CRISIS IN WASHINGTON
By Joseph Hansen
February 17 -- Having rushed to the brink of nuclear war, Johnson now stands at the edge, wildly flailing his arms, trying to recover his balance. Will he manage it? Or will he go over the edge, taking the United States and all of humanity with him?
Last week end, not even the authoritative New York Times, which for decades has had the best pipe lines into all the top circles in Washington, was certain about just who was in charge at the White House. Here is how Times correspondent Max Frankel put it February 14 in describing the "rare air of anxiety and torment" dominating the capital of the world's mightiest power:
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"There is an awareness of tense debate among the President's closest advisers, involving bitter dispute of the morality and effectiveness of various courses of action.
wand outside the inner circle of decision-makers, there is a desperate maneuvering by normally influential officials to discover who is giving what advice and to affect the course of the discussion."
This means that not even the powerful Eastern circle of capitalists, for whom the New York Times generally speaks, are in full control. Johnson, reports Frankel, “is said to be getting some very belligerent advice from very intimate quarters."
Who are these "intimate quarters"?
"At the Defense Department it is an open-secret,”™ continues Frankel, “that leading military advisers are seeking permission to continue to bomb North Vietnam. .. -
This indicates that the Pentagon has its hand on the steering wheel. But who in the Pentagon?
"One source reports that the civilian leaders at the Pentagon have submitted to the President a list of alternate targets in North Vietnam, including power stations and industrial installations, which they would like to see destroyed in future ratds."> —
At the head of the "civilian leaders" stands Robert S, McNamara.
From another source, we learn another extraordinary fact. Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, writing from Saigon in the February 16 issue of the New York Herald Tribune (European edition), report that when McGeorge Bundy, Johnson's national security assistant arrived in Saigon, “at the insistence of Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor," he was inveigled into making a most fateful decision. Taylor calculated that Bundy's personal impressions would tilt the balance,
When the guerrilla fighters attacked Pleiku, Bundy's "reaction was immediate and instant -- neither the South Vietnamese government nor the United States could risk inaction in the face of such a bold and open insult. ...
"He and Taylor decided to recommend an immediate counterstrike north of the 17th Parallel (as Taylor had repeatedly recommended before). Now Bundy was here to make the recommendation himself.
"As the proposal was being framed for Washington, Bundy permitted himself a sardonic smile and an audible hope that 'those soand-sos in Washington' would grasp the situation as he had grasped
it in Saigon,
"Washington reacted promptly. The war entered a new stage long overdue," .
From such evidence, Nicolas Chatelain, Weshington correspon- ‘dent of the Paris daily Le Figaro was able to state in his dispatch of February 16 that "three men™ hold responsibility for U.S. policy in the war-in Vietnam and its further course. “These three are first of all Johnson himself, Mr. McNamara, his Secretary of Defense, and Mr. McGeorge Bundy, who has the well-established reputation of being the most intelligent, the most intellectual adviser in the White House."
Chatelain describes Bundy as being more devious "than the Chinese themselves"; McNamara as being a “virtuoso in technology and the use of electronic computers"; Johnson, "it is taken for granted, has no ideas of his om..."
The fate of the world thus seems to rest with a cretin in the White House; and two Dr. Strangeloves each having an arm around his shoulders. ;
The immense danger thet American militarism now represents for all of civilization can be judged from the ironic fact that at the moment everything appears to hinge on whether the New York Times and the capitalist block of the Eastern seaboard can bresk through the court camarilla and gain the ear of the Texas wonder in the White House.
All these accidental factors, of course, fit within a broader framework. Repeatedly since 1945, the rulers of the United States have faced the alternative of plunging ahead into World War III in - hope of smashing the planned economies of the workers states and reopening them to capitalism. Repeatedly they have drawn back, judging the gamble to be too desperate. Their alternative has been to prepare a firmer military base. For almost twenty years, now, they -have been pouring some fifty billion dollars annually into this enterprise,
Meanwhile the workers states have grown immensely stronger. Besides the swift recovery of the Soviet Union from the devastation inflicted by the imperialist armies of Germany, the Chinese people won the greatest revolutionary victory since 1917, and along. the spiral of the colonial revolution, a whole succession of peoples have won political independence and established workers states in North Korea, Vietnam, and Cuba. The tide is running against capitalism. ,
But cutting across this development came the Sino-Soviet dispute. This could have provided a wedge for an adroit imperialist statesman and it might have been expected that Johnson, recalling
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the tactics of Franklin D. Roosevelt on the international scene, might have initiated a new foreign policy, hoping to gain a stronger position for American imperialism by maneuvering between the’ two sides and playing Moscow and Peking against each other..
Instead, going against the wishes of a powerful sector of the American capitalist class, he has indicated by his course of bombing North Vietnam that his policy is nothing more than a mere extension of the “brinkmanship"™ of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. -- with the variant that it is left in the hands of the Pentagon, thereby increasing still further the risk of a nuclear holocaust.
This perspective has caused the greatest alarm in. sectors of the American capitalist class. Hence the crisis in Washington. If Johnson now proceeds, he will begin a war with domestic opinion divided as it has never before been divided on the eve of a foreign conflict,
Moreover, in a few brief days Johnson has succeeded to a most impressive degree in helping to close the breach between Moscow and Peking. For this he deserves congratulations from the revolutionary forces throughout the world.
One of the most encouraging developments in this period of tense crisis was the display in the Peking press of pictures of Mao Tse-tung and Kosygin in friendly conversation.
To their obvious great reluctance, the heirs of Khrushchev have even felt it necessary to grant a considerable concession to . Peking in the ideological sphere. At Pyongyang, the capital of the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, Kosygin said: "Experience has shown that peaceful coexistence and revolutionary struggle are not contradictory. On the contrary. The attempts eat coexistence offer the most favorable opportunities for the struggle of the workers in the capitalist countries for their rights and interests, for the struggle of oppressed peoples.against their oppressors and the construction of socialism and communism." All this was within the framework of Khrushchev's famous theses, condemned by both the Chinese and revolutionary socialists the world over for their inconsistency and their real content, which was to give up the class struggle.
Then Kosygin introduced a significant shift toward Peking's position: "There can be no peaceful coexistence between oppressors and oppressed, between aggressors and victims of an aggression. .. The Soviet Union will try to live in peace with all peoples, but those who think that ties can be developed with the Soviet Union while conducting an aggression against other socialist states are mistaken. ..
In Washington, this is still being read as a mere verbal concession. Perhaps so. But it is at least a verbal concession that has helped Peking and Moscow to begin putting up e common front
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against the common enemy, and it will soon be seen whether vastly . increased material aid will not be forthcoming to North Vietnam,
After Kosygin returned to Moscow, Pravda picked up a major Chinese thesis; namely, that the American aggression against Vietnam "is a provocation against the socialist camp as a whole."
And Red Star declared in an editorial: "The insolent and brazen aggressors carried out their bandit raids at the very time when the Soviet delegation was in the Asian countries. They tried to drive a wedge between the socialist countries. But they overestimated their forces and underestimated ours, . .
"The present situation compels the socialist countries to take the necessary measures to reinforce the defensive strength of the socialist camp."
Of course, an immense gap remains between this and the initiation of an active revolutionary socialist policy on a world ‘scale, which alone can end the agonizing standing threat emanating from the continued existence of American imperialism. But that is another problem,
The rapprochement between Moscow and Peking in face of the common danger is a most favorable development. It is to .be hoped that it will give pause to the odd president who thinks that: the most appropriate way to celebrate his electoral victory is to act like the defeated Goldwater,
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