Whose Arrogance?

THE ARROGANCE OF POWER by Senator J. William Fulbright. 264 pages. Random House. $4.95.

The war in Viet Nam presents some Americans with an unparalleled opportunity to indulge in a national habit: selfcriticism. In this expansion of three lectures delivered at Johns Hopkins, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright raises enough dire doubts about the American character to doom a dozen Romes.

"Power confuses itself with virtue," argues Fulbright. It "tends also to take itself for omnipotence." In its attempt to "spread the gospel of democracy," he suggests, the U.S. stands in danger of overextending itself. Central to America's messianic urge is "a national mythology, cultivated in Fourth of July speeches and slick publications, which holds that we are a revolutionary society, that ours was the 'true' revolution which ought to be an inspiration for every revolutionary movement in the world." Quite the contrary is true, maintains Fulbright. America is actually an "un-revolutionary society." It fails totally to show "empathy for the great revolutions of our time."

Angels or Murderers? Repeating his familiar line, Fulbright warns that Washington is alienating most of the world with its "international policeman" tactics. At the same time, he says, the U.S. is thwarting the very nationalism that American policy has traditionally supported. The U.S. should by and large forget about fighting Communism, he urges, and concentrate on backing nationalism; when Communism captures a nationalist movement, the U.S. ought to accept that.

Viet Nam brings out the most apocalyptic of Fulbright's denunciations. "We see the Viet Cong, who cut the throats of village chiefs, as savage murderers," he says, but we see "American flyers who incinerate unseen women and children with napalm as valiant fighters for freedom." Such oversimplified formulations do little to make Fulbright's thesis credible. What distinguishes Viet Nam from every earlier American war is remarkable restraint and the very lack of jingoism that provides Fulbright with an audience.

Stridency or Magnanimity? Indeed, it is oversimplification that destroys this elegantly written and highly provocative book. There are plenty of real faults in U.S. policy to attack, but Fulbright spends more of his time attacking a gross caricature of U.S. policy. Americans, he charges, consider themselves "God's avenging angels" in the fight against Communism--but who really feels this way? Fulbright argues convincingly that Communism is no longer entirely evil--but that is a fact most Americans grasped nearly a decade ago. He glooms on and on about the high moral and material cost of the Southeast Asian war, yet fails to point out the considerable gains the American stand has already helped to produce: a realigned Indonesia, a bolder Burma, a convulsion within China itself.

Least convincing is Fulbright's proposed solution to Viet Nam. Arguing that "the true mark of greatness is not stridency but magnanimity," Fulbright would have the U.S. follow an eight-point program--including unilateral cessation of bombing and an advance guarantee of Viet Cong participation in the Saigon government--aimed at neutralizing all of Southeast Asia. Such magnanimity might indeed be a cure for American arrogance, but it might also cure any of the region's slender hopes for independence and democracy.

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