When to Intervene

Critics of U.S. actions in the Dominican Republic, notably Arkansas' Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, charge that the U.S. has destroyed the concept of nonintervention and has set a perilous precedent for acting against any Latin American movement into which Communists have insinuated themselves. Last week Under Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann, chief architect of hemisphere policy, set the record straight.

"Nonintervention is a keystone of the structure of the inter-American system," Mann told the Inter-American Press Association in San Diego, Calif.

Nevertheless, the question remains as to what the U.S., or the inter-American system as a whole, should do about intervention from the outside: "When, in other words, a Communist state has intervened in the internal affairs of an American state by training, directing, financing and organizing indigenous Communist elements to take control by force and violence. Are Communist states free to intervene while demo cratic states are powerless to frustrate that intervention?"

To frustrate such intervention, the U.S. had to move militarily into the Dominican civil war. The U.S., said Mann, supported neither the so-called "reactionary" right nor the "constitutionalist" left, but worked for a cease-fire and a long-range solution. Would the U.S. do it again? Of course, suggested Mann. At the same time, it is ridiculous to assume that the U.S. will send in the marines any time, any place someone cries Communists. "A number of Latin American governments have been able to stand up against subversive elements. But it is equally true that other states are vulnerable simply because they have not yet been able to modernize their societies and to acquire the maturity, broad support, the disciplines and traditions which are elements of national unity."

It is precisely these weaker nations that may sometimes need more help than Alianza aid or other good works to thwart Communist aggression. "In my experience," concluded Mann, "the men who have contributed most to the social, economic and political reform in this hemisphere are men who have understood that the Communist danger is not met by good works alone."