The Vietnam War-An Exchange

...By refusing to recognize this, the Administration has been not only short-sighted and deceitful, it has betrayed a trust...

...Air Force...

...He suggested that British military commitments East of Suez be liquidated because the effective containment of China could only come from the actions of Asian states...

...If some of those nations want to call themselves Communist, that is their business...

...Small wonder that the Administration has had such difficulty explaining its policy...

...We can hold on in South Vietnam...

...Saved for what...

...And why shouldn't he get it...

...According to Jean Lacouture, probably the most reliable of Western observers on Vietnam, the Vietcong prefers the South to remain autonomous, and in the short run, at any rate, seeks a coalition government in Saigon capable of dealing with Hanoi on a basis of friendship and equality...

...George Kennan argued in American Diplomacy, for example, that Pearl Harbor and much subsequent trouble in the Far East might have been avoided had "American policy [been] based consistently, over a long period of time, on a recognition of power realities in the Orient as a factor worthy of our serious respect, and directed towards the stability and quietness as well as the legal and moral tidiness of the situation there...

...The labels have somehow all become unhinged...

...If they are willing to be neutral, then we can support them whatever they call themselves: Communist, Socialist, or Vegetarian...

...And it does...

...it is certainly no threat to us...

...Let us assume, just for a minute, that the propaganda mill in the Pentagon is right, and all those countries from the China Sea to the Bay of Bengal are waiting, like so many ripe plums (or is it falling dominoes...

...A crafty nationalist as well as an old-time Communist, Ho Chi Minh has been desperately trying to prevent North Vietnam from falling under Peking's thumb -although he has been given precious little help by the U.S...

...Is there any reason to think that a Communist South Vietnam would be more amenable to Chinese domination than a Communist North Vietnam has been...

...As I noted earlier, I recognize this as a classic Tory strategy in the field of international relations...

...Then maybe Malaysia, or Indonesia or Burma...

...In the effort to contain Chinese expansion, it matters little that North Vietnam happens to be Communist...

...If it is not democracy we are defending in South Vietnam, then what are we doing there...

...Instead of one colossal Communist conspiracy organized from Peking, we seem to have a collection of different, and even conflicting, Communist groups: the Viet Cong which wants to form a coalition government in the South that would bargain with Hanoi...

...If I am correct in assuming that this is the matrix of Steel's argument, it logically follows that his emotional embellishments are superfluous...

...They are physicists of international energy and mass, and one can argue with them because they have the scruple to lay out their premises for all to see...

...A strong North Vietnam stands as a powerful barrier to China's centuries-old desire to dominate Southeast Asia...

...Nor is North Vietnam, although Communist, simply the puppet of China that Washington often portrays it as being...

...So long as this conflict between the official propaganda and the crass realities of South Vietnam continue to exist, there is likely to be disaffection and protest...

...To subdue the Vietcong probably would require the million-man army that Hanson Baldwin estimated would be necessary...

...We have more than enough client states in the world...

...Yugoslavia is nominally Communist, Pakistan nominally democratic, and South Africa vaguely fascist-yet we manage to get along with all three quite well without overly worrying over the fact that their political labels do not realistically describe what really goes on...

...Indeed, I think it is fair to say that from their raison d'etat eminence they consider morality an irrelevant, if not counter-productive, dimension of statecraft...

...By doing so, they have helped remind us all that, as Richard Lowenthal, recently pointed out, "it is not possible for a great modern democracy in the long run to call on its young men to fight and die for a cause that bears no intelligible relation to its professed ideals...

...Thus, it would seem that the Vietcong, while dominated by Communists, is not necessarily under the control of the Communist regime in North Vietnam...

...Let us assume that the power of nationalism (no point in speaking of democracy where it is only a figure of speech) is so feeble, and the temptations of Communist regimentation so overwhelming, that the Asians are panting for the chance to jump on Mao's bandwagon...

...Thus we are faced with the fact that as far as the interests of the United States are concerned (and, considering what we have done to their country, we can hardly dare speak of the interests of the miserable people of Vietnam), it really does not make very much difference whether South Vietnam "goes Communist" or not...

...The President's periodic pronouncements, in their folksy evangelism, are designed to provide just such inspiration...

...The students are not being drafted to defend democracy in South Vietnam and they know it...

...This, then, is the real motive for our war against the Vietcong and against North Vietnam, and this is the problem we should be addressing ourselves to: the determination to contain Communism...

...And China can only be contained by independent, neutral states on her frontiers...

...Machtpolitik Liberal Style By John P Roche In recent months a surprising number of liberal critics of our policy in Vietnam have been drawing their inspiration from Machiavelli and Metternich...

...To make matters even more confusing, we have been forced to admit that there is no such thing as a Communist monolith masterminded from Moscow, and that the Russians and the Chinese seem to hate each other even more than they hate us...

...For the "free world...

...to drop into Communist hands...

...First of all, we can do more of the same...

...What Steel and his fellow political physicists seem to overlook is that the surrender of South Vietnam to Hanoi involves handing over 15 million people to a terror regime...

...To accept the official statement that we are fighting in Vietnam to defend the democratic government of those brave freedomlovers, the Saigon generals, requires a degree of gullibility that a literate population cannot be expected to possess...

...It is not Ho, after all, who threatens our interests, but an expansionist China...

...Winning," of course, is another matter, if indeed it is anything more than pure fantasy...

...The history of the Vietnamese people has been one of resistance to China...

...No matter how much angst it may cause us, the nations of Southeast Asia, like most of the poor but aspiring nations of the "third world," will eventually turn to some kind of authoritarian Socialismwhere they have not done so already...

...He has every right to hold such a ruthless position, but I question his credentials as a moralist...

...By the same token, we have even discovered that all Communist nations are not alike: that Rumania is not dedicated to our destruction, that Bulgaria is not a menace to anybody, and that Hungary would be delighted to have our friendship...

...The operative section of his argument, I believe, is the following: "Why should we, of all nations, want to prevent Ho from becoming the Tito of Southeast Asia...

...It is doubtful that the Administration itself understands what is really at stake...

...Which is why he, and the lesser lights of his Administration-not to mention newspaper publishers, American Legionnaires and insurance agents -have been so outraged by the student demonstrations against the war...

...In fact, it is likely that the containment of China could be made easier if Ho Chi Minh did unify the country -as he almost certainly would have done legally if the Geneva Accords had been carried out...

...Does this mean that we should "give up" South Vietnam to the Communists...

...Let us assume that only American money and American bayonets keep all of Southeast Asia from "going Communist...

...For the Michelin tire company with its rubber plantations...

...Essentially they are saying that McNamara should liquidate another Edsel, that "American boys" (who apparently have a unique human status-as distinct from Vietnamese "kulaks") should not get killed in an unnecessary and futile enterprise-particularly since we can buy off Ho Chi Minh with 15 million cut-rate Vietnamese...

...It rings hollow because it is difficult to believe the official justifications...

...To deal in realities is to sweep away a good deal of the familiar rhetoric and to accept that Communism per se is not particularly relevant in the case of Vietnam, or any of the dozen other countries where the same episode could, and may yet well be, repeated...

...Where we once saw Russia pulling all the strings in Eastern Europe, we now see China pulling, or ready to pull, all the strings in Southeast Asia, if, heaven forbid, South Vietnam should ever "go Communist...

...If no one else is willing to admit it, they at least know they are being lied to, and are being called into uniform to die for a regime in Saigon which is the antithesis of what American democracy stands for...

...We are, it would seem, fighting the war in Vietnam for the sake of democracy...

...It is hardly necessary to detail the record of the North Vietnamese: I suspect that Ho's Army and police murdered more Vietnamese in the "dekulakization" of the countryside than have died in the War in the South...

...Fundamentally they agree that if the United States would only play the game of power politics astutely, it would find Chinese expansionism ringed and checked by "Titoist" states...

...It is not Ho, after all, who threatens our interests, but an expansionist China...

...by his own premise, Steel would be bound to support it against Hanoi if Saigon's hegemony "would be better able to guard [Vietnamese] independence against China...

...Nor is it even certain that the Vietcong, which launched its revolt against Ngo Dinh Diem and followed it through against his successors, has any desire to throw South Vietnam into the arms of Hanoi...

...This means that young Americans are not only being sacrificed for a regime which is the antithesis of America's own democratic ideals, but also for one that is of no benefit to America's political interests...

...the Communist regime in North Vietnam that supports the insurrection in the South, but is desperately trying to avoid Chinese domination...

...If this is the case, what can we do about it...

...There are some Communist governments that are hostile to our interests, some that are irrelevant, and even some that are favorable...

...Then, shrewd nationalist that he is, he could appeal to both America and Russia for help against the Chinese dragon on his border...

...It makes little difference whether the dictatorship in Saigon is Communist or fascist, but it matters a great deal what Americans are asked to die for...

...and the clever dialecticians in Peking who are eagerly working to prolong the Vietnamese war as long as possible in hopes of a) dominating Vietnam once it has been laid waste by American bombers, b) undermining American prestige throughout the "third world" of emerging states, and c) sabotaging, if possible, the RussoAmerican d?©tente...

...We have failed to apply the lesson of Europe, where we learned that nationalism persistently triumphs over ideology, and have instead lumped the Communist nations of Asia together...

...They admit that while a dirty deed may be necessary, necessity provides no purification...

...what is crucial is that it is Vietnamese...

...When this logic comes from the traditionalist camp, it is commonplace...

...And because the administration has tried to justify its policies by deception-revealing a cynicism bordering on contempt for its citizens-it has received a good deal of contempt in return...

...This is what the French did in Indochina, although they had to give it up after nine years of warfare-despite the fact that they had a stake there, since it was their colony...

...We can keep our enclaves along the coast and provide a capital for the generals in Saigon...

...We can live quite happily with the Communist states of Eastern Europe, and we have learned that they are just as eager to avoid Russian domination as we are to have them avoid it...

...Ronald Steel, however, takes the now popular liberal tack: He conveys the substance of crude power politics but hides it behind a screen of moralistic rhetoric...

...It is about time we grew out of the simple-minded anti-Communism of the Acheson-Dulles period and acted upon the fact that the world has changed a good deal in the past decade...

...We are now cozy with Russia and are even quietly wooing the states of Eastern Europe...

...There is no longer any serious doubt about that...

...We would be naive indeed to put much faith in the label under which nations, new and old, justify their policies...

...Why should we, of all nations, want to prevent Ho from becoming the Tito of Southeast Asia...

...Ho Chi Minh's brand of Communism may be a threat to China...

...However, by confusing antiWestern nationalism, Communism, and Chinese imperialism, and indeed behaving as though they were all more or less the same thing, we have completely lost sight of what is possible-or even desirable-in Vietnam and the rest of Southeast Asia...

...The point is not the ideology a regime may profess-we can be as indifferent to the ideals of a good many of our allies as they are to ours-but the policies it follows...

...I fully expect someone to suggest that the best thing that could happen in Asia would be a Communist take-over in India-presumably the resulting dictatorship could destroy Indian parochialism and inefficiency and put a really powerful "national Communist" state into the ring around Peking...

...Perhaps, but the country was never ours to "give" in the first place, and if the government of South Vietnam is incapable of protecting itself against its own people, then it need not be our job to prop it up-least of all at the sacrifice of our own soldiers...

...The rest of us know it, too, but being less directly touched, we are also less honest about it...

...But what if it does...

...The only aspect of the Saigon regime which is relevant is its weakness...

...We are, the President and his minions tell us, holding back the tide of Communism...

...But it bears about as much relation to real Communism as the "people's democracies" bear to real democracy...

...But at least the Tories have the decency not to pose as guardians of higher morality when they are pushing the pieces on the chessboard...

...If Steel and others who play at this geopolitical game would frankly announce that they think we should trade 15 million people to Ho's GPU because it is, in terms of cost accounting, a bargain for the American national interest, we could at least conduct an argument...

...Under his leadership a unified Vietnameven if it is nominally Communist -would be better able to guard its independence against China than the collapsing regime in Saigon...

...But even here we are on slippery ground, for the Vietcong, while under Communist leadership, has a good many non-Communists at its upper levels, including the leader of its political arm, Nguyen Huu Tho...

...And China can only be contained by independent, neutral states on her frontiers...

...Recently the Tory Shadow Minister of Defense, Enoch Powell, delivered a speech in the same vein to the annual Conservative Conference...

...It simply is not true...

...No doubt the President believes them himself...

...We have declared that the Vietcong are puppets of Hanoi, and Hanoi is a puppet of Peking-and, by our actions, have helped make them so, even against their own will...

...Indeed, any other argument is hardly credible, since the American people could hardly be expected to accept the cremation of Vietnamese villagers by napalm, and the death and maiming of its own soldiers without believing that something more inspiring than power politics was at stake...

...You can almost hear them falling now: Laos, Thailand, Cambodia...

...Insofar as a unified Vietnam would be better able to resist Chinese dominance, it might even be better if it did...

...With a million American soldiers occupying the country, South Vietnam could be "saved...

...In this sense it is hard to see how the military regime in Saigon, even if it can be stabilized, is going to benefit our interests in the long run...

...But if they can help serve our interests by guarding their independence, then we need not be overly concerned with their labels...

...By failing to distinguish between them, we force the small Communist states into dependence on the big ones, and help reconstruct the very monoliths we should be trying to break up...

...What we could use are a few more self-reliant allies who have some basis of support other than American bayonets...

...Translated into operational English...

...But what does it really mean...

...The Communism that we find intolerable in Southeast Asia, is neither a menace, nor particularly unendurable where the Soviet satellites are concerned...

...Most likely the last, for our economic investment in South Vietnam is insignificant, and the revolving generals in Saigon are merely tools to be used, and endured, for fighting a war which is apparently doomed to continue without end...

...Under his leadership a unified Vietnam-even if it is nominally Communistwould be better able to guard its independence against China than the collapsing regime in Saigon which we are trying to prop up at such staggering human and moral cost...

...We can call it Communism if we like...

...We continually proclaim our desire to halt Chinese imperialism in its tracks, and yet we are systematically devastating the country which is best placed to resist Chinese hegemony in Southeast Asia...

...For General Nguyen Cao Ky, that admirer of Adolf Hitler...

...Yet despite all this earnest propaganda and outraged indignation by those who conduct and support the Vietnamese war, it all rings hollow at the core...

...We can keep pouring our soldiers into South Vietnam, where the figure is already creeping up toward a quarter of a million...

...The student protests are a perfectly logical, and commendable, reaction to the official cant...

...Yet even such a commitment would not end the rebellion, but simply reduce it to the level of sporadic guerrilla warfare...

...If they are willing to be neutral, then we can support them whatever they call themselves: Communist, Socialist or Vegetarian...

...In Asia, however, we are, mentally, right back where we were with Russia in 1950...

...South Vietnam may be "saved" from Communism, only to have all of Southeast Asia fall under Chinese hegemony-even though its governments may be nominally antiCommunist...

...It is a grisly picture, designed to raise goose pimples on the flesh of every red-blooded American...

...This is true of South Vietnam, it is true of Southeast Asia, and for that matter it is true of the rest of the "third world" as well...

...Kennan is, of course, saying that we should have left the Japanese alone in China-a view shared by Walter Lippmann at that time...

...Now this is a perfectly legitimate, and even persuasive, viewpoint coming from a Tory or an American conservative...

...Neither Kennan nor Powell talk about the morality of their options...