WILSON'S "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP"
The capacity of Harold Wilson to, say "me too" in all the aggressions, interventions and attacks launched by President Johnson against other countries is truly remarkable to behold. He seems hardly human...
And yet may not a limit be in aight to this fabulous. inflexibility in sticking to a straight and narrow line? Will the worm, so to speak, turn after all?
From the beginning of Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, Wilson has repeatedly dropped hints about working through secret diplomatic channels .on "negotiations." No doubt Wilson did send out emissaries who rapped discreetly at certain doors. But nothing much came of it, except perhaps approving nods trom the Dr. Strangeloves around the *White House.
. It may now be that secret diplomatic channels are being used to submit Wilson's loyalty to an acid test. Is it really true that not the slightest suspicion of un-Americanism is to be noted: in his behaviour? Then let him send contingents of British troops to south: Vietnam alongside the loyal South Koreans, the loyal Australians and the loyal New Zealanders. Let him rally loyally to the side of President Johnson in widening the international base of the conflict and putting the heat on other allies to participate more actively with the Great Society in the holy war against "Communism"! Le.
Perhaps pressure of this kind explains the hints now appearing in the British press that Wilson is not altogether happy in his "special relationship" with Johnson. These hints, of course, may be — intended as concessions to some of the figures in the British left to whom even de Gaulle looks like a giant-killer compared with Wil-. son.
In any case, Sir Patrick Dean, the British Ambassador to the United States, now finds it possible to drop hints about the unproductive nature of his Washington post. He leaked his impressions to
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the special correspondent of the London Times and this very staid newspaper passed on the information to its readers in the May 21 issue. Sir Patrick Dean did this after calling on Secretary of State Rusk for information about U.S. policy in the Dominican Republic and discovering that the man didn't know.
How is such a startling ignorance to be explained?
First of all, and this is the voice of the British Ambassador to be heard briefing the Times correspondent, the United States has become a "super-power." “At present it is undiluted presidential power..." To this god-like force, foreign opinion, “official or public, is at best of marginal interest." It is taken into considera~ tion "only after the decisions have been made." Thus, we are told, "Alliance and special relationship are becoming obsolescent words, without much practical meaning." What is expected from "lesser countries" is to "fall in line behind the United States."
As _a consequence, none of the allies of the U.S. are con-. sulted. In fact there is “little exchange of information." To put it bluntly, "even common diplomatic courtesy is now rather uncommon."
Secondly, there is the peculiar personality of Johnson, “It is not that he regards the allies as a bunch of 'wogs!', 'frogs't, 'krauts!, or tlimeys'; they just do not enter into his calculations."
Johnson's strange "exclusiveness" and “secrecy" are known to every diplomatist and journalist in Washington. But these traits also enter into his relations with "senior officials" normally consulted in "decision-making."
"National security affairs remain the concern of the triumvirate who assisted President Kennedy, Mr. Dean Rusk, Mr. McNamara, the Secretary of Defence, and Mr. MeGeorge Bundy, the special assis- .. tant for national security affairs,"
This is the triumvirate that stood in grey eminence behind Kennedy. But not even this small camarilla are in on everything now. “Who shares Olympus with President Johnson is still very much a secret..enobody has identified a constant advisory group since Mr, Johnson came to power,"
The British Ambassador, it appears, has been able to spot only one individual who appears to be really close to the great man. That personage is Thomas Mann, the “overly tough and hard-nosed" Under-~ Secretary of State for Economic Affairs.
"This is the power structure confronting the embassies here and in turn their Governments -- nebulous, secretive, and exclusively concerned with what is regarded as the American interest."
Under the nebulous, secretive power concentrated in the hands of the enigmatic Johnson, “the Monroe Doctrine is being applied universally in the east-west dispute."
- Since Johnson's brain, great as it is, is not quite up to all the tasks of his office, other brains are hired. "Super-power,. provided. by missiles, enormous fleets, and 16 active divisions are. seen to make the doctrine universally applicable. The concepts of superpower, devised by an array of thinkers and tested on computers have revolutionized alliance diplomacy." o
The answers to the most difficult problems come with super ease from the world's biggest, best, and most reliable electronic computers, If an ally does not pitch in loyally in “carrying the doctrine around the world" that ally has no right to be either con-. sulted or informed. And if an ally does co-operate loyally "it does not have to be consulted or informed because agreement clearly exists."
All that is left after the decisions from the array of thinkers have been tested on banks of computers and digested for Johnson is “largely a public relations task,"
What appears to have particularly raised the hackles of the British Ambassador was the resumption of bombing in north Vietnam, When the bombing was stopped, the State Department told some diplo-..: matic representatives about it because they were expected to explain to Hanoi what it meant. The diplomats needed about two weeks, as they saw it, for their secret channels to produce results, "It is just possible that some advance could have been made, but the third countries concerned [London, Moscow?] were not even asked before the bombing was peremptorily resumed." No "negotiations"! Abysmal failure for Wilson's famous secret channels...Disaster for Wilson's "practical" approach to "peace" in Vietnam...
Thus Wilson's man in Washington feels compelled, by way of retaliation, to drop the hint that he does not know what the U.S. objective in Vietnam is. On top of that, he hints that he was not informed about the intervention in Santo Domingo, "and again nobody knows what the United States is willing to settle for in that unfortunate Caribbean island." .
The British Ambassador ends up biting his nails in vexation over the problem faced by "the United States and its allies...of how to live together with some mutual advantage and dignity."
The trouble with this Colonel Blimp is that he can dish out the hints but he can't take them. The problem is already solved. Johnson gets the mutual advantage and dignity. Wilson is left with the rest. It's called a "special relationship."