Ike's Hike

Last Thursday morning, in his hospital room President Johnson asked former President Eisenhower to make a goodwill tour of Asia next spring. If the General makes the tour, he will probably express his support of the Administration's Vietnam policy with the desired effect of convincing friend and foe alike that the American people--Republicans and Democrats--are solidly behind the President. In the President's mind, this move should make it abundantly clear to both Hanoi and our Asian allies that the defeat of many Democrats in the mid-term elections does not bely any widespread popular disaffection with the Johnson Asian policy; and more important, that American resolve to persist in Vietnam has not been dampened.

While the success of Eisenhower's visit may once again demonstrate Johnson's political opportunism, it will contribute nothing to the achievement of a negotiated peace in Vietnam. The present Administration policy is not aimed in that direction, and its constant reiteration by the titular leader of the opposing party will do nothing to help change it. Instead, the use of Eisenhower as a vehicle for Johnson's policy will undercut any Republican in the next two years who proposes a Vietnam policy more oriented toward negotiations than the Administration's. And should any Republican attempt to run against the President in 1968 on a peace platform, Johnson will undoubtedly attack him by quoting Eisenhower.

Furthermore, the President has not convinced those nations that attended the Manila conference -- and the General is supposed to visit them --that the United States does not seek a purely military solution. Regrettably, Eisenhower has gone on record in favor of "whatever is necessary" to "win" the war. His mission to the Far East will do nothing to change the unfortunate impression of most Asians that America wants only to defeat Communists.

To most Asians, Eisenhower is an anachronism, a relic of the 1950s when the key words of U.S. foreign policy were "alliances of containment" and "massive retaliation." In fact, Eisenhower is widely disliked in Japan, Laos, and Cambodia, the non-Communist nations of Asia whose sympathy will be necessary for peace in Vietnam.

The President has shown his duplicity by trying to make his policy seem bipartisan. This tactic of obtaining the cooperation of the opposition should not be used as a political trick. Rather bipartisanship, in its noble sense, aims to bring a viable policy from conception into reality.

America's Vietnam policy has been off the drawing boards since early 1965. This latest attempt to make it politically secure only serves once again to expose its weaknesses.