Word: missions
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...with a smile as big as a Texas barbecue. Vance, after all, had just pacified another of our finicky Asian allies--at what must have seemed bargain price: 100 million dollars in additional Korean aid. The calculable cost may indeed have been small. But on the balance, the Vance mission is a sad reminder of the short-sighted statesmanship which has generated America's open-ended Asian commitments...
...clash of interests in the mission was clear: the Americans were engaged in delicate negotiations to free the Pueblo's 82 crewmen, while Seoul, shaken by North Korea's escalating border raids was demanding pronouncements of American anger with the North Koreans. Vance avoided the verbal pyrotechnics which might have jeopardized the Pueblo talks, but at the same time the squawking South Koreans got essentially what they wanted. Vance's mere presence--and the 200 jet fighters the U.S. rushed to Korea--had the effect of renewing the blanket American commitment...
...though Korea depends on U.S. industry for weapons and some supplies, this hardly explains why two U.S. divisions patrol one third the length of the 38th parallel armistice line. The need for greater flexibility in our allied bonds is the clearest lesson of the Vietnamese mess. Vance's mission, however, ties an ostentatious knot in an unnecessarily tight U.S. commitment...
Finally, there was the enduring paradox of American relations in Asia: the ability of our allies to intimidate the American giant through protestations of weakness. The Vance mission clearly shows the Administration is slow to learn caution in handing out blank checks around the world...
...Poling had an ideal forum for his views, and he made the monthly one of the nation's most persuasive organs of Protestant opinion. Even after he retired two years ago, Poling stayed active as head of the Christian Herald Charities, which operates the 83-year-old Bowery Mission. Playwright Robert Sherwood once said of Poling that "the whole United States is his parish." It might better have been said, the whole world...