President Johnson is a politicians’ politician. An adept in the art of power he has a great reputation for deviousness. It is not surprising therefore that his dramatic announcement that he will neither seek nor accept the Democratic party’s nomination for presidentship has been received with a measure of scepticism in some quarters both at home and abroad.
The New York Times has, for instance, suggested that if the decision to curtail the bombing of North Viet Nam could bring Hanoi to the conference table, the political situation could alter so radically that President Johnson might be boosted back into the running. He could then emerge as the harbinger of peace and force his re-election to hammer out the detailed terms of that peace.
This is certainly not beyond the realm of the possible. But this time any doubt in President Johnson’s sincerity appears to be misplaced. Something seems to have cracked inside this giant of a man who has always managed to look bigger than life-size. The tears that welled up in his eyes in front of TV cameras when he made the historic announcement not to seek re-election show that he is no longer looking for admiration from his people; only a measure of sympathy and understanding.
President Johnson came to the present high office in the wake of President Kennedy’s assassination with the ambition to go down in history as one of America’s greatest chief executives. To begin with he saw himself in the role of the principal architect of the greatest social revolution in the United States after the abolition of slavery in 1865. He energetically pushed through Congress truly massive legislation for fighting racial discrimination and poverty, a feat which President Kennedy had attempted and failed to accomplish.
A Dream
But soon President Johnson found himself caught in the dominant American dream of proclaiming the U.S. as the world’s preponderant power determined to smash all resistance to its will. The decision to bomb North Viet Nam’s naval installations in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964 on the flimsiest of excuses and to start bombing North Viet Nam itself in February 1965 at a time when Mr. Kosygin was in Hanoi were expressions of the implacable desire to proclaim Pax Americana. The calculation probably was that North Viet Nam’s resistance could easily be broken and the Soviet Union forced to use all its influence in Hanoi in favour of a negotiated settlement. The calculation has proved a fiasco and President Johnson’s dream of engineering a social revolution and proclaiming Pax Americana has turned into a nightmare.
At home the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders has reported recently: “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal. Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division … they threaten the future of every American … to pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarisation of the American community and ultimately the destruction of basic democratic values.”
At the end of four years of Mr. Johnson’s presidentship the picture abroad is equally dismal. North Viet Nam remains unbowed after three years of bombing. The situation in Viet Nam remains as precarious as in 1965 in spite of the deployment of 525,000 American troops. The Viet Cong and the North Viet Namese troops can strike at will at any place of their choice. The war costs 30 billion dollars a year and yet the Vice-President of South Viet Nam, Air Marshal Ky, casts serious doubts on America’s bona fides. There is a crisis of confidence in American leadership in Europe. The NATO is in disarray. To cap it all there has been a rush on the dollar compelling Washington to agree to a two-price system for gold and to introduce fairly drastic deflationary measures.
Advisers
Till the end of 1967 not only President Johnson and his advisers but the American nation as a whole with only some exceptions managed to live in a make-believe world. They convinced themselves that the war in Viet Nam was being won, that the cost in men and money was bearable for years and even decades, that the racial problem was not beyond their resources to solve and that, above all, the American century was on. The doctrine of America being the only super-power was proclaimed from many platforms by many spokesmen. To quote one of them, Mr. Zbigniew Brzezinski said at the State Department’s National Foreign Policy Conference for editors on May 22, 1967:
“Thus in the last few years the United States successfully stared Khrushchev down in Cuba, it protected its interests in the Dominican Republic and in the Congo – and today it is doing it in Viet Nam. Yet the Soviet Union did not dare to react even in the area of its regional domination: Berlin. Today, the Soviet Union is in effect a regional power, concentrating primarily on Europe and on the growing danger from China. Our power during this ensuing period has become applicable power, with a long-range delivery system, with the means of asserting itself on the basis of a global reach.
“Moreover recent years – and this is much more important – have witnessed continued economic growth in this country; they have seen the expansion and appearance on the world scene of U.S. technological know-how. Increasingly the U.S. way of life, our styles, our pattern of living, are setting the example. Today, if there is a creative society in the world, it is the United States – in the sense that everyone, very frequently without knowing it, is imitating it.”
The concept of the United States being the preponderant power and therefore guardian of world order appeared almost irresistible last June when Israel smashed the Soviet-equipped Egyptian and Syrian forces in one surprise blow and triumphantly marched upto the Suez. It was widely regarded as an American victory by proxy because Russia’s friends had been humbled and Moscow had not shown the courage to intervene on their side as Washington would have almost certainly done if Israel faced a similar defeat. The glow of this victory by proxy lasted till the Viet Cong Tet offensive, made possible partly by generous Soviet supplies, changed the whole picture.
An American military debacle on this scale was not even conceivable outside Hanoi and possibly Peking a few months ago. This was why there was a sense of disbelief all over the world that Gen. Giap should have ordered an attack on nearly 40 cities in apparent violation of the well- tested practice of concentrating efforts in the countryside. The disbelief soon gave way to amazement that a tiny country could challenge the world’s greatest power on the battlefield and more than hold its own.
Men like Senator Fulbright, Senator Mansfield, Mr. Walter Lippmann. Mr. James Reston, Prof. Galbraith, Prof. Hans Morgenthau and many others have opposed the war in Viet Nam on both economic and political grounds for a long time. The student community has also been highly critical for over two years. This is a tribute to American democracy. But till the Tet offensive a vast majority of the Americans clearly favoured more and not less bombing to destroy North Viet Nam’s will to resistance. It is doubtful in the extreme if Senator McCarthy’s challenge to President Johnson would have meant anything more than an attempt to educate public opinion in the United States if Gen. Giap’s legions had not crashed through American defences last January and thus conclusively established that while America could destroy Viet Nam it could not win the war.
Aspirations
In all probability Senator Robert Kennedy would have continued to sit on the fence. Thus, it would be unfair for anyone to pin the entire responsibility for America’s trouble on President Johnson. He has embodied American urges and aspirations probably more truly than anyone of his predecessors since Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt. His failure is not just a personal failure but that of a whole society.
The Soviet leaders have come to recognise the limitations of power the hard way – the turmoil at home resulting in and furthered by Mr. Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the near revolt in Poland and the open revolt in Hungary in October 1956, the ideological struggle with China, the confrontation with the United States over Cuba in 1962 and the reassertion of nationalism all over Eastern Europe symbolised by the Rumanian defiance on the one hand and the current dash towards freedom in Czechoslovakia on the other. The process of adjustment with reality will be equally painful for America. The failure in Viet Nam, the rush on the dollar and the threat of a virtual civil war on the race issue, have left the American people little choice but to lower their sights. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union can go isolationist. But for different reasons both super-powers have to pay more attention to domestic problems.
In its December 30, 1967 issue The Economist said that in 1968 the American people would have to decide “whether they are essentially an eastward looking people, who will confine their attention to the relatively small part of the world around the Atlantic Ocean, or whether they want to go on carrying their responsibilities westward into Asia as well. Mr. Johnson has made it clear ‘where he stands. He is a global American. This is the real issue of the election.”
By this logic, in turning away from President Johnson and his policies the American people have turned their back on Asia. This is not and cannot be the case. If nothing else the competition with the Soviet Union will keep the United States involved in Asia. The disengagement from Viet Nam itself may be a prolonged and extremely complicated affair. What the American people have rejected is not responsibility towards Asia but the illusion that they can police the whole world. The international community is entering a new phase as it did after Stalin’s death in 1953, the Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the Cuban crisis in 1962.
The Times of India, 3 April 1968