368 



ou Vietnamese developments. Rusk opened the NSC meeting by describing the 

 appeal of the seventeen nonaligned nations. He urged that our reply lie "serious, 

 restrained, and positive." 1 agreed and decided to incorporate the main elements 

 of our reply in the Johns Hopkins speech. 3 



Id sum. the speech was in response to foreign and domestic pressure 

 to negotiate an end to the conflict. It sought to present a constructive 

 alternative to conflict. It sought to reassure the people of the United 

 States that its leadership was seeking the peaceful alternative and 

 stood ready to negotiate to this end. It sought to encourage a '"coop- 

 erative effort for development" to increase the peaceful interaction 

 among the nations of Indochina. "It sought to involve the United Na- 

 tions more extensively in the theater, and also to stimulate participa- 

 tion of as many industrialized nations as possible (including the 

 Soviet Union) in the constructive effort in the region as an alternative 

 to conflict; conceivably, such Soviet participation would widen the 

 breach between mainland China and the USSR, as well as generating 

 a possible source of difference between the North Vietnamese and the 

 Vietcong. Possibly also it was intended to contribute further stability 

 to the government of South Vietnam, and offer an enticement to the 

 North Vietnamese to negotiate. It combined the goals of ending the 

 war and winning the war. 



Diplomatic and Political Reactions to the Speech 



It is not easy to characterize the immediate consequences of the 

 President's speech. There were too many objectives, too many ingredi- 

 ents, and too many concurrent developments, for any unequivocal 

 identification of the results. From Hanoi and Peking, the reaction was 

 one of strong rejection. In the American and British press, the com- 

 ments were generally favorable. On the floor of the Congress, re- 

 sponses were largely partisan, with the President's Democratic sup- 

 porters praising the statesmanlike balance of the speech and the Repub- 

 licans denouncing it as a futile effort to '"buy peace." 



President Johnson has summed up the communist response to the 

 proposal in these words: 



The Communists' answer came quickly. On April 9 Radio Peking said my offer 

 was "full of lies and deceptions." The following day Moscow called the proposal 

 "noisy propaganda." Two days after that Hanoi's Communist party newspaper 

 described the Johns Hopkins offer as "bait." On April L'<> North Vietnam de- 

 clared that the seventeen nations thai had signed the proposal for unconditional 

 talks "were not accurately informed." 



The door to peace remained closed. As for economic cooperation and regional 

 improvement, Hanoi's spokesmen described our proposal as an attempt to "bribe" 

 them. They had no interest in cooperating with their neighbors in a peaceful 



way; they preferred to take them over by force.' 



In the Senate, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield praised the speech 

 ;i- making clear thai '*. . . we are prepared to do our part with other 

 nat ions to convert t hat peace, once it is obtained, into a dynamic peace, 

 a peace of constructive benefit, not only to the people of Viel nam, 'North 



'Lyndon B. Johnson, The Vantagi Point: Perspectives o) ih> Presidency 196S i960 

 (New York : Roll, Rineharl I Winston, 1071), p 133 The uonallpned nations were 

 Afgnnlstan, Cyprus Ceylon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iraq, Kenya, Nepal, 



Syria, Tuni in i ganda, The United Arnb Republic, Yugoslavia, and Zambia The texts of 

 the formal appeal from these nations, and the tl.S. response to it, appear in the Depart 

 ment of State Bulletin (April 26 1985), pp 610 612, 

 in, v he Vantage Point, p, 



