POLICING THE WORLD
Policing the World DESPITE their differences over the war in Vietnam and related issues of American foreign policy, doves and hawks in the U.S. Senate drew closer together during the past...
...Perhaps it is...
...It scheduled public hearings on our increasing involvement in Thailand—hearings that were to begin as this was being written...
...But whatever the outcome, Senator Mansfield and his colleagues on the Committee deserve great credit for raising, as Thomas Ottenad expressed it in the St...
...The United States, they know, has formal treaties with more than forty countries to assist them militarily...
...And, most important, while it was our intention that the arms be used against Communists (where they would have counted for little) it was evident that the local citizenry saw them all but exclusively as ways of advancing their own more ancient and more compelling animosities...
...Our government is involved in a feverish competition to sell as well as give away arms...
...rather there was a series of separate moves aimed at evaluating, challenging, reducing, or de-fusing our far-flung military commitments around the world...
...commitment to NATO was to help a war-shattered, bankrupt Europe defend itself against the possibility of Soviet aggression...
...In the face of White House and Republican opposition, the fate of the Senate resolution remains in doubt...
...namely a military solution...
...Secretary of State Dean Rusk blandly assured the Subcommittee that there was nothing to worry about...
...And of the policy of his disciples in continuing it...
...We have built elaborate bases there and American planes fly as many as a thousand missions a week from these Thai establishments to bomb targets in Vietnam and Laos...
...Recently, the U.S...
...JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee growing attachment to the idea that the United States has a 'might-makesright' obligation to be the policeman of the world...
...During the past five years the United States, apart from what it gave away, has exported $9 billion in weapons at a profit to the munitions makers of nearly a billion dollars...
...Senator Mansfield agreed: "Indeed it should have been before the Senate years ago, when it first became obvious that the European nations saw the risks of military aggression to themselves with far less anxiety and concern than was suggested by our rigid adherence to our troop commitments to NATO, even as the Europeans ignored or scaled down their own...
...There was no common assault in the Senate on the overall program...
...Johnson's professions of peaceful purpose, the military-industrial complex against which former President U Thcmt's Farewell If the United Nations is not to go the way of the League of Nations— whose demise was followed by World War II—the U.N...
...ITEM : The same mood of deepening apprehension over our limitless commitments led the powerful Senate Democratic Policy Committee to speak up boldly against our long obsolete policy of maintaining six divisions of U.S...
...That beyond the slightest possibility of doubt was the price of the Dulles policy...
...By declining a second term and forcefully stating the reasons for his decision, he has tried to bring the great powers —and particularly the United States —to their senses before it is too late to prevent the outbreak of World War III...
...Today Western Europe is thriving and prosperous, and the tensions between East and West have moderated significantly...
...military expenditures during the past fiscal year ran to an estimated $56 billion, which means that the cost of our obsolete European operation may be $26 to $28 billion a year—or some twenty-five times more than we spend on the entire war on poverty...
...That last sentence, offering weapons credit, suggests the possibility of adopting this motto for the program: "Kill now...
...By 1965 the number had mushroomed to sixty-seven...
...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be performing an immensely valuable service to the nation if its hearings alert Congress and the country on the extent to which we are failing to learn from our costly blunders in Vietnam...
...The "sowing of arms to the four winds," as Senator Church described it, is not confined to the military aid program...
...The strained language" of these commitments, he said, could lead to new wars, such as that in Vietnam, without Congressional approval...
...military presence...
...Since then, without consulting Congress or informing the country, the Administration has sent some 30,000 American troops to Thailand...
...the old tests and safeguards, the caution we used to have, are all gone...
...This request—against the background of the Rusk commitment— sounded ominously like the way it all began in Vietnam...
...In the spring of 1961, we gave a dozen supersonic planes to Pakistan and a half billion dollars in economic aid to India...
...But two of the most relentless hawks on the Subcommittee, Senators Stennis and Symington, repeatedly expressed grave doubts...
...It was clear, said U Thant, "that the pressure of events is remorselessly leading toward a major war, while efforts to reverse that trend are lagging disastrously behind...
...But we cannot escape the conclusion that for all of Mr...
...The arms we supplied under this policy caused, and I underline that word, the war last autumn between India and Pakistan...
...The United States alone—and one man in the United States—Rusk seemed to be saying, will determine when "aggression" has occurred and wield its military might accordingly—and never mind the United Nations or world opinion...
...I think there are very great dangers in being undercommitted...
...Senator Stennis seemed stunned at this limitless extension of American military commitment...
...I do not pass on the merits of the Kashmir dispute or the rights of Pakistan in this regard...
...I do not think we are overcommitted," he said...
...And he added, sadly: "About all that is left for [Congress] is to appropriate the money...
...The Administration characteristically responded to the Senate Committee's call for a substantial reduction with the dour comment that it was "poorly timed...
...We cannot," he said, "continue to insist that the Soviet threat to Europe is greater than is estimated by our European allies...
...The Committee unanimously proposed a resolution which would express "the sense of the Senate" as favoring a "substantial reduction" in the U.S...
...overseas commitments...
...A number of thoughtful Senators, led by Senator Fulbright, have expressed alarm over the prospect that we are repeating the same steps in Thailand that led to our tragic involvement in Vietnam...
...This may strike some readers as a harsh comment...
...There are differences between the situation in Vietnam and in Thailand, but there is at least one tragic similarity: We would no more be fighting to "preserve democracy" in Thailand than we are in Vietnam...
...ITEM : There was still another development in recent weeks that underscored how disturbed the Senate has become regarding the increasing militarization of American foreign policy...
...This dedicated statesman from Burma has labored mightily for the peace of the world during his five-years as U.N...
...materiel is being generated by developing an appreciation of its technical superiority, price, availability, and the offer of follow-on support, through U.S...
...Senate drew closer together during the past month on a problem of overriding concern to both camps: the ever-widening commitments of the Johnson Administration to police the world and enforce something resembling a pax Americana...
...The original purpose of the U.S...
...Thus: ITEM : The Senate Preparedness Investigating Subcommittee, usually a friendly forum for the Administration's hawkish position, expressed a deep concern over our expanding military involvement as it embarked on a wideranging study of U.S...
...The Idaho Democrat denounced this country's far-flung policy of arming nations throughout the world in these terms: "It can increase the size, complexity, and cost of maintaining military establishments in countries which cannot afford them...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, "a warning flag against what many critics see as the Administration's Ill-Fed People and Well-Fed Armies The full consequences of the policy of indiscriminate arms aid have revealed themselves with a kind of heroic clarity in South Asia...
...Gone, too, the Senator might have added, is any meaningful adherence to the concept of collective security through the United Nations...
...This Committee too, although led by a dove, Majority Leader Mansfield, is dominated by hawks of the stature of Senator Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Long, the Administration whip...
...Although he insisted the United States has no desire to police the world single-handedly, he went on to embrace just that role for this country when he proclaimed that the American commitment to military intervention extends even in "the absence of a defense treaty, Congressional declaration, or U.S...
...members must heed the somber warnings of U Thant...
...The old lines are all gone...
...Now, ironically, he may have rendered his greatest service...
...But this isn't all, by any means...
...The fact that the Johnson Administration sometimes shows little capacity to distinguish between internal social revolution and external Communist aggression can only deepen the apprehension of the rest of the world, most of which cannot tolerate what we are doing in Vietnam and what we have done in the Dominican Republic...
...In fighting for his amendment, Senator Church pointed out that in 1950, at the height of the Cold War, fourteen foreign countries received military aid from the United States...
...forces which have been sitting in Europe for fifteen years at staggering cost and for diminishing purpose...
...Policing the World DESPITE their differences over the war in Vietnam and related issues of American foreign policy, doves and hawks in the U.S...
...The tragic error is being repeated of relying on force and military means in a deceptive pursuit of peace...
...The first got more attention from the Indian press than the second...
...I have a great deal of sympathy with the position of Pakistan in this dispute...
...It is difficult to obtain accurate data on the cost of this folly, but Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara estimated two months ago that "something on the order of half of our military budget is in support of NATO...
...logistics systems...
...Senator Gruening, newly returned from a fact-finding survey in Europe, made much the same point in a notable speech in the Senate...
...There is something intrinsically obscene in the combination of ill-fed people and well-fed armies deploying the most modern equipment...
...Senate hawks—among them Senators Richard Russell of Georgia, Russell Long of Louisiana, John Stennis of Mississippi, and Stuart Symington of Missouri—joined forces with Senate doves—among them Senator J . W. Fulbright of Arkansas, Mike Mansfield of Montana, Wayne Morse of Oregon, and Ernest Gruening of Alaska—to challenge one aspect or another of the American policy of threatening to unleash our military power whenever and wherever the United States decides that the "adversaries of freedom," as Secretary of State Dean Rusk put it, "resort to force...
...It tends to identify the United States with the existing social order in countries which are seething for social change, where the military is often the hated symbol of oppression...
...In many cases, credit arrangements may be made to facilitate military sales, on short or long term basis as needed...
...But if we had not supplied arms, Pakistan would not have sought one thing we wanted above all to avoid...
...Rarely, I think, does history work itself out with such majestic, and also ironic, completeness...
...All told, over the past fifteen years, Senator Eugene McCarthy wrote recently in Saturday Review, "the United States has given or sold to other countries some $35 billion worth of military assistance...
...Although the Johnson Administration's reaction was to speak and behave as if U Thant had some other country in mind, it was obvious that Eisenhower warned so urgently less than a decade ago seems too much in command of American foreign policy under the Johnson Administration...
...Secretary Rusk recently broadened our commitment...
...Thailand is a tight military dictatorship which jails its opposition and refuses to permit elections...
...It encourages regional arms races...
...On March 6, 1962, Secretary Rusk met with the Thai foreign minister, Thanat Kholman, and declared that the United States "regards the preservation of the independence and integrity of Thailand as vital to the national interests of the United States and world peace...
...Ambassador to India] I pled with some fervor and even a certain acerbity for a reconsideration of the policy of shipping arms into the region...
...Yet the United States continues to keep some 350,000 troops there as though nothing had happened in the intervening decade and a half...
...Ambassador transmitted to Washington an urgent request by the Thai government for American-manned helicopters to participate in combat against Communist guerrillas on the northern border with Vietnam...
...troops in Europe...
...ITE M : Further evidence of mounting Senate concern over our escalating military commitments was on display before the Foreign Relations Committee this month...
...Pay later...
...When I went to that part of the world in 1961 [as U.S...
...Secretary-General...
...The fact that so many individual Senators and Senate committees, whether hawk or dove or in between—and, incidentally, all Democrats—are beginning to speak up with searching questions, brooding doubts, and forthright challenges—all this holds out a modest measure of hope that a consensus-minded President may yet halt, if not reverse, the further militarization of American foreign policy...
...NATO, he concluded, "is obsolete...
...The Pentagon's pressure for ever greater sales of arms abroad is betrayed by a Defense Department pamphlet entitled "Information and Guidance on Military Assistance," which includes the following language: "Foreign customer preference for U.S...
...Senator Frank Church of Idaho led a successful fight in the Senate— only to have it almost nullified in the House of Representatives—to slash $100,000,000 from the $917,000,000 sought by the Administration for military assistance under the foreign aid program...
...As the crowning irony, the Soviets, at whom these arms were meant to be pointed, stepped in and obtained a settlement of the conflict...
Vol. 30 • October 1966 • No. 10
