[chatter] i guess thats your water. I dont know. I drink more water than you. Sen. Fulbright would the committee come to order. We are very pleased this morning to have our distinguished secretary of state dean rusk. Hes one of the most dedicated and hardworking Public Servants as i have ever known. Sen. Fulbright i am also personally pleased to have a mr. You mr. Secretary and i enjoy our meetings, even though on occasion we have had different views on affairs. As everyone knows, you appeared in Public Session already. About two weeks ago and as much as i like listening to you, i was hopeful that we might have cooperation with the administration to the point where we could have at least two official witnesses who might help us develop for the American People, and the congress, the facts and policies of the about vietnam. As you know, the vietnamese war has become a major affair. And the secretary of defense has declined to appear in Public Session, according to the Washington Post, which is sometimes reliable, the Vice President has declined to appear. It says he will not appear bit like tor and i would ask you before your opening statement, is a confirmed decision of this administration that you are to be the only official spokesman in these hearings . Dean rusk the administrator of aid, mr. Bell, and i have both appeared. I am, of course, here today. If the committee wishes to continue these hearings and have other spokesmen from the administration, i am sure that there would be others who could appear, certainly my department. I am sure that the committee is the issue raised, a matter of certain military information in open session. But, i am not innocent in saying that i am the only witness available today. Sen. Fulbright i want to clear that up. I requested secretary ball to appear last week and he informed me that he was instructed not to appear. I assume from that that you are the only spokesman that they wished to appear for the administration. Dean rusk as you know, i was away at the time. I wished myself to make the first and major presentation for the administration for the department of state on these larger aspects. Sen. Fulbright mr. Secretary, i am to understand that if the committee has not taken the decision, it will meet on monday, i believe, to discuss this. The other official witnesses from the executive might be available. Dean rusk that is my understanding. But we will have a chance to discuss that with you and members of the committee in due course. Sen. Fulbright mr. Secretary, since our last meeting, which i believe was two weeks ago, you gave us a very thorough fill in on the vietnamese situation, in particular. There are three developments which i hope you will address in your opening remarks, if youll be so kind as to do so. First, we would like very much to know how far our commitments to general keen have gone in honolulu. Hellfire they go back with his hisow far they go back with determination never to negotiate with the deliberation front. How many troops we have promised him and how much money. Two, i would like to know what kind of commitments the administration authorized the Vice President to make in his extended trip to the nation. Especially whether in return for the 100 million loan, the indians will be required to send troops to vietnam and the same with regard to the other countries in which he is apparently authorized to make and extend loans. Three, i would like to know what general degaulle really said in his letter to our government about the war in vietnam. As recorded again in the Washington Post this morning. To be more specific, i would what general degaulle actually said that the vietnamese war is leading nowhere and that is absurd. That it is absurd. This was stated in the Washington Post. It seems to me that we in the public are entitled to know if that is true. Somebody leaked it or give it to the press, and i understand that this is a private letter, but nonetheless it is appearing in public that this is what he said. I hope that you will enlighten the committee in your opening remarks about these matters which have developed since you thoroughly briefed us two weeks ago. With that introduction, mr. Secretary, will you proceed do you have a prepared statement . Dean rusk yes, i do mr. Chairman. Sen. Fulbright memorize it or read it. Dean rusk members of the committee, i should like to make my statement. I may have to come to one or two of the questions you have raised after i finish my prepared statement, because i did not cover those in what i planned to say at the beginning. Sen. Fulbright i mention them because they are the only thing that has happened since you last testified. Dean rusk there has been a good deal of discussion since i last testified and other issues have been raised on which i want to sen. Fulbright i would be pleased to have your comment on other issues. I was only trying to suggest that we need not cover the same testimony because you made those in public. Dean rusk right. Mr. Chairman, the immediate occasion for these hearings was a request by the president for a supplemental appropriation of 415 million, of which sum was of which a part was for South Vietnam. Mr. David bell, the administrator of aid, and i both already testified on this particular request. But these hearings, as the chairman has pointed out, also entered into the largest and most farreaching aspects of our interest and involvement in Southeast Asia. For my part, i welcome this opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss with you these larger issues. Since world war ii, which projected the United States in the role of a major world power, we americans have had to face a series of difficult tasks and trials. On the whole, we have faced them very well. Today we are facing another ordeal in Southeast Asia, which again is costing us lives and treasure. South vietnam is a long way from the United States. And the issues posed, they seem remote from our daily experience and our immediate interests. It is essential that we clearly understand and so far as possible agree on our mission and purpose in that faraway land. Why are we in vietnam . Certainly we are not there merely because we have power and like to use it. We do not regard ourselves as the policemen of the universe. We do not go around the world looking for quarrels in which we can intervene. Quite the contrary. We have recognized that as we are not the armed forces of the universe, neither are we a magistrate of the universe. If other governments, other institutions, or other regional organizations can find solutions to the quarrels which disturb this present scene, we are anxious to have this occur. But we are in vietnam because the issues they are very deeply intertwined with our own security. And because the outcome of the struggle can profoundly affect the nature of the world in which we and our children will live. The situation we face in Southeast Asia is complex. But in my view, the underlying issues are simple and are utterly fundamental. I am confident that americans who have a deep and material understanding of world responsibility are fully capable of cutting through the underbrush of complexity and finding the simple issues which involve our largest interest and the deepest purposes. I regard it a privilege to discuss these problems with the committee this morning, to consult with you, and try to clarify for the American People the issues we must face. I do not approach this task on the assumption that anybody, anywhere, has all the answers. Or that all wisdom belongs to the executive branch of the government, or even to the government itself. The question at issue affects the wellbeing of all americans and i am confident that all americans will make up their own mind in the tradition of a free and independent people. Yet those of us who have special responsibilities for the conduct of our Foreign Policy have had to think deeply about these problems for a very long time. The president , his cabinet colleagues, and the congress, who share the weightiest responsibilities under the constitutional system, have come to conclusions that form the basis for the policies we are pursuing. Perhaps it is worth pointing out that those who are officially responsible for the conduct of Foreign Affairs must make decisions and must make decisions among existing alternatives. None of us in the executive or legislative branch has fulfilled a responsibilities mainly by forming an opinion. We are required to decide what this nation shall do and shall not do. And are required to accept consequences of our determinations. What are our World Security interests involved in the security of the anon vietnam . They cannot be seen clearly in terms of Southeast Asia only. Or merely in terms of the events of the past few months. We must view the problem in perspective. We must recognize that what we are seeking to achieve in South Vietnam is part of a process that has continued for a long time. A process of preventing the expansion and extension of communist domination by the use of force against the weaker nations on the perimeter of communist power. This is the problem as it looks to us. Nor do the communist themselves see the problem in isolation. They see the struggle in South Vietnam as part of a larger eadygn for the study st extension of communist power through force and threat. I have observed in the course of the hearings that some objection has been raised for the use of the term communist aggression. It seems to me that we should not confuse ourselves or the people, by turning our eyes away from what that phrase means. The underlying crisis of this postwar period turned about a major struggle on the major nature of the political world. Before the guns were silent in world war ii, many governments sat down and thought long and hard about the structure of international lines. The kind of world in which we to try and build and wrote the ideas into the United Nations charter. That charter establishes an International Society of independent states, large and small, entitled to their own national existence, entitled to be free from aggression, cooperating freely across National Frontiers and common interests, and resolving disputes by peaceful means. But the communist world returned to its demand for what it calls a world revolution. Of collection cohercian against the charter of United Nations. There may be differences within the communist world about methods and techniques, and leadership within the world itself, but they share a common attachment to their world revolution. And to the support, through what they call wars of liberation. What we face in vietnam is what we have faced before. The need to check the extension of communist power in order to maintain a reasonable stability in a precarious world. That stability was achieved in the years after the war, by the valor of free nations defending the integrity of postwar territorial arrangements. And we have achieved stability for the last decade and a half. It must not be overthrown now. Like so many of our problems today, the struggle in South Vietnam stems from the disruption of two world wars. The Second World War completed a process begun by the first. It ripped apart a structure of power that existed for 100 years. It is set in train new forces and energies that have remade the map of the world. Not only did it weaken the nations actively engaged in to fighting, but it had farreaching secondary effects. It undermined the foundations of the colonial structures to which a handful of powers controlled one third of the world s population. And the winds of change and progress that have blown fiercely during the last 20 years, have toppled those structures almost completely. Meanwhile, the communist nations have exploited the turmoil of the time of transition in an effort to extend communist control into other areas of the world. The United States first faced the menace of communist ambition in europe, when one after another the nations on the boundaries of the soviet union fell under the dominion of moscow through the presence of the red army. To check this title wave, the tidal wave, the United States provided the Marshall Plan to strengthen the nations of western europe. Then moved to organize with those nations a collective Security System through nato. As a result, the advances of soviet power was stopped and the soviet union gradually adjusted policies to the situation. But within a year after the establishment of nato, the communists took over china. This posed a new and serious threat. Particularly, for those new nations of the far east that had been formed out of colonial empires. The problem in asia were different from those in europe. But the result was much the same, instability and uncertainty and vulnerability to both the bully and the aggressor. Western europe, with established governmental and socialist institutions, recovered quickly. But new nations of asia, particularly those who have not known selfgovernment for a century or more, continue to face a formidable problem which they still face. The first test came in korea, when the United Nations forces , predominantly american, stopped the drive of communist north korea, supported by material aid from the soviet union. It stopped the chinese army that followed. It brought to a halt the communist effort to push out the line that had been drawn and to establish communist control over the korean peninsula. We fought the korean war, which like the struggle in vietnam, occurred in a remote area thousands of miles away to sustain the principles vital to the freedom and security of america. The principle that the communist world should not be permitted to expand by overrunning one after another, the arrangements bill during and since the war, to mark the outer limits of communist expansion by force. Before the korean war had ended, the United States, under president truman moved to settle and consolidate the situation in the pacific through a peace treaty with japan and through bilateral security treaties with the philippines and japan, and celiah the treaty with a australia and new zealand. Hardly had the war been finished when fighting happened in , indochina, decided to really question presence in Southeast Asia. After a brief negotiation, he came to terms with communist forces that had captured the nationalist movement. The result was the division of indochina into four parts, a kingdom of cambodia, laos, vietnam divided into two at the 17th parallel, between the communist forces in the north and noncommunist forces in the south. Recognizing that the communist s ambitions, the United States government under president eisenhower took steps to secure the situation by further alliances. Bilateral treaties were concluded with the republic of korea and the republic of china. In the middle east the socalled Northern Tier of countries lined to the south of the soviet union entered into the baghdad pact, which established the central treaty organization. The United States did not become a formal member of the alliance, which is comprised of turkey and great britain, iran and pakistan, but we are closely associated with them and have bilateral and military assistance agreements with regional members, concluded by the eisenhower administration. In order to give support to the nations of Southeast Asia, the United States took the lead in the creation of an alliance embodied in a treaty and reinforced by collective Security Systems, the Southeast Asia treaty organization. In this alliance, the United States joined with great britain, france, australia, new zealand, thailand, pakistan and the philippines to give security to the nations, but also to come to the aid of certain protocol states and territories if they so requested. South vietnam was included in this protocol. The United States had not been a party to the agreement made in geneva in 1954, which france had concluded where the communist Vietnamese Forces were known as the vietnam. But the undersecretary of state stated under instructions that the u. S. Would not disturb the agreements and it would view the renewal of the aggression with grave concern and as seriously International Peace and security. Under secretary smiths statement was a unilateral declaration, but in joining cito, the United States took a treaty engagement of farreaching effect. Article four, paragraph one, provides that each party recognizes that aggression by means of armed attack would in endanger its own peace and safety, and agrees that it will in that event, act to meet the common danger in accordance with the constitutional processes. It is this fundamental obligation that has from the outset guided our actions in South Vietnam. The language of the treaty is worth attention paid obligation it imposes is not only joint, but several, not collective, but individual. The finding that an armed attack has occurred does not have to be made by collective determination , before the obligation of each member comes into play. Nor does it require col