The "Case for Realism"

Administration critics charge that the Government's Asian policy casts the U.S. in the role of policeman to the world. This objection was seldom voiced during the height of the cold war, since these critics tend to believe that Europe is a legitimate sphere of influence for America. Last week, as he signed a bill authorizing U.S. participation in the $1 billion Asian Development Bank, the President rebutted the Europe-first approach as an "argument of isolationism." Said Johnson: "Asia must no longer sit at the second table of the 20th century's concern.

"It is not possible and it is not right," he" declared, "to neglect a people's hopes because the ocean is vast, or their culture is alien, or their language may be strange, or their race different, or their skin another color. The economic net work of this shrinking globe is too intertwined, the political order of continents is too involved with one another, the threat of common disaster is too real for all human beings to say of Asia-or any other continent-'Yours is another sphere.' "

Johnson defended the right of his critics to speak their mind, even conceded their honesty and loyalty. For their part, he suggested that they should acknowledge his own "right and duty" to make the "case for realism." That case, he explained, means "simply that there is no rest from the trials of free dom, there is no recalling what the pace of change has done to the map of this big world, there is no reducing our responsibilities while the challenges of progress will not permit us to name the site for our duel or the weapons that we use."

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