Mapping the Sore Spots

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Any good journalist knows what maps are for. You Crosshatch the Congo, underline Berlin, point an arrow at Viet Nam and -- voild -- an instant rundown of the world's trouble spots. Regular readers of the Sunday New York Times, for example, feel cheated when the ominous-looking Times map of the world shows fewer than a dozen diagonally shaded peril points or a score of fat, black arrows to denote developing crises. But the fact was that last week it was hard to add up all the trouble spots without a cartographer's score card.

Without a map and pointer, President Johnson had to resort to statistics to illustrate just what an ornery place the world was. In no fewer than "eight different situations," he told a White House press conference, the U.S. had "demonstrated anew" its determination to keep the peace. Lyndon's aides had a few more figures to prove the point. Since Nov. 22, the President has held 175 separate meetings on foreign affairs, and has discussed national security 30 times with Defense Secretary McNamara, 51 times with Secretary of State Rusk, 31 times with the Central Intelligence Agency. He has, besides, fielded more phone calls on the subject than anyone except A.T. & T. would care to count.

It was, in many respects, a typical Johnson man-in-motion performance. And while some of his critics were won dering whether it was getting the U.S. anywhere, there was no denying that he was deeply and personally involved.

The Shrug. Biggest headache was France's recognition of Red China. The move had been well-advertised, but was no less nettlesome for it. De Gaulle shook off U.S. protests with a majestic shrug. "France," said he at a press conference, "is no more than recognizing the world as it is." To add insult to in jury, he took a poke at the 176-year-old U.S. Constitution, said it might be a flop anywhere outside the U.S. "Our constitution," he added by way of comparison, "is good. It has proved itself over five years in moments full of gravity and in periods of calm."

Biggest surprise was the coup in Viet Nam, the second in three months. De Gaulle had a solution for the trouble there, too: neutrality. "In the era in which we live," said he, neutralization seems to be "the only situation compatible with the peaceful life and progress of the populations." Not, however, all of the populations. In plotting to set up a neutral regime in Saigon, complained one Vietnamese official, the French "are sabotaging us, killing us, drowning us in difficulties."

Beyond these problem areas were a slew of others. In some, the U.S. endured sharp affronts:

P:In EAST GERMANY, when an unarmed U.S. jet strayed over the border, Soviet fighters shot it down, killed three men.

P:In PANAMA, all efforts to find a com promise on the revision of the 1903 Canal Treaty failed. On a wave of bombast, Panama sailed into an emergency meeting of the OAS Council, charging the U.S. with "unprovoked attack."

P:In CUBA, with British buses, Spanish machines and all manner of Dutch, Swedish and Japanese goods flowing in, the U.S. was faced with the inevitable collapse of its economic embargo--thanks to its allies.

In other spots, the U.S. was either assuming a peace-keeping role or maintaining a close watch on explosive situations. All involved the "newly emergent" nations:

P:MALAYSIA. Everybody was trying to make peace between the four-month-old Federation of Malaysia and President Sukarno's belligerent Indonesia. First, Attorney General Robert Kennedy arranged a cease-fire in the smoldering jungle war and set up a peace parley in Bangkok for this week. Then Cambodia's anti-American Prince Norodom Sihanouk ("Snookie" to some) criticized Bobby for "meddling," and tried to arrange a separate peace conference. The upshot was that nobody was quite sure who was meeting whom where.

P:CYPRUS. Britain asked the U.S. to send troops to its former island colony to keep Greeks and Turks from each other's throats. The U.S. proposed a peace-keeping force of 10,000 NATO troops, including some 1,200 G.I.s, but the Cypriote government said no.

P:AFRICA. On Zanzibar, a ragtag horde of nationalist and pro-Communist Africans overthrew the government, slaughtered hundreds of Arabs. In East Africa, soldiers of the Tanganyikan, Ugandan and Kenyan armies mutinied. In the Congo, a guerrilla band led by proCommunists seized part of Kwilu province. Across the volatile continent, the U.S. was watching uneasily for new outbursts.

Critical Decision. The spot the U.S. has been watching most closely, though, is South Viet Nam--and there was some question whether Washington has been seeing straight. Last September Defense Secretary McNamara returned from Saigon and said that the war was slowly being won. After November's coup, Washington took a fresh look, concluded that the war effort would surely have collapsed if the junta had not taken over.

Then early last week, McNamara told the House Armed Services Committee that the post-Diem junta was not doing too well, either. The Viet Cong "have made considerable progress since the coup," he said, and the U.S. has "no alternative other than to take all necessary measures within our capability to prevent a Communist victory." Later McNamara "clarified" his statement by explaining that what he had really tried to say was that "there has been a noticeable improvement" in the war. "I'm encouraged," he added, "by the progress of the last two weeks." Next day the coup took place.

Under His Hat. The effect of all these rebuffs and eruptions was to create the impression that Lyndon Johnson--who had rightly emphasized such domestic issues as civil rights and the tax cut in his first two months-- was in over his head when it came to foreign policy. The President's critics complained that he reacts, and not too sharply, only after he gets into trouble, and that he has not been paying enough attention to international problems.

Johnson is certainly paying enough attention. But he is also having trouble staying on top of problems in the way that John Kennedy did. The reason is that he carries his office around un der his Stetson, and he has not yet set up a White House staff adequate to the job. Lyndon brought no foreign policy advisers of his own to the White House, and the machinery that Kennedy set up has been allowed to rust. McGeorge Bundy, once Kennedy's closest adviser on national security, has become more of an organizer and message router than an idea man; last week, with things popping all over the world,

Bundy was off on vacation in Antigua. The President now often turns for guidance to Elder Statesman Dean Acheson and such old cronies as Washington Lawyers Abe Fortas and Clark Clifford. He also consults regularly with the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is comprised of a few top businessmen and several former Government officials.

Above all, Johnson seeks and gets advice from his old colleagues from Congress. Arriving in Washington the night that Kennedy was shot, he looked around and asked, "Where's Dick?"--meaning Georgia's Senator Richard Russell. Dick wasn't there that afternoon, but Johnson now chats with him almost daily, regularly discusses foreign policy with Senators William Fulbright and Hubert Humphrey.

Striking at the Roots. With the Republicans raising campaign funds at 21 Go-Day rallies, it was natural that some orators, considering the kind of week it was, should be critical of Johnson's handling of foreign policy. "We have been insulted, humiliated and held up to scorn!" cried two-time Presidential Candidate Thomas Dewey last week. "We ought to pull up our socks."

The advice, while sartorially sound, is unlikely to be much help to Lyndon Johnson in formulating foreign policy.

He has, indeed, much to learn. But the fact is that despite the seeming ineffectiveness and lack of initiative on the President's part, his scope for action is more limited than some of his critics are willing to admit. When he became President, the "depolarization of power," as the Kremlinologists call it, was already under way, and Moscow and Washington were no longer able to influence the behavior of their own allies to the extent that they had in the past. There are no better examples of this than Red China's rift with the Russians or France's yeasty diplomacy.

Despite the current spate of difficulties, the U.S. is not reaching for panic buttons. Nobody doubts U.S. primacy as a world power--though there is doubt whether that power is being used effectively. Nobody is really worried, either, that a big war is imminent, or even that a brush-fire war will grow out of last week's problems. But the problem still must be dealt with, as Lyndon Johnson sees only too well in grappling with his hot-spotted map. "We cannot treat each of these troubles as an isolated crisis in itself," he told a visitor last week, "but only as outbursts resulting from the prolonged tensions gripping the world for the last two decades. Until we have resolved the deeper causes of that tension, one trouble spot will follow another."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.