Agonizing Opportunity in Southeast Asia
Elegant, Robert
'WE MUST OVERCOME OUR MORAL REPUGNANCE TO DECISIVE INTERVENTION' Agonizing Opportunity in Southeast Asia By Robert S. Elegant Hong Kong South Vietnam is not merely a prickly—and potentially...
...If the United States truly feels that Southeast Asia is an area vital to its national interests, the defense of South Vietnam thus also becomes vital to its interests...
...Finally, he charges, Washington has always hoped to find—or create—an alternative leader for South Vietnam...
...Besides, Diem is so completely isolated from events in his own country that he cannot accept outsiders' reports that his authority is vanishing...
...and they enter the south stealthily, by sea or through Laos...
...Since it is virtually impossible to fight guerrillas moving among a populace that is either friendly to them or apathetic, on the surface it appears that the battle for South Vietnam is already lost...
...To hear Diem tell it, his Government has endured not because of American aid but despite it...
...With guerrillas supported by cadres, supplies and small units from North Vietnam, they exploited it brilliantly...
...protection and guidance for an extended period...
...A man of implacable will and stubborn grudges, he cannot forgive Washington for its failure to support him in the spring of 1955, when he faced both Communist subversion and full-scale internal revolt...
...He is ineffective and dictatorial...
...The country is also a perfect demonstration of the problems which arise when a state and its leader become synonymous and indivisible...
...If Ngo Dinh Diem cannot demonstrate a new effectiveness, we must be prepared to withdraw our protection from him and allow other antiCommunists to achieve power...
...diplomats on the scene are unwilling to face the reality of Diem's ineffectiveness, and become infuriated if the press does so...
...And if force is used, we must be prepared for shouts of "colonialism" from India and Indonesia...
...The Chinese and North Vietnamese, hamstrung in both production and transportation, could certainly not sustain a field force of more than 100,000 men in Laos...
...Although that theory was excessively simple, it did correctly assess the importance of congruent frontiers in the Communist strategy of conquest...
...Unfortunately, belief in the unity of interest between leader and nation tends to endure longer in the leader's mind than in the minds of his countrymen...
...America's greatest handicap now is that more Southeast Asians each day assume that we do not consider the area vital...
...If we truly wish to hold Southeast Asia, much more difficult than the hard decision to apply limited force is the problem of the area's political redemption...
...If Diem were either superseded or forced to reform, a continuing invasion would make it extremely difficult—and perhaps impossible—for the South Vietnamese nation to survive...
...It is, however, an essential precondition to arriving at a solution...
...Only the direct application of Western military force can decisively alter the strategic and psychological circumstances now so unfavorable to us...
...The fate of Southeast Asia will be determined as much by men's judgment of which side is likely to win as by the actual military forces arrayed against each other...
...But, according to Diem, U.S...
...After setting off a string of internal revolts in 1948, the Communists found it was impossible for them to seize power by military action in distant lands where political climates are determined by an absence of authority and an apathetic populace...
...Indeed, there is a need for more decisive—though not necessarily more obtrusive—American intervention throughout Southeast Asia...
...For Diem himself, no moral problem exists...
...The answer is clearly No, though a certain amount of force will be necessary for a long time...
...Second, the terrain dictates that the supplies needed to mount a guerrilla effort—and absolutely indispensable to conventional attacks—can move only through a few mountain passes and along a few jungle trails...
...He is anti-American...
...But aside from U.S...
...Although he has been the beneficiary of American charity, Diem makes it clear that he neither loves the United States nor respects its opinions...
...Fixed "blocking" positions can be set up or commando raids can be staged on the substantial conventional supply centers the Communists have established in Laos...
...We have understood American policy less and less since John Foster Dulles' death...
...Moreover, one cannot help recalling the collapse of Nationalist China when the chief U.S...
...Force is by no means the entire solution, nor even the major part of it...
...We are, they feel, not really determined to prevent its conquest by the Communists...
...Just as we must be willing to accept a long-term military commitment, so must we recognize that political and economic tutelage can be effective only if it is protracted...
...As a result of their near domination of Laos, the Communists now have a corridor to the heart of Southeast Asia...
...We should not support any government that cannot inspire its people with the knowledge that they can advance their own interests by their own efforts...
...South Vietnam's political problem is the most glaringly immediate one...
...We must overcome our moral repugnance to decisive intervention...
...The Communists gained an unexpected windfall when Laos passed under their virtual domination in 1961...
...Thailand and Cambodia, which also border on Laos, can now expect to see Communist guerrilla movements develop "spontaneously" within their more remote provinces...
...The attack is neither open nor dramatic: The invaders do not wear regular uniforms...
...Continuing American aid has maintained his power...
...President Diem sees absolutely no reason for yielding to American pressure for reform...
...All that is known of the strategic and economic position of the Communist Chinese indicates that such intervention would not provoke massive Chinese counterintervention...
...Of course, they would also require U.S...
...Meanwhile, the access routes remain open and Ngo Dinh Diem remains arbitrary and isolated...
...The greatest difficulties we face in Southeast Asia, however, may be rooted in the United States...
...Since he is Vietnam, he considers it sheer impertinence for foreigners to claim to know better than him, the nation's own soul, what is good for Vietnam...
...Both he and his counsellors quite frankly admit that thorough reform would make it impossible for them to continue in control...
...they have not declared war...
...It is almost inevitable that the political leader who rules a newly independent and basically ademocratic nation should become so completely identified with it that men find it impossible to imagine one without the other...
...No more than one reinforced division of American and Australian troops, bolstered by Thai, Vietnamese and Laotian units, could put an end to the Communists' use of Laos as a channel for the conquest of Southeast Asia...
...They moved guerrillas and supplies across 305 miles of jungle and mountain terrain along the indefensible frontier...
...Must we then accept the prospect of indefinitely holding certain key positions in Southeast Asia by military force...
...It is pointless to argue that we should not intervene in the internal affairs of other countries...
...The American response, so far as one can see, has failed to attack either of the root problems effectively...
...While rendering more effective and more tightly controlled American aid, we must insist upon fundamental social, political and economic changes in the recipient countries...
...Characteristic of his attitude is the remark that: "Vietnam does not understand what policies the United States wishes to pursue...
...Robert S. Elegant, Newsweek's bureau chief in Southeast Asia, frequently contributes to these pages...
...our economic aid and limited military protection already constitute major intervention...
...Indeed, accepting a strategy based primarily on the indefinite application of military force would be a confession of failure before we began and a genuine reversion to colonialism...
...There was little Diem's allies could do about the osmotic invasion, though they would have reacted violently had regular Viet Minh troops marched against the heavily fortified 50-mile frontier which divides North from South Vietnam at the 17th parallel...
...reluctance to employ force, as all other paramount powers have done to maintain their vital positions, the prospect of such fighting underlines a number of unpalatable realities: • Native troops alone cannot do the job...
...They can fight alongside American troops, but not as mercenaries in our cause...
...But his country is under fierce attack by outside forces who find the road to conquest clear before them because the U.S...
...A much smaller allied force, intelligently utilizing the advantageous terrain and technological superiority, could prevent the Communists gaining their objectives...
...WE MUST OVERCOME OUR MORAL REPUGNANCE TO DECISIVE INTERVENTION' Agonizing Opportunity in Southeast Asia By Robert S. Elegant Hong Kong South Vietnam is not merely a prickly—and potentially humiliating—foreign policy dilemma for the United States...
...We must insist that governments truly communicate with their subjects, so that they can appreciate the people's wants and needs...
...Actually, regardless of the Communists, their own power probably would vanish if they simultaneously instituted more democratic procedures and relinquished the special economic and political privileges with which they have buttressed themselves...
...Washington has increased its material and technical aid to South Vietnam to a greater but still inadequate degree, and is vainly urging Diem to mend his ways...
...This conflict is complicated by the fact that Vietnam is a plexus of vital military and psychological significance for all of Southeast Asia...
...at some point they must form large, conventional formations...
...And intervention would, without question, restore Asian confidence in American resolution...
...Having gained control of Laos, the Communists intensified their attack on South Vietnam...
...The row-of-dominoes theory, applied to Southeast Asia in the mid1950s, held that one nation's collapse under direct Communist pressure from the north would be followed by the progressive fall of other regimes until Indonesia at the southernmost extreme had been conquered...
...These circumstances offer the United States an agonizing opportunity...
...But, because of the stress Washington has publicly laid upon its defense since the debacle in Laos, Vietnam remains of the greatest psychological importance...
...It is seldom noted that South Vietnam has become somewhat inconsequential from a purely strategic point of view...
...The dilemma presented to the United States has two prongs on each of its horns: If the clandestine access routes along the coast and through Laos were cut off by military force, the Diem regime might still prove too weak to survive popular discontent...
...Too often we support administrations whose chief purpose is to safeguard the great privileges their members enjoy at the expense of the masses...
...They of course argue that this is because the Communists would "take advantage" of any grant of real power to the people...
...Weak and unsophisticated native insurrectionists required stiffening in the form of cadres, reinforcements and supplies from outside...
...The United States threw its support to Diem only after he had beaten down the forces opposed to him...
...We must also abandon our complacent belief that our interests are served by supporting any and all governments that are not Communist...
...Finally, it is clear that, after the dramatic initial intervention, our troops would be required to settle down to a long period of struggle and attrition...
...While cataloguing American sins in private conversation, he is wont to cast back as far as 1954...
...At this juncture he is attendant only to the voice of his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, a bitter and pretentious Right-wing intellectual of the French school circa 1930, with authoritarian Confucian overtones...
...has failed to act effectively in Laos...
...NGO Dinh Diem typifies the dilemma the United States faces in its half-hearted efforts to stem the advance of Communism in Asia...
...The Communists are not only remarkable for their patience, they actually exalt "protracted warfare" as one of the major tenets of their guerrilla doctrine...
...They therefore concentrated their military effort on North Vietnam and in 1954 established a firm beachhead there with direct access to China...
...Beyond the ad hoc approach to immediate crises, the United States faces an arduous and lengthy political responsibility in Southeast Asia...
...Two factors, however, make the prospect somewhat less than hopeless...
...And since a great majority of the South Vietnamese feel that Diem no longer embodies their aspirations or serves their best interests, he is constantly forced to further extremes to preserve his power...
...The country is attempting to resist an armed invasion from its opposition state, the Communistruled Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north...
...Ultimately, we must create a new political doctrine that is valid for ourselves and inspiring to those who possess so much less...
...Their strategists had been prepared for the usual "protracted struggle," but internal Laotian political maneuvering gave them an opportunity for quick victory...
...Because he cannot possibly imagine his nation's best interests being advanced by anyone but himself, he believes any action justified if it perpetuates his rule...
...officials have consistently hampered his efforts to fight the Communists...
...Paralyzed by the ever-widening gap between its citizens and itself, the Diem regime cannot check the invasion...
...Too often our aid is used to preserve a status quo which cannot be preserved...
...The career of Ngo Dinh Diem, who has ruled South Vietnam since 1954, has now come to that climacteric...
...First, guerrillas alone have never attained power in Asia...
...Despite his long residence in the U.S., where his status fell somewhere between that of a political refugee and a voluntary exile, Diem has reasons for distrusting Americans...
...aid has consistently sought purposes other than his own, and U.S...
...So great is Nhu's dominance that in discussing South Vietnam's problems Diem consistently adopts his brother's very sentences...
Vol. 45 • January 1962 • No. 2
