On the Brink of Disaster

              ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER


Mr. MANSFIELD. Mr. President, in 
accordance with the unanimous-consent
agreement previously entered into, I 
believe this is an appropriate time for the 
clerk to read the speech prepared for 
delivery today by the distinguished Senator
from Arkansas  [Mr. FULBRIGHT].
The PRESIDING  OFFICER. The 
clerk will read the speech prepared by
the Senator from Arkansas.
The legislative clerk read Mr. 
Fulbright's speech, as follows:
Mr. President, at this moment no one 
knows whether the United States 
military forces in Lebanon will be plunged
deeper into the Middle East or whether 
an opportunity will arise in the near 
future to withdraw them. Certainly, 
it is the expressed hope of the 
executive branch, and I am sure the unspoken 
hope of most Americans, that these 
forces will be able to leave the area 
promptly. While they are still there, 
they deserve our support. The decision 
which put them into the Middle East 
was not theirs to make, though they 
will bear the brunt of any drastic 
consequences which may stem from it.
The safety of the men in the Middle 
East is our primary concern at the 
moment; but if we limit our concern 
to considerations of the moment, we 
will not really solve anything.  We must 
look at the basic causes of our troops 
being in Lebanon. When we do that, 
we find that our present trouble in the 
Middle East is merely symptomatic of 
a much more serious malady.
The truth is. Mr. President, that our 
foreign policy is inadequate, outmoded, 
and misdirected. It is based in part on 
A false conception of our real, long-term 
national interests and in part on an 
erroneous appraisal of the state of the 
world in which we live. Worse, it 
reflects a dangerous apathy and a quite 
incomprehensible unwillingness to look 
facts in the face.
We should put off no longer a complete 
reconsideration and reorientation 
of our foreign policy. We have already 
waited far too long.
Time and again we have put things 
off. Time and again we have drifted 
until circumstances reached an 
intolerable state, and then we have rushed to 
the brink. This time we have even put 
one foot over the brink. There we 
dangle, waiting and wondering what 
will come next. We are now looking 
squarely into the abyss of war, a war 
which we do not seek and which can 
only have the most catastrophic 
consequences for ell humanity.
But the issue of peace or war is only 
one of our problems. Equally 
troublesome—and a good deal more 
complicated—are the questions of what our 
long-term position in the world is going 
to be and of what specific kind of world 
we think would best serve our long-term 
interests. It is no answer to say we want 
to live at peace in a free, peaceful, and 
secure world, That is a hope which we 
all share, but it is only a hope: it is not a 
policy.
My fear, Mr. President, is that, if we 
continue as we have been and are, we
will lose so much ground diplomatically, 
politically, and economically that the 
question of a shooting war will really 
become irrelevant.
Before our remaining toeholds pro, it is 
time that we stop to look at where we 
are. Even more important, it is time to 
ask ourselves how we have gotten into 
this predicament. Only the blindest of 
optimism would interpret our international 
position as a secure one. The fact 
is that we are in trouble, very deep 
trouble, regardless of what happens next 
in the Middle East. The exposed position 
we now occupy in that area is only one
reflection of that trouble.
A year ago we had another reflection 
of it, when the Soviet Union launched the 
first of the sputniks. That event told us 
what many already knew, but what this 
Government chose to ignore. It told us 
that there had grown up elsewhere in 
the world a capacity for scientific, intellectual, 
and technical achievements, 
which if it had not already done so 
would soon surpass our own. This had
happened in a country and under a system 
which was hostile to our own and to 
the freedom which we cherish. It upset 
the basic assumption upon which our 
defense had rested since World War II, 
the assumption of our ability to maintain 
a substantial scientific and technical 
supremacy in this country. The launching
of the first sputnik shocked us, Mr. 
President, into a momentary confrontation 
with reality. Some of us recognized 
that for years this Nation had wallowed 
in a kind of fool's paradise in jolly and 
supercilious complacency while 
elsewhere others of more serious bent of 
mind had worked. There was a realization 
that we had seriously neglected 
education. There was a realization that 
others had labored while we had loafed. 
The reformation was momentary. The 
smug and apathetic tendencies of our 
leadership soon spread to the rest of the 
Nation. On the one hand, there was a 
disposition to live with the fact that our 
scientific leadership was either gone or 
going fast: on the other hand, there was 
the delusion that perhaps the sputnik 
was not very important—a bauble. I 
believe somebody called it. After all, we 
still had the Strategic Air Command and 
intercontinental missiles and perhaps 
even a shot at the moon on the way. So 
we went back to business as usual and 
pleasure as usual.
Then a few weeks ago. events occurred 
in Latin America to remind us of the 
precariousness of our position in the world. 
There, in an area with which we had 
once enjoyed a most cordial, friendly, and 
intimate association: in this area 
regarded as safe, above all others, a 
symbolic explosion occurred, no less 
startling in its impact on the Nation than 
the first sputnik. A few years back, a 
former Vice President had been greeted 
with almost hysterical approval in Latin 
America. The present- Vice President 
was spat upon and stoned. This, too, 
was a measure of how far we had fallen. 
This. too. gave us cause to think. What 
had we done? After all. this outburst of
resentment and fury was directed at 
something besides Mr. Nixon as a person. 
Once again, for a brief time, we