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ARTICLES Ernest Gruening and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution

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ARTICLES Ernest Gruening and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution ARTICLES Ernest Gruening and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution: Continuities in American Dissent Robert David Johnson Harvard University On 7 August 1964, Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) cast one of the two Senate votes against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, later used by the Johnson administration to authorize the American military buildup in Vietnam. Those studies of the war that mention Gruening's vote gen- erally argue that he opposed the resolution for reasons similar to those of its other opponent, Wayne Morse (D-Oregon). In fact, unlike Morse, Gruening adhered to dissenting ideas which had appeared only rarely since the onset of World War II, though by the later 1960s many anti- war senators wound up supporting positions similar to those of Gruening in 1964; the senator's Tonkin Gulf dissent thus deserves more attention than it has received. Choosing to look beyond the Cold War mindset accepted by many of his liberal colleagues,' Gruening instead relied upon a set of ideals best associated with left-wing foreign policy dissent of the 1920s to make his case against both the war and the overall path of American foreign policy. His initial opinions on South- east Asia flowed logically from his overall foreign policy ideology, and his views need to be analyzed in a broader framework. A graduate of Harvard, Gruening trained as a doctor, but decided upon receiving his M.D. that a career in medicine did not appeal, and he turned to journalism instead. After serving as a reform editor for several Boston journals, he traveled to New York in 1921 to work at The Nation. Once there, Gruening became active attempting to end the American Marine occupation of Haiti; to investigate matters firsthand, Gruening visited Haiti in late 1921, establishing close ties with Hai- tian anti-occupation leaders in the Union Patriotique and being named an honorary citizen of Port-au-Prince. He returned to the United States to publicize the ill effects of the occupation, questioning the morality and practicality of a policy that amounted to making the American military "supreme legislator, supreme judge, supreme executor"; he The ]ournal of American-East Asian Relations, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Summer 1993) © 1993 by Imprint Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. 1. Traditional explanations argue that most liberal senators voted for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution for political expediency, and not because they held views of the world differ- ent from those of Gruening and Wayne Morse (D-Oregon), the other resolution oppo- nent. wondered how the Haitians could learn democracy given the military definition of an agitator as "anyone opposed to the presence" of the Americans. Proof that "the United States clearly tried to gain control of these republics" Gruening found in theAmerican-sponsored changes to the Haitian land law, which had dispossessed Haitian peasants in favor of American-owned corporations. He singled out for criticism an alleged coalition between the State Department and investment bankers, which, by backing loans to the Haitian puppet regime, "with- out authority from Congress, commits the country to a course which ... will inevitably ... lead to the gravest international friction and to military involvements." He added that conditions in Haiti would im- prove only when the American military withdrew, though for him the critical question remained "whether the United States is going to be an Old World imperialism."2 Gruening went considerably beyond telling the story, serving as a prominent opposition witness during the McCormick Committee hear- ings, set up by the newly installed Harding administration as a way to redeem candidate Harding's 1920 campaign pledges concerning Haiti. Fluent in French and well traveled in Haiti, Gruening told the com- mittee that all Haitians except for a few collaborators opposed the occupation, wanted the 1915 Haitian-American treaty and the Ameri- can-imposed 1917 constitution abrogated, and did not desire further American loans out of a fear that such measures would perpetuate the occupation. When challenged by committee member Atlee Pomerene (D-Ohio) on why the Haitians did not tell the committee these things themselves, Gruening replied that he found a "distinct state of fear" in the countryside due to repeated Marine atrocities; Pomerene did not like the answer, and the two sparred throughout the full day of testimony. Gruening further recommended a "com- plete and radical withdrawal without qualification" which he later qualified to support a small mission of Marines to oversee Haitian elections.3 2. Ernest Gruening, "The Senators Visit Haiti and Santo Domingo," Nation, 4 Jan. 1922, 7-10; "Haiti and Santo Domingo Today," ibid., 8 and 15 Feb. 1922,147-49,188-90; "Monroe versus His Interpreters," Forum 70 (Dec. 1923): 2170-78; "Haiti under Ameri- can Occupation," Century 103 (Apr. 1922): 836-45; Gruening to Calder, 11 July 1922, 1920s scrapbook, Ernest Gruening Papers, Elmer Rasmusson Library, University of Alaska, Fairbanks; Gruening to Hallowell, 26 June 1922, copy in file 1477, Oswald Gar- rison Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 3. U.S. Senate, 67th Cong., 1st and 2d sess., Hearings before a Select Committee on Haiti and Santo Domingo, 1199-1220. The best coverage of the occupation and the McCormick Committee hearings is Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1971). .
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