some deep questions as a result of the Arab-Israeli crisis: Why should not the broadly supported premises of Washington's Middle East policy be extended to Southeast Asia...
...It has been acquiesced in by such disparate elements as Senator J. W. Fulbright (D.-Ark...
...The idea of nuclear guarantees for nations that sign the non-proliferation treaty is, for example, all but dead...
...Should not Peking be recognized and brought into the UN so that eventually it can be dealt with in the same way as Russia...
...The United States and the Soviet Union are still world rivals...
...What has changed, west of Rangoon, is the U.S...
...Johnson's overriding concern in the Middle East was to avoid a confrontation with Russia...
...The United Nations, ineffective as it was in averting the Middle East war, seems doomed to become the dumping grounds for a growing list of chores the U.S...
...Wayne Morse (D.-Ore...
...told me in an interview...
...and Ernest Gruening (D.-Alaska), who is of Jewish parentage, said the United States should have quickly broken the Aqaba blockade—unilaterally if necessary—so as to preempt a war which could have led to far graver consequences than, most fortunately, it ultimately did...
...lacks real leverage in the Middle East, remains largely one of kib-bitzing...
...and John Stennis (D.-Miss...
...If, as Senator Russell says, we should not have gotten involved in Vietnam in the first place, what is the logic now of deepening our involvement...
...WASHINGTON-U-S-A A New Consensus By Peter Barnes Washington It might have been thought that the day was long past when the Johnson Administration could find warm endorsement from Congress for its foreign policy ventures...
...Washington's muddle-through approach to the Mideast crisis is not rooted in anti-Israeli or pro-Arab prejudgment...
...The number of Senators who broke from this consensus could be counted on the fingers of one hand...
...would rather not perform unilaterally...
...Did not the Middle East convulsion demonstrate that Vietnam—the war to preserve the credibility of the American commitment—has in fact seriously eroded both our will and our ability to fulfill other commitments...
...Thanks largely to some wholly unenlightening initial briefings, this supremely cautious policy was at first mistaken by many Senators for being no policy at all...
...burdens...
...will grow less adventurous overseas, just as the Johnson Administration, perhaps coin-cidentally, becomes less daring domestically...
...response to Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran, to Nasser's pretentions of glory, and to the Arab mobilization against Israel was the end product of 25 exhausting years of world policing...
...Where was the arrogance of power that Fulbright would have pounced upon with gusto...
...More than anything else, the U.S...
...But the feeling is unmistakeable that America is tired of its heavy postwar responsibilities...
...But Administration policy, both from intent and because in fact the U.S...
...America's commitment to Israel itself was downgraded from a legal one to a moral one...
Vol. 50 • June 1967 • No. 13
