Containment in the Polycentrist Sixties

...3.95 Reviewed by I. MILTON SACKS Associate Professor of Politics, Brandeis Arthur Schlesinger's The Bitter Heritage is not so much a book as a broadside in the domestic political controversy over Vietnam...

...He quite properly "hates to see intellectuals and liberals preparing the way for a new McCarthyism by debasing the level of public discussion and substituting stereotypes for sense and rage for reason...

...In A Thousand Days the Australian Communist writer, W. T. Burchett, was cited to show that 1962 was "Diem's year" and that "The American advisers and the helicopter war had increased the cost of guerrilla action, and the Vietcong almost reached the point of giving up in the Mekong delta and withdrawing to the mountains...

...President Johnson says he seeks a negotiated settlement, but he is wedded to a bombing policy that seemingly has no justification at all other than "transient" effects, we are told...

...Once that threat disappeared, "an internal revolt of Vietnamese nationalists, even if led by Communists" did not in Schlesinger's view "threaten all Southeast Asia...

...I trust the United States has learned that it cannot ignore the moral and ideological principles at the root of today's struggles...

...Worse still, the President has surrendered his options to the workings of "the escalation machine," which inevitably will lead to war with China, "direct Soviet entry into the war in Vietnam," and even nuclear war...

...But one is forced to deplore his failure to practice what he preaches...

...He proved to be incompetent, but his misdeeds were concealed from a preoccupied President Kennedy who "accepted the cheerful reports from men in whom he had great confidence...

...In the final chapter matters turn out to be better than portrayed, however, and Schles-singer ends on an upbeat note in the true American lecture style...

...Nor is it helpful in understand-standing the Vietnam situation for Schlesinger to resurrect the old chestnut about the military: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff, of course, by definition argue for military solutions...

...In his personal memoir, A Thousand Days, he attributes Hanoi's 1960 intervention in the South to the fact that "the success of Diem's economic policies convinced Ho Chi Minh that he could not wait passively for the Diem regime to collapse...

...Those looking for a work of history will not find it here...

...He even goes so far as to affirm that "We must have enough American armed force in South Vietnam to leave no doubt in the minds of our adversaries that a Communist government will not be imposed on South Vietnam by force...

...President Kennedy then chose to send in the troops...

...All the more so, since he approvingly quotes Walter Lippman, who has specifically repudiated his own previous "one-world" concepts to denounce the alleged "global messianism" of current American policy makers...

...Of course, Schlesinger offsets the logic of some of his own positions by opposing simple withdrawal and recognizing that "military action plays an indispensable role in the search for a political solution...

...The analysis rests on the fundamental proposition that the American commitment to South Vietnam is a self-created one...

...Instead, he has chosen to provide a partisan analysis of the Vietnam war and some prescriptions, loosely defined as "De-escalation," for ending it...

...In this book, too, President Kennedy was fooled by optimistic 1962 reports from American officials...

...the author himself has specified elsewhere that "it is too soon to expect an authoritative account of the evolution of American policy toward Vietnam...

...And Western Europe and Latin America are the parts of the world to which a common intellectual tradition gives us a hope of reciprocal understanding...

...Then an American President, having honestly promised in the 1964 election campaign not to send American boys to Asia, was driven to repudiate his pledge because he "apparently" had not allowed for "continued decay in the military situation...

...History, according to Schlesinger, reveals that we have always been beset by "illusions" which "continue to mislead us" in dealing with Southeast Asia...

...Indeed, why was it necessary at that time for President Kennedy to affirm that "Moscow must not misjudge the American determination to stop aggression in Southeast Asia," or the height of wisdom to assert, "We must never be lulled into believing that either power (Russia or China) has yielded its ambitions for world domination...

...So it is as a pamphleteer, who with more than a trace of zeal attempts to disassociate President John Kennedy from the indictment, that he advances a scathing critique of American policy which is only partially mitigated by qualifying phrases...

...The "logic of our own history . . . prescribes two tables of priorities for the United States????one based on strategic significance, the other on cultural accessibility...

...Returning to the realities of South Vietnam, Schlesinger notes that once the U.S...

...At that time he said of the authors, "They do not, in my judgment, give due weight to military necessities that at times have rendered an enlarged American role imperative, nor do they always see that negotiation gestures out of Hanoi can be exercises in political warfare too...

...It is particularly unhelpful when he goes on to cite General Ridgeway, General Gavin and others where it suits his purpose and finally to ask, "Why had our military leaders not long ago freed themselves from the omnipotence of air power, so cherished by civilians who think war can be won on the cheap...

...In view of these words, one may wonder why Schlesinger so scornfully rejects the label of "neo-iso-lationist" which he says the "Administration has called the critics of its Vietnam policy...

...Thus we are said to have mistakenly supported the French, exaggerated the danger of Chinese intervention, invented the fallacious domino theory, and after the French defeat and withdrawal drawn a line which no "vital strategic interest required . . . be drawn where it was...

...The bombing of North Vietnam and the increase of American troops in South Vietnam (unhappily already numbering over 15,-000 in President Kennedy's day) was begun in February 1965 to avert "total collapse," although one simply does not know if the situation "was really all that grave . . . actuality or myth...

...We are in a difficult situation in Vietnam and he has correctly identified many errors made in the past that plague us today...

...Unfortunately, in presenting his current view of American policy toward Vietnam, Schlesinger appears to have forgotten what he forcefully wrote only a short while ago...

...The most effective bulwark against an aggressive national Communist state in some circumstances may well be national Communism in surrounding states...

...They are the most fervent apostles of 'one more step.' That is their business, and no one should be surprised that generals behave like generals...

...In World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (correctly or mistakenly, it is not clear) regarded it a vital American interest to stop the threat to Southeast Asia of a "powerful militarist state dedicated to the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere...

...He stops short of suggesting that the creation of such states should become a prime objective of American policy...

...If the Communists gained possession of the Mekong Valley they could materially intensify their pressure against South Vietnam and Thai land...

...Italics mine?I.M.S...

...And if we are to understand Schlesinger's current view about the strategic importance of Laos and Vietnam, what are we to make of his earlier treatment of Laos in A Thousand Days...

...For Laos had an evident strategic importance...

...It was essential to convince the Pathet Lao they could not win and to dissuade the Russians from further military assistance...

...The debate Schlesinger has joined will find its ultimate resolution in the future as a consequence of the sacrifices that brave Americans are making in the defense of South Vietnamese freedom, and peace and stability in Southeast Asia...

...Anyone reading only this book would never know that Schlesinger had earlier concluded, as a final judgment on President Kennedy: "No doubt he realized that Vietnam was his great failure in foreign policy...

...If Laos was not precisely a dagger pointed at the heart of Kansas, it was very plainly a gateway to Southeast Asia...

...Why was that gesture not "overcommitment," a move toward "land war in Asia" or any of the other pitfalls invoked against our policy in Vietnam...

...And by both standards Western Europe and Latin America are the parts of the world which matter most to the United States...

...But as the Pathet Lao moved forward, it became a question whether Moscow could turn the local boys off even if it wanted to...

...We shall all see whether in accomplishing that objective, we have indeed won more respect in the opinion of the world...

...was mistakenly committed there in the aftermath of Geneva 1954, it supported President Ngo dinh Diem...

...Would that this sentence had found a place in The Bitter Heritage...

...All of this is not to deny that there is much of value in Schlesinger's indictment...

...He then speculates that: "We could survive the subjection of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe or Polynesia by a hostile power or ideology, but if either Western Europe or Latin America were organized against North America, our position would be parlous indeed...

...In any case, the United States had no choice but to stiffen its position, whether in preparation for negotiation or for resistance...

...Nor is Schlesinger's position any clearer when one looks back at the introduction he wrote for The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, whose thesis he now apparently accepts uncritically...

...Why then attack Dean Rusk for believing in the monolithic character of Communism when the State Department has not held that view for a number of years...

...The present book simply refers to the belated character of Ho Chi Minh's 1960 intervention in the South as being due to the unrehabUity of the Vietnamese guerrillas in 1958...

...Needless to add, the Vietnam war has also divided the American people, liquidated the promise of the Great Society and raised the spectre of the revival of McCarthyism...

...This is based on a provocative new theory that the "containment of national Communism in the polycentrist sixties will be very different from the containment of international Communism in the monolithic forties...

...In fact, Schlesinger speculates that "Had Ho taken over all Vietnam in 1954, he might today be soliciting Soviet support to strengthen his resistance to Chinese pressure, and this situation, however appalling for the people of South Vietnam, would obviously be better for the United States than the one in which we are floundering today...

...But the main thrust of his arguments, unfortunately, stems from his basic position that our commitment in Vietnam was wrong to begin with, and that all of our actions should be guided by George Ken-nan's judgment that "There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or compromising objectives...

...In view of the pacifist inclinations of the Royal Laotian Army, moreover, it would be hard to induce the Pathet Lao to call off the war...

...Has Schlesinger really forgotten the considerations which led President Kennedy to emphasize American limited war capabilities...

...In any event, from these premises, the rest of the argument flows easily...