103. Letter From the Representative at the United Nations (Lodge) to the Secretary of State1
Dear Foster: I write this letter because I did not have time at the conference at your house yesterday2 to express all my thoughts about the use of troops in Lebanon.
Over much of my life I have given a lot of thought to this subject and while troops are absolutely indispensable under certain conditions, they are, under certain others, a method which has tremendous limitations. In fact, under certain conditions, for every problem that you solve with troops, you create ten others.
I suggest, therefore, that we have very definite ideas on the following:
How are we going to get our troops out once we have got them in?
How long shall they remain?
What will the formula be for getting them out?
What will the formula be for holding elections in Lebanon while our troops are there?
What happens if the elections should go definitely against us?
If no elections occur for a long time, what will the policy be concerning meetings of the Parliament and votes in Parliament?
And what if the votes in Parliament turn strongly against the United States troops?
You remember that we got our troops into Korea and we were unable to get them out until we had held a national election in this country, even though it was perfectly obvious that they should have come out long before they did.
Here is another question to which we should have a pretty clear answer in our own minds:
What do we do about the Iraqi and Jordanian governments? Under the present policy, I suppose that they would be just as much entitled to our assistance as Lebanon—if they decided to ask for it. Are we prepared to go into those countries too?
[Page 169]If intervention in Lebanon by U.S. troops becomes unavoidable it would be very much better for U.S. troops to go in alone. The world sees us in an entirely different light than it sees the U.K. and France.
If we go in alone the contrast with Suez would be brought out.
In the long run the decision might save American lives because passions might not be so bitter.
I have just sent you a wire telling you of Hammarskjold’s latest dispatch to the United Nations about his conversation with Nasser.3 This conversation, plus the efforts at compromise being made at Beirut, indicate a better chance for some political compromise than there has been for some time. Let’s hope something can be worked out which will prevent us from facing the horrible alternatives which you so eloquently described! I hope that the next few days show us some daylight at the end of the tunnel.
If do it we must, let us leave no stone unturned to present it properly.4
Faithfully yours,
- Source: Department of State, Central Files, 783A.00/6–2358. Secret.↩
- See supra.↩
- Reference is to telegram 1547 from USUN, for the Secretary from Lodge, June 23, in which Lodge reported that Bunche had just telephoned to convey a message from Hammarskjöld in Cairo. Hammarskjöld said he was “most satisfied” with last night’s “operation.” He urged everyone to give the “operation” a chance, and “give time for the bandages to be removed from the patient.” (Department of State, Central Files, 320.5783A/6–2358)↩
- Dulles responded on June 25 with a letter in which he assured Lodge that the “hard questions” posed by Lodge were being given a great deal of thought. He added: “The big question to my mind is must we reconcile ourselves to a world in which the independence of small nations can be effectively destroyed by means of armed insurrection fomented, directed, and augmented from without. If so, we are in a period reminiscent of Manchuria, Abyssinia, and Czechoslovakia. The technique is slightly different, but the substance is the same.” He concluded that the solution to the Lebanon crisis “must, I think, be something other than a Munich which will in fact end the independence of Lebanon and make it, in fact if not in form, a dependency of the UAR and perhaps, realistically, of the USSR.” (Ibid., 783A.00/6–2558; included in the microfiche supplement)↩