What the U.S. Wants

In fall's first week, the air was astir with talk of peace: pleas, proposals, propaganda of every hue. The dialogue yielded little hope of any quick, clean end to the conflict. It did, however, produce the most comprehensive, reasonable, and unequivocal statement of American policy to date.

Addressing the United Nations' 21st General Assembly, U.S. Ambassador Arthur Goldberg made clear in eloquent and civilized terms that Washington would go to almost any lengths to end the war, short of abandoning South Viet Nam to present or future Communist aggression.

"In God's Name." The war was not even on the agenda as the Assembly convened, though it will clearly dominate the three-month session. On the eve of the opening, Pope Paul VI delivered in Rome an impassioned, 1,700-word encyclical addressed to both sides: "We cry to them in God's name to stop." In another plea, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant made the extravagant claim that the conflict had become a "holy war between two powerful political ideologies." Its issues, he said, can be resolved "not by force but by patience and understanding." Thant went so far as to say that the Viet Nam war has strained East-West relations to a "new low," though, in fact, the world has come a long way since the coldest days of the Cold War.

While the Secretary-General despaired of any immediate prospects for peace, implicitly blaming U.S. intransigence, he told newsmen that he nonetheless considered it heartening that North Viet Nam has never formally rejected his three-point peace formula advanced last February. Neither, as Ambassador Goldberg made abundantly clear, has Washington.

Key Word. In his U.N. speech, Goldberg chided the statesmen--by implication, Charles de Gaulle as well as Thant --who persistently appeal "to one side to stop, while encouraging the other." Denying that the U.S. is engaged in a "holy war against Communism," Goldberg disclaimed any American interest in establishing a "sphere of influence" in Asia. "We want a political solution, not a military solution," he declared. "We seek to assure for the people of South Viet Nam the same right of self-determination--to decide their own political destiny, free of force --that the United Nations Charter affirms for all."

Answering the first of U Thant's three points, a call for an end to U.S. bombing in North Viet Nam, Goldberg vowed that the Administration will gladly halt the raids "the moment we are assured" that Hanoi will curb its war effort. As for a mutual reduction of military activity, Thant's second point, Goldberg pointed out that the U.S. has repeatedly urged a supervised, phased withdrawal of "all external forces." On Thant's third point, inclusion of the Viet Cong in peace negotiations, the U.S. ambassador noted that this was not, in President Johnson's words, "an insurmountable problem." The U.S., said Goldberg, does not "seek to exclude any segment of the South Vietnamese people from peaceful participation in their country's future." A key word here was "peaceful."

For Skeptics. What was significant in Goldberg's speech was mostly its nuances and tone; there was little substantively new. An increased flexibility was apparent in his statement that the U.S. would take the "first step"--cessation of bombing--on Hanoi's mere assurance that it intends to reduce its war effort. Hitherto, Washington has left the impression that the raids would not stop until North Viet Nam gave concrete proof of troop withdrawals. The speech was plainly meant to rebut the skeptics who question the credibility of the Johnson Administration's desire for peace.

The U.S. had particular reason to get that word across in Moscow and Hanoi. Though Washington remains understandably dubious, there have been signs in recent weeks that Ho Chi Minh, alarmed by the frenetic domestic upheavals in Red China, may be edging his nation closer to the Soviet Union. Moreover, through Moscow have come faint but persuasive hints that Hanoi has become more interested in negotiations.

Right Direction. Most non-Communist nations indicated their approval of Goldberg's address, and at home even the Johnson Administration's most vociferous war critic, Senator William Fulbright, was forced to concede: "This approach is in the right direction." Neither the Russians nor the North Vietnamese, however, have expressed any public interest in the American peace overtures. Though Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko conferred privately in New York twice last week, Gromyko delivered a vituperative speech in the Assembly denouncing Goldberg's address as a hypocritical "torrent of words." Hanoi, in turn, blasted it as "another U.S. peace swindle."

Those were the reflex reactions of Communist spokesmen and did not necessarily reflect either government's true inclinations. All the same, they contrasted oddly with U Thant's plea for "patience and understanding." The U.S., at least, had gone out of its way to demonstrate both, while reaffirming its determination to prosecute the war as long as it has no other real alternative.

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