Facing the Facts in Vietnam

...Well, Rhee is gone...

...Having created that ideology, we are free to revise it to meet any set of particular circumstances...

...To believe that is to carry the idea of containment to the point of mysticism...

...I find it odd, too, that it should be those very American liberals who are most insistent upon the official disestablishment of religion in this country who are simultaneously (and suddenly) demanding the official establishment of Buddhism in Vietnam...

...And it would seem to be time for us to consider the possibility that there may be no other way for us to accomplish this in Vietnam than-as in Korea-by putting sufficient military pressure on the Communist regime in the north to cause it to cease and desist from provoking, organizing, supplying, and participating in armed rebellion in the south...

...It is not by chance that U Thant, who has never so much as breathed a word of criticism of Ho Chi Minh, has suddenly seen fit publicly to discover that South Vietnam is a highly imperfect democracy...

...But can anyone seriously believe that India's will to resist could survive a major American debacle in Southeast Asia...

...No, we are stuck with South Vietnam-and with a South Vietnam which, regardless of any change in leadership, will be a weak and troublesome ally...

...But no one can say that it has failed...

...I am not sure that, even for Western Europe, it has worked better than other policies might have, had there been a vigorous effort to explore alternatives...

...As concerns Vietnam, it would seem that such a revision cannot wait much longer...

...A nation or a civilization on the defensive is like a prize-fighter on the defensive...

...Soviet expansion has been halted in Western Europe...

...Indeed, the parallel between Ngo Dinh Diem and Chiang Kai-shek is positively uncanny, and it is not inconceivable that the issue of Vietnam will enter American politics in the 1960s in the same poisonous way that the issue of China entered it in the 1950sand with the same disagreeable (and sterile) consequences...

...Those who urge us to do so will, in the next breath, urge us to give all possible aid to India to help it withstand the Chinese threat...

...This vision is historically dubious and morally smug...

...The Right is far more interested in finding a scapegoat for the mess in Vietnam than in finding a way out of it...

...But is there any alternative...

...Simply to pull out of Vietnam would be an unthinkable admission of defeat...

...They seem to have a vision of history according to which "containment" becomes a form of progressive, if occasionally stern, education for political juvenile delinquents...

...The Administration utters ambiguous warnings and plaintive exhortations to the Vietnamese leadersand is promptly censured by editorial writers and columnists for diplomatic imprudence...

...The most we can hope for in South Vietnam is what we have achieved in South Korea: that is, to remove this little, backward nation from the front line of the cold war so that it can stew quietly in its own political juice...

...I remember too well all the fanciful hopes that the agitation against Syngman Rhee's regime inspired in some American breasts...

...THINKING ALOUD Facing the Facts in Vietnam By Irving Kristol The one obvious thing the crisis in Vietnam has demonstrated is the stereotyped and inflexible quality of American thinking about foreign affairs...

...the free nations of that continent have maintained or established sturdy polities and economies...

...All sorts of spooky stories are circulated by the press about how the CIA might, in one fell coup, retrieve the situation for us-as if a single little lucky episode in Guatemala had provided us with a universal trick for winning the cold war by sleight-of-hand...

...Containment is only a policy, not a panacea, not even a useful ideology...

...This is an exceedingly fragile polity...

...No amount of American aid, no amount of exhortation, no amount of good advice can change this basic condition...

...Irving Kristol, a regular contributor to this department, is a former editor at Commentary and the Reporter and the first American editor of Encounter...

...Now, in politics, as in mathematics or in physics, it is always a good idea to re-examine first principles when any line of thought leads to an impasse...

...And the obvious fact about this principle is that in Vietnam it has led (in retrospect, one can say it was bound to lead) to precisely the blind alley we are in today...

...No one can pretend to predict, for instance, just how Communist China would react...

...While I am prepared to give credence to most of the criticisms directed against the Diem Administration, I cannot place my hope in political-religious leaders whose mode of protest is to make funeral pyres of themselves...

...The idea of containment was born out of the postwar situation of Western Europe, and there it has worked reasonably well...

...Such a change has been signalled by the lead editorial in the September 14 issue of the New Republic, which announces that South Vietnam is of no military significance, that the Diem regime is doomed, that no alternative is in sight, that none other than Ho Chi Minh is "America's best bet," and that we ought promptly to "open a dialogue" with him so that, when he eventually takes over, our relations with a Communist Vietnam would be more amiable than might otherwise be the case...

...and-as the advocates of containment predictedstresses within the Soviet system have considerably weakened both its ideological dynamic and its militarypolitical stranglehold on Eastern Europe...

...It lacks the political traditions, the educated classes, the civic spirit that makes self-government workable...

...Vietnam, it would appear, is not one of those nations...

...But what works in Western Europe need not work in Southeast Asia...

...More generally, and more significantly, there are rumblings on both Right and Left...

...To survive, and certainly to win, he must be nimble, sure-footed, selfconfident, strong, and coolly rational...

...to ask it, in the name of containment, to conduct a costly, interminable, defensive war against a well-organized and ruthless enemy, operating from an inviolable sanctuary, is to ask the impossible...

...Listening to Administration spokesmen, one gets the impression that, for them, containment is very much an ideology...

...One can imagine the self-righteously indignant columns that would have been written had President Kennedy remained silent in the face of the recent grisly and dismaying events...

...More important, it can be wildly misleading in practice...

...Such men doubtless have great virtues, but it is unlikely that a capacity for effective government can be reckoned among them...

...And what is the American response to this dilemma...

...The plain truth is that South Vietnam, like South Korea, is barely capable of decent self-government under the very best of conditions...

...Nor do I believe for a moment that, waiting in the wings to replace Diem, there is some progressive, enlightened leader who will rally the masses, inspire the Army, abolish poverty and corruption, respect civil liberties, etc., etc...

...We have troubles enough without plunging into that quagmire...

...I do not pretend to know what the internal turmoil in Vietnam is all about, and I rather strongly suspect that most Vietnamese themselves do not know either...

...and Korean politics remain a squalid and incomprehensible business, with one opportunistic and corrupt politician succeeding another in a private competition that the world has long since lost interest in...

...We shall resist resolutely and patiently, allowing Communist fanaticism to expend itself in perpetual frustration, until such time as the Communists are ready to join the comity of nations...

...simply to remain and carry on as before is to make such a defeat an eventual certainty...

...For it so happens that there are parts of the world where we cannot resist resolutely and patiently...

...The principle behind our policy in Vietnam can be summed up in the term, "containment...

...He is currently senior editor of Basic Books...

...From the men of the Right we are already beginning to hear all the mindless insinuations and vindictive clichés that characterized the China tragedy of 15 years ago...

...The United States cannot overthrow the Diem regime, occupy the country, manage the economy, run the civil administration, and then fight the war for the Vietnamese...

...The number of good defensive prize-fighters is always relatively small -and the number of nations capable of carrying out a successful policy of containment against Communism is equally small...

...We are not, however, stuck with the ideology of containment...

...If Vietnam and Laos and Thailand and Burma fall within the Chinese Communist sphere of influence, is India likely to remain invulnerable and immune...

...There are risks to such a revision of our policy, it goes without saying...

...We find ourselves massively supporting and sustaining a regime whose legitimacy we doubt, whose practices we deplore, and whose ineffectuality is becoming every day more evident...

...Nor can we "write off" South Vietnam...

...That our policy in Southeast Asia has reached an impasse, no one except an official Administration spokesman, in the line of duty, is likely to deny...

...He is reacting, in his own way, to what he senses to be a change in the American mood...

...On the Left, there is the familiar scampering of frightened feet...