WILSON AND WASHINGTON by Tom Nairn.
The present strategic aims of President Johnson and the American government are well known. America requires a far more successful and coherent policy towards the Third World: from Chile to Leopoldville, from Stanleyville to Saigon, her interests - the interests of American capitalism and of the Free “World as a whole - are obviously threatened by emergent nationalism and popular revolution, with or without help from the communist nowers. But at the same time as this problem has grown more acute - giving rise to Goldwaterism in its train - another problem has appeared in its turn, and has in effect made doubly difficult any effort to solve the first. This second threat cones from within the capitalist world itself.
Once, the American world contained only the relics of the older imperialisms, struggling for survival. Now, after the econouic renaissance of Hurope and the establishment of the Coimion Market, these relics have assumed a new aspect. Once they were a subordinate exploitation of Africa and Asia, tolerated by America within the broad cloak of her general hegemony and swiftly disciplined if they transgressed certain lisits (as at Suez). Now, in the light of General De Gaulle's ambitions, they have become notential elements in a European challenze to that hegemony. Gaullism may have many archaic and pathetic sides. But these are secondary, seen from Washington, What counts is its character as a genuine challenge to the American dominion, as an alternative strategy other European powers might be tempted to embrace, And once the Free World is divided at its heart, how can America be sure of any ambition, how can she concert any effective strategy towards the Third World ? De Gaulle's picturesque peregrinations in South America, his attempts to foster French interests in the Congo, his vlans for Vietnam: for Washington, these are in themselves only minor irritants, but foreshadow a major storm, a possible fissure within capitalism as grave as the Sino-Soviet split within the socialist camp,
This menace is aggravated by the trend towards better relatiohs between the USA and the USSR. Each stepv towards dis ensiion between the giants slackens the cohesion in their respective alliances, by appearing to make them less important and indispensible. And although the American government desires an entente with Moscow, it is not prepared to pay for it with the disintegration of its own forces - that is, with a radical weakening of its own position which would (or so it thinks) in any case undermine any agreement arrived at with the Russians. Peace must cone from strength,
The only answer to this danger, for President Johnson, lies in a determined attempt to arrest it at its source, inside the Atlantic Alliance itself, America must tie her allies to her more firmly and irrevocably. She mest neutralize in advance all serious efforts at independence, and - obviously = concede something to the new European aspirations, as an integral part of such a re-inforcenent of her dominion, Hence the urgency with which Washington presses for the formation of that improbable modern Hydra, the Multi-Lateral vrorce, The Honest Broker.
Hence also, the haste with which the British Prime Minister has taken himself to Washington so soon after his election. What does he