Standoff

For two years Secretary of State Dean Rusk had adamantly refused to submit to a public third degree by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee over Viet Nam. Last week he agreed to appear, ostensibly to testify on foreign aid.

The expectations were electric, and in some respects, the duel between the Secretary and Committee, Chairman William Fulbright was dramatic enough. But the outcome was a curiously flat standoff.

Cold Cliches. At the end of the first day, prepackaged rhetoric gave way to poignance as Rhode Island's Senator Claiborne Pell asked if it "might be conceivable" that many U.S. allies are correct in their doubts about U.S. strategy. "Well," Rusk replied, "these are questions that one approaches on one's knees. One cannot be eternally dogmatic about them."

Yet neither side wore holes in its trou sers. Neither Rusk nor his adversaries, who now dominate the 19-man committee, had new ideas to offer. The handful of members who still support the Administration could do little more than deal in cliches--including the threat of "monolithic" Communism as cold as the marble that lines the hearing chamber.

"A to Z." Nothing troubled the Fulbright faction more than the prospect that the Administration might order a major increase in U.S. troop strength in Viet Nam without any consultations with Congress. "Do I understand you to be saying," Fulbright asked, "that you have no intention to consult with this committee and Congress, that you are going to do as you please?" Rusk said that the Administration would con sult with "appropriate" members of Congress about any important decisions concerning the war.

Historically, Rusk was not obliged to make even that concession. U.S. Pres idents have frequently ignored congressional advice when it seemed necessary or convenient to do so. Lincoln ran the Civil War far more highhandedly than Lyndon Johnson has ever operated in Viet Nam, and Franklin Roosevelt in effect launched lend-lease, virtually committing the U.S. to active involvement in World War II, three years before asking Congress to vote on it.

A cool, controlled advocate during more than ten hours of grilling, Rusk assured the committee that an "A to Z" review of the war was going on within the Administration. That hardly assuaged the committee's fears of a buildup of as many as 200,000 additional men. By week's end, word leaked out that the Administration--perhaps as a partial reaction to the hearing--had ruled out a massive troop increase. One spokesman said that the prospect is more likely to be a moderate buildup in the coming months.

Confrontation in Vienna. Aside from demonstrating just how far disaffection in the Senate has spread, the session did serve another purpose. It laid out, occasionally with eloquence, the basic positions of the Administration and its less extreme critics. Rusk recalled the Kennedy-Khrushchev confrontation in Vienna: "In effect, Chairman Khrushchev said to this young President of ours, 'Take your troops out of Berlin or there will be war.' It was necessary for this young President to say, Then Mr. Chairman, there will be war.' " Had the Russian leader believed that Kennedy lacked support at home, Rusk said, he might actually have applied the amount of critical pressure that could have resulted in war.

Said Fulbright: "The war is described as an exemplary war, a war which will prove to the Communists once and for all that so-called 'wars of national liberation' cannot succeed. In fact, we are not proving that. What are we proving except that, even with an army of half a million men and expenditures approaching $30 billion a year, we cannot win a civil war for a regime which is incapable of inspiring the patriotism of its own people?"

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