Manana Policy?

The U.S. was on the hot seat. Ever since Spruille Braden, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American affairs, talked tough as U.S. Ambassador in Buenos Aires last summer, U.S. hemispheric policy had been aimed at the overthrow of Argentina's Strong Man Juan Peron. Last week Washington policy-makers knew where that policy had got them: 1) Argentines, in free elections, apparently had chosen Juan Peron their President; 2) the U.S. would have to try a new tack.

The U.S. had gambled heavily on popular opposition to Peron's police regime. Then, in the midst of the presidential campaign, the State Department gambled again, issued a Blue Book of documents to prove that Peron had secretly played along with the Nazis in World War II. Peron won both those plays.

Last month the U.S. had said again that it would sign no military treaty with a Peron-bossed Argentina. Now, after reading the election returns, the other American republics (19) were loath to sacrifice hemispheric unity (and Peron's favor) and sign any sort of treaty without the Argentines.

U.S. policy-makers had another angle to consider: Russia. Peron barely led in the election returns when Buenos Aires' keen-nosed Communists joined Peronist unions in a paralyzing strike against packing plants, most of them U.S.-and British-owned. A Russian trade delegation was on its way to Buenos Aires. The next wind to sweep north might bring with it news of the first Russian ambassador in B.A. since the Bolshevik revolution.

Bridges to Tomorrow. Faced with such perplexities, the State Department stalled while seeking a new formula for hemispheric action. Its Good Neighbors sought just as feverishly for a way out of the U.S.-Argentine conflict, for un puente de plata--a bridge of silver--that might bind the Americas together and save their 56-year-old Pan American system.

Last week a somewhat shaky bridge had been found: the Pan American Union began to poll its members on postponement of the Rio conference. Onto the bridge stepped Secretary of State Jimmy Byrnes: postponement would be agreeable to the U.S. if other nations wanted it. Then the Colombians, who will entertain all 21 republics at a regular Pan American conference at Bogota next December, obligingly suggested that the whole business of a military treaty be put off till then.

To the State Department, which had been careful to say that it refused only to sign a military agreement with Peron, all this had a pleasant sound. It would give the U.S. time to find a way out. Meanwhile U.S. policy would fit the traditional Latin pattern of manana.

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