The Liberals and Vietnam

...In 1931 Trotsky (writing with regard to the possibility of a Nazi takeover in Germany) advised that the USSR should attack immediately...

...Now I do not "approve" of war or violence, but I also disapprove of treating complex policy issues by revival meeting techniques...

...it is hardly intolerable...

...We would certainly never march north...

...The British recently sent 50,000 troops to defend Malaysia, and we are distressed about a commitment of 30.000 in South Vietnam...

...Let me make it perfectly clear that a pacifist can on principle argue that the use of force in international affairs is immoral...

...a "paper tiger" is that from their perspective we have refused to use our power in Asia in conformity to their canons...

...The only real solution to a struggle between Socialism and capitalism can be the eventual total defeat of the latter...

...If it were to be fought effectively, we should have to make a substantial ground commitment-perhaps, as Hanson Baldwin says, a million men-and to what end...

...4. In the absence of a viable South Vietnamese state, the U.S...

...Let us examine the course of American commitment in Asia...

...For even if (as I expect would be the case) no general war occurred as a consequence of continuous pounding of North Vietnam, Hanoi could drag us from a marginal intervention (30,000 troops) into a full-scale Balkan War without overt Chinese assistance...

...The future of Asia cannot be determined in Indochina...

...The difference is that in 1954 we were primarily concerned about the character of our "colonialist" ally...

...We should know by now that we cannot select our favorite wars and refuse to support any political regime which has a lower liberal quotient than the late Spanish Republic in an hour of crisis...

...My thoughts are directed to that end, and when I am done it will be noted that I have not proposed a "solution in Asia...

...Thus the notion that Ho can blow a whistle and call off the Vietcong-which underpins our attacks on the Northmay be questionable...

...If, indeed, they are now standing...

...We could hardly bomb Saigon, so the planes went North...

...As Red Flag put it on March 4, 1963 ("More on the Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us"), "the axiom that 'war is the continuation of politics by other means,' which was affirmed and stressed by Lenin, remains valid today...

...3. Such a major Balkan War in Asia, as envisaged by Hanson Baldwin, would be essentially defensive: to hold one domino...

...Our response was, and has been ever since, one hastily improvised reaction after another...

...MacArthur, with characteristic disingenuousness, later implied that the Japanese peace pledge was the work of sinister subversives, but contemporary accounts indicate that he on several occasions took personal credit for this act of statesmanship...

...But the other dominos can fall even if South Vietnam remains upright...

...What has impelled the Sino-Soviet schism is not a rarified question of ideology, but a concrete question of Chinese national interest...

...To put it another way, the Chinese as advocates of "combined development," i.e...

...There is, for example, some reason to believe that Burma is a geographical fiction...

...Not mistaken, but immoral...

...In essence we must make it possible for the Indians to have guns and butter: We must see to it that the increase in Indian defense expenditures does not decrease the already marginal living standards of the population, but that the latter simultaneously increase...

...In strategic terms, Communist intervention is nasty and uncooperative...

...Marshall pointed out here (NL, March 15), we could have moved to establish ground security by increasing our troop commitment moderately, Hanoi, in my judgment, has from the outset exercised strategic direction over the Vietcong (which is not to say that Hanoi has had operational control over guerrilla units on a day to day basis), But I rather suspect that by this time the Vietcong has become a semi-autonomous operation, which may even be prepared to blackmail Hanoi on occasion...

...Given this set of assumptions, it seems apparent that the reason the Chinese have dubbed the U.S...

...Thus I submit that the defense of the autonomy of South Vietnam is a legitimate cause, that we are under no more obligation to recognize the 17th parallel as a limit to our actions than has Hanoi, that unless the USSR gives deterrent coverage to China we need not expect a "general war" in Southeast Asia, that, in sum, there is tactically considerable merit to the Administration's measured escalation...

...Despite much 20/20 hindsight it seems apparent that no one in 1945 from President Roosevelt and General MacArthur down had any premonition of future problems...

...The Chinese were, in effect, told to earn their own way...

...If all of them fall and India holds, there is still a future for democracy in Asia...

...Above all, we must-to the extent that it is possible-work out a strategy for Asia which is more than a series of ad hoc responses to crises...

...The Chinese have a very clear strategic design for Asia: They look upon themselves as the double heirs of Chinese nationalism and proletarian internationalism...

...The Johnson Administration's tactic (and I use that word deliberately) has been ferociously attacked as immoral, vicious and provocative at innumerable political prayer meetings in recent weeks...

...The ritual curses which the Chinese Communists have poured upon the memory of Trotsky must thus be disregarded-they have roughly the same historical standing as Henry VIII's denunciation of Martin Luther, which won the king the papal accolade of "Defender of the Faith...

...If this assumption is sound, the Johnson Administration is logically correct in hurting North Vietnam...

...THINKING ALOUD The Liberals and Vietnam By John P. Roche Ever since the pace of the hostilities in Vietnam accelerated, and particularly since the Administration's decision to bomb North Vietnam, there has been a certain element of hysteria in liberal circles...

...Moreover, we should undertake political initiative (such as President Johnson's implied offers of economic assistance to a non-aggressive North Vietnam) which could encourage argument between Hanoi and Peking, and nourish Ho's anti-Chinese tendencies...

...There were other options which did not risk international complications: As S.L.A...

...If this hypothesis is correct, it is unnecessary to worry about any great Chinese concern with "saving face...

...What particularly disturbs me is the growth of part-time pacifism, or liberal isolationism...

...Hanoi, deserted and vulnerable to air strikes, would therefore choose to close down its support for the Vietcong and negotiate some time-gaining settlement such as neutralization of the whole area under great power guarantees...

...permanent revolution," have expected the Russians to provide the technological bases for Chinese primitive capital accumulation, to make it possible for an agrarian society to build capitalism with Socialist institutions, to telescope the whole capitalist epoch by creating capitalism without capitalists...

...We should not become so obsessed with avoiding Munich that we forget the lesson of Sarajevo...

...They failed because the Yugoslavs, at a crucial moment, defected from the Soviet camp and, apparently, because Stalin distrusted Markos...

...As Red Flag put it (January 1, 1963): "It is precisely in accordance with Lenin's teachings that we Chinese Communists distinguish between different kinds of compromise, favoring compromises which are in the interests of the people's cause and of world peace, and opposing compromises that are in the nature of treachery...

...Consequently, we should not raise the ante with Hanoi, but should intensify our commitment in the South to the level where only conventional techniques (not guerrilla tactics) could seriously hurt us...

...The "domino theory" has been used to justify a major effort in Indochina, but I fail to see the logic of the argument...

...Indeed, Vietcong terrorism against Americans could be designed to keep Hanoi on the hook, though this seems unduly clever and clever explanations of political behavior are rarely correct...

...We will not have an Asian policy but a no-Asia policy...

...The Soviets, good Stalinists, even under the regime of Stalin's vilifiers, have imposed "Socialism in one country" upon the Chinese...

...There is nothing more immoral about bombing staging areas in North Vietnam than there is in North Vietnamese support for Vietcong terrorists in the South (who have murdered from 20 to 30 thousand village officials in the past six years...

...What has really aggravated us, I suspect, is not the behavior of Hanoi so much as the perpetual circus in Saigon, the apparent inability of the South Vietnamese elite to create a viable govern­ment...

...The Greek Communists failed in their assault, but hardly because of Greek considerations...

...All the other "dominos" on the mainland of South Asia are minute by comparison with India...

...In fact, the first step should be an enormous program of economic aid for India...

...But it is war-the highest Chinese authorities have said so and we have no reason to question their sincerity...

...I recall distinguished liberal and Socialist leaders informing us that Hitler was just a rational spokesman for German national interest, an understandable consequence of the "evils of Versailles...

...About once every three days, for example, some multipurpose, ad hoc committee of protest invites me to join in the liturgical ceremony of signing an ad in the New York Times...

...Indeed, MacArthur's demilitarization of Japan in itself indicated the absence of any Machiavellian plots in American "ruling circles...

...In areas of great power commitment there are no more "civil wars" in the old sense of private internecine fights...

...But a pacifist is thus forbidden by his moral imperatives from having any favorite wars...

...Leaving aside the intriguing question of whether Trotsky in power in the USSR, or Lenin had he survived, would not have adopted "Socialism in one country" as a national imperative in the '20s and '30s, we can, I submit, evaluate Maoist doctrine as pure Leninism of, say, 1919...

...To what ends...

...There is no principled basis for part-time pacifism...

...In the words of Edmund Burke, criticizing British policy toward America, the government was seized by "a general notion that some act of power was become necessary...

...Admitting in Mao's phrase that "power comes from the barrel of a gun," they are prepared to back away from bigger guns...

...One important difference should be noted: unlike South Vietnam, Greece had a discrete national tradition...

...To paraphrase Lenin's Leftwing Communism, the Chinese support negotiations and compromise the way a rope supports a hanged man...

...the back of the rebellion was broken and Stalin-who may earlier have been following Yugoslav initiatives against his better judgment-liquidated his losses...

...Our Vietnamese enterprise is thus an expedition to Salonika...

...we are in the right war, but the wrong place...

...Nothing could bring this out more starkly than the fact that the map shows two main lines of great power confrontation in Asia: India-China and Indonesia-Malaysia (Britain), and our power is being dissipated in a Balkan war...

...The enormous frustrations of American policy makers confronted by Saigon's incapacity to govern, to create a state (without which an effective army cannot exist), and by the equal unwillingness of the South Vietnamese to permit the Americans to operate a protectorate, have led to demands for "action" against somebody...

...What is significant is that by a series of historical accidents the United States finds itself containing Red China, but (in contrast to the Chinese) while we have enormous power, we have no strategy...

...Such a decision could be made in desperate hopes of forcing the hands of Peking and Moscow...

...This examination of United States options in Asia will begin with an analysis of the character of the main enemy-Red China...

...In the face of a mortal enemy, when the logic of the situation points to inevitable war, it would be irresponsible and unpardonable to give that enemy time to establish himself, to consolidate his positions . . . and to work out the plan of attack...

...If Hanoi launched a ground offensive, Laos, Cambodia, even Thailand, would be vulnerable and-given our full concentration in Saigon-all the dominos between the Kra Isthmus and the Indian frontier could topple...

...Yet the Chinese, unlike the Nazis, are totally lackingin a "Gotterdammerung Complex...

...We find ourselves arguing about: How should force be employed...

...The logical alternative for them is to assume that we have lost the capacity to kill, that we are degenerate and ambivalent-a society on the edge of dissolution, a fourth-century Rome...

...Had Americans anticipated any long-range threat in Asia, they would surely not have removed the Japanese piece from the strategic chessboard...

...If a full war broke out, Vietnam would not be merely irrelevant, it would be a net liability: a force like the Salonika Expedition of World War I which could not go forward, and equally-in political terms-could not be liquidated...

...indeed, East Germany has received more economic assistance from the USSR than Red China...

...However, if one is neither a pacifist nor a spiritual supporter of Hanoi and Peking (nor an isolationist, who thinks American involvement in the outside world is somehow unethical), it is hard to take such a frenetic line...

...This is not because I am hedging my bets...

...It gives us a chance to think through an Asian strategy...

...We can keep the South Vietnam "domino" standing indefinitely if we make the necessary commitments...

...If India falls, or dis­integrates, under internal and external stresses, the show is over and our operations in South Vietnam will resemble Gallipoli rather than Salonika...

...I confess that I was born without an apocalyptic chromosome, yet I still insist that liberal intellectuals should not behave like a secular branch of the Holy Rollers...

...Simply to hold on to a Balkan enclave where no crucial decisions about Asia are at issue...

...This is a bourgeois luxury...

...The basic assumption is that Socialism is at war with capitalism on every front and that "negotiation" or "peace" are merely tactical expedients employed by the Socialist society in its confrontation with temporarily, or locally, more powerful enemies...

...The Soviet Union, despite its latest rhetorical flourishes, has-I suspect-effectively departed from Southeast Asia...

...But the logical conclusion of this view is the advocacy of submission rather than a fanciful re-evaluation of the character of the enemy...

...We can hold the solitary domino in South Vietnam, but the other dominos could go over anytime Hanoi (not necessarily Peking) intervenes in force on the ground...

...It would soon be known as the "American War" in Vietnam-and as "Johnson's War" in Republican circles in the United States...

...we should establish ground security and plan to hold on indefinitely...

...Spain in the '30s rather than the United States of 1861-65 provides the model, with the great powers providing client elites with overt or covert support...

...Germany was then disarmed in accordance with the Versailles Treaty and the USSR had probably the largest Army in the world...

...I am prepared to settle for a favorable outcome...

...Too often, because we are opposed to war, we liberals start with the conclusion that war is unthinkable, convert it into a premise, and then-in order to reassure ourselves-convert our opponents into genial pragmatists like ourselves...

...To return to the main theme, we have a tactic in Indochina but no strategy in Asia...

...With what intensity...

...From 1963 until last month he served as national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action...

...The war burned hot in Korea for three years, and it has been lukewarm ever since...

...As a consequence of the war with Japan and its aftermath, the United States for the first time became really involved in Asia...

...We may have the power to blow up Asia, but we will have no alternative to destruction...

...Whatever response Hanoi received from China or the USSR (and were we to assault the industrial cities of North Vietnam, there would be incalculable tensions and pressures in the Communist worlds and possibilities of irrational reactions), we would find ourselves in a major enterprise...

...Trotsky's complaint was not against monolithicism per se, but against monolithicism in the hands of his enemies...

...If one goes back and reads the journals of opinion of that era, he learns that the guerrillas were seemingly triumphant, that the Greek government was corrupt and incapable of mobilizing the resources of the people, that the "masses" only wanted to be left alone...

...Yet I am opposed to it...

...At a certain point, Hanoi could well decide that North Vietnam has nothing further to gain by holding back its Army (300,000) and go in (without China) on the ground, not merely into South Vietnam but also into Laos...

...Beginning with the unarticulated premise that war was the ultimate evil, many fine liberals convinced themselves-and many of us-that Nazism was largely a creation of British propaganda, that if Germany were granted her "legitimate aspirations," the Nazi threat would subside into harmless gemutlichkeit...

...Tn many ways the Vietnamese War resembles the Greek Civil War of 1945-50...

...China was still Nationalist, Mao was under Stalin's curse as a probable loser (Stalin probably assumed that the United States would never permit its client Chiang Kai-shek to be defeated by the Reds: thus the Soviets stripped Manchuria before they departed), Japan was disarmed and, by MacArthur's constitution, permanently disclaimed military power...

...A true pacifist, in short, does not decapitate the messenger who brings bad tidings...

...it is simply because I do not accept the Platonic notion that somewhere in the geist, awaiting our use, there is a "solution...

...But-as distinct from Saigon -at least there is an Indian elite with a sense of national consciousness and, since the Chinese attack, a realization that moral aphorisms in international affairs are, regrettably, no substitute for national power...

...The Chinese assault on India in 1962 was patently designed, in this spirit, to destroy the illusion that India was a first-rank Asian power...

...This is not a universe of denunciation, but of calculation and serious evaluation of options...

...And we could put far more effort than we have done so far into developing a viable state in South Vietnam-a political and economic, as well as military commitment...

...Great power action in the Balkans usually sees one engaged with the other side's second or third team...

...or worse, that the statement that Nazis, or Communists, are devoted enemies of freedom and justice is propaganda for war spread by evil warmongers...

...would have to run this war from start to finish...

...5. Thus it is in American national interest to have a minimal involvement in Indochina and, one could argue, in the Chinese Communist interest for us to get enmeshed in the jungles with their second and third teams...

...Do we really want to up the ante in Indochina...

...If we are not pacifists, nor spiritual supporters of Hanoi, we find ourselves in a different universe, one dominated by standards of wisdom and John P. Roche, a regular new leader contributor, is Morris Hillquit Professor of Politics at Brandeis University...

...It is perfectly legitimate to argue, as many pacifists do, that war is the ultimate evil...

...VI, The Aftermath...

...Decisions are made in terms of the balance of forces, not as an outgrowth of a feudal sense of honor or some equally antiquated and un-proletarian rationale...

...The collapse of Nationalist China, the Korean War, the rise of Indonesia, the Indochinese conflict, suddenly gave Asia an entirely different appearance...

...Any intelligent examination of the role of the United States in Asia must begin with a realistic appraisal of the opposition, and a realistic appraisal cannot be based on wishful thinking...

...The Bulgars and Albanians (who were isolated) could not provide the logistical support for the Communist guerrillas...

...Fine liberals, who would storm Congress to aid a beleaguered Israel, suddenly shift gears when Asia is involved and start talking about "the inevitability of Chinese domination" and the "immorality" of bombing North Vietnam...

...today we are focusing on the character of the enemy...

...Stalin refused to follow this authentic Leninist counsel, but it is clear to me that the Chinese Communists operate on precisely this premise...

...One does not argue that the Nazis, or the Communists, are really a bunch of decent chaps who have been misunderstood...

...The use of force is moral when I approve of it" is a rationale with a certain existential charm, but it can hardly provide guidance for liberals who are concerned with fundamental sources of principled action...

...The Chinese, good Trotskyites maligre eux, there-fore demanded from the Russians enormous capital-creating capital in order to bridge the abyss between agrarian serfdom and Socialism, and the Soviets, good Stalinists even as they denounced the "cult of personality," refused to take up their fantastic burden...

...What strategic principle could, for example, justify abandoning the French in Indochina in 1954-and then becoming deeply involved there ourselves a decade later...

...prudence, not by the moral trumpets of the apocalypse...

...The Chinese, in short, trapped in a frozen ideology, cannot believe that the U.S.-despite its enormous advantage in strategic power-is restrained by "moral" considerations from undertaking a pre-emptive strike...

...Leaving aside pacifism, on what grounds can one argue that our Vietnamese policy is immoral...

...The Chinese are authentic "Leninists," which means that in the post-1923 context they are ideologically Trotskyites...

...There is an interesting analogy between our problems in Saigon and the difficulties the Allies had with the White Russians in 19l8-20-see Winston S. Churchill's The World Crisis, Vol...

...Lenin once observed that a good Bolshevik would if necessary "crawl on his belly" in the interest of the Party, and Trotsky noted that "revenge is not a political sentiment...

...No one can expect history to repeat itself in mechanical terms, but it does make sense to suggest that the key relationship in Indochina is that between Hanoi and Peking...

...The less said about the American White Paper the better: The Vietcong has its ideological inspiration in the North, but its weaponry has come largely from South Vietnam's Army, indirectly from the U.S...

...indeed, once we recognize where the real axes of conflict are it is obvious that our commitment to the Asian Balkans is strategically counter-productive...

...Of course, organizationally they are Stalinists-Trotsky in power would have been a "Stalinist" vis-a-vis opposition groups who pretended to speak for the proletariat...

...6. This un-American policy of giving the enemy a chance to make a few mistakes, of giving Hanoi and Peking some opportunity to argue, of letting the Sino-Soviet schism fester, of waiting out the consequences of the death of the old guard in Hanoi and Peking, has a great positive advantage as well...

...Our strategic priority in Asia can only be the buttressing of Indian strength to the point where India becomes a first-class Asian power capable of providing a counterpoise to China...

...The real problem with Balkan Wars is that they cannot be won in the Balkans...

...Under what circumstances...

...There is no need to tarry here with the question of what form the thrust of Chinese power would take if it were unchecked, whether it would create Stalinist-style puppet states in neighboring countries or settle for substantive domination over client regimes maintaining the semblances of sovereignty...

...2. Our escalation of the war against Hanoi is a logical step only if we are prepared to fight a major Balkan War on the ground-not necessarily involving overt Chinese intervention...

...This is far more than a military problem...

...In other words, had the situations been reversed, they would have attacked us long ago, particularly since the Soviet Union made it clear by 1960 that it would not extend deterrent coverage to China: that a strategic air attack on Red China (whether nuclear or conventional) would not automatically bring the USSR into the war...

...I am not arguing that we should have rushed to aid the French, but that our decisions have been made on an ad hoc basis...

...The Indian elite, too many of whom have the reflexes of Left -wing British intellectuals, can be counted on to make the going sticky...

...Though I do not hold this position, I recognize its principled foundation...

...If we cannot win any prize in the Balkans, neither can we be defeated there...

...Bombing the North is a way of saying to Hanoi that we find its intervention in the South intolerable...

...One who holds this view can quite legitimately condemn our actions as an immoral effort to block the course of history...

...Paradoxically, we should do for India what the Soviet Union has refused to do for China: institute a democratic version of the policy of "combined development...

...There is only one other foundation for such a position, namely, that North Vietnam is a historically progressive regime confronted by a reactionary, imperialist creation in South Vietnam...

...Hanoi, according to this scenario, would ask Peking for massive aid and the latter would refuse more than token assistance on the ground that if it should intervene in force, American airpower would devastate China's industrial sector virtually unchallenged by the obsolete air force in Red hands-and the USSR would confine itself to ritual complaints and minor aid while putting a basketball team in space...

...One argues that however wicked the Nazis, or Communists, may be, submission is better than war...

...Like Vietnam, however, Greece demonstrated the futility of the concept of "civil war...

...it was a cold-blooded, calculated thrust out of Clausewitz by Lenin...

...American power in Asia was at its nadir in 1950 and all over the map strange and ominous events were occurring...

...To put the pieces together in a coherent fashion, let me set out in analytical fashion the main points of the argument: 1. We are caught in a minor Balkan War involving potentially enormous commitments in a sector of Asia where no crucial determinations can be made...

...Whether we like the idea or not, the Red Chinese have been at war with us since 1950...

...I regret that I may be a messenger of bad tidings, but I am convinced that the absence of liberal realism in the analysis of international relations has a dangerous effect on national opinion...

...Compromise and negotiation are instruments in policy making, but-like Brest-Litovsk-tactics merely...

...And on international stability: Have we ever been closer to Armageddon than in October 1962, when Khrushchev thought the Americans were "too liberal to fight...