An Alternative for Vietnam
STAROBIN, JOSEPH R.
THINKING ALOUD An Alternative for Vietnam By Joseph R. Starobin Two recent and profound upheavals-one in Saigon, the other in Washington-have given a new turn to the Vietnam war. Not since...
...They calculate that the political advantage to them of denying the United States quick victory, and demonstrating that the world's greatest power cannot extricate itself from a morass in a tiny corner of Asia, is more important than the material damage they suffer...
...Whatever changes might occur in the relative military positions of all the contending forces would be transitory and insignificant, as the de facto truce between Christmas 1965 and the Vietnamese New Year at the end of January 1966 demonstrated...
...This is the same Tran Van Huu who recently made his first visit to this country, on a reconnoitering mission to the United Nations and to Washington...
...On the diplomatic side, the U.S...
...The air war, meanwhile, is inching toward the Chinese frontier...
...To simplify, I would say that whereas we used to cut a roadway in order to overturn the vehicles passing on it, they prefer to get on the auto and ride it...
...The war is viewed as the accelerator of political processes, and the power in the South which Ho Chi Minh fumbled in 1945 and was obliged to forgo in 1954 might at last come within his grasp in the 1970s...
...If one assesses the NLF as an amorphous coalition that did not get a Communist backbone until after it was set up, it becomes easier to understand how the NLF differs from the old Viet Minh...
...Rather than systematically defy legality, they prefer to make use of it and change it from within...
...He was one of those nationalist, nonCommunist figures who helped make the Viet Minh such an effective force against the French and imperial Japan...
...He became Ho Chi Minh's minister of national economy in 1945, and was then transferred to preparing the ill-fated Fontainebleau negotiations with France in 1946...
...One would also expect Hanoi to do its utmost to conceal these strains, especially since it has been placed on the firing line...
...It follows, however, that the attempt to deal with the NLF by including it within the whole complex of political forces might therefore be extremely wise...
...In Saigon, the Buddhist uprising in their historic region of influence, Annam, has exacted the pledge of elections by summer's end with the ultimate objective being replacement of the military junta by a civilian regime...
...If John Foster Dulles declined to accept responsibility for a Vietnamese settlement of that period, why should Dean Rusk be obliged to do so 10 years later...
...The "neutralists" have a distinct position on many aspects of the Vietnamese problem, but their main one is neutralization of the area and they are quick to point out that this was advanced years before General de Gaulle made it his own...
...At the same time, the United States has begged the co-chairmen of the Geneva Conference to reconvene it...
...Those who have studied the NLF at close range, for example Jean Lacouture in his recent volume Vietnam Between Two Truces, make it clear that the Front is a combination of the young rebels of the Diem period and the old-timers of the Viet Minh days, some of whom remained in the South after 1954, others of whom came back from the North...
...Nguyen Manh Ha did not follow Ho to the mountain country in the second round of the war...
...Not since the fateful escalation began almost 17 months ago has the situation been so fluid and the opportunities so great for far-reaching decisions...
...One explanation may be that the Vietnamese Communists are set for a very long war, of a kind in which they have passed their entire adult lives...
...Granted that it has few battalions, but these "neutralists" clearly have enough prestige to wheel and deal in many directions...
...His closest associate and executive person is Nguyen Manh Ha, who comes from a different tradition entirely...
...What may have taken place in South Vietnam in the decade since the Geneva Conference is not only a regional division within the Communist ranks but a deep generational conflict of the same type that has wracked the entire Communist world, and indeod the Left in the non-Communist world as well...
...It was Tran Van Huu who jailed Tho for a time in the early '50s, but in January 1963 it was Tho who wrote most respectfully to Tran Van Huu, asking his understanding of the Front, or at least an exchange of views...
...in effect, a political solution to the prolonged internal crisis of South Vietnam may be attempted...
...at the second congress, in January 1964, 11 seats were left open for "representatives of political parties, organizations of the people, the Armed Forces and patriotic personalities who will adhere to the Front," according to Lacouture...
...and perhaps Jacob Javits as well (R.-N...
...position has been stalemated...
...Why is Ho Chi Minh so recalcitrant, so intransigent...
...Pending the outcome of such a round table, United States forces would remain in what amount to their present enclaves from which they cannot, in any case, be dislodged...
...What remains vivid after all these years is Pham Van Dong's admission that the Viet Minh pursued unrealistic, selfdefeating policies in Saigon in the 1945 days...
...Its chief figure, the fellow-travelling lawyer Nguyen Huu Tho, did not become its president until a year after it was formed...
...The mere exploration of the terms of an accommodation with the NLF would not be a victory for anyone, whatever "face" any faction chose to place on it...
...But there could be another explanation...
...Before the war, Manh Ha headed the Catholic youth in Hanoi...
...For Secretary of State Dean Rusk, it is clear that on the basis of the Geneva accords there are two Vietnamese states, one of which is subverting the other...
...If Washington abandoned the whole concept of the Geneva accords as the framework for prosecuting the war or striving for a negotiation, both military and political policy could be oriented toward a localization of all the issues in the conflict...
...The latter was a full-fledged resistance center and government, with its own echelons, currency, educational apparatus: It sought to be and it was an alternative government to the Vichy French and the Japanese occupation during the War...
...If this is a period of re-evaluation, perhaps there is also an avenue of reappraisal to be explored with respect to the "peace offensive" that has spasmodically accompanied the Administration's escalated military policy...
...If the American political strategy has crumbled in Saigon within one year, why should not Ho Chi Minh view another year and still another with confidence...
...To them, as Nguyen Manh Ha has made plain in my most recent communications with him, it is a vital fact that the National Liberation Front has not yet declared itself a government and has not tried to elevate its missions in many countries to governmental status, despite Hanoi's insistence that the NLF is the "sole representative" of South Vietnam...
...Are these valid interlocutors through whom either a cease-fire or the creation of some ultimate governing authority can be explored...
...This train of reasoning derives logically from recent events in Saigon as well as from the intransigence of Hanoi, and it leads to a different course of action: Let the South Vietnamese factions negotiate among themselves, and let the National Liberation Front be included in this negotiation, not as a "sole representative" of South Vietnam, which it is not, but as an "essential element" in the picture as Senator Mansfield is ready to grant, and which the Administration itself does not dispute...
...The military counterpart of this political posture has been the merciless pummeling of the Vietcong and the increasing pressure on North Vietnam with a display of fire-power, according to McNamara, four or five times greater than what was employed in World War II...
...This problem of control is evident from the fact that the Popular Revolutionary party, which is the Southern counterpart of the Northern Lao Dong and hence the closest thing to a Communist party, was not formed until two years after the Front itself was launched...
...Instead of viewing the NLF as a creature of the North, as though there were no basis for Communist activity in the South until the North gave the signal, it makes just as much sense to view the Front's formation as an attempt to give a framework and establish some sort of control over the Southerners, once they had begun their activity...
...The NLF, in contrast, is more of a movement expecting to gain prominent adherents as it goes along and expecting to wheel and deal with the authorities in Saigon...
...In Washington, powerful Senators who were part of President Johnson's consensus have voiced the view that an American withdrawal-with honor and without defeat-is conceivable...
...Different as each case may be, the fact remains that adversaries are probing the terms on which they could live (or live to fight another day) in the Dominican Republic, and over the Berlin Wall, and between French Socialists and Communists, not to mention the Catholic church and its Anglican or Orthodox counterparts...
...If, in fact, the United States is essentially a bystander which has responded to a request for assistance but would-in the eyes of powerful Senators-be obliged to leave were thai request withdrawn, it follows that there could be negotiations among the Vietnamese themselves, without direct American participation...
...Whereas a year ago the North Vietnamese spoke of the Geneva Accords as a basis for discussion, they have since taken the position that the NLF is the "sole representative" of South Vietnam and must be recognized as such...
...The options and the initiative, Manh Ha stresses, are still open to the United States...
...The option remains open, and the time for exploration may now be at hand...
...and those of his friends who have demurred at the course of the war for quite some time...
...At the NLF'S first congress -February 16-March 3, 1962-where a central committee of 52 persons was proclaimed, only 31 were actually named...
...But I would call attention to a small yet energetic group of Vietnamese exiles in Paris, calling itself the "Committee for Peace and the Renovation of Vietnam" and known among the historians as "the neutralists...
...On the other hand, the American fixation with the Geneva framework is such that Ho Chi Minh retains the option of taking part in whatever settlement emerges...
...In June 1965, I spent many hours during several weeks with Nguyen Manh Ha, as have many Americans-journalists and others-since then...
...If the Chinese, Russians and British are not involved in the current fighting, why should they be automatically included in either ceasefire negotiations or an ultimate political settlement...
...Joseph R. Starobin is now a senior fellow at Columbia University's Research Institute on Communist Affairs...
...The head of the NLF, the French-trained lawyer with a complex fellow-travelling career, Nguyen Huu Tho, is not a mystery-man to the "neutralists...
...The position throughout this year has been that the United States accepts the 1954 Geneva Accords as a framework for discussion with Ho Chi Minh's government...
...he has escalated the political terms while keeping the bulk of his own forces intact...
...Although Vice President Hubert Humphrey has at times admitted that there are in fact elements of civil war in the South Vietnamese fighting, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara denies this...
...The declarations of Senator Richard B. Russell (D.Ga...
...indeed, why should de Gaulle's France, with whom the United States is at odds on far vaster and more vital matters than Vietnam...
...Granted that Senator Russell's cry of outrage over events in Saigon can be interpreted as a form of pressure on the Saigonese politicians and contains the rationale of a much more intensified war with all its hazards, nevertheless something new has been said from powerful quarters...
...suggests, Ho Chi Minh will have made a difficult passage safely...
...As seen by Nguyen Manh Ha, the basic reason for this lies in the desire of the Front to join with a variety of political forces in the South, rather than to set itself up as the legitimate authority to which others must adhere...
...Lacouture also cites an interview with Pham Ngoc Thuan, whom he knew 18 years ago in the Viet Minh days, and who describes the difference between the earlier resistance movement and the NLF this way: "Wherever they can our successors (who have gotten much publicity and have learned from our experiences and our setbacks) have chosen another path: They are trying their utmost to infiltrate the existing state apparatus and to utilize it...
...I do not know the answer, and there may be experts in Washington who do...
...Nguyen Manh Ha is obviously on speaking terms with the North Vietnamese in Paris as well as the Liberation Front delegation in Algiers, although he is not necessarily able to arrange contacts between these officials and all the Americans who have wanted to talk with them...
...He calculates to discharge his obligations to his South Vietnamese compatriots and weather the crisis in their inner relationship...
...It simply asks that someone from Hanoi indicate a readiness to negotiate without any prior conditions...
...Nothing came of this overture...
...Their leading figure is a "notable" of the old school, who was the premier in the Bao Dai government at a point in the early '50s when the French still had hopes of victory...
...The problem arises, of course, as to what group or personality could convene or catalyze a meeting of this kind...
...He is Tran Van Huu, who retired to Paris shortly before the Geneva Conference when the spotlight shifted to Ngo Dinh Diem...
...Each of these new voices has taken rather literally the Administration's claim that we are in South Vietnam upon the invitation of its government, and we would not stay if a government came to power in Saigon that rescinded the invitation...
...they had enough reason, from 1956-60, to begin guerrilla operations on their own, which they did before the formation of the NLF in December 1960...
...On the military side, the best indication that the immense (and frightful) use of power has not succeeded lies in the fact that its own advocates do not claim success and the trend is toward a further escalation...
...If the United States is prepared to live with a Saigonese civilian government dominated by the Buddhists (nervous as Washington may be at that prospect), we should be able to endure a round table of all the "essential elements" in South Vietnam...
...And if the American people are asked to have patience and perseverance in prosecuting a war in which victory is far from assured and beyond any deadlines, surely the same patience and perseverance could be asked and expected for a round table of reasonable duration...
...Manh Ha was present at the Geneva Conference and freely describes conversations with his old associate, Pham Van Dong, the Premier of North Vietnam...
...What you Americans have failed to recognize," Manh Ha said to me in June 1965, "is that there are five or six million South Vietnamese who represent something other than the Front, and by preventing them from expressing themselves politically, you are playing directly into the hands of the Front...
...He remained in Hanoi until 1951, where all sides apparently wooed him, and where his stance was not unknown at that time to interested Americans...
...What struck me at that time, and in my contact since then, is the posture of this particular group...
...Y.), represent a current of opinion going well beyond Senator J. William Fulbright (D.-Ark...
...If this is an accurate portrait of a much more sinuous, supple, and essentially indigenous movement (with assists from the old-timers and from the North), one would expect great strains between the NLF and Hanoi...
...It is now admitted that up to half-a-million American soldiers will be in South Vietnam by the autumn, and may have to take over from the South Vietnamese Army, parts of which are immobilized by the political situation...
...In direct contradiction of the American thesis that everything that has happened since 1956 is a North Vietnamese plot, it may be that Ho Chi Minh does not in fact control the Vietcong, but he dare not abandon it either...
...The U.S...
...In the spring of 1965, the deputy premier in the South Vietnamese civilian government of Dr...
...The British have been unable to persuade the Russians that the time is ripe...
...John Sherman Cooper (R.-Ky...
...He is inclined to compare this reticence unfavorably with the "old days," when "Ho Chi Minh would talk with anybody...
...Are there political circles in the Vietnamese wasteland with sufficient contacts in all directions, and a sufficiently dispassionate stance over all these years, to command a minimum of confidence on all sides...
...Having insisted that the NLF is a separate entity, Hanoi could not now object to the Front's behaving accordingly...
...If the United States finally comes round to granting the NLF a share of "power and responsibility" in South Vietnamese affairs, as Senator Robert Kennedy (D.N. Y.) has proposed, or negotiates with the NLF as one of the "essential elements" in the situation, as Senator Mike Mansfield (D.-Mont...
...The Communist behavior appears as a mystery in this country only because, in engaging this adversary, so little serious analysis has been made of his particular characteristics...
...when grouped with those of Senators John Stennis (D.-Miss...
...Embedded in this approach is the concept that the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam is essentially a tool of Hanoi, that it can be represented only as part of Hanoi's delegation...
...it should be remembered, did not sign the Geneva agreement-which was, after all, a temporary arrangement between the withdrawing French forces and the North Vietnamese...
...The youngsters represent a new generation and are mainly native Southerners...
...It is not only that they want to chastise the United States, as the British correspondent James Cameron-one of the few who has visited the Communist leaders-suggests...
...Emissaries are evidently moving all the time from Saigon to Paris and back: during my discussions, the young editor of a Catholic weekly, That the Faith May Live, had just arrived and was soon returning...
...But it is possible for the United States to take another course entirely-one which is more consistent with the political settlement now being sought by the Buddhists, and with the readiness of powerful Senators to disengage from Vietnam if the political solution among the South Vietnamese factions leads in that direction...
...Uncle Ho" has refused to say "uncle" to Uncle Sam...
...Thereafter he returned to Paris (his wife is French) and joined with Tran Van Huu...
...Quat (which preceded the present military junta) found it worthwhile to talk with the "neutralists" during a visit to Paris...
Vol. 49 • July 1966 • No. 15
