U.S. POLICY: OLD MYTHS, MIXED VOICES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200920143-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 1999
• Sequence Number: 143
• Publication Date: April 6, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

Sanitized - Approved For Release : C
NEWSWEEIC
Fred Ward-131-1, Star
Bundy: LBJ's choice?
APR 61964
L S. pofliely: Old Myths, Mi.xed Voices
Ever since Lyndon Johnson began
showing a master's, flair for domestic
affairs, his critics have been waiting
with some impatience-and mounting
clamor-for a display of an over-all grasp
of U..s. foreign policy in the mid-'60s.
It came, last week-but not from LBJ.'
1i,str;;d, Arkansas's professorial J.W.
FI:lhright rose in the near-deserted Sen-
..uc chamber, thrust his hands in his coat
Ockets, and drawled out what seemed
i re a -'Jim ,ev i oe tIb e 6vres 1 @vte:;i,-
dent on foreign affairs. The lesson was
entitled "Old Myths and New Realities."
Eloquent, thoughtful, and comprehen-
sive., it also bristled with controversy;
many would differ with at least some
of it, Yet it was designed to start Mr.
Johnson-and America-thinking.
In 9,000 words of Fulbrigh.t scholar-
ship, the chairman of the prestigious
Foreign Relations Committee com-
plained that much current U.S. policy,
was frozen in dangerously dated pos-
tures. Confused notions. of morality, he
insisted, were keeping America from
the only viable world course: reasoned,
realistic self-interest. The nation, he
said, must think "some 'unthinkable
thoughts'-about the cold war and East- - bright advocates is the same road which
West relations, about the underdevel- Neville Chamberlain traveled in the
oped countries, particularly in Latin 1930s," snorted the GOP national
America, about the changing nature of ' committee. "Monumentally naive and
the Chinese Communist threat in Asia, ' unrealistic," pronounced Florida's Dem-
about the festering 'war in Vietnam." ocratic Sen. George Smathers, COP na-
"'We must learn to welcome rather tional chairman William Miller warned
darkly that the Fulbright manifesto was
an Administration trial balloon auguring
the worst.
Fulbright stoutly insisted, he had
spoken "entirely" on his own-without
consulting the President or the State De-
partment. The White House fielded the
speech gingerly ("very interesting,"
summed up a spokesman) but quickly
added that Fulbright's policies on Cuba
and Panama were hardly LBJ's. "I think
Castro, 1.9. more than. a: nuisance-', Said
'Secretary of 'State Dcan Rusl'. He is a
threat to this hemisphere." But he went
out of his way to commend Fulbright's
call for a fresh perspective in dealings
with the Communist world.
Actually, much of Fulbright's thesis
matched the mood of recent Adminis-
tration pronouncements. The world. the
President himself told a labor cons em-
tion in Washington just last week; "is
not the same as it was," With nuclear
war unthinkable-""impossible," as he put
it (not quite accurately)-"the people
of this country and the world expect
more from their leaders than just a
show of brute force."
But striking a mood is a long way
from implementing it imaginatively-or
even from far-sighted coordination of
the vast range of foreign-policy, activity.
Indeed, some. critics complain that the
President has no foreign policy excepta
native tendency to avoid trouble. ""There
is," grumbles one. insider, "no projection
ConttnueI
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000200920143-4
than fear the voices of dissent and not
to recoil in horror whenever some her-
etic suggests that Castro may survive or
that Khrushchev is not as bad a fellow
as Stalin was," he declared.
In official Washington, some of,Ful-
bright's pronouncements (page 18) were
indeed heresy. Castro? The senator
tabbed him a "distasteful nuisance" but
hardly "an intolerable danger." It was
time to admit, said Fulbright, that the
ecoa0mic b cckade Of C":Lu. wv:rs hotge-
lessly ineffectual and another invasion
out of the question. Panama? The U.S.
should willingly negotiate: reforms in
the "obsolete" canal treaty. Red China?
He opposed recognition; but America
should prepare for the day when "nor-
mal relations" may be possible.
Tactics: The 1962 Cuban
STATI NTL
crisis had forced the Russians to aban-
don recklessly aggressive tactics, said
Fulbright. So long as the Soviets re-
mained tractable, the U.S. should seek
to exploit the detente, recognizing and
encouraging the emerging diversity in
the Communist bloc.
Predictably, Republicans cried ap-
peasement. "The course Senator Ful-