The Good Neighbor

I

Four thousand troops were sent into the midst of a pro-Bosch revolution in the Dominican Republic "to protect American lives" Friday.

There were two soldiers to protect every U.S. civilian.

The troops did not evacuate the civilians and withdraw. They were told to "re-establish order."

Re-establishing order meant delivering control of the island republic to a right-wing junta headed by General Wessin y Wessin.

Sunday Johnson admitted to what had clearly been the purpose of intervention from the beginning: to halt a Communist take-over. With great reluctance, with deep sadness, after long and prayerful consideration, the United States destroyed a fifty-year-old tradition of increasing respect for the independence of its Latin American neighbors.

The U.S. poured thousands upon thousands of airborne units and Marines into a country where revolution had broken out against a military dictatorship and in favor of restoring the constitutional non-Communist government of Juan Bosch. After four days of hesitation, the U.S. deliberately sided with a group of generals who had distinguished themselves by their virulent insistence that the whole revolution was Communist-inspired.

II

The Administration should not have sent troops, for both moral and strategic reasons. The moral reason is that no nation should intervene thus in the internal affairs of another. Specifically, the United States--which some of us still like to think of as a liberal power--should not intervene in a revolution which seeks to replace dictatorship with a constitutionally-elected president whom the U.S. once enthusiastically supported.

The long-range strategic reason (for those who deny the importance of morality in politics) is more compelling. The U.S. can intervene two or three times in the small republics and succeed. But the real stake is the allegiance of the giants of Latin America--Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, and Chile. Intervention is simply not worth the animosity that accrues to the U.S. in the great republics, where no sane President would dare try the same thing.

The short-range strategic reasons are confused, yet none of them point to doing what Johnson did. He was informed by CIA reports that 58 influential revolutionaries were Communists. He knew that several moderate leaders had become discouraged with the growing strength of the Communists, and had abandoned the effort to restore Bosch.

But 58 Communist lieutenants do not necessarily determine the fate of an uprising comprising tens of thousands of non-Communist Bosch supporters. Kennedy's experience with CIA reports before the Bay of Pigs should have suggested to Johnson that the CIA is occasionally inaccurate. Judging from New York Times reports, there was a good chance that the non-Communist pro-Bosch forces would have been able to win. Yet Johnson was in no mood to wager on the Dominican Republic becoming another Cuba. That is why he intervened.

Even if one accepts the decision to intervene, wise short-range strategy still did not dictate Johnson's course. At the beginning of the revolt, the Communists were clearly distinguishable from the pro-Bosch rebels. The State Department itself admitted this when it announced that, because of the discouragement of Bosch supporters with the strength of the Communists, the U.S. had decided to intervene. But intervene in favor of whom? For the Bosch supporters who wanted constitutional reform but hated the Communists enough to denounce their progress to the U.S.? Or for Wessin y Wessin whom even the "purest" of Bosch's supporters detested?

The decision was for Wessin y Wessin because, according to the New York Times, Administration officials "mistrusted Bosch's judgment on the ground that he was 'color blind' toward 'reds' in his seven months in office in 1963." The U.S. government seems incapable of understanding that social reform, not Communism, is the central concern of Latin Americans.

Ironically, Uncle Sam's intervention in favor of the right-wing military may do more for the Communists than he could have done by sitting on his thumbs. Dominicans remember that the last time the gunboats came to their island, Trujillo emerged from the ensuing struggle. His dictatorship lasted 32 years. Many Dominican democrats fear a return to U.S. supported Trujilloism in the person of Wessin y Wessin. They are being forced to make common cause with the Communists in the fight for non-military government.

Even if the United States manages, by means of the 14,000 man force it is building up, to shoulder the army junta into power, the Communists will be playing from an understandably stronger position at the polls or in the next (and practically inevitable) revolution. Next time there may be no Bosch standing between the junta and the Communists.

III

Given what has happened--and it is clear that a substantial number of people in the United States are not happy to take what Mr. Johnson has given--the President should take the following steps.

* He should place the entire U.S. military contingent under the authority of the OAS, to lend some credibility to the fiction that the troops are there as an impartial peace-keeping force.

* Originally, the U.S. had the option of evacuating American citizens with a few hundred soldiers and then withdrawing. What Johnson has done already precludes this possibility, since the presence of U.S. soldiers firing on the revolutionaries has given the leadership of the revolution to the Communists. Withdrawing now would give them the entire republic, something neither the OAS nor the U.S. desires. Now Johnson should urge the OAS to use the leverage of this military force to create a provisional government under Juan Bosch, until OAS-supervised elections such as those of 1963 can be held.

* Mr. Johnson should make a strong speech at an appropriate forum reaffirming the Kennedy doctrine of strong support for constitutional social-democratic governments in Latin America.

In his address to the nation on the Dominican Republic Sunday night, President Johnson evoked the imagery of peace and freedom that had served him when the bombing in Vietnam began. "We had no desire to interfere in the affairs of a sister republic," he said. "But by Wednesday night, the man who is your President had no choice." This is manifestly untrue, and Mr. Johnson's rhetoric hurts because Americans depend on their President's being frank with them. He did have a choice.