From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (119 page)

Seeking to break out of its isolation, China won major victories in 1964 when France extended diplomatic recognition and the annual controversial vote on its admission to the United Nations ended in a tie. Beijing also joined the nuclear club with a successful test in October 1964. The Chinese took the more radical position in supporting Third World revolutions, especially in Africa. But the dominant fact of Chinese life after 1965 was the Great Cultural Revolution launched by Chairman Mao himself to reaffirm his control of the party and secure his historical legacy. Using the threat of superpower encirclement, he set off a veritable revolution at home, purging the bureaucracy of "revisionists," fomenting his Red Guard followers' revolutionary zeal, and using brute force to impose ideological purity. As many as half a million people died in the carnage that followed. The Great Cultural Revolution pushed China to the brink of civil war and its relations with the USSR to the edge of military conflict.
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LBJ and his advisers struggled to make sense of a sometimes baffling world. Following JFK's lead, they took further steps toward detente, seeking to "build bridges" to Eastern Europe by upgrading U.S. diplomatic representation, expanding trade, and developing cultural exchanges, partly in the hope that closer contact might undermine Communist ideology. In early 1967, LBJ even declared, in a not sufficiently recognized statement, that the U.S. goal was not to "continue the Cold War but to end it."
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A bit of flexibility even crept into U.S. China policy. The administration used the Warsaw talks to make clear its limited goals in Vietnam as a way to avoid a repetition of China's entry into the Korean War. It stopped trying to block China's admission to the UN. Responding to popular pressures from
intellectuals, business, and others urging diplomatic relations, it eased restrictions on trade and cultural exchanges and even authorized government officials to engage in informal contacts with the Chinese.

Old habits also died hard in Washington, however. LBJ saw his job mainly as following the policies he had inherited. In his first two years, he focused on getting elected in his own right and implementing Great Society reforms. His principal foreign policy concern was to avoid anything that smacked of weakness or defeat. He and his advisers believed that in an uncertain and still dangerous world it remained essential to display firmness and maintain U.S. credibility. China's nuclear test and its outright rejection of arms control talks seemed to underscore the threat it continued to pose. Its ostensible support for radical revolution confirmed the need to hold the line in Vietnam and elsewhere. In any event, the Cultural Revolution put on hold any movement toward rapprochement. U.S. leaders still believed that the nation must deter and contain its adversaries, uphold its commitments, and prove its reliability as world leader.
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In Latin America, the Cold War and especially its domestic political imperatives continued to dictate U.S. policies. LBJ shared in full measure Kennedy's obsession with Castro. He called off the assassination program and until early 1964 kept alive unofficial discussions of normalization. But he continued to fear a Castro threat to the hemisphere and especially worried about the domestic political consequences of another Cuba. In the summer of 1964, the administration pressured the OAS to isolate Cuba by cutting off trade and severing diplomatic ties. The specter of Cuba shaped U.S. policies on most hemispheric issues.
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The fate of the Alliance for Progress hinted at the direction Latin American policies would take under Johnson. Kennedy's disciples have unfairly blamed LBJ for the demise of one of his predecessor's pet projects. In fact, the alliance was moribund by November 1963, and JFK himself was deeply concerned at the lack of economic progress and the reversion toward dictatorships. As a Texan, the new president thought himself simpatico with Latin America and pledged to support the alliance. But his heart lay with the domestic reforms of his Great Society, and he understandably hesitated to favor a program that bore Kennedy's personal imprint. Under his deeply conservative assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, fellow Texan Thomas Mann, the emphasis shifted toward self-help,
private investment, and local control, which advantaged U.S. corporations and the entrenched local oligarchies the alliance had been aimed at. LBJ and his advisers generally preferred stability to the reform spirit of the early days of the Alliance for Progress.
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Mann inadvertently proclaimed this approach in an off-the-record March 1964 statement that U.S. recognition policy should be guided by practical rather than moral considerations. This so-called Mann Doctrine was widely interpreted to mean that the administration would not look unfavorably on military governments.
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United States policy toward Brazil showcased the Mann Doctrine in action. Thanks in part to the CIA destabilization program launched under JFK, Brazil was in deep trouble economically by 1964. President Goulart appeared to be drifting further leftward, and U.S. ambassador Lincoln Gordon warned that this "incompetent, juvenile delinquent" might try to seize dictatorial powers which in turn could prompt a Communist takeover. Refusing to "stand around" and "watch Brazil dribble down the drain," U.S. officials informed dissident military officers they would not oppose a coup and if necessary would assist with military aid and a show of naval force.
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When the insurrection began, however, Goulart fled to Venezuela, and the takeover, led by Gen. Humberto Castello Branco, proceeded smoothly. Acting Secretary of State George W. Ball at 3:00
A.M
. on April 2 cabled the embassy effectively recognizing the new government. A "furious" LBJ subsequently chewed him out not for what he had done but for failing to inform the White House.
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The administration rationalized that the Brazilian military had traditionally respected constitutional government. In fact, the new leaders promptly suspended basic rights. Brazil would remain under military government for ten years.

Johnson also faced a crisis in Panama in early 1964. It was a classic decolonization dispute, although most North Americans, blind to their colonial past, failed to see it that way. Panama had profited from the U.S.-built and -operated canal, but its people had long resented the 1903 treaty negotiated by Philippe Bunau-Varilla, the total U.S. sovereignty in the Canal Zone, and the wealth and display of the expatriate "Zonians" who lived in that imperial enclave. At a time when colonialism was waning worldwide, they pressed for a new treaty. The 1964 crisis erupted when Zonians at a local high school defied an agreement requiring Panama's
flag to be flown alongside that of the United States. This largely symbolic but to Panamanians significant incident sparked rioting and then street battles in which twenty-four Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed. President Roberto Chiari demanded a "complete revision of all treaties with the United States" and broke relations.
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In an election year, LBJ felt compelled to establish his foreign policy credentials. He conceded some merit in Panama's demands. He and his advisers saw the omnipresent hand of Castro behind the tumult in Panama and recognized the need for concessions to prevent it drifting leftward. But he also understood the emotional attachment of his countrymen to what they considered, in the words of his close friend and mentor Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, American "property" built with "American ingenuity and blood, sweat and sacrifices."
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Viewing the crisis as a test of his personal strength as well as his diplomatic skills, Johnson feared any concessions that would make him appear weak. Over the next weeks, he put on full display the frenetic, consensus-seeking style that was his trademark. He parried U.S. senators on the left who sympathized with Panama and on the right who demanded toughness. He sent emissaries to calm the Zonians—and demand that they abide by the rules. Refusing to negotiate under threat, he rejected Chiari's demands for treaty revision. He also applied pressure—"squeeze their nuts just a little bit," as he crudely put it—by holding back economic aid and threatening to build a new sea-level canal elsewhere in Central America.
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At the same time, he publicly agreed to discuss all issues dividing the two countries and privately hinted that treaty revision might result.
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The two countries soon began serious negotiations and by 1967 had drafted an agreement making major concessions to Panama while preserving U.S. control of the canal. The issues that had provoked it were not resolved, but the 1964 crisis marked a turning point in U.S. policy toward Panama.
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Johnson's major Latin American challenge came in the Dominican Republic in the spring of 1965. United States officials had happily acquiesced in the overthrow of Juan Bosch and had been quite content with a reliable government headed by pro-U.S. businessman Donald Reid
Cabral. But Reid Cabral had little popular support, and a clumsy attempt to shore up his power in early 1965 provoked outright rebellion. Military officers loyal to Bosch responded by seeking to topple the government, plunging the nation into an especially confusing and bloody civil war. In a desperate act of self-preservation, the government begged Washington to send troops.

LBJ responded decisively. Top U.S. officials staunchly opposed the return of Bosch, "an idealist floating around on Cloud 9 type," Mann labeled him, fearing that his political ineptitude would give the "Castro types" the opening they needed. "How can we send troops 10,000 miles away [to Vietnam]," the president asked, "and let Castro take over right under our nose?"
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At a crucial point in pushing key Great Society legislation through Congress, Johnson was not about to risk a foreign policy setback. Events in the Dominican Republic were truly bewildering. Bundy and McNamara repeatedly warned that the extent of Communist and Cuban influence could not be determined. Insisting that he had no choice and publicly justifying his actions in terms of saving American lives, the president on April 18 ordered the landing of five hundred marines from ships offshore. Within a week, more than twenty-three thousand U.S. troops were in the Dominican Republic.

As in Panama and Brazil, the United States achieved its immediate goal. American citizens were safely evacuated, U.S. forces restored order, and the diplomats eventually cobbled together an agreement providing for a provisional government and elections. There would be no Cuba in the Dominican Republic. Elected president in 1966, the authoritarian Joaquin Balaguer would dominate the country for the next twenty-five years. But LBJ paid a high price for his success. Complaining that the OAS was "taking a siesta" while the Dominican Republic was "on fire," he consulted it only to provide a veneer of legitimacy to his moves.
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The essentially unilateral U.S. intervention awakened memories of gunboat diplomacy in the days of Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson. Combined with growing problems in the Alliance for Progress, it undercut much of the goodwill in Latin America generated in the Kennedy years. At home, as was his wont, LBJ responded with hyperbole to charges that he had overreacted. His claims of the threat to American lives and a Communist takeover proved questionable at best, widening what had already been labeled his "credibility gap." The Dominican intervention opened fissures
in the Cold War consensus that would grow into a canyon over the next three years and raised further questions about the president's ability to handle tough foreign policy issues.
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After the Dominican crisis, U.S. relations with Latin America moved off center stage. The assassination of Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1966 and the failure of the revolution he tried to instigate there seemed to ease the threat of another Cuba. As Johnson became more and more absorbed in Vietnam, his interest in the hemisphere waned. United States officials blamed worsening relations on Latin Americans' self-centeredness and irresponsibility; Latin Americans, on U.S. obsession with security at the expense of economic progress and social justice. In April 1967, LBJ made a last-ditch effort to mend fences by attending a hemispheric meeting at Punta del Este. Some minor agreements were reached, and he pushed his advisers to meet the commitments. But no crisis pushed Latin America back to the top of the priority list. What JFK had called "the most dangerous area of the world" receded to the relative unimportance it had held before Nixon's 1958 trip to Venezuela.
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"I don't want to be known as a war president," LBJ insisted in the fateful summer of 1965, but the war in Vietnam that he launched with great reluctance and struggled to conclude would consume his presidency and define his historical reputation.
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That "bitch of a war," as he called it, helped to destroy his Great Society, "the woman I really love."
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It would dominate U.S. foreign policy into the next decade and shape attitudes toward military intervention abroad into the next century.

Johnson inherited a commitment already in peril. Kennedy and his advisers had hoped that Diem's overthrow would stabilize the Saigon government and invigorate the war against the insurgency. The opposite resulted. Buoyed by the coup, the NLF strengthened its hold in areas where it had a presence and expanded its influence into new parts of South Vietnam. Gambling that the United States would not intervene with full force, North Vietnam expanded the flow of men and supplies down the fabled Ho Chi Minh Trail, an elaborate, six-hundred-mile network of danger-filled roads and footpaths across the most difficult terrain.