Foreign Relations: New Warning to the Latins

The Administration had not asked for the resolution, and it seemed downright embarrassed when the House passed it last week by the overwhelming margin of 312 to 52 votes. The resolution established no new policy, offered no new recommendations, gave the President no new powers, had no binding force. Yet it was significant because it publicly stated what has become a hard fact of life: the U.S. cannot afford any more Communist takeovers among the nations of Latin America. The resolution proclaimed the right of the U.S. or any other American republic to intervene, with “armed force” if need be, “to forestall or combat” Communist subversion or aggression wherever it may occur in the Western Hemisphere.

The resolution caused something of a furor in both the U.S. and Latin America, but the fuss did not obscure its clear warning to Russia and China. Its object, said Alabama Democrat Armistead Selden, the resolution’s sponsor and the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs, was “to make it clear to Communists that they cannot count on the principle of nonintervention to shield their takeover of a hemisphere country.” Added he: “It is a pretty good mandate about how the people of this country really feel.”

Poles Apart. Several similar resolutions have been introduced in the past three years, but they got nowhere largely because they were considered superfluous. The U.S. has long been pursuing, in word and deed, just such a policy. John Kennedy emphatically stated after the Bay of Pigs fiasco that he would not let the doctrine of nonintervention in the affairs of other hemisphere nations excuse inaction in the face of Communist aggression. Lyndon Johnson restated the policy during the Dominican crisis: “We don’t propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere.”

Neither the White House nor the State Department raised any objections when Selden began hearings on his resolution, perhaps because it amounted to a warm endorsement of U.S. policy in the Dominican Republic, which has lately been attacked by Arkansas’ Democratic Senator William Fulbright. Privately, most Latin American ambassadors in Washington also found it unobjectionable; a TIME correspondent polled 19 of them, found 15 in favor. With Latin diplomats, however, private preference and public position are often poles apart. Belatedly, the White House realized that many of the same Latins who privately approved the resolution would publicly damn it as a throwback to Yankee big-stick diplomacy.

Quick Response. The Administration executed a fast flip-flop in its position. It sent a phalanx of officials, including Under Secretary of State Thomas Mann and White House Adviser McGeorge Bundy, to urge Selden to drop the resolution. If it passed, they said, Latin American nations might read it as an excuse for Americans to intervene at the least threat of Communist subversion, and some Latin strongmen might attempt to use it as a convenient justification for moving in on other countries. Selden stood fast, and the resolution breezed through the House.

The Latins did not take long to respond. Peru’s lower house condemned the resolution as “American imperialism.” Colombia’s Congress denounced it as “openly regressive.” Venezuela’s ruling Democratic Action Party and Mexico’s Popular Socialist Party complained about it. Newspapers of almost every persuasion, from Cuba’s Communist dailies to the conservative Jornal do Brasil, blasted it.

In the U.S. the resolution came in for some criticism because it gave every windbag south of the Rio Grande an excuse to fan the air. Since it only stated a known fact, though, there was hardly reason for the fuss. Considering the Communist subversion now going on in Peru, Venezuela and Colombia, the warning did not seem out of order. It also served as a sharp reminder that, despite U.S. pleas, the nations of Latin America have not yet put together a permanent body to cope with attempted Communist takeovers. Many of the loudest complainers last week were those who turn tail fastest every time the U.S. suggests such a force, which would make unilateral U.S. intervention unnecessary.