THE WAR AGAINST U THANT
GRANT, DONALD
the WAR against U THANT by DONALD GRANT United Nations, New York A LONG WITH their war in Vietnam, President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk have taken on another war—against...
...Four Presidents have not taken that view," Rusk answered...
...Rusk, naturally, had to blow up at that...
...If Thant had, in fact, resigned last fall in disgust with President Johnson's Vietnam policy, few doubt it would have been a severe political blow to the President...
...It is the intellectuals who do most of the public speaking and writing...
...The United States does not agree with it...
...Rusk and President Johnson apparently have their own mechanisms of self-justification, which operate to expand the war in Vietnam, but as Thant has pointed out, the people of that small country are faced with the problem of their very survival in the face of the overwhelming military might of the United States...
...It is an underground war...
...Thant is a former school master, and still talks like one on occasion...
...Thant has refused to be silent in the face of President Johnson's turn toward a wider war, with direct and massive participation by American troops and air and artillery strikes against North Vietnam...
...The domino theory—if South Vietnam falls, so will Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and others—does not make sense...
...The record of the evolution of that policy and Thant's anxiety over it is fairly complete by now...
...Thus, despite his private and often obscene grumbling, he wrote Thant, urging him to remain in office...
...You may be assured of the wholehearted support of the United States government...
...Rusk's dubious historical reference aside, the usual form of Administration guerrilla warfare against Thant consists of private "briefings" of Washington correspondents...
...Although there were occasions on which Thant's predecessors, Trygve Lie and Dag Hammarskjold, failed to please past regimes in Washington, responses lacked the venom displayed by the Johnson Administration...
...Third, despite Thant's outspoken criticism, President Johnson was almost pathetically eager last fall to have him remain as Secretary General...
...It is emphasized that Thant is an Asian, from Burma, hardly equipped to understand the vast responsibilities of the greatest national power in the history of the world, the United States...
...They are very obsessed with the principle of non-alignment, which, as you know, is one of the twin objectives of the Geneva Agreements...
...There is more than a trace of irony in these words—perhaps even conscious irony—for it is precisely U Thant's search for peace that has brought him into a collision with the Johnson Administration and the Vietnam policy...
...The contrast between those years and the Johnson years which followed is notable...
...Thirdly," Thant continued, "I do not subscribe to the view that South Vietnam [later he indicated he meant Vietnam as a whole, for that matter] is strategically vital to Western interests and Western security, whatever its political or ideological pattern may be, in the same way as—to give an extreme example—Yugoslavia, for instance, does not pose a threat to international peace and security...
...The Secretary General is described as "incompetent" if not worse...
...As intended, these judgments creep into the copy of some Washington correspondents...
...The current Washington folklore, that President Johnson is only following in the footsteps of his Presidential predecessors in Southeast Asia, is not supported by the historical record...
...The American intellectual community may not be large, but its influence is greater than a head count would indicate...
...You have not only labored tirelessly in carrying out your formal responsibilities but you have also given unsparingly of yourself wherever and whenever you thought you might be helpful in easing world tensions...
...By the same token, President Johnson has not throttled or fired Goldberg, who has remained Thant's chief defender, sometimes carrying on that defense inside Rusk's State Department, and in private press "briefings" of his own, among the WashDONALD GRANT is United Nations correspondent for the St...
...Arthur J. Goldberg, the chief American delegate at the United Nations, has assumed the difficult task of defending the world organization and its Secretary General against assaults by the Johnson Administration in which he serves...
...If Thant's analysis is correct, then Rusk's whole war policy makes no sense at all—a judgment shared by many American and foreign observers with expert credentials...
...First, it is unique in American history...
...If Vietnam is independent and militarily non-aligned, as I have been advocating, preferably with the guarantee of the big powers, including the United States, then I do not see how this could pose a threat to international peace or security or how Vietnam could be strategically vital to the interests and security of the West...
...Like the war in Vietnam it has some of the aspects of a civil war...
...Without tracing in detail the his of this year, the Secretary General delivered to his press conference a school-teacherish lecture which might have been entitled "Vietnam Views...
...The National Liberation Front in South Vietnam, he said, is no "stooge" of Hanoi...
...Others pass them along to their editors, for "guidance...
...Johnson, "and of the contributions you have made to the cause of world peace since assuming that office...
...ington press corps...
...Thant assumed office November 3, 1961, serving for two years while President Kennedy was in the White House...
...the WAR against U THANT by DONALD GRANT United Nations, New York A LONG WITH their war in Vietnam, President Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk have taken on another war—against United Nations Secretary General U Thant...
...President Johnson knows that an open assault on the United Nations would serve only to damage further his battered political fortunes...
...Despite the underground war against his policies, Secretary General U Thant is showing, over and over again, the road to peace, to reality, and to sanity...
...The burned and maimed bodies of the children of Vietnam make even less sense...
...After Thant did decide to stay, the President added: "You may depend on my continuing, closest personal at tention to the problems confronting the organi zation in its search for peace...
...I am very conscious of the role of the Secretary General in the successful functioning of the organization," wrote Mr...
...Second, the Johnson Administration's assaults on Thant flow directly from policies and actions in Vietnam...
...A number of Goldberg's friends believe he could act more openly, both in defense of Thant and in opposition to U.S...
...President Johnson, by this reasoning, needs Goldberg badly, even as he needs Thant...
...Three important background elements of the Johnson Administration's "Operation Ambush," directed at U Thant, deserve special mention...
...policy in Vietnam, without running a serious risk of being forced to resign...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...I think that the leaders in Vietnam are very independent...
...I think I know the mood of the leaders in Vietnam...
...These men are important links to the remnants of the American—and foreign —intellectual communities still tolerant of the Johnson Administration...
...Only occasionally does the Johnson Administration openly criticize Thant, as when Rusk denounced the Secretary General's observation that Vietnam was not strategically vital to Western interests...
Vol. 31 • March 1967 • No. 3
