"America cannot-and will not-conceive all the plans, design all the programs, execute all the decisions and undertake all the defense of the free nations of the world."

President Nixon's State of the World Message, 1970

FOREIGN POLICY

right isolationism of the 1930s, for increasing numbers of Americans, especially young Americans, no longer believe that their country has either the duty or right to play Big Brother to the world. Graham T. Allison, an associate professor of politics at Harvard, writes in the first issue of a new quarterly, Foreign Policy: "To the extent that foreign policy is currently important to most young Americans, their posture expresses a generalized desire to 'cool' foreign affairs."

The dimensions of this disenchantment are reflected in a recent Gallup poll commissioned by NEWSWEEK. The results (chart, page 30) show that even on issues of presumably critical importance to the U.S., most Americans would prefer to hang back. Asked what the Administration should do if Jordan's King Hussein were about to fall, 61 per cent said that their country should do nothing, while a bare 4 per cent favored the use of U.S. troops. Less than half the people surveyed endorsed any direct U.S. response to combat between Russian pilots in Egypt and Israeli forces. And on an even more emotionally charged issue, fully 42 per cent said that the U.S. should allow Israel to be conquered if it comes to that; only 14 per cent favored a rescue operation by U.S. forces. Even more surprising, the responses showed relatively little variation by age, education, political affiliation or region, suggesting that the urge to let down overseas affects all levels of society.

"We face the danger of removing collective security with nothing to put in its place."

To be sure, the "foreign-policy establishment"-that loose collection of internationally minded politicians, scholars, present and former government officials, journalists and businessmen-advocates a search for new forms of involvement to suit the times. "We are at the point again where we have to decide all over what our role is to be in the world," former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, now a law professor in Georgia, told NEWSWEEK's Henry Trewhitt. "At present, the trend is toward isolation. We face the danger of removing

Mr. Nixon is an eagle-eyed reader of political omens, and despite his own record as a cold warrior and his professed determination not to let the U.S. appear as "a pitiful, helpless giant," he has consciously set out to fashion a foreign policy to match the mood of his countrymen. Its first full articulation, in July 1969, was done in appropriately ambiguous fashion. At an officers' club on Guam, where he had come after welcoming the Apollo 11 astronauts home from their moon trip, the President spelled out his thinking in a background briefing for reporters. America would honor its commitments, he said, particularly its strategic guarantees. The U.S. would stand by its allies and other nations in which it had a vital interest if they were threatened by a nuclear power. But Washington expected its allies to do more for themselves, and any threatened nation would be primarily responsible for its own defense. In subsequent backgrounders, White House officials stressed that the new doctrine meant "no more Vietnams" and no new commitments.

Clearly, Mr. Nixon had retreated a long way from the ringing rhetoric of John Kennedy's Inaugural Address. Walt W. Rostow, President Johnson's national security adviser, describes the Nixon doctrine as "the most subtle and difficult task of foreign policy ever undertaken by the United States." But the doctrine is so subtle and difficult that even now, more than a year later, few people are sure that they know exactly what it means. One of the senior diplomats charged with carrying out the Nixon doctrine calls it an "interim foreign policy, one to serve while we learn what we can and cannot do." The Administration's critics are much less kind. "The Nixon doctrine is only a change of tactics," says Noam Chomsky, a New Left professor at MIT, while Sen. J. William Fulbright charges that the doctrine is merely "so much rhetoric."

At times, the implementation of the Nixon doctrine has only added to the confusion. At the middle levels of government, many officials whose attitudes were formed in the activist '40s and '50s found the new posture uncomfortably negative. "[One] ambassador refused to read a telegram setting forth some examples of what a lower profile might be," diplomat Jerome K.

December 14, 1970

29

Holloway reported in the November issue of the Foreign Service Journal. "And, when it came to specific implementation, these types of reaction were translated into the most stubborn and skillful bureaucratic delay." Worse yet, the Administration seemed unable to develop an effective working relationship with Capitol Hill. "The Nixon doctrine requires close cooperation between the President and Congress," says McGeorge Bundy, national security adviser to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, "and this has not been worked out. The Administration thinks it can have Vice President Agnew blackguard the opposition on the one hand and then ask for cooperation on foreign policy."

> "If you are going to set a new doctrine... you have to say that peace is divisible."

But more than anything else, the Nixon doctrine was cast into doubt by the President's own actions. "I am a chance taker in foreign affairs," Mr. Nixon remarked twelve years ago, and even as he professed to disengage from overseas entanglements, he was always ready to take an aggressive gamble. His Administration unleashed the Cambodian incursion and two brief but heavy renewals of the bombing of North Vietnam. It threatened to intervene in Jordan, blustered over the alleged construction of a Soviet submarine base in Cuba and contemplated—and then rejected—the adoption of a harsh attitude toward the new Marxist regime in Chile. Frequently, Administration officials have hinted that the President's unpredictability is a deliberate tactic designed to persuade the Soviet Union that, despite its new low profile, the U.S. is no sitting duck. But whatever their effect on the Communists, these ploys have served to confuse America's allies and its own people. "If you are going to set a new doctrine," declares Morton Halperin, an alumnus of Kissinger's National Security Council staff, "you can't say that Cambodia is a vital interest of the United States. You have to say that peace is divisible."

In the preliminary stages of the cold war, peace was

UPI

The atomic mushroom cloud rises over Japan
A statue of Stalin is decapitated in Budapest

Keystone

indeed divisible. The hallmarks of America's early post-war years—the Truman doctrine, the Marshall plan, the breaking of the Berlin blockade and the creation of NATO—were aimed at protecting America's prostrate European allies from what was considered to be an immediate threat of Soviet expansion. This defensive umbrella, however, was not intended to cover the whole world. There was no intervention when China fell to Communism, and even Korea was at first excluded by Dean Acheson from "our line of defense." But the Truman doctrine had stated a principle that was to shape the years ahead: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."

In 1950, Truman himself applied that principle to Korea, and in the Eisenhower years, it spread still further. Although Ike tried to hold defense costs down, his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, created a vast network to contain Communism, and by the end of the decade, the U.S. had security treaties of varying scope with 42 nations. These commitments were in the nature of a crusade. For as most Americans then saw it, Communism was a malevolent, monolithic force bent on world domination, and it was the messianic mission of the United States to thwart that design anywhere and everywhere.

These views still prevailed in 1961; John F. Kennedy described his countrymen as "watchmen on the walls of freedom." "Kennedy's Inaugural Address was made in the spirit of continuing struggle for decisive influence in the world," says Arthur Schlesinger. "But his policies came rapidly to reflect a different perception." By late 1961, JFK had taken a new tack. "The United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient," he declared in a speech at the University of Washington. "We cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity... Therefore, there cannot be an American solution to every world problem."

But before Kennedy could develop his new perception, he and his successor were sidetracked by Vietnam. Kennedy's advisers were convinced that the job could be done in a hurry. One former New Frontiersman recalls Robert Kennedy overriding objections with the remark: "We can get in there with a couple of di-

## INTERVENTION: A CASE STUDY

The Mideast is an area much in the headlines; it is also an area whose problems arouse particular concern in many Americans. As one indicator of the current U.S. attitude toward foreign involvements, Newsweek commissioned The Gallup Organization to question Americans on three potential crisis situations in the Mideast. Based on a sample of 1,514 adults, here are the results:

The U.S. should

<table><thead><tr><th></th><th>send troops</th><th>send equipment</th><th>stay out</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>If Palestinian guerrillas were about to overthrow Jordan's King Hussein</td><td>4%</td><td>20%</td><td>61%</td></tr><tr><td>If Russian pilots in Egypt engaged Israeli forces in direct combat</td><td>send pilots and planes 11%</td><td>send equipment 34%</td><td>stay out 44%</td></tr><tr><td>If Israel seemed in danger of being defeated by Arab armies</td><td>send troops 14%</td><td>send equipment 32%</td><td>stay out 42%</td></tr></tbody></table>

(Don't know omitted)

30

Newsweek

Keystone
John Foster Dulles

## THE END OF AN ERA

The atomic age ushered in a period of U.S. dominance and lent impetus to Dulles's crusade against "monolithic" Communism. In the mid-1950s, that view of the Soviet bloc was shattered by de-Stalinization. No longer obsessed with the Red menace and increasingly concerned with domestic woes, Americans first backed Johnson in Vietnam, expecting a quick victory. When the war dragged on, a national revulsion against worldwide involvement set in.

Dennis Brack—Black Star

LBJ explains Vietnam policy

Antiar protest

visions and get out quickly." Official Washington also fostered the notion that American motives were above reproach. "Sure of its moral purposes-surer of its own moral performance-America shall not be deterred," Lyndon Johnson asserted in the early months of the bombing of North Vietnam.

Vietnam, of course, turned out to be a disaster for interventionism. And even as that war raged, Johnson got into similar trouble-though on a much smaller scale -when he interfered in the Dominican Republic. These soul-wrenching experiences seemed to demonstrate that cold-war policies conceived for Western Europe were not valid for the emerging nations of the Third World. And in the end, they goaded Americans toward disengagement.

> **"I don't even believe that you will keep your commitments in Asia."**

The Truman doctrine was a policy conceived for Western Europe and then applied-ill-advisedly at times-to the rest of the world. The Nixon doctrine, in a sense, works the other way, for its initial motivation was a problem in Asia. The immediate goal of Mr. Nixon's policy is to get the U.S. out of Vietnam and to prevent it from stumbling into similar cul-de-sac. So far, the Indochina issue is far from resolved, but the Administration has made steady progress in bringing American troops home and in upgrading Saigon's armed forces, and one high U.S. official recently noted with pride that Vietnam had not been a major issue in the 1970 off-year elections.

It remains very much open to question, however, whether the Nixon doctrine will be successful elsewhere in the world. The doctrine-and the national mood that largely dictated it-inevitably encourages the Soviet Union to take advantage of America's apparent exhaustion. The Russians, moreover, are becoming a truly global power, and they have been able to sweep like scavengers into openings in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. Emboldened by what they interpreted

as a lack of will in Washington, they helped the Egyptians to violate the Middle East cease-fire. Their relations with the countries of Western Europe have so far been all take and little give-as in the recent treaty with West Germany. At best, this trend will lead to increased Soviet prestige. At worst, it could lure the Kremlin into perilous miscalculations.

Even before the Nixon doctrine was officially proclaimed, America's allies were alive to the implications of a low U.S. posture. Privately, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt admits that the timing of his Ost-Politik (the drive for rapprochement with the nations of Eastern Europe) was partly motivated by doubts about the reliability of U.S. commitments to European security. Similar concern is widespread in Japan, which in the Nixonian scheme is to be the non-Communist keystone of the Pacific. "The U.S. will gradually withdraw from the Asian scene," says Tokyo University political scientist Shinkichi Eto. "I don't even believe that you will keep your commitments in Asia."

Concern that the U.S. may have overdone the rhetoric of disengagement had a strong impact on the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels last week, where the latest display of Soviet chutzpah-stepped-up harassment on the autobahn leading to West Berlin -was the topic of concerned discussion. Assuming a larger share of the defense burden, the European allies agreed to contribute nearly $1 billion over the next five years to upgrade NATO forces and facilities. The U.S., for its part, made it clear that Secretary Laird's earlier proposal to bring home 10 per cent of the 285,000 U.S. troops in Europe had been laid to rest. In fact, U.S. officials hinted privately that the U.S. force level might be raised to around 310,000 men.

Laird and Secretary of State William Rogers returned from Brussels last week with good reason to believe that-for the moment, at least-they had shored up the Western Alliance. But the central dilemma of the Nixon doctrine is that the best medicine for America's allies and adversaries may not go down well at home. For if the Administration goes too far in convincing the world that the U.S. still means business, it might well persuade the American people that the respite they so desperately want is turning into another of those frustrating postwar mirages.

December 14, 1970

31

# AFTER THE WAR IS OVER

by Walter Lippmann

When the war in Indochina ends, it will matter a great deal how we understand what happened, and why. For this country can tear itself apart if it falls into bitter quarrels about what happened. There will be those who say that we have been defeated although we could have won. There will be others who say that we should not have intervened but that we were deceived and seduced. "There are two things that will always be very difficult for a democratic nation," said Alexis de Tocqueville, "to start a war and to end it." The heavy losses of the dead and wounded and the enormous costs and frustrations of the war will be tolerable only if we can come to some common understanding as to what went wrong, and why it happened.

I must begin by insisting on a point that President Johnson and President Nixon have needlessly obscured and confused. It is the difference between a mistake and a failure on the one hand and a defeat on the other. The United States has not been and cannot be defeated in Indochina even though we withdraw our armed forces and realize that in the longer run the South Vietnamese Government is not likely to be able to stay on a course that is independent of North Vietnam. For the United States this will have been a large and costly failure to do what we said we were going to do. But the United States will not have been defeated. For defeat is what happened to Nazi Germany and to Japan: to surrender, to have the armed forces lay down their arms, to have the country occupied and governed by the enemy. No such thing can happen to us in Indochina, which is proof that it is not a vital area to the United States. And therefore President Nixon would do the country a service if he would cease to confuse a mistaken war with the downfall of being defeated.

> "Armed peasants who are willing to die are a match for the mightiest power."

We need at the same time to explain to ourselves what at first seems to be absurd. Here we are, some 200 million of us, with the greatest armaments that any country has ever possessed and there are the North Vietnamese, some 20 million of them, with a primitive industrial system. Yet we have been unable to make them do what we want them to do. Why not? Because armed peasants who are willing to die are a match for the mightiest power. Elephants cannot clear the mosquites from a swamp. The United States has been unable to conquer the armed guerrillas of the vast Asian continent.

Why, we are asked, have we not used all our weapons and bombed them back into the Stone Age? The answer is that the United States had compelling reasons to believe that China and the Soviet Union would not stand idly by if we did, and that nothing that was

at stake in Indochina was worth another world war.

Thus, our failure in Vietnam sprang from a great mistake. We asked the armed forces to do what it was not possible for them to do. Our senior military leaders, the men who were the commanders before and during the second world war, knew better. They had always believed that the United States' military power was on the ocean and that Asian land wars were to be avoided studiously. The men who did commit the United States to a land war in South Vietnam had to ignore the precedents and override the advice of men like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Matthew B. Ridgway.

> "There flourished the fantastic notion that one nation could act as global policeman."

If we are pacifists and doves about Vietnam, it is because of the old American view of a land war in Asia. The opposition to intervention on the Asian continent begins with the teachings of our senior commanders in the second world war, long before Senator Fulbright and his colleagues in the Senate began to dissent. The question is why the United States ever violated its own military doctrine.

The reason for the mistake which led to the failure was certainly not the villainy or the ambition or the profit-seeking of anyone. The reason was the global confusion which existed when the second world war came to an end. The two principal enemies of the United States, Germany and Japan, were utterly defeated and all the principal allies and friends, the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain, were prostrated. Only the United States was uninvaded, powerful and rich, unhurt and invulnerable.

The recovery of our allies and of our enemies was greatly helped by wise and beneficent measures like the Marshall plan and NATO, and for a few years it looked as if we could do anything anywhere in the world. The whole world seemed to depend on the United States for protection and for recovery and reconstruction, even for food. Never, it seemed, was there such a total victory, and never before, therefore, was it so difficult to judge with any accuracy what needed to and what could be done. In these circumstances there flourished the illusion of American omnipotence, the fantastic notion that one nation could act as global policeman.

It was not, I think, the United States which yearned to police the world, though there were a few intoxicated imperialists among us. Events and the pleading of our friends abroad nourished the illusory role of world policeman and world benefactor.

While that illusion flourished during the late '40s, it became exceedingly difficult to measure wisely the ex-

32

Newsweek

tent of our power and of our responsibilities. Although the postwar distribution of power in the world has proved to be short-lived, the postwar situation was complicated by the first appearance of nuclear weapons. They were unbelievably destructive and for a time the United States had a monopoly of them. It was difficult to understand the limitations of nuclear weapons, and to realize that though those weapons would destroy anything, they could not do anything in particular. We have learned gradually the limitations of nuclear power, but it has been difficult for most people to understand why, if we are so powerful, we do not succeed in anything we attempt to do.

And then, last but not least, there was a third novel-
ty in the postwar world which made it difficult to
judge foreign policy accurately. This was the emer-
gence of the Russian empire as the citadel of a world
revolution against established order everywhere. Amer-
icans had never before confronted such a state of af-
fairs. The consequence was the cold war to contain
Communism, to roll it back and to insist that the con-
frontation with Communism would have to precede not
only stable recovery, not only peace and harmony in
the world, but the recognition of the balance of power.

It is very easy in retrospect to see that the war in Vi-
etnam was a great failure owing to a great mistake. It
is also easy to see that this great mistake was made by
a new generation of men who were faced with the
unique conditions of the postwar world—the total vic-
tory of the United States, the unmeasured nuclear
weapons, and the Soviet Communist crusade which,
for living Americans, was unprecedented.

When the Vietnamese war ends—we pray without a
catastrophe—there will be only one salve for our
wounds, for our pride, for our honor and for our digni-
ty. Honesty and no pretenses. It is to recognize the
mistake as being a mistake, to refrain from pretending
that it was not a mistake, and to find the remedy in the
universal human knowledge that to err is human.

Eastfoto

Viet Cong: Mosquitoes vs. elephants

DIPLOMAT AT
THE PENTAGON

He hardly seemed suited for the role. With his bald-
ish head and bristling eyebrows, which make him
appear slightly menacing even when smiling, Secretary
of Defense Melvin Laird looks more like a Hollywood
version of a Prussian general than a Nixonian-style
dove. Yet in the less than two years since taking over at
the Pentagon, the seemingly indefatigable Laird has
made some 75 public speeches, held 53 full-scale news
conferences, submitted to 110 interviews, spouted some
1,152,000 words for the record—and through it all he
has become the most prodigious propagandist for the
Nixon doctrine in the entire Administration.

It was perhaps inevitable that Laird would find him-
self cast in such a role. For as Secretary of Defense, he
more than any other Administration official is responsi-
ble for the actual implementation of the Nixon doctrine
—getting American troops out of South Vietnam and
scaling down the costly U.S. military establishment
overseas. By any measure, he has tackled the task with
nothing short of total enthusiasm. For Melvin Laird is
the one man in the Cabinet who is as much of a political
animal as Richard Nixon himself. And though he won't
admit it publicly, Laird has by no means given up the
thought of running again for elective office at the end
of his Pentagon tenure. As he more than anyone else
understands, the success of the Nixon doctrine could
well mean political success for Melvin Laird as well.

Yet despite all his political acumen, Laird has not
been spared from controversy. Some conservatives—
not to speak of columnist Joseph Alsop—liken him to
another politician-turned-Secretary of Defense, Louis
Johnson, who in the years after World War II drasti-
cally cut military spending and rapidly dismantled the
U.S. war machine. Some liberals, on the other hand,
say Laird has undone much of Robert McNamara's
"civilian revolution" in the Pentagon and has handed
back too much power to the military. His zealous back-
ing of President Nixon's plan to shift to an all-volunteer
army has led some critics to charge that he favors
the creation of a powerful mercenary force that—unlike
a draft army—would be unresponsive to domestic
political pressures. And Laird's economy measures
have come under fire too. In an effort to hold down
defense expenditures, he has chosen to pare U.S. con-
ventional forces—a move branded by some analysts as a
step back toward the "massive retaliation" theory of
the 1950s.

"You cannot have a violent disagreement with Mr. Laird. He does not behave that way."

This kind of controversy must, of course, be expected
by a man who presides over the most complex adminis-
trative empire the world has ever known, encompassing
a budget of $72 billion, about 4 million employees and
some $218 billion worth of property. Indeed, the office
has been recognized as a political cockpit ever since
professional pressures led its first occupant, James V.
Forrestal, to take his own life. In sharp contrast to his
predecessors, however, Melvin Laird has managed to
maintain harmonious relations with political friend and

December 14, 1970

33

foe alike. As the first former congressman to hold the reins at the Pentagon, the onetime ranking Republican on two appropriations subcommittees carefully cultivates contacts made in his sixteen years on Capitol Hill.

He makes it a point to get back to Congress as often as possible, lobbying hard for defense programs. About once a week, he slips off to the Hill to get a haircut in the Longworth Building barber shop and drop in on some old friends like Representatives Leslie Arends, George Mahon, chairman of Laird's old Appropriations Committee, and Gerald Ford, GOP leader in the House. In the Senate, he frequently chats with Senators Richard Russell, John Sherman Cooper and John Stennis. "Laird has an impossible job—he cannot please everybody," says Mahon. "We differed [on some defense budget cuts] but you cannot have a violent disagreement with Mr. Laird. He does not behave that way."

Laird even plays golf with arch war critic, Sen. J. William Fulbright, and until recently was, despite their vast differences over policy, on surprisingly amicable terms with the Arkansas senator. This relationship was shaken, however, over the U.S. raid two weeks ago on an abandoned POW compound in North Vietnam. After an appearance by Laird before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigating the abortive rescue attempt, Fulbright charged that the Defense Secretary had withheld information about U.S. air strikes on targets near the Son Tay compound. "They misrepresent the facts," said Fulbright. "Obviously [Laird] did, and they do it all the time." Replying testily to the charge, Laird (who has made much of his desire to "go public" unless military security required silence) said: "I only answer questions that are asked."

For the most part, however, Laird has managed to keep his disputes with others on a policy rather than a personal level. And he enjoys the added advantage of being compared favorably to Robert McNamara, who in his seven years of forceful leadership at the Pentagon

clearly rubbed not only many politicians—but many bureaucrats and military men—the wrong way. Understandably, Laird has gone out of his way to demonstrate that he is a different breed of cat. Even his redecoration of Room 3E880—the Secretary's third-floor Pentagon office—was designed to point up the contrasts. Gone are the austere McNamara furnishings, replaced by a "living room" setting: two brown-striped sofas and a half dozen captain's chairs sprinkled on either side of the room, light green walls and a tweedy beige-green carpet. McNamara's Rouault lithograph of a brooding judge has been removed too. In its place hang military paintings of Vietnam war scenes. Atop a bureau sits an AK-47 rifle captured from the Viet Cong.

> "McNamara liked to talk about peripheral issues, such as ammunition production."

On a more fundamental level, Laird has made perhaps his sharpest break with the past in his dealings with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His first step after arriving at the Pentagon was to relegate McNamara's civilian "whiz kids" to an advisory and review role. At the same time, he elevated the Joint Chiefs and service secretaries to more active roles in initiating ideas and in carrying out proposals under a new "participatory management" policy. And the chiefs, for their part, have clearly been delighted with that policy. "Secretary Laird listens better than Mr. McNamara did," Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, told NEWSWEEK's Lloyd Norman. "McNamara liked to talk about peripheral issues, such as ammunition production and technical matters. He avoided making the required decisions except within his inner circle. Mr. Laird, on the other hand, faces things head on. He communicates."

Nowhere has Laird's courting of military favor been more obvious than in his handling of the Pentagon's International Security Affairs section. Under McNamara, ISA was an active think tank stocked with tough-and generally dovish-intellectuals. Possessing no great reverence for Pentagon shibboleths, these civilians often found themselves at odds with the military.

So far, Melvin Laird's ISA has posed no such problems for the military brass. Headed by soft-spoken G. Warren Nutter, a former professor and Barry Goldwater's foreign-policy adviser during the 1964 campaign, the current ISA is made up of a mixture of anonymous-and generally hawkish-experts. Under Nutter and his deputy, Armistead I. Selden Jr., a former Alabama congressman who was defeated in a 1968 Senate bid, the section has maintained a low profile-such a low profile in fact that critics have argued that civilian control over the military is decreasing. "Laird is in control when he wants to be," says one former Kennedy Administration policymaker. "But his thinking is different from McNamara's. Remember that you can reduce the budget and not hear a peep from the military provided they get to decide how their share of the pie is spent. Or you can increase it and allocate it for them-and have immense dissatisfaction. And certainly one whole area, the ISA, has disappeared as a counterweight to the military's views."

Despite Laird's concessions to the military, however, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are not entirely happy. At the root of much of the discontent is the Vietnamization program. Realizing that they have to pull out of Vietnam, the high command has tried to do so at the slowest possible rate. Again and again, they have come up with

## BACK TO MASSIVE RETALIATION?

© Herblock, in The Washington Post

'Don't misunderstand me-I'm very fond of birds'

Wally McNamara—Newsweek

Laird with aides Packard and Foster

Translating the Nixon doctrine into practice, the Pentagon has begun withdrawing U.S. troops from foreign bases. Critics charge that this policy-plus Secretary Laird's decision to deploy MIRV's (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles)—signals a shift away from the concept of flexible response to a renewed reliance on nuclear weapons.

34

Newsweek, December 14, 1970

leisurely troop-withdrawal schedules only to have Laird advance their timetable by weeks or even months. What's more, he has even talked about scaling down Vietnam troop levels to only a small advisory force by the 1972 Presidential election—a scheme many military men consider would threaten the survival of the Saigon government.

In strategic terms, however, the Nixon doctrine implies far more than just a massive redeployment of troops homeward from Vietnam, Europe and other global outposts. In fact, it signals the abandonment of the so-called "two and a half war" strategy. The bedrock of U.S. defense policy for the last five years, this theory held that the U.S. should maintain conventional forces sufficient to fight simultaneous major wars in Europe and Asia and a "brushfire" contingency elsewhere. Mr. Nixon has adopted a less expansive—and less expensive—"one and a half war" posture. "Under it," President Nixon explained in a message to Congress early this year, "we will maintain in peacetime general-purpose forces adequate for simultaneously meeting a major Communist attack in either Europe or Asia, assisting allies against non-Chinese threats in Asia and contending with a contingency elsewhere."

For his part, Melvin Laird professes discomfort over all the talk about "war" theories. "Our policy is based on preventing war, not planning to fight wars," he says. "That's the job of the Defense Department—preventing wars." Laird's remarks have prompted his critics to quip about his "zero war strategy."

Yet whatever the terminology, the new strategy seems certain to foreshadow substantial cutbacks in U.S. conventional forces. These forces—Army and Marine ground troops, the Navy's surface fleet, and the tactical air units—account for roughly one-third of the defense budget and have so far been the prime targets of the fledgling austerity drive. And with budgetary pressures expected to grow even harsher, Laird has begun to trim total U.S. troop strength from about 3.4 million men in January 1969 to an estimated 2.4 million by 1972. The Navy is scheduled to lose some 300 ships. And gradual but steady cuts have already begun to pare down totals of both tactical planes and strategic bombers.

> "We can hope to deter wars, but we cannot win them if they break out."

In many ways, the military's reluctant retrenchment is markedly similar to the two other periods of limited U.S. disarmament since World War II. For in tackling the problem of reducing military expenditures, both Louis Johnson and later Charles E. Wilson chose to forge ahead with nuclear development at the expense of conventional forces. Pledging to get a "bigger bang for a buck," Wilson pinned the fate of his "New Look" policy on massive nuclear retaliation.

That policy soon fell into disfavor. Heavy sniping from anxious military men and academicians (including a young Harvard instructor named Henry Kissinger) and the emerging nuclear stalemate with Russia forced the Eisenhower Administration to moderate its dedication to massive retaliation. And with the election of John F. Kennedy and his appointment of Robert McNamara, the U.S. accelerated the shift from massive retaliation to what McNamara called "flexible response." In line with this strategy, McNamara ordered continued nuclear expansion while launching a drive to dramatically beef up conventional force levels. Now, however,

under pressure from powerful political, social and economic forces, Laird and the Nixon Administration have apparently been forced to retreat from costly flexible response to something of a New Look for the 1970s. "We can hope to deter wars," says a key Pentagon strategist, "but we cannot win them if they break out. The President may talk about planning for one and a half wars, but the fact is we cannot win one war or a half war."

According to Administration analysts, however, drastic cutbacks in conventional forces are acceptable as long as the nuclear deterrent "triad"—land-based missiles, bombers and Polaris submarines—remains strong. In order to remain credible, the Pentagon argues, the triad must be able to withstand a nuclear blitz and still be capable of destroying 25 to 30 per cent of the Soviet population and half of all Soviet industry.

While they believe that the U.S. deterrent is sufficient for now, Laird, Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard and Pentagon research chief Dr. John S. Foster believe that steady "momentum" in Soviet arms production may pose a threat to the U.S. by 1975. Laird points with particular concern to the rapid Soviet deployment of long-range SS-9 missiles, possibly equipped with triple nuclear warheads. (According to Pentagon figures, the Soviets have a force of 350 SS-9s and are building them at a rate of about 54 a year.) If they reach a level of 420 SS-9s, Laird insists, the Soviets will be able to wipe out 95 per cent of the U.S. force of 1,000 Minuteman missiles. In a similar vein, the Defense Secretary contends that the fast-growing fleet of Russian Yankee-class submarines will surpass the U.S. fleet of 41 Polaris subs by 1974.

That view is by no means universally accepted—even at the Pentagon. Many of Laird's key associates do not share his fears of the Soviet nuclear threat. "My personal feeling is that we are still far superior to the Russians in nuclear warfare and will be even in 1975," says one top official. "I understand that Laird

Johnson

UPI

Wilson

UPI

McNamara

## PENTAGON PENNY-PINCHERS

One Defense Secretary after another has fought vainly to cut defense costs. Under Truman, Louis Johnson was thwarted by the onset of the cold war. Wilson's "bigger bang for the buck" policy ran into booming missile costs. And McNamara's cost-effectiveness approach foundered in Vietnam.

Newsweek, December 14, 1970

37

is taking the most pessimistic position because that makes the best argument with Congress if he is going to get money for the ABM and other programs."

In the face of this criticism, Laird has stuck by his assessment of the Soviet threat. Furthermore, he has indicated that barring success in the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) in Helsinki the U.S. will be faced with "tough decisions" on such exotic hardware as the Navy's ULMS (underwater long-range missile system), a vastly expanded anti-ballistic-missile system and the Air Force's B-1 strategic bomber. In fact, some crucial decisions have already been made. Within the next five years, Pentagon analysts say, at least half of the Minuteman force will be equipped with multiple warheads, and 31 Polaris subs will carry new Poseidon missiles armed with up to ten warheads each.

As a result of these moves, it seems all but inevitable that Pentagon budget requests will continue to sky-rocket. Laird has talked of a "need" for a $75 billion budget for next year; Moorer and the Chiefs would prefer $78 billion. Future estimates soar even higher.

Even more important, however, are the budgetary implications of the Nixon doctrine itself. For if the doctrine is going to make good its pledge to protect American interests overseas while bringing U.S. troops home, then America's favored clients will require stiff doses of military aid. And as the recent supplemental requests for $1 billion for Cambodia, Israel and others clearly indicate, that aid will not come cheap. "The Nixon doctrine," says one analyst, "attempts to substitute money for blood ... It may look attractive at first, but then the questions arise: How many dollars? Are they well spent? Shouldn't we be spending them at home? And these questions are not resolved by the doctrine."

JCS Chief Moorer

A B-52 during bombing mission

U.S. Air Force

A cruising Polaris sub

Minuteman AP

## THE TRIAD OF U.S. DETERRENCE

Current U.S. defense strategy is based on the "survivable nuclear deterrent"—one that can inflict unacceptable damage on the Soviet Union even in the event that Moscow launches a massive first strike. This nuclear shield is composed of what Pentagon planners call the "triad": land-based intercontinental missiles, long-range bombers and Polaris submarines. Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Thomas Moorer claims that Moscow may soon be able to knock out one element—the Minuteman missiles.

38

# ECONOMIC POLICY: WHO'S IN CHARGE?

by George Ball

Recent Administrations have consistently had trouble in locating the prime responsibility for U.S. commercial policy. Even if Secretaries of State Rusk and Rogers or national-security advisers Bundy, Rostow or Kissinger had had a burning interest in the tradesman's part of our foreign relations—which none of them had—they were all subject to special disabilities. It is accepted folklore in the Congress that the State Department is more concerned with maintaining easy relations with other countries than with looking out for the interests of specific American businesses, while the President's national-security adviser is by custom disqualified from legislative activity. This leaves the Department of Commerce, which has traditionally been too much attuned to the parochial concerns of domestic business to be trusted as a spokesman for the longer-range interests of the country as a whole, and, finally, the Treasury, which, though wielding the laboring oar on international monetary policy, is outside the main stream so far as trade policy is concerned.

President Kennedy sought to resolve this dilemma by creating in the White House a special trade representative to negotiate the Kennedy round, but Carl Gilbert, the present occupant of the post, carries only the political authority the President chooses to give him and so far Mr. Nixon has not given him much. Thus the Administration's position is lost in a confusion of counsel.

One day we learn from the Department of Commerce that, unless imports of certain products are sharply curtailed, there will be large pockets of unemployed; again, that the trade bill Congress is pondering is not really protectionist at all, and finally that, even though a protectionist bill is passed, the Administration can be counted on to administer it in a liberal manner. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State views the legislation with alarm as threatening our vital interests and Secretary of the Treasury David M. Kennedy says that "this nation must not retreat from its dedication to traditional trading policy."

Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock's famous description of the tariff as a "local question" means, in twentieth-century terms, that many congressmen and senators will fear to vote their liberal convictions because of intensive pressure of local business in their constituencies. Thus, unless the President acts for the national interest as a whole in providing a clear lead on trade issues, the game will go to the logrellers.

That is what threatens today, for though no one believes that the President is philosophically a protectionist—that would totally undercut all he has said and done in the area of world politics—he has, by failing to speak out loud and clear on the issue, left the beleaguered Congressional supporters of his international policies to fend for themselves. Now the hour is late, and, unless an unambiguous threat of a veto is promptly forthcoming from Pennsylvania Avenue, all that stands between us and a slippery slide into protectionism is the last-ditch expedient of a filibuster.

Our foreign political and economic policies are opposite sides of the same coin. Unless we are careful we may devalue that coin without wishing to.

For three decades America has mounted a massive

Newsweek

effort to check the expansionist drive, first of Hitler, then of the Kremlin. Today, disenchanted by an ill-advised venture into Southeast Asia, we are distracted and starting to turn inward. The question in all the capitals is whether our introspection will become isolation.

In our foreign-economic policy we are at an even more critical juncture. We have, for a third of a century, led in sweeping the channels of trade free from obstructions interposed by more timid nations. Yet today we are on the verge of returning to the protectionism we shed when we came of age and became a world leader.

For a continent-wide country rich in resources, the temptation to concentrate on our own pressing affairs is latent in the subsurface of our consciousness. When we felt secure within our boundaries, the argument for a Fortress America had a certain selfish logic; yet that logic was dissipated in a mushroom cloud, as the atom put all America on the frontline.

So also did the explosion of modern business destroy all attractions of autarchy. Multinational corporations—America's prescription for the efficient use of world resources—can flourish only in an open environment free of restraints on trade and investment. For us now to retreat in the fight to secure this freedom, to turn chicken and close our own border, would be denying our whole postwar achievement.

Yet we are on the verge of having this done to us if we do not watch out. Political maneuvers inspired more by domestic politics than any rational view of our world position have produced a retrograde trade bill. If the Senate passes that bill and the President signs it, a resentful chain reaction will be set in motion with incalculable consequences.

> "A poisonous effect on our world political position."

A few American interests will benefit, but at high cost to the rest of us, for the object of the proposed legislation is to transfer resources from one group of Americans to another—and always at the expense of the American consumer. The drafters of the trade bill have explicitly sanctified the robbing of Peter to pay Paul. When foreign countries are damaged by the quotas imposed to benefit certain American producers, our government is empowered to pay off those countries by reducing the protection now accorded other American producers. Yet even that may not work, since those countries have the clear right under established trade rules to retaliation against other American products of their own choosing by closing them out of their markets—and they are threatening to extend this retaliation to our freedom to invest as well.

But even that is not the end of the story, for one has only to read of the widespread anxiety excited by the trade bill to recognize its poisonous effect on our world political position. Shutting our markets to the products of developing countries runs counter to all we have been trying to achieve with foreign aid for the past twenty years. It makes mockery of our widely proclaimed effort to lead toward a world where choices will be made by the free-market mechanism. It blots the picture of an America of spacious policies inspiring the world by our boldness and vision.

Yet to argue that the pending bill does not require the President to use the powers conferred on him to the extent I have described is disingenuous. Any combination of special interests powerful enough to pass the present bill will be powerful enough to assure that its authority is utilized.

The protectionist pressure behind the trade bill was not generated overnight. Two developments have given it special stimulus. One is the growing assertiveness of the Common Market as a major trading bloc, the other the fantastic economic growth of Japan.

So far, Americans have greatly benefited from the prosperity the Common Market has helped bring about, not only through the rapid expansion of our exports to the six Common Market nations (which have multiplied 2.4 times since 1958), but also through the opportunities afforded our industries to make profitable European investments.

It is true that the agricultural policy of the Common Market hurts some of our farm exports, and we should not docilely accept the excuse former West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard used to give me: "In agriculture, all nations are sinners." Instead, we should use our negotiating leverage to improve access to the Common Market for the products of our American farms.

But we will throw away whatever leverage we have if we begin to shut out foreign industrial products as the pending trade bill contemplates. The Europeans have already made clear one form their retaliation will take; they will punish our soybean growers—and that will be only the beginning.

The problem produced by an expanding Japan is of a different order. It is a puzzle that not merely America but all great trading nations must join in solving: how can we bring a nation with a wholly different structure and background into the world trading community?

As with the United States, Japan's rapid growth has depended primarily on the development of a great internal market. Yet, Japan has been a laggard in opening her doors to either foreign goods or money. The strong protectionist traditions in a society that has moved in less than a century from feudalism to industrialization will not disappear overnight. Indeed, it will only be eroded by steady, consistent pressure from its great trading partners.

Unhappily, however, our pressure on Japan has been neither steady nor consistent. If one day we have hammered away on the theme of liberalization, the next we have demanded that Japan restrict first one, and then another, type of export to America. As a result, we have been sending contradictory signals. Instead of concentrating on encouraging the forces in Japan working to free trade and liberalize investment, we are, by the pending trade bill, giving aid and comfort to the most reactionary and protectionist elements in Japanese industry, while undercutting those liberal groups who have been trying to do something about it.

Our country will have to decide what it wants.

The protectionist forces have won the first battle. If their drive is checked now, either by the President or by the Senate, the uneasy coalition will have been re-pulsed and we will have bought some needed time—time to begin work under less frantic circumstances on a proper foreign economic policy for the 1970s.

That events have gotten so far out of hand is the fault of many—of our great export industries, who were not alert soon enough, did not act with sufficient unity or fight with sufficient vigor; of American agriculture, which has been scared into abandoning its historic support of liberal trade, and, finally, of the executive branch of the government, which has produced little but a babble of contradictory voices on the issue.

What is American foreign economic policy today? No one can say, for there seems to be no one in charge.

McElroy—Newsweek

December 14, 1970

39

A NEW GLOBAL ACTIVISM

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the Nixon doctrine is its modest, almost defensive tone. Advocates like Henry Kissinger, Melvin Laird and William Rogers explain it as an effort to readjust America to the new realities of the world. But the world they perceive is a bleak one in which the Soviet Union is a growing nuclear menace, unstable new nations have proliferated from former colonial empires, Western Europe and Japan have suddenly become economic challengers and the American people-traumatized by Vietnam-are reluctant to grapple with global responsibilities. In short, the Nixonian world view intelligently diagnoses the problems but does not offer as much as it might in the way of possible solutions to those problems.

It would be both unfair and inaccurate, however, to blame the Nixon Administration for all the woes of American foreign policy. If Hubert Humphrey, rather than Richard Nixon, had been elected President in 1968, he too would have been hard pressed to deal with the historic misfortunes that have descended upon the nation. For the edifice of foreign policy that sheltered a generation of Americans sank into the quagmire of Vietnam. And, fairly or not, the last custodians of that edifice-men such as Walt Whitman Rostow, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara-were tarnished in reputation by the rancorous domestic debate that ensued. Perhaps most important of all, Americans had been taught from their earliest history that they had a special mission in the world; the Marshall plan and the crusade against Communism were conducted in this confident belief. But in the America of the late '60s, belief, whether in one's self or in one's country, almost seemed to qualify for the military designation KIA-killed in action.

Thus, when it took office, the most pressing task facing the Nixon Administration in the field of foreign af-

ceptualized view of America's place in the world. "This country's commitment to international affairs on a global scale has been decided by history," says Columbia University's Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former State Department analyst. "It cannot be undone, and the only remaining relevant question is what its form and goals will be."

More precisely, the commitment to internationalism to which Brzezinski refers has been decided by countless individual U.S. citizens and corporations who have, under the umbrella of U.S. power, forged more ties with foreign countries than any government program could ever equal-or undo.

Last year, for example, 1.8 million Americans traveled abroad; the comparable figure in 1936 was 142,000. Most of last year's travelers went to Europe, where their firsthand experiences often reminded them of America's origins and thus intensified the sense of an Atlantic community. Those who visited Asia could not help but notice how jet aircraft, television and communication satellites have transformed the world into a global city, how commodity prices, hemlines and the popularity of rock singers and movie stars rise and fall almost simultaneously in Osaka, Milan and Kalamazoo.

International trade, moreover, is far more important to the well-being of the U.S. than is generally recognized. The U.S. imports one-third of its iron ore and 89 per cent of its aluminum and bauxite. And last year, efficient U.S. farmers-who grow far more than Americans can consume-exported $6.6 billion worth of farm goods, the produce of one acre out of every five under cultivation.

Overseas investments represent still another international commitment that no American Administration can ignore. In Europe alone, U.S. investments are now worth about $100 billion, and more than 1,000 multinational U.S. firms in Europe account for an annual average of 30 per cent of the sales of their parent companies in the States. Many U.S. businessmen, in fact, concede that European sales have saved them from disaster during the current slump in the United States.

In view of the intimate economic, communications and psychological ties among the U.S., Western Europe and Japan, a number of experts argue that Washington should no longer think of its relations with other industrial nations as essentially foreign. For decisions made in Tokyo, Paris and Bonn can affect the daily lives of American citizens as directly as can the passage of a bill by the U.S. Congress. Thus, there is practically unanimous agreement among those who study international affairs that the bedrock interest of U.S. foreign policy is Western Europe and Japan. Yet, curiously, the Nixon Administration has so far failed to spell this out in clear and unequivocal terms. Remarks one of the State Department's European specialists: "Like previous Administrations during this past decade, this one has been unable to focus on Europe. As a result, we waffle and the Europeans drift."

As a first step in defining America's vital interests, therefore, Washington could begin to reassert its political leadership in the Western Alliance, perhaps by placing as much emphasis on its ties with the Common Market as it has traditionally with NATO. "Our interests belong with Western Europe and Japan," says Morton Halperin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for strategic planning and, until he quit in protest over the Cambodian invasion, an assistant to Henry Kissinger.

MORTON HALPERIN

"Our interests belong with Western Europe and Japan, less out of concern for defense against a Soviet threat to them than out of concern for . . . their openness to the world for trade."

Wally McNamee—Newsweek

fairs was to restore confidence at home and set new-and feasible-goals abroad. Most experts interviewed by NEWSWEEK rated the Administration less than successful on both scores. "A government has a responsibility in a time of great incertitude to assess basic trends," says Robert Osgood, professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "If it has pronounced a doctrine which is basically retrenchment, then it has to explain how it's going to pull that off. I see no signs of that." Indeed, many students of foreign affairs argue that the Nixon doctrine is more a rough sketch than a coherent, con-

40

Newsweek, December 14, 1970

"But less out of concern for defense against a Soviet threat to them than out of concern for our relations with them and their openness to the world for trade. These are quite different things." And Brzezinski adds: "The more important and promising changes in the years to come will have to involve Western Europe and Japan. The ability of these areas to continue to grow economically and to maintain relatively democratic political forms will more crucially affect the gradual evolution of a new international system than will the likely changes in American-Soviet relations. Western Europe and Japan offer greater possibilities for initiatives designed to weave a new fabric of international relations, and because, like America, they are in the forefront of scientific and technological innovation, they represent the most vital regions of the globe."

If there is a consensus as to America's interests in the industrialized world, the same cannot be said of the underdeveloped world. Indeed, the most intense debates in foreign-policy circles these days concern the proper role of the U.S. toward the "emerging" nations. "The disaster area of our foreign policy has been in what the knowing unite in calling the Third World," writes former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith. "In this world we cannot intervene, need not intervene, and we have intervened." On the other side is Walt Rostow, former national security adviser to President Johnson, who contends that the abandonment of Africa, Asia and Latin America by the U.S. would tip the balance of power in favor of the Soviet Union and China.

Between these two views, however, there is ground for a good deal of agreement. The majority of experts believes that America's interests will be served by aiding the poor nations in their efforts to develop and by helping them to remain outside the arena of great-power rivalries. Such a policy would imply that the U.S. must channel large sums of money and technological know-how to underdeveloped nations through multilateral agencies like the World Bank and the United Nations. It also would require that the U.S. de-emphasize its military involvement in these countries-which, for the

direct threat to U.S. interests-or if they are fomented by an outside power like the Soviet Union.)

In practical terms, then, the experts seem to be advocating a new style of global activism-one that recognizes both the limits and magnitude of U.S. power and that depends primarily on economic, political and diplomatic measures rather than on military force. "No [military] commitment should be allowed to survive the threat which brought it into being," write defense-policy experts Paul Warnke and Leslie Gelb. "Our military response should turn solely on a determination that

Bernard Gotfryd—Newsweek

## ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

> "This country's commitment to international affairs on a global scale has been decided by history. It cannot be undone, and the only question is what its forms and goals will be."

a military threat exists to the U.S."

In order to generate popular support for any kind of activist foreign policy, however, the Administration, it is generally agreed, will have to formulate a "doctrine" that is far more precise and positive than it has offered so far. The President could make a start in this direction by explaining to his countrymen how the world of the 1970s differs from the world that they inherited after World War II. This would require that he acknowledge that the ideological cold war has faded, that the Soviet Union is becoming as much of a global power as the U.S. and that, in the words of Morton Halperin, "Just as we are involved in the world, we have to accept Soviet involvement." It would also require that the President move more quickly in preparing the U.S. to accept Communist China as part of the world community.

And that would only be a beginning. For it is one thing for Americans to acknowledge that the U.S. and Russia-and perhaps, by the end of this century, China too-are inextricably mutually engaged in the world. It is another thing for them to understand and to accept the risks that such engagement carries with it. Inevitably, even the most enlightened U.S. foreign policy-one that promotes realistic domestic interests and encourages a world of humane justice-will come into conflict with the competing interests and concerns of other nations. It is the business of policymakers in the White House and the State Department to articulate clearly their definition of U.S. national interests and to explain to the American people how they propose to defend them. As a popular slogan for America's participation in the turbulent Third World, "No more Vietnams" may be as misleading as a previous slogan in American history: "No more Koreas." If applied to the complex interrelationships among the industrialized nations, the retrenchment implied by the Nixon doctrine may be a dangerous invitation to the Soviet Union to test America's mettle. A decade ago, John F. Kennedy overstated the breadth of America's global interests and the extent to which it would be willing to go to protect them. Today, Richard M. Nixon seems to be understating the case.

James D. Wilson—Newsweek

## J. KENNETH GALBRAITH

> "The disaster area of our foreign policy has been in ... the Third World. In this world we cannot intervene, need not intervene, and we have intervened."

most part, has served to shore up the status quo. As Ronald Steel, the author of a book titled "Pax Americana," puts it, "Although it has not been our stated intention to preserve the status quo, this has been the impact of our policy ... In some instances, violent or undemocratic change is the only way that the modernization we incessantly advocate is likely to take place ... Revolution in backward countries is no threat to the United States." (True though this view may be in many instances, it may not be possible for the U.S. to ignore revolutionary changes in Latin America if they pose a

Newsweek, December 14, 1970

43

CHARLES BARTLETT

Rogers' future tied to Mideast

WASHINGTON— Events in the Middle East could have “make or break” consequences for Secretary of State William Rogers. The ambassadors whom he summoned to a special meeting on the airplane hijackings complain that he was not at all forceful. His thinking on the crisis seemed so uncertain that the British Ambassador, John Freeman, finally asked why he had called the meeting. “I just wanted to see if you had any ideas,” Rogers reportedly replied. His prestige is now tied tightly to the outcome of the peace initiative.

The Nixon official who is probably arguing hardest for a stronger administration stand against the cease-fire violations in the truce zone is Leonard Garment of the White House staff. A former law partner of the President's and a Brooklyn Democrat, Garment was long regarded as a captive liberal in the Nixon camp but he was plainly influential in the decision to take a tougher line on school desegregation. He is now performing as the White House liaison with spokesmen for the Jewish groups.

Vice President Agnew will settle some old accounts in his campaign travels this fall. He tells aides he will decline to speak for Rep. Robert Taft in the Ohio Senate race because he was once stung by a remark Taft made about him. One Congressman for whom Agnew will make a special effort is Rep. William Cowger, who came as mayor of Louisville to campaign for his election as Baltimore County executive in 1962.

Concentrating on the Senate races, Agnew will speak for republican candidates for governor only in states where the next governor is likely, because one of the senators is old or sick, to make an appointment to the Senate.

Agnew is given high marks by the diplomats who accompanied him to the Far East. He handled himself extremely well in his private meetings, they report, and stuck close to the briefing advice he had been given.

George Shultz has been designated by the President as the chief economic spokesman for the administration, but hopes that Shultz might be able to lend a hand in the political campaigns have been dashed by a discovery that as Director of the Budget, he is subject to the Hatch Act. The White House is very optimistic that the economic news will stay consistently good through the November election.

The apparent reason the Soviet First Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, is getting a publicity build-up at home is that the Kremlin has seen evidence his popularity is fading. At a recent soccer match the arrival of Premier Kosygin was greeted with polite but restrained applause. When Brezhnev took his seat, virtually no one clapped. The collective leadership has not allowed any personalized coverage in the press since Nikita Khrushchev's ouster but now Brezhnev is getting unusually close coverage; presumably to make him better liked.

Some of the shrewdest Democrats this fall are apprehensive that they may be done in by the students who leave their campuses to participate in the campaigns. Some are flatly refusing to have student groups formed in their names and at least one Democrat has ordered that the students enlisting in his campaign must number no more than one-third of the total volunteers. Only the conservatives feel relaxed about accepting all the youth support they can get. Only 23 colleges and universities now plan to follow Princeton's example in calling a recess during the campaign.

CHARLES BARTLETT

# Nixon trying to end feud of Rogers and Kissinger

WASHINGTON — The President is said to be worried and annoyed by the continuing bad blood between his Secretary of State, William Rogers, and his foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger. Aides report he exploded in anger twice during the Jordanian crisis at reports of fresh disagreements between the two men. Mr. Nixon has worked hard to heal the breach, telling Rogers and Kissinger it is crucial that they work in harness.

White House aides describe the feud as a "major institutional weakness" and they are hopeful the new Undersecretary of State, John Erwin, will be able to improve the liaison.

Despite the Nixon doctrine and heavy American pressures, the response by Cambodia's Asian neighbors to the struggle of the Lon Nol government has been disappointing. Japan has given $2 million in humanitarian aid and Australia has given $2 million, some of it in arms. But Thailand will almost certainly not send troops and none of the other neighbors, except South Vietnam, is taking a hand in the struggle. As always the expectation is that the United States, already in for $50 million, will take up the slack. Many in the region remain uncertain that the Lon Nol government will survive the end of the rainy season.

Republicans find apathy toward the elections in the grassroots and they are delighted by it. They believe voter disinterest will work for them because the poor, the young, and the blacks, who vote Democratic, are least likely to turn out. The White House strategy on the Senate races is to pour heavy sums into small states where it will be most effective. This means that Maryland, Wyoming, North Dakota and Utah will become special targets. The President is expected to

sweep through the states where the mar gin is close as a campaign finale. Mean while, all the GOP candidates are de lighted by Spiro Agnew's performance.

The President's plan to visit Yugoslavia brings to mind the long delay in crystallizing the only substantial agreement that emerged from his visit to Romania 13 months ago. Mr. Nixon and President Ceausesco agreed to exchange libraries and exhibits but there has been so much haggling over who will pay the rent for the Romanian exhibit in Manhattan that the leases are not yet signed. The Romanians are getting a good deal because the US government will pay their rent in New York in exchange for space in Bucharest.

Still uncertain whether it will be wise to run the government with a tight rein from the White House, Mr. Nixon and his aides are experimenting with a compromise that brings in officials from the agencies to serve on White House task forces. But there is a strong disposition to call the signals from the President's office and many department heads expect their freedom of decision to diminish as the White House staff expands. Robert Finch is now the chief White House political operator with authority over Harry Dent and Murray Chotiner.

New statistics show why the Selective Service system isn't really working. Faced in the last year with approximately 30,000 delinquent registrants, US attorneys attempted to prosecute only 17,000. Some 3305 men, almost double the number in the previous year, were indicted and 1700 were convicted. But because of lenient sentences, particularly on the West Coast, only one-third of the indicted delinquents ended up in prison.

PRESIDENT NIXON, JULY 1, 1970

1. "Our interest is peace and the integrity of every country in the area".

2. "We recognise that Israel is not desirous of driving other countries into the sea. The other countries do want to drive Israel into the sea."

3. "Once the balance of power shifts where Israel is weaker than its neighbours, there will be war".

DR HENRY KISSINGER, JUNE 26, 1970

"... When you talk about settlements, you can say a good settlement is one with which both parties are equally happy.... The best you can do in the Middle East is to make a settlement with which both parties are relatively equally unhappy."

SECRETARY OF STATE ROGERS, JULY 11, 1970

"... it (the deployment of missiles along the canal) might suggest to the two parties that this is the most appropriate time to open negotiations."

Pawn or King? Which way
will the Middle East go?

DAN GILLON

When the extent of the Soviet Union's presence in Egypt was finally confirmed, the immediate reaction in Israel was to look to Washington for some positive response. Much to the delight of an obviously worried Government, President Nixon produced the requisite tough talk which is considered desirable but not always possible on such occasions. But behind the language, and some Israelis at least were perceptive enough to notice this, the direction of American policy was unmistakable.

While recognising the global implications of Soviet policy in the Middle East, the Nixon administration evidently prefers to regard the situation as forming, for the time being, merely an escalation

of a local conflict for which a solution must be found. For the US a settlement is the necessary prelude to enforcing the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Middle East and Mediterranean region. In other words, as the Americans now see it, the really crucial response will be Israel's reply to the Rogers initiative. A total rejection of the plan by Israel would present the United States with a awkward choice: Washington might either have to accept the permanence of a Soviet presence in the Middle East and the Mediterranean or be prepared and willing to challenge it directly.

Either event could powerfully affect the strategic or power political incentive which has been the main reason for

United States support of Israel.

This has to be seen, moreover, in the context of the changes taking place inside the region. Although the gulf dividing the two sides in the conflict remains immense, there is Arab-Israeli agreement on one crucial issue: neither Arabs nor Israelis wish to see the Middle East revert to the direct control of external powers, especially either Super-Power. President Nasser's twenty days in Moscow may have been happier than the time spent in the Russian Capital by the unfortunate Dubcek, but the implications for the people of Egypt are no less ominous than they were for the Czechs. Nor can the lesson of the dangers of Great Power involvement have been lost on the Israelis.

5

6

THE NEW MIDDLE EAST–AUGUST 1970

PREMIER MEIR WITH ASSISTANT SECRETARY SISCO: *Smiles can be deceptive*

Thus, if the region is not to become a mere pawn in the Great Power war game, the initiative for peace must arise from a local recognition of mutual interest in arresting the threat of a new dark age of colonial rule – by whatever name it is designated.

Earlier this year, the New Middle East warned against the danger of what it saw as "a process of Great Power re-colonisation" which threatened to reverse the progress made since the Second World War in freeing the area from Colonial rule. The immediate cause for concern at that time was a sudden upsurge of Soviet activity in the area on lines not unlike those which had formed the basis of American policy since 1945.

Since the Soviet and United States involvement was predicated on the ability of both to obtain the support and approval of local states, the issue was clear; if the Middle East was not to lose all the advantages gained in twenty years of at least partial independence, then the states of the area had to produce a sufficiently powerful combination capable of thwarting the new colonialism.

Israel, by then clearly the most powerful single state in the area, seemed the most qualified to act as a focal point of opposition to this intrusion, though of course the prospect of an eventual group forming under an Israeli banner was remote to say the least.

Yet it was an opportunity; if only it had been taken. Now one wonders whether at the time the Israel Government was even conscious of its existence. In fact, since the beginning of this year, Israel has pursued with increasing deter-

mination objectives which have served only to widen the gap between her and the Arab States.

On the assumption that there must be a point at which rational men forgo violence and begin to talk peace, Israel decided to use the tactic of the constant reminder to its Arab neighbours that it was stronger than they, both individually and collectively. The genuine purpose of the policy was to bring President Nasser to the conference table. For Nasser was the only Arab leader considered by Israel as having sufficient power over his people to permit him the freedom of negotiation and the subsequent ability to implement the peace. Ironically, then, Israel's policy of constant military attack resulted in the near collapse of the one strong ruler with whom she wished to negotiate.

As Israel succeeded in demonstrating its military superiority, hoping "that Nasser would come to his senses," so Nasser lost ground to forces inside Egypt angered at the feebleness of their country's response. Far from leading Nasser to the conference table, the Israel strategy resulted in the almost total collapse of his regime and led him in desperation to seek even more support in Moscow.

The stories of his secret visit in January remain somewhat apocryphal but the evidence available does suggest that in return for Soviet backing Nasser, the first Egyptian to rule his country in over two thousand years, was prepared to give up a large portion of Egypt's sovereignty, at least in decisions affecting military strategy.

Egypt was not the only country to feel the tremor of popular revolt and the

threat of chaos undermining its established regime. Indeed it is difficult to think of a single Middle Eastern Government able to take its position for granted. The people of the area showed a remarkable unanimity in their refusal to be either bombed out of existence or forced into acquiescence. If it had been assumed that the Arab "people" did not care one way or the other about the existence or non-existence of Israel and that the Arab conflict with Israel was merely a useful tool to divert attention from the misdeeds and failures of various Arab governments, that concept at least (if it had ever been right) was now stood on its head.

The chaos which spread throughout the Arab world in late 1969 and early 1970 opened the door still wider to Soviet penetration. With the virtual collapse of Nasser's regime in Egypt (which the Soviets may well have seen as being as much a blow to their own position in the area as it was to President Nasser) re-colonisation turned into plain old fashioned colonialism of the 19th Century variety, and the earlier Soviet determination to avoid local involvement was simply abandoned.

There followed in the wake of this dramatic change, a mini-invasion of between eight and ten thousand Russian personnel, not all of whom, to give the Soviets their due, even pretended to that classically inappropriate title of "advisers". Instead of the hoped for coalition of genuinely independent Middle Eastern States, combining to thwart a quasi-Colonial take-over, the Arab Governments of the area, accepted the Soviet presence almost as a matter of course, indeed of salvation.

Without really trying, and possibly even against her own better judgment, Russia had become the new overlord in a country which could still be regarded as the natural "powerhouse" of the Arab world and which had always been the region's main hope of spearheading genuine and independent stability. It gave one an eerie feeling to think that in 1970, with all the delicate balancing mechanisms which the nuclear age had produced, Russia had been able to march into Egypt with a good deal less fuss and bother than the British had encountered in 1882.

It was always the claim of the British that they invaded Egypt with great reluctance only because the alternative was anarchy. At least the Soviets have so far not found it necessary to play the role of reluctant invader. The British would

THE NEW MIDDLE EAST-AUGUST 1970

7

follow the first statement, with the assurance that as soon as order had been properly restored they would withdraw. The establishment of "proper order" took them seventy-two years.

How long the Russians will remain it is hard to say, though one doubts whether the Egyptians will have any more say in the matter now than they did during the whole period of the British occupation. No doubt, the Soviets would be delighted to have even half the time permitted to their predecessors. Egypt still remains the ideal base from which to exercise control, either directly or by remote control, over the entire Middle East. This for the British was of a far greater importance than the presumed attraction of the Suez Canal. While this is also probably true of the Russians, the fact that the Suez Canal now requires reopening, may, at least in the short run, come to play a decisive role in Soviet strategy. At the same time, though Washington has none of the USSR's historical ties with the area - there are nonetheless important global interests which dictate American concern.

Oil supplies to Europe and Japan makes the area at least by association important to the United States. The access routes to Africa and the Far East no doubt form an additional interest as do the considerable private and public investments which the US has made in the area in the course of the last thirty years. These considerations by themselves, however, do not add up to an interest any greater than the US has in most areas of the world.

The real importance of the Middle East lies in the fact that to America's global rival, the USSR, the Middle East has become an area of interest second to none. This leaves the US with the somewhat negative task of denying the Soviets too easy a time where penetration is impossible to prevent and maintaining as much of a local balance of power as reason and prudence allow. In other words, so long as the Soviet Union does not become overwhelmingly dominant in the area, the US is prepared to accept the Soviet presence rather than admit by implication that it has no power to dispute that presence.

The United States has managed to maintain this posture while safeguarding its own essential interest in the area, by cultivating the friendship of a number of regimes ready to comply with American policy in return for at least the promise of American assistance and protection. After an initial courtship with the early

military regimes, (Nasser was once a hot favourite in Washington) the US chose to base its position on the friendship of the more conservative Arab Governments to whom the availability of US protection is of considerable value and comfort.

When the administration in Washington had finally to accept the reality of the Soviet move into Egypt, it was evident that the Nixon administration had little idea of how to react. Apart from support for the "conservatives", America's other great commitment in the area was to the state of Israel or more precisely to ensuring its continued survival. Fortunately, for the Americans, Israel had always been able to let them off the hook by either doing something which so displeased Washington, that the question of assistance simply did not arise (Suez 1956), or else Israel was so clearly able to cope that American intervention was completely unnecessary - as in June 1967.

In the summer of 1970, however, the situation was quite different on the face of it, the events of the past few months would seem to suggest that the United States would have no alternative but to intervene because, suddenly, the Soviet Union had occupied a new position of power to an extent which exposed not only Israel but also every other local ally of the United States to the extension of Soviet power.

As the story of Russia's growing influence in the area began to unfold, President Nixon in a television interview on July 1, warned that the situation in the Middle East was more ominous than the conflict in Indo-China, because in the

Middle East, there was always the danger of a Super Power collision. The President's remarks had been explained to a select group of editors and columnists at two secret meetings (one on June 26 before the missiles had appeared on the Canal and the second on July 1 immediately before the President spoke).

The editors were briefed by Dr Henry Kissinger, the man President Nixon had put in charge of matters of National Security and Foreign Policy. Kissinger's remarks were embargoed until after the Nixon interview so that when the President spoke little was known about the background to his interview. In fact the only immediate information available was that a White House aide had talked of "expelling" the Soviets from the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Israelis were understandably jubilant about the apparent change in US policy, signified by the Nixon-Kissinger statements. As they now saw it, the United States had accepted the premise upon which their entire policy was based. The President had spoken harshly about Arab intentions to drive Israel into the sea; he had argued the need for maintaining a balance and of the US determination to see that Israeli strength was on a par with that of the Arab states; they saw significance in his choice of the words "defensible borders" rather than the old formulation of "recognised and secure".

Kissinger had in some instances gone even further than the President and acknowledged the need for Israel to maintain a position of "superiority" in order to survive the threat of attrition. In the Israeli view, having accepted this, and done so publicly, the United States had

PRESIDENT NASSER WITH SOVIET LEADERS IN MOSCOW: Too close for comfort

8

no alternative but to act and act
decisively now that the Soviet Union and
President Nasser have declared their
hand.

The Israel Government, and by its lead
also, the Press and public, chose the
Nixon-Kissinger statement as the "true"
statement of US intent and discounted
all other pronouncements as being in
conflict with declared White House
policy and therefore null and void. Thus
remarks by Secretary of State William
Rogers to the effect that the "Soviet
proposals for peace were a step forward"
or that "now that Russian missiles had
been deployed towards the Canal the two
sides might start to negotiate" etc, were
greeted with dismay and later simply
passed off as reflecting the prejudice of
this or that official or department but of
no real consequence as far as United
States policy was concerned.

Possibly even more important and
dangerous was that Israeli officials and
again through their agency also the
Press, underplayed important aspects of
all the statements made, and particu-
larly the statement made by Kissinger
on June 26.

Kissinger began the briefing by draw-
ing an analogy between the present
situation and that which existed in the
Balkans before 1914 and led to the First
World War.

Now, as then, he argued, the interests
of the local powers blinded them to the
more general interests of world peace.
Then as now, the Great Powers had little
control over their client states. This
combination had dragged the Powers into
an unwanted war in 1914. Today, the
United States would pursue peace with
this analogy in mind and a determination
to avoid a repetition, even though this
was hardly likely to please either
contestant.

While he accepted that Soviet inter-
vention in Egypt had upset the balance
against Israel, and that Israel had no
option but to aim for superiority, the
outline of Israeli defence strategy was
followed by an equally sympathetic
acknowledgment that, from the Arab
point of view, the Israeli aim was clearly
unacceptable. In neither case, Kissinger
said, was he "passing judgment. I am
trying to say what makes the situation so
inherently explosive. When the Israelis
try to vindicate their superiority, then
there is an incentive for the Soviets to
come in as balancers".

The fact that Kissinger was able to
explain, justify and even sympathise with
the Israeli dilemma was hardly, as the
Israelis would have it, a commitment by

the United States to provide Israel with
all she required to uphold her previous
position and policy. On the contrary,
Kissinger stressed that the United States
wished to maintain a balance (the
phrase also used by Nixon), sufficient
power to Israel to prevent her from
over-reacting, and enough dignity to
prevent the Arabs from feeling
menaced.

President Nixon was even more
specific when he said that the balance
which the United States wished to
provide was intended as a means of
defence against an Arab attack or more
precisely to deter an attack rather than as
a means for Israel to wage war. What is
unmistakable is the determination
apparent in both the Kissinger and the
Nixon statements, to encourage the
Soviet Union to pursue peace along
similar lines, and, most important of all,
to bring their own client under control.

Thus, while there is no doubt about
the American resolve to see the Russian
military presence in Egypt ended, every
effort is to be made in the meantime to
establish the parallel interests of the two
Super-Powers: the avoidance of a nuclear
or even conventional confrontation.

This clearly must be seen as the
overriding purpose of the United States
initiative. It is the common theme of the
statements made by the President,
Secretary Rogers and Secretary Sisco.
Any difference which may exist between
the White House and the State Depart-
ment is largely semantic and tempera-
mental, not substantive. The policy of
both is precisely the same whether it be
towards the conflict itself or on the
question of the United States response to
the Soviet presence in Egypt.
Washington's supposed "two voices" was
nothing more than the reflection of
Jerusalem's clearly troubled mind and of
careless reporting.

Thus, for the United States, achieving
a settlement is now urgent and a matter
of its own national self-interest. In the
absence of peace the danger that the two
Super-Powers will be dragged unwill-
ingly into war, will become increasingly
acute. So long as there is no peace, the
Soviet Union will tighten its grip on
Egypt and the area as a whole almost a
will. only by means of a settlement can
the US hope to "expel" the Russians
from the Eastern Mediterranean and
ensure the protection of her own
interests.

Therefore so long as there is a
convincing attempt by the Soviet Union
to bring the Arab States towards a
settlement the United States will find

that its interests are best served by
supporting Israel only to the extent that
is necessary to make peace possible and
prevent the outbreak of another war.

Above all, American policy will be to
discourage Israel from the notion of a
military solution, and to encourage
what Washington regards as the essential
basis of any settlement - compromise.

For both Israel and the Arab States,
compliance with the Roger's proposals,
or a modified version, means an unsatis-
factory peace and a continuing
possibility of war. Yet simply to reject
them, would lead with equal certainty
to increasing Super Power re-colonisa-
tion and the consequent loss of genuine
independence for all the states of the
area. If the Middle East is to avoid the
consequences of a new colonial ice age,
the initiative for peace must come from
either Jerusalem or Cairo, not
Washington and Moscow. That initiative
is still possible, but only just.

Of course a regional plan can only
hope to succeed if both parties to the
conflict are prepared to act. The first
step, however, has to be taken by the
Israeli Government if for no other
reason than that it has the power to act
which the Arabs do not have. The time
has come, as General Dayan has recently
been urging in the Cabinet, for Israel to
declare the details of "the map" which
would satisfy her essential requirements.
In conjunction with this it is necessary
for Israel to recognise that the Arabs of
Palestine are as entitled to their separate
independence and sovereignty as is the
Jewish population of Israel. To comple-
ment these two declarations the Arabs
states have, for their part, to make
explicit their acceptance of a Jewish
Homeland in Palestine in the form of
the Sovereign State of Israel.

The suggested procedure is not an
alternative to the compromise which the
Soviet Union and the US are now
pressing the parties to accept. There is
no alternative *but* to compromise, and
in many respects the degree of mutual
accommodation which a regional
initiative would entail is, if anything,
greater than would be required by an
enforced settlement. That, however, is
not the relevant basis for comparison.
The choice is not between one form of
compromise and another: the real
choice is between the price of renewed
Great Power domination and the oppor-
tunities of genuine independence. The
choice before Arabs and Israelis is
whether to remain a pawn or become a
king.

4/29--JD428PES

UPI-131

ADD 10 CAMBODIA, WASHINGTON

SEN. ROBERT P. GRIFFIN, R-MICH., ASSISTANT SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER, SAID HENRY KISSINGER TELEPHONED HIM SHORTLY BEFORE TODAY'S WEEKLY LUNCHEON MEETING OF THE SENATE.

SAID HENRY KISSINGER TELEPHONED H.

IM SHORTLY BEFORE TODAY'S WEEKLY LUNCHEON MEETING OF GOP SENATORS TO EMPHASIZE THAT THE ANNOUNCEMENT DID NOT MEAN NIXON HAD AGREED TO CAMBODIA'S REQUEST FOR U.S. MILITARY AID.

"IT WAS MADE CLEAR THAT THIS OPERATION TODAY WAS SEPARATE AND APART FROM LON NOL'S REQUEST," GRIFFIN SAID, REFERRING TO THE CAMBODIAN PREMIER'S REQUEST FOR U.S. ARMS AID. PARAPHRASING KISSINGER, GRIFFIN SAID TODAY'S OPERATION WAS "IN SUPPORT OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE TROOPS IN A LIMITED ACTION IN THE INTEREST OF PROTECTING AMERICAN TROOPS IN VIETNAM."

HE SAID KISSINGER DID NOT SAY WHETHER THE ACTION WAS ISOLATED OR INDICATED A NEW POLICY.

GRIFFIN SAID THE UNITED STATES WAS ONLY PROVIDING THE SAME ADVISERS WHO REGULARLY ACCOMPANIED SOUTH VIETNAMESE TROOPS IN SOUTH VIETNAM. HE SAID HE SUPPORTED IT.

"THE CAMBODIANS HAVE ENJOYED A SANCTUARY IN CAMBODIA WHICH HAS SERVED TO PROLONG AND DRAG OUT THE WAR," GRIFFIN TOLD A NEWS CONFERENCE. "THE FACT THAT THEIR SANCTUARY IS NOT SO SECURE IS AN IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT...IT COULD HASTEN THE DAY OUR TROOPS COULD BE BROUGHT HOME."

HE SAID HE CONSIDERED THE ACTION "IN THE INTERESTS OF THE VIETNAMIZATION PROGRAM...FOR THE COMMUNISTS TO OVERRUN CAMBODIA WOULD BE A THREAT TO THE VIETNAMIZATION PROGRAM."

"IT IS AN OPERATION TO CLEAN OUT A POCKET," GRIFFIN SAID. "HOW LONG IT WOULD TAKE I WOULDN'T KNOW. BUT IT IS THAT KIND OF AN OPERATION. IT DOESN'T MEAN THEY'RE (U.S. ADVISERS) GOING TO STAY THERE."

CHAIRMAN JOHN STENNIS, D-MISS., OF THE SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE SPOKE FAVORABLY OF NIXON'S DECISION.

"IF THESE SOUTH VIETNAMESE CAN DO THE JOB, THAT'S FINE," STENNIS SAID. BUT HE WITHHELD FINAL JUDGMENT UNTIL NIXON CLEARS UP QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW MUCH COMBAT SUPPORT THE U.S. WOULD SUPPLY.

SEN. ALAN CRANSTON, D-CALIF., SAID HE WOULD JOIN OTHER SENATORS IN AN EFFORT "TO REVERSE THE LATEST ACT OF FOLLY."

"PRESIDENT NIXON'S PLUNGE NOW INTO CAMBODIA WILL MEAN MORE AMERICANS DEAD, AIMED, DIVIDED," CRANSTON SAID. "THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AMERICAN LIVES IN VIETNAM AND ELSEWHERE IN SOUTHEAST ASIA IS TO GET EVERY AMERICAN SOLDIER OUT."

4/29--JD437PED

UPI-94

ADD 7 CAMBODIA, WASHINGTON

SECRETARY ROGERS TODAY REJECTED CHANGES THAT HE HAD NOT BEEN "VERY CANDID" IN HIS MONDAY AFTERNOON DISCUSSION WITH THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION POLICY TOWARDS CAMBODIA.

DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN ROBERT J. MCCLOSKEY SAID, "THE SECRETARY FEELS THAT HE, IN HIS APPEARANCE MONDAY AFTERNOON, ANSWERED QUESTIONS HONESTLY IN THE LIGHT OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES AT THAT TIME."

FULBRIGHT EARLIER BRANDED AMERICAN SUPPORT OF A SOUTH VIETNAMESE MILITARY ATTACK ON COMMUNISTS INSIDE CAMBODIA "A. GREAT MISTAKE." FULBRIGHT SAID, "IT LOOKS AS IF THE ADMINISTRATION WAS NOT VERY CANDID WITH THE COMMITTEE." THE COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN SAID THE SCOPE OF THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE-AMERICAN OPERATION APPEARED TO MEAN THAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN PREPARED AT LEAST A FEW DAYS IN ADVANCE. THE IMPLICATION WAS THAT ROGERS KNEW ABOUT IT AT THE TIME HE TESTIFIED IN SECRET SESSION BEFORE THE COMMITTEE MONDAY.

MCCLOSKEY CONFIRMED THAT ANOTHER SHIPMENT OF CAPTURED COMMUNIST AUTOMATIC RIFLES HAD BEEN SHIPPED FROM SOUTH VIETNAM TO THE HARD- PRESSED CAMBODIAN GOVERNMENT, WITH AMERICAN APPROVAL. OTHER OFFICIALS SAID THE SECOND SHIPMENT, ADDED TO AN EARLIER DELIVERY OF CAPTURED CHINESE-MADE AK47S, BROUGHT TO 4,000 THE NUMBER OF SUCH WEAPONS SENT TO PHNOM PENH.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN AGRESSED, IN RESPONSE TO A QUESTION, THAT PRESIDENT NIXON HAD NOT IMPOSED CENSORSHIP ON GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS REGARDING THE OPERATION INTO CAMBODIA. HOWEVER, MCCLOSKEY WAS UNABLE TO ANSWER A NUMBER OF QUESTIONS CONCERNING WHEN THE SOUTH VIETNAMESE ASKED FOR U.S. TACTICAL AIR SUPPORT AND ADVISERS FOR THE OPERATION, WHETHER THE CAMBODIAN GOVERNMENT HAD APPROVED IT OR WHETHER ANY ALLY BESIDES SAIGON HAD BEEN CONSULTED.

MCCLOSKEY SAID THERE WAS "FULL CONSULTATION WITH THE GOVERNMENT IN SAIGON AND INASMUCH AS IT IS AN ARVN (ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM) OPERATION WITH U.S. SUPPORT, THAT WAS FELT ALL THAT WAS REQUIRED." HE ADDED, UNDER QUESTIONING, THAT HE DID NOT KNOW WHETHER THE GOVERNMENT OF NEIGHBORING THAILAND WAS AWARE OF THE PLAN TO ATTACK INSIDE CAMBODIA.

THE SPOKESMAN, WHEN ASKED WHETHER THE CAMBODIAN GOVERNMENT WAS CONSULTED IN ADVANCE OF THE ACTION, SAID, "YES, VERY RECENTLY."

MCCLOSKEY CONTENDED THAT CAMBODIAN PREMIER LON NOL'S REQUEST FOR A LARGE AMOUNT OF U.S. MILITARY EQUIPMENT WAS STILL UNDER DISCUSSION.

THE SPOKESMAN SAID, IN ANSWER TO ANOTHER QUESTION, THAT HE KNEW OF NO U.S. PLANS AT THIS TIME TO TAKE TO THE UNITED NATIONS THE QUESTION OF CAMBODIA, WHICH THE UNITED STATES SAYS HAS BEEN INVADED BY 40,000 NORTH VIETNAMESE AND VIET CONG TROOPS.

4/29--GE146P

THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1970

Kissinger Seeks to Deter Visit by Ky

Continued From Page 1, Col. 7

dications that Mr. Ky would agree to stay away, or at least delay his arrival in the United States until after the Oct. 3 march.

The Kissinger trip, which was arranged at the last minute, is viewed here as an indication of the White House's concern over the diplomatic and political problems that would arise from an appearance by Mr. Ky at the rally.

For a week, scores of anti-war groups and student organizations have been preparing protests against the appearance. Some have threatened to carry out a citizens arrest, while others have laid plans for a counterdemonstration to protest the war.

A number of Congressmen have also protested Mr. Ky's planned visit, including Senator Edmund S. Muskie, Democrat of Maine, who warned today that it would "deepen the divisions over Vietnam, escalate domestic tensions and increase the chances for violent confrontation."

Arranged by Preacher

The United States March for Victory will be the second mass demonstration in support of the American involvement in South Vietnam organized by the Rev. Carl McIntire, a right-wing radio preacher who is pastor of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Collingswood, N. J.

On April 4, a crowd estimated by the police at 50,000 marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument to hear Mr. McIntire call upon President Nixon to seek a military victory in Vietnam.

The fundamentalist preacher

The New York Times
Henry A. Kissinger

has predicted that as many as 500,000 would converge on Washington next Saturday to cheer Mr. Ky and urge a victory over communism in Vietnam.

In an effort to insure Mr. Ky's participation, Mr. McIntire flew to Saigon last month. He emerged from the meeting with Mr. Ky and said the vice president had promised to join the march and address the crowd. Mr. Ky confirmed this on Vietnamese national television last week, before his departure for Paris, where he is conferring with members of the South Vietnamese delegation at the Paris talks.

Since then, the Administration and many South Vietnamese, including the ambassa-

dor to United States, Bui Diem have been urging Mr. Ky to avoid the rally.

Mr. Kissinger, in his capacity as Mr. Nixon's personal representative, is expected to do the same, arguing that a possibly violent confrontation between supporters and critics of the war would do serious harm to United States-South Vietnamese relations.

In his talks with Mr. Bruce and his assistant, Philip C. Habib, Mr. Kissinger is expected to assess the significance of the new eight-point peace proposal put forward by the Vietcong delegation at last week's session of the talks.

High Administration officials said today that they saw no great difference between the eight points and previous Communist proposals, but that the Administration would study the changes in nuance and emphasis with great care before replying in any formal way.

After his meetings in Paris, Mr. Kissinger is scheduled to fly to Rome on Sunday to meet Mr. Nixon on the first leg to European tour.

Most in Regime Reds, Sihanouk Says

PEKING, Sept. 25 (Agence France-Press) — Prince Norodom Sihanouk said today that a majority of his government-in-exile now were members of the Khmer Rouge rebel movement "and the power already belongs to the Cambodian Communist party."

The Prince, in an interview at his residence here, commented on the recent broadening of his government. The original 12-member cabinet formed in Pe-King last May 5 included three Khmer Rouge ministers, no-tably Khieu Samphan, the defense minister, who was also named deputy premier last Aug. 21.

At Mr. Khieu Samphan's suggestion, seven deputy ministers have just entered the government. "They are not Sihanoukists, they are all members of the Khmer Route," Prince Sihanouk said.

102 Flown Out to Beirut, 22 of Them Americans

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 25 (AP)—Planes evacuated 102 refugees from Jordan to Beirut today. Twenty-two of them were Americans.

The Americans came on the second flight out of Amman arranged by the United States Embassy in Beirut. That plane carried 64 persons. Aboard besides the Americans were 6 Britons, 7 Italians, 6 West Germans, 9 Lebanese, 11 Jordanians, a Yugoslav, a Colombian and an Indian.

A Red Cross flight brought out 60 foreigners and Jordanian wounded women and children. Besides the wounded, there were 29 Czechoslovaks, 2 French, 2 Moroccans and an Austrian.

The first flight out of Amman was a Royal Jordanian airliner carrying eight wounded Arabs—four children and four women.

The American airlift was not operating at full capacity because not all those wishing to leave could get to the collection point at the Intercontinental Hotel.

The first United States-chartered flight yesterday brought out 73 persons, 32 of them Americans.

as Chief of State and who has remained at his Moscow post since then. Mr. Huot Sambath is to be named ambassador to Yugoslavia from the Sihanouk government, the Prince said.

There is no doubt that the two new ministers will also be members of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communist organization. The Prince said: "I am giving everything to the Khmer Rouge. They are pure. They will do what is necessary for the people. They are patriots, they will keep Cambodia independent." He added that the Communists had exerted no pressure on him.

Prince Sihanouk continued:

"I was for a Buddhist socialism. The experiment failed. Now, there can only be a Marxist socialism.

"There is no question of my returning to power. If I wanted to exercise power again, I would have to carry out a coup d'état like Lon Nol, and, like him, I would have to appeal for American aid." Premier Lon Nol deposed Prince Sihanouk last March.

It was clear, from Prince Sihanouk's statements, that the rising political force in Cambodia is now the Khmer Rouge group around the deputy premier, Khieu Samphan. But the Prince is considered to be the depository and guarantee of constitutional continuity.

"For the moment, I am still indispensable," he said. "But after the liberation, perhaps this will no longer be the case."

War Casualties

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 (UPI) —The Defense Department announced today that the following servicemen from the New York area had been killed in Southeast Asia:

to be transferred to Cambodian territory and placed under ministers chosen from among the guerrillas. The ministries are those of public works and of justice, now headed respectively by Huot Sambath, former Cambodian representative to the United Nations, and Chea San, the Ambassador to the So-

KISSINGER SEEKS
TO DETER KY VISIT

Flying to Paris, Where He Is
Expected to Persuade Him
to Avoid Capital Rally

By TERENCE SMITH

Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25—
Henry A. Kissinger, President
Nixon's adviser on foreign pol-
icy, has scheduled a Paris
meeting tomorrow with Vice
President Nguyen Cao Ky of
South Vietnam to try to per-
suade him not to attend a
“March for Victory” rally here
next week.

The White House confirmed
today that Mr. Kissinger was
flying to Paris tonight and
would meet with Mr. Ky. The
Presidential press secretary,
Ronald L. Ziegler, said Mr.
Kissinger would also confer
with David K. E. Bruce, the
chief United States negotiator
at the Vietnam peace talks.

Reliable sources within the
Administration said Mr. Kissin-
ger would try to convince Mr.
Ky that an appearance at the
rally would be in neither his in-
terest nor that of his country.

The sources said they had in-


Continued on Page 6, Column 4