Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR Ukraine George F. Gilder's incredible statement in his article. 'The Republican Paralysis" (NL, March 15), that "it remains difficult to take seriously a document [the 1964 GOP...
...Chinese predominance is neither inevitable nor desirable...
...liberals generally ought to get out and talk to Ukrainian Americans and refugees...
...I don't accept the argument...
...He would like to emigrate to the United States but faces legal and financial limitations...
...I am sure that Brzezinski is just as aware of the truth of this proposition as I am...
...Woodmont, Conn...
...In the second, he asked the Vietcong to end the persecution of religious people, to stop using lying propaganda, and to stop using "pagodas to garrison their subversive forces...
...Always fully Informed...
...I will grant Brzezinski that we may now achieve some political advantage through our present military policy...
...It is not inevitable because with our help other Asian nations, notably Japan and India, are likely to assert their own identity and foster their own way to modernization, provided they feel confident they are not being abandoned to the Chinese (as some predict or advocate...
...Enamored of his shibboleth of "international stability," Brzezinski states that in Asia there isn't much of it because of a "revolutionary interference...
...It is not desirable because the cause of peace will not be served by proving Chinese revolutionary doctrine right and Soviet caution wrong...
...In other words, the problem is not what is precisely the problem, indeed the cause of the war.-No, it must be seen in "relation to the entire pattern of international relations at the present time...
...I must point out that, in the case of Vietnam, it was this very revolutionary interference, shared by the over-whelming majority of South Vietnamese people, which rose up against the "stability" of Ngo Dinh Diem's ruthless and dictatorial regime...
...So I think he must have forgotten about it when he wrote his defense of our government's policy in Vietnam...
...It is throwing rocks at our language...
...What is Professor Brzezinski's argument...
...Progressive Republicans and U.S...
...Those who criticize the bombing of North Vietnam are called "self-appointed troubadors of morality...
...The United States is the greatest power of the Western hemisphere: and for a foreign government to challenge American power in this hemisphere, as Khrushchev did when he sent missiles to Cuba...
...On March 30, the Associated Press reported that Thich Nguyen Tu, a 32-year-old Buddhist monk of the Vinhlong pagoda at Vinhtruong, 275 miles northeast of Saigon, burned himself to death, He left three letters...
...We are not in Vietnam to support its people-this is the illusion of some or the hypocrisy of others-but to protect our other allies in the area...
...The New York Times and Herald Tribune buried the story in a few inches of type under small heads on inside pages, and if it appeared in the Washington papers at all...
...and the same result...
...He was not fooled by the pretense that it is a popular uprising of outraged indignation against an oppressive oligarchy...
...their criticism is called a "self-righteous posture of permanent dissent...
...May I point this fault out...
...The fact is, however, that China is not the dominant power in Asia, though it may be stronger than the other Asian powers (as, incidentally, was Japan in 1940'), So was Russia in relation to Western Europe in the mid-'40s...
...Brzezinski ends his article by saying that international morality must come only after international stability...
...wire services to get a picture of himself going up in flames...
...Lesser, the serious parts of his letter are answered in my reply to Mr...
...Gambia, Tanzania, Mali, and Upper Volta are gaining independence, the Russians are going to keep indefinitely a 1,OOO-year-old nation of 45 million intensely nationalistic people in political bondage...
...Last but not least, it is important to remember that our actions are designed not to overthrow the North Vietnamese government but to establish in Asia the same principle that was painfully established for Europe in Greece, Berlin and Cuba: that in the nuclear age political change can take place by evolution, but not by revolution directed or supported by one side against the other...
...I mean the Vietnamese, or have we all forgotten about them...
...All we can do is to interdict the terrain to the other side...
...We did, and ultimately (in the Cuban confrontation) Russia accepted the principle that it cannot change the European status quo by force of arms and then quietly dropped the Berlin threat...
...and make it stand out in the public mind...
...I promise not to call his position one of "warmongering...
...bruit it around...
...But now look at Asia...
...But how can the bombing of North Vietnam be considered in an analogous light" That is, as "maintaining international stability...
...Retaliatory bombing that has no efficacious military objective can now be stopped...
...Rwanda...
...It is this very cool "analysis" and detachment that someday will make a war, a big one...
...Chicago, Ill...
...maintain international stability" Brzezinski is sanguine that no such perils are forthcoming as a result of the bombing and he might be right, but it is only callousness that such a policy is condoned on the basis of "analysis...
...His claim: Just as President Kennedy, by responding forcefully in the Cuban crisis, taught the Soviet leaders the lesson they needed to learn, so our present government, responding with bombings to the worsening situation in Vietnam, may succeed in teaching the Chinese the very same lesson...
...complete with rapprochements and detentes...
...speaks Chinese and several Indonesian dialects...
...I hope your readers will join me in shedding a silent sigh for Thich, and whispering...
...Does Brzezinski actually regard such talk as a contribution to the discussion...
...He holds a doctorate in English literature (equivalent to our M.A...
...We, too, Protest...
...In what way does this policy, then...
...But I insist that such an advantage is bound to be ephemeral...
...Eugene H. Methvin The issues in Vietnam have become so beclouded by complex discussions that one wonders whether an attempt at simplifying them would not be of greater value than attempting to solve the issue in all of its ramifications...
...The Romans did this for centuries...
...In the school of politics in which I was educated it was taken for granted that one cannot win militarily where one has been defeated politically...
...New York City Lionel Abel Zbigniew Brzezinski's article is depressing on several counts...
...Alexandria, Va...
...no Christian ministers raised money for page ads proclaiming, "We too, Protest...
...In the long run our present policy is likely to compound military disaster with the political defeat we have already endured and which, I think, we would be best advised to bear with...
...when one compares them, is a bad one...
...This is truly boffo-socko International Relations...
...It only makes the Russian position extremely difficult at a time when their interests and ours are converging in the area...
...His central point is that China is the principal power in Asia, that we are wrong in resistine The new leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...John Switalski VIETNAM What a pleasure it is to read Zbigniew Brzezinski.'s political articles...
...3. The Vietnamese people are victims either of the Communists of the North or their generals (and ourselves) in the South...
...The Worker and other Communist publications did not pick up the story and weep buckets over poor Thich's death...
...Can anyone seriously believe that while the non-homogeneous peoples of Burundi...
...I must add this point...
...the "Weep for Thich" theme was totally lost in the rush of news, for no Communist party apparatus was there to spotlight it...
...Eugene Lesser Zbigniew Brzezinski replies: Since I respect Lionel Abel as a literary critic I do wish he had stopped when he was ahead...
...2. Having bombed the North we have shown both our willingness to do so, which needed to be done, and our weakness, which prevented us from doing anything more effective...
...Certainly his recent article ("Peace, Morality and Vietnam," NL April 12), justifying our government's policy of bombing North Vietnam as both "courageous" and "moral," lacks nothing in cleverness or devilishness...
...Instead, how does it contribute to "the maintenance of the Soviet-American detente," what is its significance in the Sino-Soviet dispute...
...Republicans...
...I feel that an American college can use such a man-for his knowledge of Indonesian dialects and the country itself-aside from his other qualifications...
...The lessons of the Cuban confrontation seem totally inapplicable to the facts of the Vietnamese realpolitik...
...It is based fundamentally on an analogy between the Cu ban crisis of 1961, and the present situation in Southeast Asia...
...He cannot obtain any university position and earns his living minding a store for his family...
...The third letter was addressed to Vietnamese Buddhists, urging a return to the nationalist cause of opposing Communism...
...I could not find it...
...The bombing of North Vietnam clearly threatens the military involvement of Communist China, the overt retaliation by the full brunt of the North Vietnamese divisions, and therefore the possibility of a horrible war, even if not a nuclear one...
...Is there anyone among the readers of THE NEW LEADER who might call the attention of some interested college to the availability of such a highly qualified individual...
...He makes no mention of those people who are being bombed and shot at, and killed...
...and without being able to change the political state of affairs...
...i.e., after his first reading of my article, But now that he has raised this challenge, my response will be, as ours has been to the North Vietnamese aggression, both measured and restrained...
...It does not follow, however, that in a self-fulfilling prophesy we should conclude that China will dominate the region, disengage from it, and thereby assure that Chinese predominance...
...I volunteered, received some names, enjoy the experience and it is the experience that forms the nature of this letter...
...In other words, let us not be so naive and so blind as to consider the Vietnamese people who (with 400 Americans) must die on their land...
...is 31 years old...
...There China is incontestably the chief power, politically and militarily...
...Zambia...
...I became very friendly-via the mailswith a Chinese student living in Indonesia...
...Politically speaking, we have already suffered defeat in Southeast Asia...
...In Asia we have already contributed to stability by developing Japan and Taiwan, and are helping the development of Thailand, Pakistan and India...
...And S0 no fellow travelers heard about Thich no innocents picked up the horrible news...
...Moreover, China's political power in Asia waxes year by year, even as our political power there wanes...
...he asserts, may be anticipated-namely, greater international stability...
...Nor did he have an organization sprawling around the world to bring out demonstrators and finance newspaper ads, turning his name into that of a martyr...
...Brzezinski even says quite shamelessly that "it is not a problem to be judged merely in terms of the popularity or even the stability of the local regime...
...In the first, he prayed to the goddess of mercy to "help save the people from the current Communist-instigated war...
...It is wrong in what is perhaps the worst way...
...How sad to hear him say this...
...Liberal intellectuals also ought to read "some of the poems of Taras Shevchenko, now available in excellent English translation...
...First of all, the analogy between the Cuban and Vietnamese situations...
...The Republican Paralysis" (NL, March 15), that "it remains difficult to take seriously a document [the 1964 GOP platform] which calls for liberation of the Ukraine," shows one of the things that is wrong with the so-called liberal, or progressive...
...even more destructive [than in Europe...
...Precisely because these societies are less stable than Europe was even in the '40s, they are more vulnerable to guerrilla war and subversion designed to further aggravate that instability and to capitalize on it...
...As fer Mr...
...Especially after these descendants of the people of Kievan Rus had already proclaimed their independence in 1918...
...If the analysis is wrong, many people will die who were never asked to okay it and, if they were asked, might not have...
...Sao Paulo, Brazil Herbert Carn QUERY A couple of years ago THE NEW LEADER published a letter by a group in California asking readers to send their used American magazines to Asia and offering to supply addresses and names...
...I was taken at first by Brzezinski's argument, and only after reading his article a second time could I find any fault with his logic...
...Is to think that really so "devilish...
...Abel...
...Hence the courage and morality of our Administration in resorting to means of terror...
...I have kept a record of his letters to me and they are available to anyone who is interested in trying to contact this man...
...In this regard, Brzezinski is indifferent...
...coherent and clear, they are often devilishly clever...
...He knew enough, all right, to know what was going on in his country, and who was behind the bloody war that has racked it...
...Poor Thich...
...But he did not know enough about the workings of Western journalists to go to a busy down-town Saigon intersection and arrange to have several photographers present from-U.S...
...An attempt should be made...
...it, and that the Cuban analogy there-fore does not apply...
...is certainly to threaten international stability...
...At the time, many similarly claimed that it was folly to try to contain Russia...
...I say this not because I am opposed to analysis in general or to Brzezinski's in particular, but because war will only be prevented if those people in a position to start or continue a war understand the ultimate horror of a war...
...Since no one takes us seriously as godfather to the wronged, we have no propaganda advantage in a pose that interferes with military efforts...
...He holds that the bombing of North Vietnam may well have the effect of leading not to war in Asia but to greater international stability...
...1. We are in a war at the outskirts of our side of the world that is too expensive for us to win, but which we cannot afford to lose...
...In the name of international stability, the U.S, has followed a policy in Vietnam that fills me with deep shame...
...He did not have a propaganda apparatus to crank out mimeographed releases...
...Civil order is out of sight...
...territory...
...They merely continued their breast-beating about the need for "Negotiations Now...
...How are we working for international stability when we challenge China's power in Asia in exactly the same way that Khrushchev challenged ours in the Western hemisphere-that is, by trying to alter the military situation...
...but it has some superficial appeal in that Russia was allegedly provoking tensions by introducing dangerous weapons far away from her territory and very close to U.S...
...It can be argued that the U.S...
...we must study support for a military dictatorship...
...and to warn our potential enemies...
...He impresses me greatly with his knowledge of English and general intelligence and above all with the waste of the same in Indonesia...
...New York City David Galerstein...
...We must learn to live with this for the number of years necessary...
...Now what is wrong with this way of reasoning...
...was correct in threatening a "nuclear showdown" with Russia in order to maintain "international stability...
Vol. 48 • April 1965 • No. 9
