Word: geyelin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND THE WORLD, by Philip L. Geyelin. A perceptive, sometimes tartly irreverent account of how L.B.J. has fared in foreign affairs, by the Wall Street Journal's diplomatic correspondent...
...absorbing Washington game that Philip Geyelin calls "Lyndonology"-the study of the President-is usually more of a cutting-down than a building-up pastime. Geyelin, the diplomatic correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, adds some choice cuts. In this book, the first comprehensive study of Lyndon Johnson's performance in foreign policy, Geyelin reports that the President sent the Marines to Santo Domingo with the cry that it was "just like the Alamo." And he records some presidential double-edged scorn: Handing the Dominican government back to Juan Bosch, said Johnson, "would be like turning it over...
Against Towel-Throwing. Geyelin takes the position that Johnson, for all the seasoning he had had since 1932 in Washington, came to the presidency poorly prepared in the area of foreign policy. Shortly before, on an official jaunt through Southeast Asia, L.B.J. had shocked some Asians by letting out a rebel yell inside the Taj Mahal, and proclaiming that Viet Nam's Ngo Dinh Diem was "the Winston Churchill of Asia." On that same trip, Johnson grasped the importance of U.S. support for Southeast Asia. While others in Washington were dallying, Johnson wrote a prophetic memo to President Kennedy...
...Bargaining. Johnson has steered between these two poles, and his main purpose in Viet Nam, says Geyelin, has always been "to pursue settlement by improving his bargaining position." Then the author raises-but leaves un answered-some doubting questions. Has the policy of improving the bargaining position by "fiercer war" missed "opportunities for negotiated settlement"? Has U.S. involvement become "unnecessarily deep"? Geyelin charges that L.B.J. in foreign policy has radiated no "moral leadership...
...Geyelin almost begrudgingly tells a story of worthwhile successes. During the Johnson Administration, the Alliance for Progress has moved from the vision stage of Kennedy's day to the point where practical progress is possible. Johnson extricated the U.S. from the multilateral force, the hapless NATO-nuclear-fleet concept that he inherited from the Kennedy Administration. Foreign aid was put on a hardheaded basis that demands results. New bridges of culture and trade are being extended toward Eastern Europe. China policy is being modified under the fresh slogan of "containment without isolation." Most important, Communist conquest of South Viet...