Unpack

Angry and fearful over President Kennedy's dallying in the Laotian crisis, a few SEATO members want Secretary of State Rusk to travel to Asian capitals and reassure them personally that the U.S. has their interests at heart. While it is true that the basic issue behind it--whether SEATO can work out a Laos policy all its members will accept--is pressing, their request for Rusk in person is unfortunate and smacks of a recent era in diplomacy when junketing was thought an adequate substitute for solid diplomatic achievement. It should not be heeded.

Kennedy is faced at the outset with a series of crises, and it is essential that he start off on the right diplomatic foot. Embassies, special emissaries, and channels of communication between governments exist, and there are sound reasons why they are preferable to personal diplomacy. It is not simply that Rusk is needed to coordinate policy in Washington, though that is also true. The question is whether Kennedy will be pressured into the kind of thinking that characterized and crippled the conduct of diplomacy under Eisenhower. Man-to-man talks gave leaders valuable knowledge of each other, but they bred foolish hopes and symbolic solutions to grave problems. The personal touch, the smile to the cheering crowds, the joint communique--all are hallmarks of a tradition which thinks reassuring people more important than facing reality.

Rusk can do in Washington exactly what he can do in Bangkok. And by staying home, he will not raise hopes and expectations that a speedy resolution to the SEATO division is possible. In the months to come, there will be other such crises and similar cries for him and Kennedy to bring salvation in a travelling kit. If the Kennedy administration really means to lay things on the line to the people, then it had better not start by re-introducing personal diplomacy.