Washington

on the World Today

THE conflict between the Soviet Union and Communist China is causing new worries in Washington and a new examination of America’s relations with the Communist states. Only a few months ago, it was confidently believed in Washington that better relations with Russia were possible and that a period of peace and relief from major crises was at hand.

While there continue to be indications that Moscow favors a detente with the West, it is nevertheless accepting new risks in applying pressures in the underdeveloped world. It also is taking advantage of the confusions and divisions in the Atlantic alliance resulting from French policy. No one believes that Moscow desires a deterioration of relations with the United States. But circumstances and opportunities seem to impel the Kremlin to run graver risks now than at any time in the last two or three years.

Averell Harriman, ambassador at large, has made the most explicit public warning that the Sino-Soviet conflict “is increasing the dangers to the free world of Communist subversion and aggression.” He acknowledged that in the long run the conflict “may have great significance in breaking the monolithic structure of international Communism.” But he said that at the present time the rift between Moscow and Peking “has led to a bitter struggle for leadership of the international Communist movement.” In an effort to enlarge their influence, he said, the Russian and Chinese Communists “are stepping up their respective economic and military assistance programs, their propaganda and subversion campaigns, and where possible, supporting terrorist action leading to guerrilla-type ‘wars of liberation.’ ”

In policies with respect to Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, the Administration is acting on the assumptions underlying Harriman’s warning. It believes that we are entering a new period of danger as the two Communist powers compete to expand their influence in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Yet the Administration is not giving up hope that a détente with the Soviet Union is possible. It remembers that one of the first principal manifestations of the Sino-Soviet conflict was a dispute over the approach to national liberation movements in underdeveloped countries.

A clear lesson

The quarrel over strategy in Laos and Vietnam was a natural outgrowth of this disagreement between Peking and Moscow. Peking was prepared to run risks that Moscow did not want to take. But to maintain its leadership against China in the underdeveloped world Moscow must assume a new belligerence, Harriman and other Washington experts believe. It must give greater support to the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam and support, even if reluctantly, the Hanoi and Peking demand that the United States and Saigon negotiate, if at all, with the NLF.

President Johnson said that he would hold “unconditional discussions” with any government precisely because he had no intention of negotiating with the NLF, the political arm of the Viet Cong guerrillas. If the United States agreed to negotiate with the Viet Cong this year and accord them a legal status, why could it not be prevailed on to negotiate with the Thailand or Congo or Venezuelan guerrillas next?

The President, like Harriman, is convinced that the threat of guerrilla-type wars is greater now than when President Kennedy first began remodeling American Army training tactics to deal with the threat. “To stand firm,” the President has repeatedly said, “is the only guarantee of a lasting peace.” He calls this “the clearest lesson of our time.” It is a key to understanding his actions.

Twenty years of the UN

Despite the many recent attacks on the United Nations, Washington views the organization on its twentieth anniversary with a sober understanding that it is both an indispensable and an imperfect instrument. Even in its extreme youth, it has performed useful functions and continues to have, in the face of considerable popular disenchantment, the firm support of Democratic and Republican leaders.

They recognize that it is an important forum for the discussion of international problems, that it was an instrument for solving the Cuban missile crisis, that it has negotiated settlements, supervised truces, and provided peacekeeping forces in Cyprus, the Gaza Strip, the Congo, and elsewhere, and that it has been useful, as Secretary Rusk has said, “in minimizing the dangers of a great-power collision.”

For the first time in the UN’s history, the President has asked the Senate to ratify two amendments to the Charter. They involve relatively minor changes, but they are the first that have been proposed. Because the UN has grown from 51 to 114 members, the first amendment would enlarge the membership of the Security Council from 11 to 15 countries and raise the requisite majority from 7 to 9 members. The other amendment would increase the size of the Economic and Social Council from 18 to 27 members.

As the UN has grown — and it may eventually reach a total of 125 to 130 members — the chief American concern has been with the clear disproportion between voting power and real power. All the major powers and all the experts on UN affairs have been concerned with this problem.

Suggestions have been made for weighted voting, for dual voting, and for the establishment of a bicameral arrangement requiring decisions on certain matters to be approved by both the General Assembly and the Security Council. But agreement on reform to meet the fundamental question of the power imbalance in Assembly voting is some distance away, Washington believes. Meanwhile, the experts think that those who fear the worst from the voting power of the small Afro-Asian countries have forgotten that the influence of the major powers extends far beyond their votes in the General Assembly.

Looking ahead, it is obvious that the next major crisis facing the UN will almost certainly be over the admission of Communist China. Though the Administration is aware of the inevitability of such action, it is unprepared to meet it. Involved is the whole question of American policy in Asia, particularly with respect to Taiwan and Vietnam. And involved also are Communist China’s relations with the rest of Asia, including Taiwan, and with the United States. A broad settlement is undoubtedly too much to hope for in such a critical situation. But if there could be a negotiation on Vietnam, the first step toward an eventual settlement at least would have been taken.

Dollars and kicks

President Johnson’s chief adviser on LatinAmerican policy, and the man most responsible next to Johnson for decisions affecting the Dominican Republic, is Thomas C. Mann, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs. At fifty-two, the quiet, soft-spoken Mann is a controversial figure in the State Department and its number three man. A pleasant charmer at times, he can also be blunt and tough to the point of rudeness, and a driver of his staff and of Latinos who do not move as fast as he thinks they should.

A Texan, Mann, like the President, believes in the use of American power. He has been heard to observe that Latin Americans understand two things: the dollar and a kick in the pants, or words to that effect, and he manifests this attitude in many ways. Military, economic, and political power should be used when necessary to protect the country’s interests, Mann thinks. He is not overly impressed by the importance of public opinion, here or abroad.

In the State Department, Mann is regarded as a realist who wants to achieve prescribed objectives. In Latin America, he is regarded as a conservative who is not very sympathetic to the important forces of the non-Communist left. His emphasis is on orderly reform, on law and order, and on what he thinks is achievable, not on reform for its own sake. He is a lawyer, not an economist.

The timid Dean

The outcome of the clumsy Dominican affair will be more a measure of Mann’s and the President’s policies than of any other’s. According to the scarce information so far available, Secretary of State Dean Rusk warned against precipitate landing of the Marines in the Dominican Republic. He wanted the Organization of American States to be consulted or at least informed in advance.

Mann, however, has little regard for the OAS, which he looks upon mainly as a powerless debating society (which it may be). Yet form can be important, and Rusk should have made a stronger argument than he did for form and for accepted procedures.

Mann and Admiral William F. Raborn, Jr., who had just been sworn in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, urged speed to block what they regarded as a serious Communist threat. As a man of action himself, with a scorn for intellectuals who debate and hesitate, the President acted with furious haste.

Moreover, the President complicated the situation further with a series of flamboyant speeches that did neither him nor the country any good. Washington has been disturbed more than once by the President’s frenzied, seemingly undisciplined approach to great issues. Sometimes his manner of doing things rather than a policy itself arouses the greatest misgivings. His love of power, his sensitivity to criticism, his headlong quest for action worry many who admire his unquestioned gifts. If ever a President needed effective critics, a strong Secretary of State, and a staff that is informed, alert, and willing to argue, Johnson does.

Rusk is intellectually well equipped to hold the first place in the Cabinet. But he has one serious (some say crippling) deficiency. He gives the President clear and well-reasoned advice, but he does not fight for his point of view. He does not inspire the men under him.

Instead of looking upon himself as the President’s only important adviser on foreign policy, as John Foster Dulles and many other Secretaries have, Rusk thinks of himself as one among several who help the President determine American policy. Since there are strong persons like Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, special assistant for national security affairs, Mann, and others who have the President’s ear and are not timid about speaking into it, Rusk’s voice sometimes is lost in the murmur.

The pliant staff

In many ways, the President’s staff lacks the same quality that is missing in the Secretary of State. It does not press its views on the President with sufficient force. As an example, during the first part of the Dominican crisis three of his staff agreed that a certain course of action by the President was required. But they found themselves debating not what advice to give him but how to give it in a way that would not arouse his anger. An effective staff would have no such inhibitions when the President’s own interests are at stake.

For instance, an alert staff probably would have dissuaded the President from demanding that Congress pass the $700 million appropriation for military purposes in Vietnam as though a new crisis had developed. Congress gave the President the money in record time, but it did not like the emergency atmosphere that was created by the President’s dramatic request. You would not know it, of course, from the compliant vote of 408 for and only 7 against.

Mood of the Capital

While the President has made up his personal staff almost entirely of fellow Texans, his other appointments have been distinguished by the fact that they are heavily from the career service. Ability and not politics has been the chief criterion in the overwhelming majority of Johnson appointments.

John W. Macy, Jr., chairman of the Civil Service Commission, has been the President’s chief adviser on appointments and personnel problems. The selection of Macy was an indication of the President’s interest in career people and in finding the most competent men to help run the huge federal bureaucracy. In the same way, the President last year fought hard for larger salaries for senior officials. The result has been greatly improved morale throughout the career service, for there were many at first who thought that Johnson would be strictly political in his appointments. He definitely has not been. On the record to date, he has very high grades.