Foreign Relations: The One-Two Punch

Standing at a lectern in the East Room of the White House, the President of the U.S. hefted his big fists and clenched them. “We’re like a man in the ring,” he said, assuming a pose and a phraseology he has been using a lot in private. “We’re using our right and our left constantly.” Out shot his right fist. That, he said, symbolized U.S. power. “I say to Secretary McNamara, ‘You be sure that our men have the morale and have the equipment and have the necessary means of seeing that we keep our commitments in Viet Nam.'” Then he poked his left fist forward. That, he said, represented U.S. diplomacy’s continuing effort “to get us away from the battlefield and back at the conference table.”

In adopting this uppercut-with-olive-branch stance at his press conference, Lyndon Johnson once again sought to underscore his hope of ending the Viet Nam war with a one-two punch—military success leading to a settlement from a position of strength.

Fancy Feints. The week’s events showed that his strong right hand, at least, was having some effect. In the wake of the U.S. Marines’ victory over four veteran Viet Cong battalions at Chu Lai, the guerrillas were lying low; in fact, they have initiated no action above battalion-size in eight weeks. North of the 17th parallel, U.S. planes plastered a power plant, rail lines and bridges.

Despite some fancy feints and jabs, it was hard to tell whether Lyndon’s left hand was landing on target or merely shadowboxing. According to a British white paper on Viet Nam, the U.S. is thinking of another, “more prolonged” pause in its bombing of North Viet Nam in exchange for an “appropriate and commensurate” military move by Hanoi, such as recalling its 9,000-man regular infantry division, which is deployed in South Viet Nam. It was unclear just how the U.S. could verify such a withdrawal, if it took place, or how the Reds could be kept from sneaking another division over the sievelike border to replace it. Nor was it clear whether Hanoi was even interested in bargaining. “Thus far,” said Dean Rusk, “my antennae have not picked up the key signal.”

Richard Nixon’s antennae also were out. In the course of a business trip to the Far East, Nixon told newsmen in Tokyo that Washington’s “constant repetition” of its willingness to negotiate would only prolong the war.

Other diplomatic moves were afoot, though without benefit of Lyndon’s left. At the U.N., Secretary-General U Thant was sounding out 14 nations—among them Red China and the Soviet Union—to determine whether another U.S. bombing pause would help pave the way to peace talks. In Moscow, United Arab Republic President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced that he too would help negotiate a cease-fire to halt “American aggression.”

Outmaneuvered. At home, Johnson had another kind of skirmish to contend with. While a lot of Republicans out in the country have been backing Johnson’s fighting stance in Viet Nam, some G.O.P. Congressmen have felt that it is time to debate the subject. This is pretty hard to do without sounding like a speaker at a college teach-in. But the G.O.P.sters thought they detected a mild rift between Johnson and Eisenhower in their respective positions on Viet Nam and decided to move into the breach. Naturally, they drafted a “white paper.”

Naturally, the President heard about the white paper. He beat the Republi cans to press with a slick, green-covered, 27-page pamphlet of his own called Why Viet Nam?; naturally, it was based on a letter he had received from the mother of a serviceman. He then de cided to hold his first press conference in a month on the very day the G.O.P. paper was to appear. Outmaneuvered, the Republicans, led by Michigan’s Jerry Ford and Wisconsin’s Melvin Laird, hastened publication of their humbler, mimeographed effort by a day, misnumbering the pages in the process.

Wrong Impression. The G.O.P. document traced the ever-deepening U.S. commitment in Viet Nam: Harry Truman’s 1950 decision to aid the French in Indo-China; Dwight Eisenhower’s 1954 pledge to support Ngo Dinh Diem’s fledgling South Vietnamese government, principally with economic aid; John F. Kennedy’s 1961 decision to expand the U.S. military effort as Laos crumbled and Viet Cong terror increased; and Lyndon’s massive intensification of the U.S. involvement.

With some justification, the report accused the Democratic Administrations of having pursued so uncertain a policy as to provide “a basis for miscalculation by the Communists. Policy has been altered abruptly. Conflicting statements have been issued. Deeds have not matched words.” Johnson’s 1964 campaign oratory, it added, encouraged further miscalculation.

Of that, there could be little doubt. By striking his man-of-peace posture and frowning on everything that Barry Goldwater or any other Republican campaigner said about a greater military effort in Viet Nam, Lyndon may well have persuaded Hanoi and Peking that he was a pushover for peace at any price. Not even his quick retaliation for Red attacks on U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 could erase that impression. Only when Viet Cong guerrillas raided U.S. barracks at Pleiku and Qui Nhon last February did the President, with the election safely behind him, begin in earnest to intensify the U.S. role in the war. And even after he did, a chorus of protest from U.S. campuses led the Communists to believe, wrongly, that the U.S. was not united in its determination to press the war to an honorable conclusion.

Bad Timing. New York’s Charles E. Goodell, chairman of the committee that produced the white paper, described it as “a work of scholarship” rather than a political document. He was right: it stated the history of the war dispassionately—if selectively—but as a vote getter or reputation smircher it was a dud. Ike declined to support the Republican paper, as did Everett Dirksen, who, like Eisenhower, has backed L.B.J. all the way on Viet Nam.

The trouble with the paper was in the timing. If it had been issued back when Johnson was fumbling around, it might have had some effect. But how can you criticize a man when he’s fighting and winning? As General Lucius Clay, now the G.O.P.’s biggest national fund raiser, said: “We didn’t talk about our involvement in Viet Nam when we should have. We cannot right now.”

Correct Pose. The President, with his sure political instinct, assumed the correct pose: he was patronizing to his G.O.P. critics and patriotic toward everybody else. “I think the issues of war and peace in Viet Nam,” he told his press conference, “are far greater than any personal differences that one might have—for that matter, far greater than any parties. The boys that are fighting the war are not divided between Republicans and Democrats. The men directing the strategies—I don’t know what party they belong to.”

And now back to those fisticuffs.