The Constant Policy

Basic U.S. policy in the Dominican Republic is simple. It is to prevent a Castro-style takeover in the Caribbean. Its ultimate aim is to set up a representative, constitutional government excluding extremists, from Trujilloists on the right to Reds on the left.

But carrying out that policy is nightmarishly difficult. U.S. policymakers have been forced to improvise from hour to hour. What looked like a stroke of intuitive genius one day seemed to be a blunder of impulsive foolishness the next. Nobody has found this more frustrating than the President of the U.S. Said Lyndon Johnson in a four-hour, after-dinner talkfest with some 30 journalists in the Georgetown home of Columnist Max Freedman: "We think we've got something patched up there and then it falls apart."

Quicksand. In tactical terms, patchwork is about the only plausible pursuit for the U.S. in the Dominican Republic. So corrosive is the hatred between the opposing Dominican forces that there is no middle ground. Yet the military middle ground is what 20,500 U.S. paratroopers and marines now hold, getting shot at from both sides, and the political middle ground is what the U.S. seeks, while suffering polemic potshots from around the world.

Most of the middle ground has proved to be quicksand. The rebels will not even talk to U.S. Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett Jr. if only because he was the first to cry Communist about their hard-core cadres. With Bennett cut off, President Johnson sent to the scene former Ambassador John Bartlow Martin, a friend of deposed Dominican President Juan Bosch, whose "constitutionalist" symbol the rebels were carrying. But the junta headed by Brigadier General Antonio Imbert Barreras remembered Martin as a promoter of Bosch and cut him cold. At that point, the U.S. had one pipeline to the junta (Bennett) and one to the rebels (Martin). Trouble was, Bennett and Martin disagreed, and it soon became evident that there was no pipeline between the pipelines.

At the same time, the Organization of American States became anathema to the rebels when an OAS committee reported that their ranks were infiltrated with Reds. And while the junta welcomed the OAS, the rebels rolled out their Red carpet for the United Nations, which, with U.S. acquiescence, sent special envoys to Santo Domingo. This was the first time that the U.N. had directly interceded in hemispheric affairs, and it established a precedent that vastly disturbed the OAS.

The Mission. This was confusion compounded. In hope of clearing it up, President Johnson sent four trusted advisers south--White House Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Under Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Jack Hood Vaughn, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus R. Vance. The mission, as a White House aide put it, was intended to "accelerate strategy." Officially neutral, the U.S. at first had seemed to lean to Imbert's junta. With the arrival of the Bundy mission, the U.S. started working toward a coalition headed by a onetime Bosch Cabinet member whose main qualification was that he had said he was antiCommunist (see THE HEMISPHERE).

To Imbert, this looked as if U.S. strategy were accelerating in reverse and he launched strong Dominican-manned military strikes against the rebels. At week's end a temporary truce was in effect. The U.N. wanted to turn it into a permanent ceasefire, but the junta was reluctant to halt its offensive.

All other things being equal, the U.S. does not want any military man in the Dominican Republic's seat of power. But at week's end it appeared that Johnson might have to side with Imbert or someone approved by the general. Although this would not be an ideal solution, it would be in line with the basic U.S. policy that has remained constant throughout: no more Castros in the Caribbean.

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