QUESTION
In regard to American foreign policy, it seems that in the case of the Dominican Republic the United States took on, the responsibility of defining the social revolution as Communist-dominated. This represents a danger as to future involvement... There seem to be two sides to the American policy here. On the one hand, we consider the situation to be so chaotic that American intervention is justified in fear of a Communist takeover. On the other hand, we seem to expect some sort of stable coalition to result from our effort...
BUNDY
The problem [is] that we realize what things we must do, but there is great difficulty involved in doing them... It is not exactly clear how we are to move forward in a direction which offers real prospects of hope, once we have taken such emergency measures...
Dominican society has been torn by violence to a degree that we cannot understand from any part of our national history as a matter of direct experience. And yet there is a very deepseated desire for something different, something which will correspond more to the genuine desires and hopes of the people involved. Now how to move from where we are to there in the current situation is exactly the problem.
QUESTION
There seems to at least have been a chance that the Dominicans could have finished this off for themselves. There is an indication that Bosch's forces were winning at the time that the United States decided to intervene... We have been given different reasons for American intervention, from protection of property to fear of Communist takeover. How can the President expects the students to support his policy when all the reasons for which he followed it are not made clear, are "classified?"
BUNDY
There was quite persuasive evidence-certainly persuasive to me-that the breakdown in authority which had led many on both sides to take cover had produced a situation in which there was a serious danger that the people who would take hold of power were the people who had stood it out and had shown readiness to take desperate forms of action-who were, in fact, Communists, It has been the policy of the United States for a long time-certainly since it became clear as to what had happened in Cuba-that the American must be ready to act to prevent the establishment of another Communist state, especially in the Caribbean area. This was the policy of the Kennedy administration; this has been the policy of the Johnson administration; this is certainly the overwhelming and convinced sentiment of this country... So a President faced with a substantial risk (I would put it even higher): a very serious danger that what had passed in a moment of crisis into the hands of Communists might become a new Communist authority; a President faced with that kind of situation had no other choice. I feel that there has been no shortage of explanations of this basic position