(See Cover)
All week the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had been listening to the Secretary of State and other top officials as they explained—and defended—the current state of U.S. policy abroad. Then Senator William Fulbright left room 5116 on the Capitol's first floor, with its marble fireplace and crystal chandelier, and headed for Miami, there to address a meeting of the National Association of Secondary School Principals. He talked about foreign affairs, but not much.
Mostly Bill Fulbright talked about education, about the pursuit of excellence, and about the improvement of American life. The trouble with foreign affairs, he said in effect, is that they have been interfering with these goals far too long. "The Cold War, it seems clear, has been an excuse as well as a genuine cause for the diversion of our energies from domestic well-being to external security," he told the teachers. "It has encroached upon our sovereignty; it has given the Communists the major voice in determining what proportion of our budget must be allocated to the military and what proportion therefore cannot be made available for domestic social and economic projects."
But in the long run, "the solution of our domestic problems has a vital bearing on the success of our foreign policies. Armaments are only one aspect of national security." It is time, suggested Fulbright, to turn to the "problems of slums and crime and poverty and inadequate education."
Mounting Concern. The implication was that since the Cold War is clearly less icy than it used to be, the U.S. might as well reap some domestic benefits. Not long before Fulbright made his Miami speech, he had assessed the world situation in moderately optimistic terms. "We Americans need patience, along with some other things like wisdom, but when you think back to 20 years after World War I and compare it to our situation 20 years after World War II, I'd say we are in a lot better shape today." As for President Johnson, "he has been very cautious, which I approve. He hasn't done anything wrong. He hasn't yet done much affirmative either, but it is quite in his favor that he hasn't done anything foolish."
Remarkably enough, Fulbright said these things at a moment of growing debate about U.S. foreign policy. Fulbright himself helped to start the debate ten months ago with a speech entitled "Old Myths and New Realities," in which he urged Americans to shake loose of some of the foreign-policy feelings and sentiments that had settled in their minds in the anxious years since World War II. At the heart of that debate right now is the suggestion that perhaps the U.S. has overextended itself, that it is trying to do too much, that its power is spread too thin across the world. The notion was recently advanced by Columnist Walter Lippmann, who deplored "scatteration" of U.S. resources and suggested that the U.S. concentrate on the "vital" areas of Europe and the Americas, and more or less ignore Asia and Africa. The notion that it may be in the U.S.'s "self-interest" to retrench crosses both party and ideological lines.