ustxtxb_obs_1967_04_28_50_00013-00000_000.pdf

Lubbock Texas Tech College in Lubbock invited a leading exponent of the Kennedy peacein-Vietnam viewpoint to speak as one of its public affairs lecturers earlier this month. John Kenneth Galbraith spoke to some 800 students, with a sprinkling of faculty members and townspeople, in the Municipal Auditorium, which is on campus. He titled his talk “A Modern Foreign Policy.” The crowd was large, considering the Saturday evening timing and the traditionally hawkish mentality of the High Plains area; and remarkably staid and well-mannered for a large gathering of draft-age college kids. Many came in couples and dressed as on a date. Apparently the belligerent element stayed at home in droves those who had not already volunteered for action in Vietnam. After the hour-and-a-half lecture, a “coffee” reception was held in honor of the distinguished new president of the author, lecturer, and one-time U.S. ambassador to India. At the student union, more than 80 people crowded into a small meeting room, filling folding chairs, lining the walls, and looking in from the hall. One Negro was present, evidently a student. There are few Negroes in far West Texas, practically none at Tech. The reception was warm and cordial, being question-and-answer format with anecdotes thrown in, which provoked much easy laughter. Both the lecture and the reception were free and open to the public, a fact which struck this Dallasite dumb with disbelief. Nobody even passed the hat for some cause or other. In Dallas or Houston such a speaker would have brought at least $3.50 a plate for chicken and frozen peas, and there would have been a fuss from right-wing hecklers. The message that this member of the Kennedy brain trust brought to the Lubbock outpost of civilization was that “the world renders obsolete even the most cherished of our ideas.” He reviewed in some detail what he termed the “three generations” of our foreign policy in the 211/2-year interim since World War the alliance with the USSR and China during and immediately following World our presently emerging policy of coexistence, at least in Europe. It’s time, Galbraith believes, to discard our cherished Cold War concept. “We have,” he said, “a policy that accepts the changed set of circumstances, and another policy that does not accept the change.” The term “Iron Curtain” has, to some extent, lost its relevance, Galbraith believes. Trade is opening up between East Germany and Western Europe; travel to Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, etc., is common today. Our large ground force in Western Europe is an anachronism, he indicated. We should reduce our troop strength in Western Europe. We are not needed there now as we were. DeGaulle is right; he does not require American troops. NATO is not as urgently needed as before. “The Marshall Plan and foreign aid program succeeded beyond our fondest hopes, in getting Europe rebuilt and back on its feet,” Galbraith said. “Meanwhile, the communist bureaucracy committed every sort of blunder in the mismanagement of the various economies and industries.” Thus the threat of war,. in Europe, has been materially reduced. We can look for reduction in our commitments in Western Europe, Galbraith said. “The process of revision has run considerably ahead of our language. In fact, a vigorous reassertion of our position is often a harbinger of imminent change, or it’ indicates that changes have already taken place.” T URNING TO ,ASIA, Galbraith said that our policies there have not kept us abreast of the developing situation. So our Cold War thinking got us into a shooting war in an area which” is not strategically important to us, not important even to Australia. “The Australian mobilization is something less than total,” Galbraith said. The domino theory of one country falling, and another, and another, is for people whose knowledge of foreign affairs has no depth, he believes. The “monolithic conspiracy” has been split asunder, with China’s dramatic break from Moscow domination. The China threat has diminished further as the Maoists and anti-Maoists struggle for control. Who can say, he asked, that the Viet Cong is an instrument of Moscow, a probe of the communist conspiracy into Southeast Asia, when no one can say definitely whether Ho Chi Minh is a tool of: for us may not be conflict, but patience, Galbraith suggested. “The Saigon government’s control extends out to the far side of the airport. Southeast Asia has never had strong centralized government as we know it. Rather, there is a village culture. The Viet Cong has ruled over South Vietnam for a decade. Why sacrifice a large number of American lives to change this?” he asked. “The air attacks are not effective in halting the military build-up. I suspect there is a renewed determination to fight back when we bomb North Vietnam cities and ports. We cannot expect negotiations for peace so long as we continue the air attacks,” Galbraith asserted. STUDENTS challenged Galbraith’s statement that the Chinese revolution or the Viet Cong are indigenous phenomena. Questions evoked a discussion of the speaker’s service in India, in which he was faced with the border skirmishes when China invaded India’s Himalayan frontier. Galbraith also mentioned the “awesome problems of population growth and food for India.” Of special interest to the Panhandle area was the fact he cited that “a fourth of our wheat crop now goes to India. Within ten years that figure may well be half of our crop,” he predicted. Much of the wheat in North Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas is already lost this year, due to lack of rain. There is much concern in the wheat belt, and lots of people are hurt financially. But nobody here will starve. “We find President Johnson pressing the USSR for more food shipments to India,” Galbraith said, “another manifestation of our changing foreign policy. . . . I used to use the polite euphemisms of ‘family planning’ and ‘population control.’ Now I advocate a crash program to educate the world’s masses of people about birth control,” Galbraith told his young audience. ROBERT N. JONES, 3002 Dutton, Dallas, Texas 75211. “Mr. Jones is a petroleum engineer in Dallas and a native of Big Spring. April 28, 1967 13 A COMMUNICATION Galbraith on the High Plains Texas AFL-CIO recommends EDWARD P. MORGAN and the news Coast to Coast on ABC Monday thru Friday Austin KVET 10:30 p.m. Big Spring KBST 6:40 p.m. Bryan KORA 6:00 p.m. Dallas-Ft. 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