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Editorials printed in The Michigan Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers
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"No matter what safeguards of attitude and procedure we
employ, a foreign policy of chronic warfare and intervention
has its own irreversible dynam ic, and that is toward author-
itarian government. A democracy simply cannot allow foreign
policy to become an end in itself, or anything more than the
central, dominating goal of securing democratic values within
our own society."
I
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 11, 1969I
NIGHT EDITOR: JUDY SARASOHN
The Violence Commission
does a disservice
YESTERDAY, the National Commission
on the Causes and Prevention of Vio-
lence issued their first policy statement,
one directed solely at t h e increasingly
disorderly and violent nature of univer-
sity communities across the country.
The Commission's overriding aim is to
further mobilize the forces of moderation
upon the campus; its major preoccupa-
tion is to calm and assuage campus tur-
moil. While some concessions in rhetoric
are granted to the claims of dissatisfied
students, the upshot of the argument and.
of its suggestions is the demand t h a t
these claims be rectifiled through estab-
lishedl procedures. As if the Vietnamese
War could be ended by a petition drive.
In other words, the need for order is more
compelling than the need for justice.
The Commission makes f o u r recom-
mendations to campus communities:
- that a "broad consensus"- be devel-
oped among faculty, students and admin-
istration "concerning the permissible
methods of presenting ideas, proposals,
and grievances, and of the consequences
of going beyond them;"
- universities should shore up their
"contingency plans for dealing with cam-
pus disorder;
-"procedures for campus reform and
governance should be developed to permit
more rapid and effective decision-mak-
ing;"
- faculty leaders a n d administrative
officers m u s t improve communications
between the campus, alumni, and the
general public.
THE RECOMMENDATIONS do not take
into consideration the dominant note
of student dissatisfaction, namely, uni-
versity ties with social injustice. As long
as the university functions as a recruit-
ment and research center for the military
and corporate giants, as long as Ameri-
can power is spent destroying the Viet-
namese rather than racism and, poverty,
as long as materialistic strivings and as-
pirations plague the public passion, there
will be dissatisfaction, and perhaps, vio-
lence upon campuses.
Does the 'violence of campus disorder
and dismay even approach the level that
is daily enacted in Vietnam?
If violence upon college campuses is the
only assured method for drawing public
attention to racism and economic exploi-
tation, is it necessarily illegitimate.
Most mainstream publications agree
that it was Kirk's autocratic and inept
administration that brought about Co-
lumbia. Even Arthur Schlesinger Jr. calls
Pusey's a c t i o n at Harvard "stupid."
Heyn's incompetence and Reagan's fas-
cism have more to do with Berkeley con-
frontations than a conspiratorial plot by
SDS, the Progressive Labor faction, an-
archists or nihilists.
THE COMMISSION Tenders the country
a profound disservice when it isolates
"radicals" and describes, them w i t h an
aura of inhumanity and barbarity. Amer-
ica has always portrayed those on the left
as intent upon destroying the public good,
and usually defined that "good" in terms
of institutional or corporat advantage.,
The Commission only acts as an instru-
ment protecting the status quo by grant-
ing legitimacy to the violence of Lyndon
Johnson and Richard Nixon when they
ignore it; it acts as the representative of
a privileged elite when they isolate cam-
pus disorder, and de-legitimatize sincere
protests that actively seek to end social
blight.
The Commission's political line reflects
one most heard from elderly liberals:
"we'll keep the fascists off your backs if
you guys keep quiet on our mistakes and
blunders. Is it a deal?"
Milton Eisenhower, president of Johns
Hopkins, chaired the Commission, and be-
trays his own personal preoccupations
stemming from his academic position In
the Commission's report rather than sin-
cere and objective research on the ques-
tion.
Granted, this is better than Eric Hoffer,
Roman Hruska, or Hale Boggs who alsot
are members.
HOWEVER, the Commission has a long
way to go if it is to explore the causes
for violence on the campus - this docu-
ment only reflects a concern for preven-
tion without knowledge of causation.
Hence, it should be t h r o w n in the bin
where one keeps their "law and order"
documents, o n 1 y for serious reading or
burning when Richard Nixon adopts the
Wallace platform.
-DREW BOGEMA
4
J. William
Fuibright
trend toward authoritarianism
Thell
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The following
is part of an address given by
Senator J W. Fulbright of Arkansas
to the National War College. It was
delivered on May 9, 1969, and en-
titled "Dimensions of Security.")
QUITE AS inevitably as if it
were deliberate, our imperial
role in the world has generated a
trend toward authoritarian gov-
ernment.
Vested by the Constitution ex-
clusively in the Congress, the
power to initiate war has now
passed under the virtually exclu-
sive control of the executive. The
"'dog of war," which Jefferson
thought had been tightly leashedt
to the legislature, has now passed
'4k
sued by Secretary Rusk and Span-
ish Foreign Minister Castiella in
1963 asserting that a "threat to
either country" would be the oc-
casion for each to "take such ac-
tion as it may consider appropriate
within the framework of its con-
stitutional processes."
In strict constitutional law, this
'agreement, whose phrasing closely
resembles that of our multilateral
security treaties, would be bind-
ing on no one except for Mr. Rusk
himself; in fact it is what might
be called the "functional equi-
valent" of a treaty ratified by the
Senate. Acknowledging even more
explicitly the extent of our de
military men but militarism. Ap-
plying the same principle to the
executive as a whole, the danger
of executive dominance over our
foreign relations has nothing to
do with the wisdom or lack of it
of individual officials. A threat to
democracy arises from any great
concentration of unregulated pow-
er. I would no more want unreg-
ulated power to be wielded by the
Congress than by the executive or
the military - not even by the
Senate Committee on Foreign Re-
Slations.
The principlesis an old and fam-
iliar one, and is just as valid as it,
was when Jefferson expressed it
and intervention has its own ir-,
reversible dynamic, and that is
toward authoritarian government.
A democracy simply cannot allow
foreign policy to become an end
in itself, or anything more than
an instrument toward the central,
dominating goal of securing demo-
cratic values within our own so-
ciety.
I would indeed lay it down as
a fairly confident prediction that,
if American democracy is destroy-
ed within the next generation, it
will not be destroyed by the Rus-
sians or the Chinese but by our-
selves, by the very means we use
to defend it. That is why it seems
to me so urgent for us to change
the emphasis of our. policy, from
the security of means to the secur-
ity of ends.
FINALLY, I would like to say
a word about the moral price of
our imperial role in the world.
The success of a foreign policy, as
we have been discovering, depends
not only on the availability of
military and economic resources
but, at least as imuch, upon the
support given it by our people.
As we have also been discove-
ring, that support cannot be gain-
ed solely by eloquent entreaty,,
much less y the devices'of public
relations. In the long run it can.
only be secured by devising poli-
cies which are broadly consistent
with the, national character and
traditional values of the society,
and these-products of the total
national experience-are beyond
the reach of even the 'most effec-
tive modern techniques of political
manipulation.
HISTORY DID not prepare the
American people for the kind of.
role wet are now playing in the
world. From the time. of the fram-
ing of the Constitution to the two
world wars our experience and
values-if not our uniform prac-'
tice-conditioned us not for, theu
unilateral exercise of power but
for the placing of limits upon it.
Perhaps it was a vanity but we.
supposed that we could be an ex-
ample for the world-an example
of rationality and restraint. We
supposed; as Woodrow' Wilson put
it, that a rational world order
could be created embodying "not a
balance of power but a community
of power; not organized rivalries.
but an organized common peace."
Our practice has not lived up
to that ideal but, from the earliest
days of the Republic, the ideal has
retained its holdd upon us, and
every time we have acted incon-
sistently with it-not just in Viet-
nam but, every time- -a hue and
cry of opposition has arisen.
When the United States in-
vaded Mexico, two former Presi-
dents and one future President
denounced the war as violating
American principles. The senior of
them, John Quincy Adams, is said
even to have expressed the hope
that General Taylor's officers
would resign and his men desert.
When the United States fought
a war with Spain and then sup-
pressed the patriokc resistance to
American rule of the Philippines,
the ranks of opposition were swell-
ed with two former Presidents,
Harrison and Cleveland, with Sen-
ators and Congressmen including
the Speaker of the House of Rep-
resentatives, and with such dis-
stinguished individuals as Andrew
Carnegie and Samuel Compers.
THE DILEMMA of contem-
porary American foreign policy is
that, while becoming the most
powerful nation ever to have ex-
isted on the earth, the American
'people, have also carried forward'
their historical mistrust of power
and their commitment to the im-
position of restraints upon it.
That dilemma came to literal
and symbolic fulfillment in theI
year 1945 when two powerful new
forces came into the world. One
was the bomb at Hiroshima, repre-
senting a quantum leap to a new
dimension of undiscipliped power.
the other was the Unite ations
Charter, representing the most
significant effort ever made to-
ward the restraint and control of
national power.
Both were American inventions,
one the product of our laborato-
ries, the otther the product of our
national experience. Incongruous
though they ;are, these are Amer-
ica's legaices to the modern world:
the one manifested in Vietnam
and the nuclear arms race, the
other in the hope that these may
yet be brought under control.
THE INCONGRUITY between
our old values and our new uni-
lateral power has greatly troubled
the American people. It has much
to do, I suspect, with the current
student rebellion. Like a human
body reacting against a trans-
planted organ, our body politic is
reacting against the alien values
1 which, in the name of security,
have been grafted upon it.
We cannot-and dare not-
divest ourselves of power, but we
have a choice as to how we will use
it. We can try to ride out the cur-
rent convulsion in our society and
adapt ourselves to a new role as
the world's nuclear vigilante.
Or we can try to adapt our pow-
er to our traditional values, never
allowing it to become more than
a means toward domestic, societal
ends, while seeking every oppor-
tunity to discipline it within an
international community.
WE CANNOT resolve this di-
lemma by choosing to "err on the
side of security," because security
is the argument for both sides.
The real question is: which re-
presents the more promising ap-
proach to security'in its broader
dimension?
-4
4'
Backward together
BY HIS announcement of a 25,000 man
troop withdrawal, President Nixon is
trying more to quiet domestic criticism
of his war strategy than he is to actually
end the war.
And while administration salesmen
would have us believe that the Nixon
move represents both a reduction in the
level of violence and a redirection of
American policy, it seems clear that.
Nixon intends to maintain the same de-
ranged policies of the Johnson admin-
istration.
Nixon's ploy will no doubt muffle
some war criticism for a few months, as
a dogged Amer~ican public again adopts a
hopeful "wait and see" attitude. But it is
already apparent that Nixon has not
fooled many imporitant critics in the Sen-
ate.
The numerical insignificance of the
announced troop cutback and the in-
creased tempo of American action in the
field points out the true direction of
Nixon's policy.
BY REMOVING 25,000 troops from com-
bat, Nixon would only shift a-fraction
of the 538,000 troops now in Vietnam.
Taking into account that "Vietnamiza-
tion" of combat forces began during the
Johnson administration, the increased
numbers and strength of the S o u t h
Vietnamese army has increased the al-
lied forces. The withdrawal of a mere
25,000 troops, when viewed over last year,
could be construed as a net escalation of
the war.
One must doubt Nixon's sincerity in
calling for a "reciprocal" withdrawal of
North IVetnamese forces when one con-
siders that the actual level of the allied
power will not be diminished by the with-
drawal.
mission by American forces has increas-
ed sharply. This increase has not been
turned back by the Nixon administra-
tion.
It must be remembered that Johnson
also called for reciprocal action f r o m
Hanoi when he announced a halt to the
bombing of North Vietnam. The U.S. did
curtail its bombing of the North but
pushed forward with increased action on
the ground.
Nevertheless, it is now being learned
that Hanoi did in fact answer Johnson's
plea for reciprocal action. I. F. Stone,
piecing together recent statements by
Avereill Harriman, observes in the cur-
rent New York Review of Books that U.S.
Intelligence sources estimate that Hanoi
withdrew between forty and sixty thous-
and troops in October of 1968. The U.S.
ignored Hanoi's action.
These troops naturally were sent back
to meet the U.S. offensive following t'h e
bombing halt. Nixon can hardly expect
that Hanoi will be very eager to accept
his good faith that a 25,000 troop re-
duction means a redirection of American
intention.
IT IS DOUBTFUL that even Nixon still
believes that the U.S. can achieve a
clear military victory in Vietnam. On
the other hand, Nixon does not really
seem committed to clearing the ground
for a negotiated end to the war. What
Nixon seems to be doing is merely scaling
down the war to a "tolerable" level that
he thinks the American public will en-
dure. Such a conflict could be prolonged
for decades.
The Midway talks seem to embrace this
concept of a prolonged war. No r e a 1
movement was made to staging real free
elections. Nothing was done for including
the NLF in a coalition government. There
under the virtually exclusive con-
trol of the executive.
The President's power as com-
mander-in-chief, which Hamilton
defined as "nothing more than
the supreme command and direc-
tion of the military and naval
forces," are now interpreted as
conferring upon the President full
constitutional power to commit
the armed forces to conflict with-
out the consent of Congress.
On the one hand it is asserted
that the initiation of an all-out
nuclear ,war could not possibly
await Congressional authoriza-
tion; on the other hand it is con-
tended that limited wars are in-
appropriate for Congressional ac-
tion. There, being, to the best of
my knowledge, no other kinds of
war besides "limited" and "unlim-
ited," it- would seem that the Con-
gressional war power has been ef-
fectively nullified.
THE TREATY power of the
Senate has also been effectively
usurped. Once regarded as the on-
ly constitutional means of making
a significant foreign commitment,
while executive agreements were
confined to matters of routine or
triviality, the treaty has now been
reduced to only one of a number
of methods of entering binding
foreign engagements.-,
In current usage the term "com-
mitment" is used to refer to en-
gagements deriving sometimes
from treaties but more often from
executive agreements and even
simple, sometimes casual decla-
rations.
Thailand provides an interest-
ing illustration. Under the SEATO
Treaty the United States has only
two specific obligations to Thai-
land: to act "in accordance with
its constitutional processes" in the
event that Thailand is overtly at-
tacked, and "to consult imme-
diately" with the other SEATO
allies should Thailand be threat-
ened by subversion.
But the presence of 50,000
American troops in Thailand, as-
signed there by the executive act-
ing entirely on its own authority,
creates a de facto commitment
going far beyond the SEATO
Treaty. In addition, on March 6,
1962, former Secretary of State
Dean Rusk and Thai Foreign Min-
ister Thanat Khoman issued a
joint declaration in which Secre-
tary Rusk expressed "the firm in-
tention of the United States to
aid Thailand, its ally and historic
facto commitment to Spain, Gen-
eral Wheeler, acting under in-
structions from Secretary Rusk,
provided Spanish military author-
ities in 1968 with a secret memo-
randum asserting that the pres-
ence of American armed forces in
Spain constituted a more sig-
nificant security guarantee than
would a written agreement.
Quite aside from questions of
the merit or desirability of these
commitments, the means by which
they were incurred must be a mat-
ter of great concern to anyone
who is concerned with the in-
tegrity of our constitutional pro-
cesses.
For at least thirty years power
over our foreign relations has been
flowing into the hands of the exe-
cutive. So far has this process ad-
vanced that, in the recently ex-
pressed view of the Committee on
Foreign Relations, "it is no longer
accurate to characterize our gov-
ernment, in matters of foreign
relations, as one of separated pow-
ers checked and balanced against
each other."
To a limited extent this con-
stitutional imbalance has come
about the result of executive
usurpation; to a greater extent it
has been caused by the failure of
Congress to meet its responsibili-
ties and defend its prerogatives
in the field of foreign relations;
but most of all it has been the re-
sult of chronic warfare and crisis,
of that all but.inevitable concen-
tration of powers in time of emer-
gency of which Alexis de Tocque-
ville took notice over a century
ago.
UNDER circumstances of con-
tinuing threat to the national
security, it is hardly surprising
that the military itself should
have become anaactive, and largely
unregulated, participant in the
policy making process.
Bringing to bear a degree of
discipline, unanimity and strength
of conviction seldom found among
civilian officials, the able and
energetic men who fill the top
ranks of the armed services have
acquired an influence dispropor-
tionate to their numbers on the
nation's security policy. The De-
partment of Defense itself has be-
come a vigorous partisan in our
politics, exerting great inflience
on the President, on the military
committees of Congress, on the
"think tanks" and universities to
which it parcels out lucrative re-
in the simple maxim: "Whatever
power in any government is in-
dependent is absolute also."
In recent months the Senate has
shown a growing awareness of the
need for restoring a degree of con-
stitutional balance in the making
of our foreign policy. To a great
extent this new attitude has been
reflected in the debate on the an
ti-ballistic missile and a general
disposition to bring the military
budget under the same scrutiny
that has always been applied to
the budgets of the civilian agen-
cies.
In addition, the Senate is about
to debate a "national comniit-
ments" resolution, the essential
purpose of which is to remind the
Congress of its constitutional re-
sponsibilities both for the making
of treaties and the initiation of
war.
THESE, I BELIEVE, are hope-
ful and necessary steps, but in the.
long run it is unlikely that con-
stitutionaj government can 'be
preserved solely by the vigorous
exercise of legislative authority.
Nb matter what safeguards of
attitude and procedure we employ,
a foreign policy of chronic warfare
a4
.1