USA After The Defeat

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Indo-China has only brought fresh problems for Presidenl Ford and US foreign policy.

Ford's decision to bring at least 1135,000 South Vietnamese refugee; into the US (a decision in part forced on him by the cold response of other governments - particularly; in the Phil opines, Thailand and Hong Kong " to the refugees), and his still e1 proved request to Congress fi: nan: il support ta the tune of $: 000 per head, has met considerable hostility.

Opinion polls show that 54% of Americans vould rather the refugees were kopt out of the US (among the reasons given are the fear that the relugees : ? bring with them communism ad disease!). In California and Florida, where refugee camps have been set up, the problem is seen differently. Florida's unemployment rate is now 14%, California's not much less, and social services in these and other states are already heavily over-taxed. Here there are fears -with or without justification - that 'further unemployment and economic strain will be caused by the introduction of thousands of refugees.

In addition, many Americans , who have shared the widespread anti-war sentiment in the US during the prospect of lavishing money and hospitality on a collection of government officials, army officers, informers and black market profiteers who have fled Vietnam with substantial quantities of gold and US dollars in their suitcases.

FOREIGN While this controversy goes on, US politicians must turn to the tricky task of tailoring a new foreign policy which can be foisted on both the US "public" and US "allies" around the world. Following the defeat of US imperialism in Indo-China. Thailand and the Philippines have revised their relationships with the US. At Thailand's request US soldiers are already being withdrawn; and the entire US force of 23,000 troops and 200 combat aircraft will be out by March 1976. The Philippines government is hinting at a renegotiation of the US lease on air and naval bases there, and President Marcos -whose motive seems to be fear of the threat to his regime by communist and nationalist liberation forces - has declared that closer links with the Communist states are the only way to ensure his colony's security and survival. position in the Pacific and the increased instability of the South Korean regime jeopardising the 40,000 US troops there, a hurried review and revision of American strategy is taking place. Secretary of Defence Schlesinger has come closest to defining what this will be: a) limiting of US security interest and commitments to guarding the peace in W. Europe, the Middle East, Japan and Korea; and b) backing US diplomatic pressure with military force.

Just exactly how this will be accomplished and what relationship it implies netween Congress and the Preside. 11 administration are not clear, a i out of this uncertainty come statements like that of Dean Rusk (secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson), who says "I think both the Republicans and the Democrats should sus, and politics for the rest of this yuai. We've got to put our heads together and quietly debate the direction in which we wish to proceed, as we did immediately after World War II' The desire to "suspend politics" is a pipedream, like the wish to return to the boom period after the war. The US cannot opt out of the economic crisis. Nor can it rewrite history, as right winger Alabama governor and Presidential candidate George Wallace attempts to do on the same side as Japan in World War Il instead of being on the same side as China and Russia... I wish the Soviet Union had been contained somewhat"

DIVERSION

These political fantasies reflect US capitalism's central place in the world economic crisis. US politicians are desperate to turn attention away from the significance of the gains of the proletariat in Vietnam, Cambodia and Portugal in recent months, in Wallace's case by whipping up fascist sentiments among the sections of US society already inclined towards racism.

All such moves must be fought by the US working class which is already energetically resisting policies of unemployment and inflatior Central to this fight will be the building of a revolutionary Trotsky. ist party, working to break the stranglehold of the two main capitalist parties in US politics. 200 years after the American bourgeois revolution of 1776, only a party firmly based on the indepen ent interests of the working class can offer a way forward for the labour movement. A spokesman for the organisation said that the leaflets in question were forgeries, planted by the police to justify a drive to ban them during the election campaign.