The War: The Power Akin to Freedom

More than any other great nation in history, the U.S. has remained deeply mistrustful of its might and reluctant to invoke it. For most Americans, Manifest Destiny died when the 20th cen- tury was born, and two world wars have only thrust it deeper in its grave. Nonetheless, the junior Senator from Arkansas last week professed to see the U.S. commitment to Viet Nam as a portent of the overweening conviction of righteousness that has typified most major powers in decline.

"The question that I find intriguing," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright,"is whether a nation so extraordinarily endowed as the U.S. can overcome that arrogance of power which has afflicted, weakened, and in some cases destroyed great nations in the past." To Fulbright, who in a recent interview made the extraordinary assertion that in Viet Nam the U.S. is waging war "against a little country" that is "obviously at our mercy," the answer was a foregone conclusion. "Gradually but unmistakably," he pronounced in the first of three lectures at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies, "we are succumbing to the arrogance of power."

Secular to Sublime. During a three-hour Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the Administration's $3.4 billion foreign-aid bill, Fulbright asked Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara: "Isn't it a fact that when countries become very strong, they tend to become arrogant and to use that power in ways which have often resulted in war?" McNamara, whose responses were as precise as a punch card (see following story), answered: "Some have and some have not." "Could you give a very good example of some who have not?" persisted Fulbright. Replied McNamara: "I hope we are an exception, Mr. Chairman."

Turning hastily from the secular to the sublime, Fulbright declared: "Every country has believed that God was on their side when they waged a war." Smiling faintly, the Defense Secretary observed: "I don't think we have brought God into our current military operations."

Fulbright's certitude riled at least one fellow committee member. "We are not a military people," protested Wyoming Democrat Gale McGee, an Administration loyalist on Viet Nam. "I just cannot quite buy the allegation that we have heard here that great military power induces arrogance and self-righteousness. I resent that as an American."

Pavlovicm Cries. Fulbright's intimations of American "arrogance" are based in part on the dog-eared premise that the U.S. would like to remake the world in its image. Indeed, Tennessee Democrat Albert Gore actually asked McNamara whether Washington aimed to establish "an American-type state" in South Viet Nam. "It is our goal," replied McNamara coolly, "to allow those people to choose the form of political institutions under which they prefer to live. I suppose you could conceive of them choosing some form other than a democratic form. If they did, we would adhere to that choice."