The Power Akin to Freedom

More than any other great nation in history, the U.S. has remained deeply mistrustful of its might and reluctant to invoke it. For most Americans, Manifest Destiny died when the 20th cen- tury was born, and two world wars have only thrust it deeper in its grave. Nonetheless, the junior Senator from Arkansas last week professed to see the U.S. commitment to Viet Nam as a portent of the overweening conviction of righteousness that has typified most major powers in decline.

"The question that I find intriguing," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright,"is whether a nation so extraordinarily endowed as the U.S. can overcome that arrogance of power which has afflicted, weakened, and in some cases destroyed great nations in the past." To Fulbright, who in a recent interview made the extraordinary assertion that in Viet Nam the U.S. is waging war "against a little country" that is "obviously at our mercy," the answer was a foregone conclusion. "Gradually but unmistakably," he pronounced in the first of three lectures at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, "we are succumbing to the arrogance of power."

Secular to Sublime. During a three-hour Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Administration's $3.4 billion foreign-aid bill, Fulbright asked Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara: "Isn't it a fact that when countries become very strong, they tend to become arrogant and to use that power in ways which have often resulted in war?" McNamara, whose responses were as precise as a punch card (see following story), answered: "Some have and some have not." "Could you give a very good example of some who have not?" persisted Fulbright. Replied McNamara: "I hope we are an exception, Mr. Chairman."

Turning hastily from the secular to the sublime, Fulbright declared: "Every country has believed that God was on their side when they waged a war." Smiling faintly, the Defense Secretary observed: "I don't think we have brought God into our current military operations."

Fulbright's certitude riled at least one fellow committee member. "We are not a military people," protested Wyoming Democrat Gale McGee, an Administration loyalist on Viet Nam. "I just cannot quite buy the allegation that we have heard here that great military power induces arrogance and self-righteousness. I resent that as an American."

Pavlovicm Cries. Fulbright's intimations of American "arrogance" are based in part on the dog-eared premise that the U.S. would like to remake the world in its image. Indeed, Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore actually asked McNamara whether Washington aimed to establish "an American-type state" in South Viet Nam. "It is our goal," replied McNamara coolly, "to allow those people to choose the form of political institutions under which they prefer to live. I suppose you could conceive of them choosing some form other than a democratic form. If they did, we would adhere to that choice."

Though U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge voiced his fear last week that the Vietnamese elections--tentatively planned to be held by September--may result in violence and rigged ballots, the Administration underscored its willingness to work with whatever government the South Vietnamese decide on. Washington also reaffirmed its readiness to seek an end to the fighting in Viet Nam, which flared with fresh intensity after a five-week lull (see THE WORLD). Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield independently proposed "a direct confrontation across a peace table between ourselves and Hanoi, Peking and such elements in South Viet Nam as may be essential to the making and keeping of a peaceful settlement"--presumably meaning the Viet Cong. Such a conference, he said, should be held in Burma, Japan or "some other proximate and appropriate Asian setting." Though the Administration swiftly announced that it welcomed Mansfield's statement and that "there would be no difficulty" in hearing the Viet Cong's views, the response from Hanoi and Peking was the standard Pavlovian cry of "hoax" and "trick."

Last Refuge. For all the Administration's patient attempts to negotiate peace, Fulbright warned, "a false and strident patriotism" may soon poison "the relatively healthy atmosphere" in which the Viet Nam debate has thus far been conducted. If "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," in Dr. Johnson's phrase, the bugaboo of McCarthyism has become the perennial last refuge of the doctrinaire liberal. True to form, Fulbright spoke gravely of the threat of "a new era of McCarthyism."

Underlying the Senator's concern with the uses and abuses of power is his conviction that the U.S. has consistently overreacted to the threat of Communism. Not so, retorted McNamara. During his five years in the Pentagon, said the Defense Secretary, "the Soviets have sought to deny access to us, and to our allies, to Berlin. The Soviets introduced nuclear weapons in Cuba. The Red Chinese have supported the North Vietnamese in their aggression against South Viet Nam. The Red Chinese have carried on military operations against India, and I could cite a number of other acts of aggression."

What Fulbright seemingly overlooks is that power, when it is salutary, derives not only from wealth and the force of arms but also from the convictions of free men. That this can and must be so was eloquently argued by Historian G. M. Trevelyan in chronicling "the bloodless revolution" of 1688-89, which transferred the powers of the British Crown to Parliament. By establishing order and a rule of law, Trevelyan concluded, the revolution gave England "a kind of power naturally akin to freedom, as the power of great armies is not."

"Mankind," he said, "would have breathed a harsher air if England had not grown strong." By the same token, 20th century man would have breathed a far harsher air had not the U.S. developed a power "akin to freedom."

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