1965: United States

A summary of United States foreign relations, legislative activities, political events, and judicial developments in 1965 is presented below.

Foreign Relations

The United States and the U.S.S.R. avoided for another year any direct confrontation even though certain hard issues between them—Germany, Eastern Europe, Vietnam, and disarmament—remained unresolved. Elsewhere around the globe, however, there was a dangerous intensification of conflict over questions that appeared secondary only in that they did not threaten the world with thermonuclear war. These disturbances, moreover, not only aggravated strains within both the Western and the Communist blocs but also held unpredictable consequences for the worldwide balance of power. French president Charles de Gaulle continued to pursue policies that have the effect of undermining the North Atlantic alliance. In the Far East, Sukarno evinced more than his customary animosity toward the United States. Pakistan's unsupported war against India, plus nationalist sentiment in such countries as the Philippines and Japan, endangered the entire Asian security system. By autumn U.S. efforts in Vietnam appeared reassuring enough militarily; politically and diplomatically they scarcely satisfied the nation's concern for peace and stability at all. Clearly, the United States throughout 1965 faced a staggering accumulation of foreign policy problems, and for none of them was there a ready answer in sight.

Many American observers, however, regarded such issues as overpopulation and racial tension greater dangers to world stability than any Communist conspiracy. Doubting that American security interests were global, the New York Times asserted on Jan. 3, 1965, that the nation, because of its past commitments, was intervening in parts of the world where the American presence is unnecessary to our security, sometimes unwelcome and generally costly and dangerous.' Senator George Aiken (R., Vt.) complained, 'We're trying to police the world, and we can't do it.' American officials insisted, on the other hand, that the United States was assuming no responsibility for peace beyond that demanded by the nation's safety.

Relations with Europe.

NATO.

Nowhere were the limitations on U.S. policy imposed by the will and determination of others more apparent than in relations between the United States and its Atlantic allies. NATO, Washington officials made clear, remained the foundation of the nation's external policies. On March 6, in an address before the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared that no European country could deal singlehandedly with problems of trade, monetary policy, aid to emerging states, or defense. The United States, he promised, would continue to support the movement toward European integration and would maintain its forces in Europe as evidence of the importance of close defense ties between the United States and a uniting Europe.

This continuing commitment to NATO was anchored to the assumption that defense against any Soviet threat demanded nothing less than an integrated Western European military structure. To that end American leaders had favored the multilateral nuclear force (MLF), not only to give NATO members, especially West Germany, a share of responsibility for the nuclear deterrent against war but also to prevent the proliferation of national nuclear weapons systems.

Unfortunately, this search for greater military integration within NATO ran counter to the wishes of both Moscow and Paris, who had warned that they would oppose any arrangement that gave West Germany control over nuclear weapons. The Soviets had long warned the United States, moreover, that its quest for Western nuclear integration completely negated its quest for both a treaty against proliferation and an agreement on German reunification. No Western power cared any longer to promote allied unity at the expense of improved East-West relations. Conscious of these basic flaws in the logic of MLF, Washington, after January, ceased to force the issue on Europe. In the general shift of U.S.-European relations it appeared increasingly clear that the future course of Europe would be determined in Europe.

The Challenge of De Gaulle.

President Charles de Gaulle continued to assert France's paramount position in European affairs. Through another year of forceful, if sometimes disturbing, leadership, he pressed toward his goal of a 'European Europe' without any U.S. hegemony over the continent. He voiced his doubt that the United States would come to Europe's defense with nuclear weapons and proceeded to expand France's nuclear force, largely at the expense of his nation's conventional forces.

Favoring cooperation to integration in military affairs, de Gaulle threatened to terminate France's active role in the NATO defense structure. In his semi-annual press conference in September he charged that NATO constituted a 'subordination' of French defense forces to the allied structure, which, he said, had to end. On the other hand, he revealed no desire to destroy the alliance, preferring, rather, to utilize it and make its organization conform to his notion of the nation-state as the chief vehicle for human progress. During October the general lent his approval to a French plan which, after 1969, would replace NATO with two alliance systems. One would include the United States in a simple treaty of alliance, permitting each member nation genuine freedom of action. The second system would be limited to Europe and provide greater integration of military facilities. West Germany would be denied a nuclear force but would receive guarantees that French nuclear weapons would be employed in her defense. This arrangement would make France the dominant military power of Europe and make Europe responsible for its own security.

De Gaulle administered a further blow to American hopes for an increasingly integrated Europe when he challenged the tendency within the European Common Market toward political union.

When the Common Market's council of ministers met in Brussels late in June, France demanded an agreement on farm subsidy financing. The Brussels group asked, in exchange for a decision favorable to France, the establishment of an independent community budget for European programs—a decided move toward supranationality. De Gaulle, refusing to link political concessions to agriculture disbursements, withdrew his delegation and established a French boycott of the Common Market, which jeopardized not only that organization but also the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Atomic Energy Community, and the European Investment Bank. De Gaulle made it clear, moreover, that he opposed the provision in the Treaty of Rome which, as of January 1, 1966, would substitute for each member's veto power a decision within the council of ministers by a weighted majority of votes.

In response to France's boycott the United States officially remained silent to avoid giving de Gaulle an excuse to berate the executive commission as a body of American stooges. European unionists warned, however, that only the United States could reinvigorate the idea of an Atlantic partnership, first proposed by President John F. Kennedy in 1962. The U.S. attitude notwithstanding, France's actions had not wandered far from Europe's political realities. The Common Market had been organized to strengthen Western Europe against a possible Soviet attack. To few Europeans in 1965 did that danger appear real.

The Problem of Germany.

Clearly, Western unity hinged as much on the question of German reunification as on the matter of defense. Yet on this issue, as on others, there existed a profound cleavage among the allies. De Gaulle preferred a European solution in which Germany's continental neighbors would negotiate German reunification and frontiers, thus eliminating Britain and the United States from at least the first stages of the deliberations. Bonn, on the other hand, feared any negotiation without the active involvement of the United States. In his conversations with West German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard in January, de Gaulle agreed to support German reunification on the basis of self-determination and agreed that French, German, British, and U.S. representatives meet to determine in advance what part the Kremlin should play in reunification discussions. De Gaulle believed, however, that there could be no meaningful discussion of German unity as long as West Germany persisted in its desire to engage in any type of mixed-manned nuclear force. Erhard declared emphatically that he intended to consider participating in such forces.

At the allied council meetings in May the foreign ministers prepared a declaration calling for German reunification on the basis of self-determination. But already Bonn had cause for disillusionment with the Paris government. During April de Gaulle informed Erhard that he would tolerate no form of European political union. At the end of April Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko announced in Paris that the Soviet and French governments were agreed that Germany's eastern borders were fixed and that Germany should be denied nuclear weapons. German leaders readily admitted that Germany could not recover her lost territories, but they were displeased that France should take the lead in renouncing the German claims. Naturally, Erhard continued to look to Washington for support and announced at Bonn upon his return from his visit to the United States in June that the United States was 'an absolutely reliable ally.'

Relying largely on American power and support, Erhard emerged as Europe's leading spokesman for that region's economic and political integration. Unable to compel the allies to initiate action aimed at German reunification, he joined de Gaulle in pushing Western trade and influence into Eastern Europe and broadened his contacts with East Germany. Indeed, the burgeoning contacts between Eastern and Western Europe were a powerful and satisfying compensation for the loosening of Western ties.

Relations With Asia.

The War in Vietnam.

In the Far East the Western allies were at the beginning rather than the end of their long journey toward orderly change. The U.S. leadership viewed the challenge of Communist domination in Asia as dangerous and as demanding of Western unity as that posed by Soviet power in Europe. Throughout the year the United States exerted unending pressure on its European allies to lend some tangible support to its containment policies in the Far East, particularly as they applied to China. These efforts failed. Thus the United States, pursuing policies that were largely unilateral, found itself in an expanding war in Southeast Asia without any major allies.

For a decade the United States had been held to its deep commitment to the status quo in the western Pacific by the domino theory, a concept suggesting that if one nation fell the others would topple one by one in the face of Communist aggression, which was insatiable and if permitted any further successes would drive Western influence and power completely out of Asia and the Pacific. Recognizing the fact, however, that the United States was isolated diplomatically and that a general war in the Orient would not serve any basic national interest, U.S. officials declared repeatedly that they desired only a negotiated settlement that would protect the interests of the people of South Vietnam. Defining the administration's goals in Asia in such terms, presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy stated during May that the United States sought 'a solution in which American troops can be honorably withdrawn.' President Lyndon B. Johnson admitted repeatedly that the war could not be won in any traditional sense. Above all, he said, he did not want to involve the United States in a war with the masses of mainland China. During the summer and autumn of 1965 the Johnson administration accepted the principles of the Geneva agreement of 1954, which stressed the unification of the two Vietnams under free elections, in an effort to find a diplomatic formula that might terminate the war.

In the absence of any agreement between Washington and Hanoi, the U.S. desire to limit and eventually end the war had little relationship to military developments in South Vietnam itself. Following a Vietcong attack on the American base at Pleiku, the president on February 7 ordered retaliatory air raids against North Vietnamese 'military areas which are supplying men and arms for attacks in South Vietnam.' The government evacuated dependents of American military personnel from South Vietnam and brought in surface-to-air missiles. Then, to rationalize and explain the decision to bomb the north, Washington in February published a white paper to demonstrate to its critics that Hanoi was really the enemy. During March, April, and May the United States moved toward round-the-clock bombing, striking increasingly at nonmilitary targets and moving ever closer to Hanoi and the Chinese border.

In March the United States for the first time dropped the notion that American troops were merely advisers to the South Vietnamese forces. During May additional combat troops brought the American troop strength to over 46,000. Then on June 8, in a dramatic move, the president authorized the U.S. commander in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, to commit American forces to direct ground combat upon request of South Vietnamese officials. That month the number of U.S. troops involved in major ground operations reached 75,000. Despite this enormous effort the ground war continued to go badly. Finally, in his news conference of July 28, the president announced that U.S. forces in Vietnam would be increased to 125,000. Even more significant, the Strategic Air Command began in June to send B-52 bombers from Guam to strike Vietcong positions in South Vietnam. This massive air support soon permitted U.S. forces to alter the course of the fighting. By October and November the heavy casualties suffered by the Vietcong had prompted Hanoi to dispatch increasingly larger numbers of its own forces to the south. The result was a new enlargement of the struggle with a mounting toll on both sides. When Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara returned from an inspection trip to South Vietnam in late November, he made no clear additional troop commitment, but said that the action was intensifying and that the United States would send whatever forces were 'required.'

U.S. Reaction to U.S. Policy in Vietnam.

The first major military involvement of the United States since the Korean War, the war in Vietnam engaged the U.S. populace at home in serious and often heated discussions and actions. Denunciations of the administration's increasing activity in Vietnam took the forms of organized mass protest marches, petitions, and open letters to the president; nationwide teach-ins and debates on college campuses throughout the country; and the more individualized actions of fasting, draft-card burning, and self-immolation. The protest movements, in their turn, precipitated counter-demonstrations in support of the administration's policy, and across the nation organizations sprung up variously advocating immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, peace negotiations, victory for the Vietcong, and victory for the United States by continuation or escalation of the war. Participants in the controversy were diverse: professors, students, members of the performing arts, businessmen, women's organizations, members of the clergy, and congressmen were among those who saw fit to object to the U.S. presence in Vietnam.

One of the year's more dramatic events was the 15½-hour national teach-in May 15-16 on Vietnam policy, broadcast from Washington to more than 100 college campuses and attended by prominent professors and national and international figures; this was followed up by a televised debate from Washington June 21, with special presidential assistant McGeorge Bundy, Columbia professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Guy Pauker of the Rand Corporation in support of the administration and Professor Hans J. Morganthau of the University of Chicago and Columbia professor O. Edmund Clubb opposing. Nationwide demonstrations, organized by the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, were held October 15-16 in about 40 U.S. cities. Other events included the self-immolations of Norman R. Morrison, a 32-year-old Maryland Quaker, in front of the Pentagon November 2 'to express his concern over the great loss of life and human suffering caused by the war in Vietnam' and of Roger Allen LaPorte, 22-year-old pacifist Catholic Worker, November 9 before the UN building. During Thanksgiving weekend a March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam was attended by an estimated 25,000-50,000, representing dozens of different organizations and including such noted individuals as Saul Bellow, James Farmer, Jules Feiffer, Dr. Erich Fromm, Arthur Miller, Bayard Rustin, Dr. Albert Sabin, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Norman Thomas.

In response to these activities, President Johnson and other Washington officials made periodic statements defending U.S. policy in Vietnam; a 'truth team' was dispatched in May to several midwestern colleges to explain the administration's policies to the academic community there; administration representatives met in conference with peace march representatives during the march on Washington; and opinion polls were published showing that the majority of U.S. citizens supported the administration's actions in Vietnam.

China.

Troubled by the pressures of war in the Far East, U.S. officials found themselves trapped between their traditional opposition to the Peking regime and the countering determination of the chief centers of world politics to terminate China's diplomatic isolation, especially at the United Nations. By 1965 almost all of the world's leading powers had recognized the Peking government. These nations, as well as such U.S. allies as Australia and Japan which had not recognized the Communist regime, handled 60 percent of China's foreign commerce. Many world leaders, moreover, agreed with de Gaulle that the future of Asian peace hinged on better Western, especially U.S., relations with Communist China. UN Secretary-General U Thant stated before the General Assembly in September that the problems of war and disarmament could not be resolved without Chinese representation at the UN. Pope Paul VI, in his appearance in October before the UN, urged that organization to 'study the right method of uniting to your pact of brotherhood, in honor and loyalty, those who do not yet share in it,' and Britain and France made it clear that they would argue for Peking's recognition. Even some German leaders declared publicly that it was time for Germany to stop playing satellite to the United States.

Despite these new pressures in behalf of Peking, the Johnson administration, through its UN spokesman, Ambassador Arthur Goldberg, determined again to direct the U.S. effort against the seating of a Communist Chinese delegation. That the task proved to be easier than anticipated resulted from a series of Peking demands that seemed to prove China's own disinterest in UN membership and which Goldberg termed 'undisguised blackmail.' To admit that nation, he said, would only encourage it along its 'present path of violence.' The delegates of Cambodia and Albania, backed by the Soviet ambassador, took the lead in supporting Peking and condemning the United States for its policies in Vietnam. Finally, on November 17 the UN rejected Peking by a vote of 47 to 47, with 20 abstentions, the closest vote in 15 years. For the first time, the United States found itself the only major nation voting against Peking. Moreover, as long as many world leaders believed that Peking's diplomatic isolation contributed to its extreme nationalism and belligerence, it was not clear how American behavior on the issue of China could contribute to allied unity in the Far East, the scene of the major challenges to world stability and peace.

Latin American Relations.

The Dominican Crisis.

U.S. relations with Latin America were beset by an incompatibility between two U.S. objectives in that area. The 'good neighbor' tradition, embodied in the Alliance for Progress, sought the integrity, independence, and political and economic welfare of each Latin American nation. This tradition recognized the sovereign equality of the American republics and sought to defend it not only from external threats but also from the overwhelming power of the United States itself. On the other hand, the United States viewed Latin America as a cold war battleground, where those identified as Communists were to be engaged and eliminated. It required only a massive U.S. involvement in the Dominican Republic during April to expose this ambiguity in U.S. purpose.