Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - Tamás Magyarics: From the Rollback of Communism to Building Bridges: The U.S. and the Soviet Block Countries from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 to the Prague Spring in 1968

tried to make use of the Polish, the Hungarians, and the Rumanians in their half-secret negotiations with the North-Vietnamese. All these efforts were almost doomed from the beginning because the U.S. emphasized that it was waging a war against the Communists in Vietnam, and not against the Vietnamese; this attitude alienated those East-European countries which might not have deemed the Vietnam War so important from their point of view, provided it had not been against their comrades. Sen. J. William Fulbright recalls an incident that "an Eastern European diplomat told me that he regarded the Vietnam War as remote to the concerns of his own country except when he read statements in the American press celebrating the number of "communists" killed in a particular week or battle. Then, he said he was reminded that America considered itself to be at war not merely 14 with some Vietnamese rebels but with Communists in gener al. It is true, though, that in the latter case, it would have been the American public that would have withdrawn its support from the war even at the beginning of the conflict. Of course, it was not only the Vietnam War that worked against the relaxation of the East-West tension. The ideological orthodoxy in the East-European satellites contributed to the failure to a large degree too, as the American Ambassador to Czechoslovakia Jacob D. Beam writes in his memoirs: "I soon had to realize that President Johnson's 'bridge-building' program is not for Novotny..."

0 The Vietnam War served as good excuse for blocking the "bridgeheads" and resuming ideological confrontation on both sides: it became more and more difficult to maintain the idea of seeking rapproachment with the enemy in the U.S.

—-one of the "victims" of this atmosphere was the killing of the East-West Trade Relations Act in 1966—, while the "anti-imperialists" voices grew stronger on the other side and resulted in such actions as the "spontaneous" demonstration in front of the American Embassy in Budapest in February 1965. The most ambitious economic plan of the Johnson Administration was its attempt to place the East-West trade relations on a new basis. The President appointed a committee under the chairmanship of J. Irwin Miller in October 1964. The task of the Miller-committee was to ' ' Beam, Jacob D. Multiple Exposure. New York, 1978. 152. For the lull text of the Report see American Foreign Policy. Current Documents, 1965. Washington, D.C., 1968. 532-537; or DSB, Vol. LIV, NO. 1405. May 30, 1966. 845-855. 82