Pantechnicon; BBC's America: From Plymouth Rock To Vietnam

Good evening and welcome to the night you know this is. An entertainment the arts and ideas. Tonight we present the fourth in the four part series The BBC video takes a bicentennial look at America. The series is compiled and presented by Michael Sumner. Tonight's program from Plymouth Rock to Vietnam. It was in the 1940s and 50s that a new term became fashionable in the language of international politics. The term superpower the superpower was in those days were taken to be Britain France the United States the Soviet Union and perhaps China. In other words those nations which emerged victorious from the Second World War superpowers by virtue of their military strength. Today there are but three the United States the Soviet Union and China each in a sense counter balancing the other. Each has enormous manpower natural resources sophisticated weapons for offense and defense. And the ultimate test the capacity to wage nuclear war. These are the facts of life you know of 20th century.

It is of course to the United States that the democratic countries look in the final analysis for the defense of their way of life. The United States now is celebrating its bicentenary as an independent nation. Its 200 years of growth from the tiny British colony to the military and economic colossus of today. If you look back over those 200 years you can see a kind of inevitability about the historical process by which America grew into the greatest of the superpowers. You can see in this pageant the way the infant colony grew to nationhood. I invited American journalist Jay Miller to survey those two centuries and to mark the decisive moments in the beginning the earliest European settlers to eastern America were content to stay where they landed they lived on the shelf of land that stretched westward from the Atlantic Ocean to the first mountain range which is called the Appalachians. Few people had any idea what could be found beyond those Appalachians except more Indians more wilderness and a vast

territory vaguely somewhere out there which was known to belong first to France then to Spain and then again to France. The westward thrust met a barrier in those Appalachians until a front tears man Daniel Boone opened them with a key his key was a winding narrow gorge on the mountainous borders of Kentucky Virginia and Tennessee. Its name was and is the Cumberland Gap through it. Boone and other frontiersman headed south and west. Me and my wife and my wife bought me all the Cumberland got the momentum going God. Although parts of interior America were known to different nations and to different people a few men as shrewdly put them all together as did President Thomas Jefferson and what might have been called a Watergate of his time. Jefferson secretly negotiated right around Congress and had his agents buy directly from Napoleon. What's called the Louisiana Purchase.

This consisted of the area of fourteen present American states. Jefferson presented Congress with his fait accompli 400 million acres of new land at a cost of four cents an acre or a total of 16 million dollars. It was a third of North America and it gave the westward appetite plenty to chew on. Soon it was found that that new land the Louisiana Purchase had minerals and wealth a plenty good country for cattle and if handled right crops and farming could expand. But the glittering magnet that really opened the country was the discovery of gold in California. It drew the earliest settlers to the far west and then filling in behind them came the farmers for the Midwest who were not so ambitious for a quick killing especially their own for the farmers had heard stories of Pioneer trails West littered with human and animal corpses and hostile Indians. The late comers filled in the prairie and

then came the rare road such as the actress in Topeka and Santa Fe preceding the rare roads have been the stage coaches and although for a while the railroad in the stagecoach existed together wherever there Iron Horse opened a new route the flesh and blood horse yielded locomotives ran faster. They were safer. They were arrow proof and they stretched a web of steel over the nation that only became unraveled about twenty years ago. And most importantly the railroads provide an almost mass transport for businessmen and European immigrants and Chinese and freight which included farm machinery that allowed the farms to become huge efficient factories for food. This fuel for the Western drive was at various times gold land. Cattle Sheep coal crops oil timber silver and just plain living space. Each new discovery meant a new wave of people and like the ocean no two waves were the same but they were all

headed for the setting sun. Maybe it was in those days some of which were only a century ago that the Native American rootlessness the willingness to move as long as it promised betterment was born. Whatever it was it had brought Daniel Boone through the Cumberland Gap and it still hasn't ended today. I don't believe in God but I think just three miles from it all. The God God. During these formative years and leaving aside the early quarrels with England and Spain America looked inward absorbed in its own development indifferent to the world beyond and throughout its history. The pendulum has swung between isolationism on the one hand and the reluctant internationalism on the other. I asked Professor Esmond right to analyze this phenomenon in 1893 in the famous Mandela doctrine the doctrine of President James Monroe announced a

measure of isolation from Europe. You keep out it said to Europe you keep out of our affairs and we will keep out of Europe. And so for almost a century it followed isolation and of course had its own civil war for long years with masses of lives lost which forced it to look in on itself. So it was essentially an isolationist country looking west moving west after the Civil War defeating subjugating Indians and reaching the Pacific coast. So it wasn't until the turn of the century beginning the 20th century that in part it had reached its limit and filled up its country it was now nearly 200 million people. It was absorbing Europeans on a vast scale 40 million of them in the last half century one century. And as a result beginning to look to then world to the countries from which they came because we came pressure groups German Italian Irish involvements and of course it had money to invest outside as well as inside the country. And so from the 20th

century onwards it was moving into the world scene it was wanting a two ocean Navy. It needed canal of Panama to get the Pacific fleet into the Atlantic and vice versa. The first troubles with Cuba 1895 and so almost despite itself it became a great power. And I would have said the climax of that was the entry reluctantly into the First World War. For me there was a swing back to isolation. Once the failure as it seemed of that war and the expenditure of lives and the

non entry into the League of Nations the Senate revulsion against presidential leadership. Yes a wave of isolation in the 20s and the 30s. The poverty of the Depression 1929 forcing a new deal and therefore massive expenditure on domestic measures roads schools post offices to try and rebuild the economy. Or do you think Congress right you would look swell. For like Yankee Doodle. Happening again. Right you are going through how. I would like you read we're there. Don't you remember. Clegg told me. Why it was allover. Going to remember.

Through farting. Thank you for. The air. So it wasn't until well after Hitler had seized power in Germany and was leniently in 1937 that FDR even recognized that danger and began to talk of foreign policy. He had to be persuaded that there was a real threat to the United States before he began to give the aid the Lend-Lease the supplies the 50 destroys the deal for bases in 91 and the gradual manufacture of course after Pearl Harbor which proved the threat from December 41 onwards the close alliance with Britain. But yes 20 years of isolation. July the 16th 1045 was possibly the most significant day in American history even in world history. At five twenty nine that morning in the desert south of Los Alamos in New Mexico a

small group of men led by Dr. Robert Oppenheimer exploded the first atomic bomb. Terrified by the appalling power he'd unleashed. Oppenheimer quoted a lion from a Hindu poem. I am become death the shattering of worlds. And Winston Churchill said this is the second coming in Roth. The second world war was won and America alone at that time possessed this most final of weapons possessed total power. It gave her the power if she so wished to subjugate the whole world. She did not so wish. She held her hand. But then you got the succession of crises the awareness of the number of Russian infantry in Europe. So the beginning of the plans for what became the Marshall Plan being beginning a build up of NATO's the awareness that the economic and the military angles had to support each other. And so between 47 and 50 you've got an awareness that America

United States had to help Europe in October forty nine you got to the coming to power of Mao in China and an awareness that there was a communist threat in Asia too. And so of course June 1950 you got an American invention career. So by 1950 the United States is putting troops in and money into both wings into Europe and into Asia. The 1950s were a curious decade. American leaders believe there's an article of faith that they could impose the American peace throughout the world. Although the Soviet Union acquired atomic weapons in 1950 American power seemed unchallengable yet the world's policeman at times seemed impotent ignored Castro's takeover in Cuba declined decisively to finish off the Korean War turned its back on the hungry and bowed to Russian pressure over sewers. Nevertheless when John F. Kennedy became president in 1061 his inauguration speech promised all embracing support

for those who believe that America and the Pax Americana every day should know. Whether it was your diet where we already know that we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any friend oppose any foe to assure the vital and the success of liberty. This was heady stuff. And in pursuit of this grand design the United States concluded treaty is a protection with 43 nations. There was a heated up when three months after the inauguration of President Kennedy. Fifteen hundred anti-Castro Cubans with the approval of the United States administration invaded Cuba and were routed. But the American peace seemed absolute when in 1062 President Kennedy forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles from Cuba. This surely was the high a

new era of American power and influence. Soon afterwards America's disastrous intervention in Vietnam exposes the basic fallacy of the superpower concept. Ten years of bloody conflict the loss of thousands of American lives as well as many more Vietnamese and the United States withdrew leaving the communists in control of the superpower had failed to impose its military will it failed or refused to use its nuclear firepower in Washington in the State Department. I discussed this remarkable fact with the administration's leading expert on nuclear policy Dr. Freddy clay director of the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. You know regarded the conflict the very difficult and prolonged conflict in Vietnam as a conventional conflict. And we wanted to preserve the tradition which has got up a very very important tradition over the last 30 years of not using nuclear arms. The longer we can preserve this edition

I think the better the boat works against the destructive use of nuclear weapons which is an event that we very much want to prevent for ever. Of course to some extent you have had this philosophy also at the very beginning of the nuclear era right after the Second World War when the United States alone possessed the monopoly of an atomic arms and yet proceeded very slowly towards building up nuclear arsenals and sometimes forgotten that as much as two years after the end of World War Two we really didn't have an arsenal of nuclear arms. Even though we were then involved in difficult conflicts like guarding the interpretation. Of the post-war world or world war two agreements a yacht on Potsdam agreements. We did not resort to nuclear diplomacy contrary to some accusations that have been made.

So it was a matter of follow political philosophy that required America to deny herself the total use of her military superiority. But her humiliation in Vietnam was caused also by a lack of the will to win the money. The American people they just didn't believe in the Vietnam War as Bill Holmby executive editor of The Denver Post puts it the great problem we faced in Vietnam was. That the executive got hopelessly out of tune with what the. Country the Democratic. Opinion in this country was just to regard what we ought to do it morally. The girl. At the result being that eventually and in a democracy you are not going to have a foreign policy and never sustain over a long period of time unless it. Enjoys. Basic genuine majority support. Congress too became increasingly hostile to the Vietnam adventure but impotent it seemed to influence the executive. Things are different now as well to

flower as a Democratic congressman from Alabama explained to me. We have. Three legislative enactment in the last several years and made it virtually impossible now for a matter like Viet Nam to occur we had a bill called the War Powers Bill which severely restricts the power of the executive to to set out upon all of foreign engagement without the full approval of the legislative branch and of course if that occurs in that democratic system here in America means approval of the American people. We never had that in connection with Vietnam and. I think that was part of our problem. There are lots of other things that entered into that. It was all wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place. But part of it was certainly the fact that the American people had never really through their the people's house and the people save it indorsed to with their stamp of approval the war in

Vietnam. The Vietnam disaster has had an enormous influence on American thinking indeed rethinking of the world. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator John Sparkman summed it up like this. Well I think perhaps it taught us a lesson and I would describe it just in saying that I think it solidified the feeling in this country that the United States cannot police the world. We have our commitments with our allies throughout the world and we will not get mired down in any such wars that again. A radical change indeed from the great dominant days of the Kennedy presidency. It seems almost as if that American pendulum is swinging again back to some kind of withdrawal to the old isolationism. Yet the American analysts I spoke to

were reluctant to concede that this might be so. Bill Holmby of the Denver Post. America has gone through a great trauma in the last decade let us put it that way. We suddenly realize the. Great number of limits that there are on the ability of any nation or any people to completely surge forward on their own blueprint. The Vietnam thing where applying policies that most of the American people initially thought were simply extensions of the helpful kinds of policies that had worked out in Western Europe during the period of the Marshall Plan and post-World War 2 era all of a sudden these policies obviously were a tremendous bankrupt kind of a failure. Iraq has been one of the American people suddenly having to realize something that's very Adian to them that the idea of limitation the idea of limits on on what they can do and where they can go. Now. I don't think that this sudden

realization of limitation. Once it gets sorted out. It is going to. Be quite with withdrawal. I don't know I don't believe that. But I think you're going to find a less total kind of a commitment on the part of the United States a feeling that we had better pick and choose the places where we can really be helpful or effective. If you will a saner approach to foreign policy not trying to. Do our things in all places and be all things to all people. And Peter Liss ago of the Chicago Daily News. I am basically going back in time. Americans tend to be somewhat isolationist in their view. Vietnam has been traumatic in this country how long it will persist I don't know but it's certainly very deep there. There is a tendency to look inward now but I remember that after the Korean War in about 1953 and if 54 we were saying never again. And look how soon after Korea Vietnam came

along. Now there's you know you hear people say never again. If North Korea were to cross the South Korean borders tomorrow I don't know what this country would do but I suspect that we would go in there and defend South Korea. And you would have the bulk of the American people with you. This new doc the dean the State Department in the Congress in the news media and in the homes of the people there is in progress a deep rethinking of America's international policies. When do vital interests lie. At what point does she see a genuine threat to those interests. When would the people support the kind of military intervention most of them eventually condemned in Vietnam when in fact other parameters the new frontiers of foreign and military policy to be drawn. Bill hold again where those parameters go in regard to the Third World. Where they go into eastern Asia haven't been sorted out really I

don't think there is a consensus now. Foreign aid for example and this is quite a sad thing to have to say but first I need no longer has the somewhat automatic majority support that it had at one point in this country and since we obviously nor any rational person knows that the industrial northern half of the world is going to have to do something rather. Rather well-planned and rather intelligent and rather extensive in regard to their problems in the underdeveloped southern half. This is going to have to be resold to the American people a broader foreign aid involvement in the Third World for example. So I don't know where the parameters are there but I think the parameter of that regard Western Europe. The NATO's structure if you will. I think that holds solid. Senator Sparkman was crisp and specific. I would say if I had to name our primary commitments we do have a commitment in South Korea and we've got

armed forces there. We do have a commitment to NATO and it's a positive commitment. We are part of it. Of course we can look a bone in England as our great and lasting ally. And we are interested in the whole NATO's Avraham would have a rethinking may be in progress following the lessons of Vietnam. It's clear that American military policy remains good to opposing at least in Europe and the spread of communism from the Soviet Union and its allies. And that means as Bill Hornby and Senator Sparkman said the defense of western Europe and a fool role in NATO's. The fact that need to is hopelessly outgunned by the Walsall pact powers in north central and southern Europe. One of the quarter million need to troops face the same number of Warsaw Pact troops. But only ten thousand need to battle tanks face more than 26000 Warsaw

Pact tanks 3000 aircraft face 5000 inevitably then the key lies in nuclear weapons. Despite its refusal to use them in Vietnam America remains the most powerful nuclear superpower there is something like 7000 nuclear warheads available to NATO's the multi million dollar question is In what circumstances would the United States assert her superpower status and use the bomb. I discussed this with the doctor over the last 25 years we have had a substantial change in our doctrine regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the early 1950s under President Eisenhower. Defense Secretary Wilson John Foster Dulles. We looked to nuclear weapons as possible substitutes for conventional arms types of arms that may permit is to meet our defense obligations more cheaply. But no guard or nuclear weapons as as unique as something very

special. Type of armaments where our overriding effort must be to prevent their use and to avoid situations where they would ever have to be used. The primary function of our nuclear arsenals is to deter nuclear attack. To deter nuclear attack on ourselves and our allies. The less televisual. Secondary function of our nuclear arms. It has to do with our alliance obligations and particular obligation towards NATO and this role means that if there was a massive conventional attack an attack would be crossed with first try to meet by conventional means. But where in the last analysis our conventional. Resources will not be sufficient. And the adversary would not stop in his attack. That in no circumstances very mad to resort to first use of nuclear arms that presumably is based on the assumption that the Western European

countries within it don't have the total capability or withstanding a conventional attack is that right. That is the underlying reason. Together with the desire to prevent a conventional war of that magnitude because even if you had initially the intention of not of never using nuclear weapons in such a war. Once a war takes on such magnitude destroying entire major sovereign nations you would have a risk of nuclear weapons being used in any event. We got a list of what your policy is towards so called first use of nuclear arms. These then are the realities of the super power concept power so great that it's unthinkable usually impossible to use it. But paradoxically for all of the current negotiations towards detente towards disarmament towards a wherry rapprochement between the United States and her allies and the communist nation's strength remains the cornerstone of American policy. And this reflects the thinking of

many Americans. People like Hank GREENSPUN the tough editor of the Las Vegas Sun. Sure our nation wants peace throughout the world we want detente with Russia and China. Well you'd have to be the world's classic idiot to say we'd rather have a confrontation than to have poor pour but we must not be lulled into this false sense of security that these monolithic powers you know the communist powers. Where they want to time it with this is long as it serves their purposes. They have to be put on notice by a very strong leadership in this nation that if they want to survive they have to give a little just like we're willing to give. They can't have it all their own way. Always with the thought in the back of their head that someday they're going over take it at bedtime when it's opportune for them that they're going to

destroy you. I don't like to build up in this country a bugaboo where we will never have reproach more with the big powers. But I would like us to be so powerful that we will always be in a negotiating position with Russia and with China and with the other nations. The moment you lose your strength you lose all negotiating power. We've been listening to from Plymouth Rock to Vietnam. I have the BBC radio bicentennial look at America. Thank you for being with us tonight. Join us every night at 6:30. And weekends at 5:30 p.m. At times I think this is honest out wishing you well that I wasn't giddy.