The Impotence of Power

The seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo in international waters came as an abrupt object lesson to Americans that the world's greatest power can be roundly and resoundingly put down by the most minuscule of foes. The Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961 was a portent, but it was a local and limited embarrassment that was soon forgotten. North Viet Nam has also proved the efficacy of persistent, small-scale Communist effort. Yet no other Communist state, big or small, has succeeded so well in provoking and frustrating the U.S. as North Korea did last week by hijacking Pueblo.

From that quick, cunning act came the threat of a second war front in Asia--one which the U.S., hard pressed in Viet Nam, can scarcely afford. Apart from fueling anti-American polemics from Paris to Pyongyang, the incident raised grave questions in the West about the Johnson Administration's ability to prevent or respond effectively to Communist military initiatives in Southeast Asia or beyond.

At home, the plight of Pueblo's crew was eloquently conveyed by a photo from North Korea of the ship's officers and crew parading with their hands up. Washington's impotence in a week-long waffling effort to obtain their release helped prompt a predictably irascible response from press, public and Congress. "A dastardly act of piracy!" cried Massachusetts Congressman William Bates, senior Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. Utah's Republican Senator Wallace Bennett urged the U.S. to send "an armada steaming into Wonsan harbor, throw a tow rope around the Pueblo and get her out of there."

Even some dissenters from Johnson's Viet Nam policies urged quick retaliation against the North Korean regime. Idaho's dovish Democratic Senator Frank Church called the seizure "an act of war," adding: "The ship must be returned at once, with all Americans aboard. Our national honor is at stake."

Said Kentucky's Republican Senator Thruston Morton: "We ought to pursue every possible diplomatic action to get it back, and if that doesn't work we'll have to go in there."

"Tactical Blunder." Others, recalling the clumsy initial cover-ups attempted during the U-2 and Bay of Pigs disasters, were more circumspect. Presidential Candidate Richard Nixon called the whole affair a "tactical blunder" by the U.S. South Dakota's Senator Karl Mundt, long a G.O.P. supporter of the President's Viet Nam policy, demanded to know why the Administration risked provocative patrols "when you already have more war on your hands than you can handle." Warned Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield: "We ought to keep our shirts on and not go off half-cocked until we know more."

Despite persuasive evidence that Pueblo had not ventured over the twelve-mile limit claimed by North Korea as its territorial waters, Pyongyang insisted that the ship had "intruded into the territorial waters of the Republic and was carrying out hostile activities."

The evidence did not satisfy everyone. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman William Fulbright said that he wanted more information on just what had happened, and added: "I'll find out eventually--in two or three or four years. We're just now finding out what took place in the Gulf of Tonkin." Fulbright's rueful reference was to the exhaustive study his committee is making into the 1964 attacks on

U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese PT boats and the Senate's subsequent resolution granting President Johnson broad authority to counter aggression in Southeast Asia. The committee was to have decided last week whether to pursue the investigation farther, but in the light of the Pueblo incident, it prudently deferred a vote.

Hardening Line. In the Pueblo affair, despite a general willingness to give diplomacy a chance to work, pressure mounted swiftly for a retaliatory strike. The Navy, some said, wanted to bomb the Wonsan MIG base. South Korean Premier Chung II Kwon urged a massive response, warning that "a lukewarm U.S. response would encourage the Communists to engage in another Korean War." But President Johnson was cautious, in part because his critics have accused him so often of overreacting during crises, notably--if unfairly --in the case of the Dominican Republic. His carefully measured response was also determined by the war in Viet Nam. What may become the biggest engagement of that conflict to date is shaping up in the hill country of the DMZ around Khe Sanh, and Johnson is reluctant to take any new military initiative that might divert men and materiel from that looming battle.

One of the President's first moves was to ask Moscow to put pressure on Pyongyang for the release of both the ship and her 83-man crew. Shrewdly, he did not use "the hot line" that proved so useful during the Israeli-Arab war last June. The Russians, who have only recently weaned North Korea from Peking's camp and at least part way into their own, are reluctant to do anything that might disturb that delicate relationship. Moreover, Moscow has endured severe criticism from Asia's Communist parties for its lack of militancy in combatting the U.S. presence there, and seems to be hardening its line in the entire area.

Steamy Valve. As a result, when U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Llewellyn Thompson called on Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov to request Moscow's intervention, he was almost rudely brushed off. A second visit, this time with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, yielded an equally frosty response. Elsewhere in Communist Europe, U.S. Ambassador John Gronouski reported from Warsaw that he was discussing the matter with the Polish government.

White House aides frankly admitted that outside efforts to work with the North Koreans did "not have satisfactory results," and Johnson began exploring other channels with his crisis-oriented "Planning Committee." One course led swiftly to the perennial "pressure valve" of the United Nations, but few officials expected it to produce much more than steamy, timesaving debate.

With his famous other hand, Johnson signaled that the U.S. was not going to accept the North Korean action meekly. Accordingly, he called up 14,787 Air Force and Navy Reservists, mobilized 372 inactive aircraft, hinted that some ground troops might follow, and thus released hundreds of operational war planes for service in Japan and South Korea. Ironically, the Korean crisis thus gave Johnson an unsought dividend by enabling him to activate reserve units--a move he had seriously contemplated to alleviate serious shortages in Viet Nam but had rejected as too risky politically.

Act of War. Johnson's mobilization order, as every U.S. call-up has invariably done, proved of immense concern to the Russians. Almost immediately, Tass was on the air denouncing it as "a threatening act." More significantly, the move was greeted with some concern by Kosygin and his entourage, who were in New Delhi for the 18th anniversary of India's independence. In the wake of the U.S. call-up, Kosygin let it be known that the Kremlin's top leadership is more interested in a settlement than its underlings had let on. Kosygin's aides even hinted that perhaps the best way off the hook would be for the U.S. to pay a fat fine for its supposed violation of North Korean waters--as Russian trawlers had to do after being nabbed within U.S. territorial limits off Alaska last March.

The Kremlin has yet to encourage any diplomatic cooperation between the Big Two on the Pueblo affair, and just how much can be achieved without it is questionable. In any event, U.S. officials are determined to square accounts. Describing the hijacking as "an act of war," Secretary of State Dean Rusk declared grimly: "My strong advice to North Korea is to cool it. There have been enough of these incidents."

Risky Options. If Pyongyang decides not to cool it, however, the options open to the U.S. all involve serious risks. One is to storm Yonghung Bay and either retrieve Pueblo from Wonsan or destroy it--though a commando-style raid of the sort might involve heavy casualties. Seizing a North Korean ship or two would hardly be worth the effort inasmuch as the biggest, most attractive vessels Pyongyang has afloat are two 500-ton Russian-built mine sweepers. A blockade of Wonsan would mean cutting the Soviet submarine fleet off from one of its principal Far Eastern ports. Nabbing a Soviet trawler would be punishing the wrong party--though not necessarily an entirely innocent one.

Whatever the decision, it is unlikely to be a violent one until all diplomatic channels have been thoroughly explored. "We are not going to shoot from the hip." Lyndon Johnson firmly warned his advisers last week. The President wants to avoid at all events any clash that might debilitate the nation's military strength and imperil his own political stance as a man of restraint. Yet as his critics are bound to point out, the all-encompassing eye that Johnson trains on domestic affairs should have been applied as closely to military and intelligence procedures before the Pueblo embarrassment. Though --after the event--the President took great care not to get into something he cannot finish, the nation has nonetheless been confronted with an impasse from which it can expect no cheap or graceful exit.

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