A Note on Vietnam: Duplicity, Murk and Blood
H., I.
HERE is an essential shoddiness in Richard Nixon's politics that shines out, like fool's gold, from every word he speaks and every step he takes. In domestic policy (Southern school...
...this is clear enough...
...And an increasing number of Democratic party leaders, most of them heroes after the event, are joining in the clamor against Nixon's policy...
...troops...
...If the fighting declines, if the casualties drop, if not many sons are drafted, then—the expectation runs—there will not be large-scale popular resentment...
...But the main difficulties in Nixon's policy lie not in the U.S...
...Is there any reason to suppose, then, that the Communists would accept a cease-fire...
...people will lose interest in the prolonged negotiations and maneuvers...
...That done, the strategy assumes, Hanoi and the Viet Cong will have no choice but to negotiate on terms more favorable to what the Nixon administrations wants...
...reductions of draft quotas...
...For as Nixon has remarked, he does not wish to be "the first President to October 20 preside over an American defeat...
...Will the Nixon strategy work...
...On the other hand: a sustained effort to buttress the Thieu government militarily and politically...
...The students are not likely to be deceived by the Nixon strategy, they want the war to end regardless of who or how many get drafted...
...On this score, perhaps, we can reassure him: the first President so to preside was named Lyndon Johnson...
...adopts a wait-and-hold position, what possible motive do the Vietnamese Communists have for accepting terms of negotiations which they already rejected under heavy military pressure...
...and the second part of the strategy will thereby unfold itself...
...It is entirely in the interest of the Thieu clique to prolong the Vietnam stalemate and keep a strong protective cover of U.S...
...Whether they are "right" or "wrong" about this hardly matters...
...If Nixon is prepared to wait, then so too may the successors of Ho—and probably with greater success...
...Vietnam policy: McGeorge Bundy has gone ahead to still more glorious disasters, John P. Roche now favors his contemporaries with a valued silence...
...And the Vietnam Moratorium of October 15 seems a sufficient indication that he will be denied...
...For we must remember that there is barely present any longer an articulate or coherent body of spokesmen for the U.S...
...The "ordinary voters" may be lulled for a while, but among them one senses a strong common-sense approach: if victory is no longer our goal, then what's the point of more killing...
...For if the U.S...
...The calculation is simple enough, though not without some cleverness...
...Given the experience of the last two decades, in which over and over again equivalent expectations were held by U.S...
...steps to decrease the number of battle casualties...
...On the one hand, we may expect some withdrawals of troops...
...We have no illusions whatever about the character or likely outcome of such a regime...
...Gene McCarthy, too, shows signs of coming back to political life...
...The Communists continue to insist that a political agreement must precede a military truce...
...UNDER THESE CIRCUMSTANCES there is a strong emotional appeal in the idea of a cease-fire in Vietnam, the proposal now being advanced by some Democratic leaders and moderate peace groups...
...In a sense, it is Nixon who has more to fear from Thieu and his friends...
...Either the Nixon administration, while engaged in massive troop withdrawals, starts cutting its ties with the Thieu clique and accepts proposals—the exact formula can't here concern us—for a provisional "coalition" or "neutralist" regime, or the war continues...
...In domestic policy (Southern school desegregation, tax "reform," Supreme Court appointments, etc...
...policy-makers, does it not seem likely that the Vietnamese Communists don't have very much to fear from a consolidated Thieu regime...
...Here the President's dilemma seems insoluble: the very measures that may ease the pressure on him at home must also weaken his efforts to apply pressure on Hanoi...
...we only say that the war is by far a greater evil...
...Nixon's hope is first to mute and scatter antiwar criticism, or at least to confine it to a small segment of peace and student activists...
...If the negotiations are stalled, their argument runs, then at least let's stop the pointless shedding of blood...
...And of course, if a cease-fire were possible, then we should all want to be in favor of it...
...For domestic political reasons this may not be likely, but as long as the Nixon policy is maintained, it continues to be a possibility...
...Apart from the inherent difficulties of a cease-fire in a guerrilla war which has no precise boundary demarcations, there is the new and probably decisive fact that right now a cease-fire would seem to be a step enabling Nixon's strategy of maintaining a low-casualty but firm military presence in Vietnam...
...A puppet haunted by the fear of abandonment can suddenly put up a show of independence and truculence...
...But as a political proposal advanced by the antiwar opposition, cease-fire seems less and less adequate—five years ago, even three years ago, it made more sense...
...To wit: A prolonged holding operation, with 200,000 or 250,000 troops in Vietnam, not trying for "victory" perhaps, but active enough to keep the other side off balance, to prevent a Viet Cong take-over, and to give the Saigon regime sufficient time, money, and power to consolidate itself...
...what matters is that they are in a position to enforce their views...
...The central issue remains political, in Senator Fulbright's words: "It does not matter how much we talk about settlement, the war cannot be settled as long as we insist upon maintaining the puppet government in South Vietnam...
...To deny such a possibility out of hand would be foolish, but to rest a policy on it would be feckless...
...For as the Saigon government feels more desperate, it will grow more belligerent...
...Domestically, it may bring him a breathing spell for a little while, but even that is by no means certain...
...COMMENTS AND OPINIONS An assumption behind the Nixon policy may be, however, that the other side will come to fear the growing strength of the Saigon government and therefore acquiesce in U.S...
...It is in their interest because at some point one can anticipate a desperate response in Washington: "well, the policy of wait-and-hold hasn't worked, so maybe the only choice left is to start increasing military pressure on Hanoi" —in other words, back to the ways of Lyndon...
...The President demands a muting of criti cism...
...and now we can see it in his emerging scheme for Vietnam...
...A ceasefire would greatly lessen the pressures on Nixon, while the policy he is initiating has already lessened the pressures on Hanoi...
...HERE is an essential shoddiness in Richard Nixon's politics that shines out, like fool's gold, from every word he speaks and every step he takes...
...The President must be denied...
...settlement terms...
...pious statements favoring negotiations...
...but in Vietnam...
Vol. 16 • November 1969 • No. 6
