Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR VIETNAM EXCHANGE Ronald Steel's "Our Asian Illusions" ("The Vietnam War-An Exchange," including a reply by John P. Roche, "Machtpolitik Liberal Style," NL, January 3) must be reread...
...December 20) Professor Robert Palter criticizes Wilson Stampwick for asserting that the "myth" that Eisenhower had said that Ho Chi Minh would have beaten Ngo Dinh Diem in a free election in 1956 is only a "myth...
...But when all normal remedies (selected dictators, free munitions, oversize local armies, bribes, gifts, loans, assassinations, army coups, and CIA intrigue) fail and an oppressed people start a civil war, the U.S...
...If I may say so, the remainder of Professor Palter's letter is, on the whole, marked by the same kind of carelessness...
...But in his answer to Ronald Steel his zeal is getting the better of him...
...Englewood, N.J...
...There is widespread fear among independent observers and in the U.S...
...As a study in political surrealism it is a worthy footnote to Orwell's newsspeak and newsthink...
...in must be changed...
...They can plot to "nationalize" their assorted Communist despotisms with our warmest good wishes...
...and quite another to persuade ourselves and Communist parties in non-Communist states that they are free of reprisal if they follow the Steel line-Tyrannize your subjects with impunity providing you Titoize your Communism...
...The quotes follow: "It is generally conceded that had an election been held Ho Chi Minh would have been elected premier...
...338) "I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochina affairs who did not agree that had elections been held at the time of the lighting, perhaps 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai...
...investors lost so much in Cuba, it has been U.S...
...372) It seems quite obvious to me that Professor Palter has not read Eisenhower's book or that his filters are incredibly thick...
...It is the "six and half a dozen" moral equation that has led liberals to resort to the power politics argument of which Roche complains...
...Now, says Palter, conveniently forgetting the two year discrepancy in the earlier letter to which Stampwick was referring...
...He refers to elections at two different points...
...Stanley Rothman Associate Professor of Government Smith College...
...I incline to the latter view because Stampwick quoted verbatim the most significant sentence in the second passage...
...Wouldn't it be monumentally ironic for so-called "Wars of National Liberation" to turn inward upon the seething Communist land mass...
...It is because we made distinctions among Communist states...
...But precisely the opposite has occurred...
...On the contrary...
...As the wise and rocketing stock market clearly shows, it is a prelude to more war...
...If nationalist impulses are quickening beneath and within Communist bureaucracies, they are essentially attributable to our military, economic and allied power, plus the demonstrated credibility (Berlin, Korea, Cuba) of our readiness to use that power against overt or covert aggression...
...The right to invest isn't all that important to most Americans...
...If there were a clearcut case to be made that the people of South Vietnam are better off under their type of government than those who live under Ho Chi Miniti, Roche would win the argument on morality...
...New York City Murray Baron I have long admired John Roche's wellreasoned and generally well-grounded efforts to keep his fellow-liberals consistent and on the straight and narrow of international morality...
...When Communist imperialism cannot explode-it implodes...
...But it is one thing to argue for selective and varying policies toward Communist States in being (Yugoslavia, North Vietnam, etc...
...Toward the end of 1953, the effect of the termination of hostilities in Korea began to be felt in Indochina...
...However, in the partitioned areas of the world (Berlin, Germany, Korea, Vietnam), despite exasperating provocation, we have made a distinction between resisting aggression by the Communist half against the non-Communist half and a policy of reverse military action to de-Communize the Communist sections...
...Unhappily, the situation was exacerbated by the almost total lack of leadership displayed by the Vietnamese Chief of State, Bao Dai...
...Government that a free election would result in a country-wide victory for Ho...
...Steel's prognosis combats the Peking expansionist virus with the antibodies within Ho's unified Vietnamese body politic: neutralism, nationalism, Titoism...
...But I have not seen this case made in any responsible reporting from Vietnam...
...Steel says: "In fact it is likely that the containment of China would be made easier if Ho Chi Minti did unify the country-then, shrewd nationalist that he is, he would appeal to both America and Russia for help against the Chinese Dragon on his border...
...Perth Amboy...
...Robert B. Goldmann Ever since U.S...
...Steel, Hans Morgenthau, Walter Lippmann and their subscribers present the disarray of the Communist world as a justification for yielding non-Communist Asian territory and peoples to the salubrious compassion of National Communism, thus transposing cause (containment) and effect (Titoism...
...The policy that got the U.S...
...Whole armies move when the right to invest seems in any danger (Santo Domingo...
...Northampton, Mass...
...Steel further asserts: "By failing to distinguish between [Communist states] we force the small states into dependence on the big ones and help reconstitute the very monolith we should be trying to break up...
...The economic and political disarray within the Communist controlled spheres in large measure flows from our mixture of firmness and flexibility toward different Communist regimes...
...policy not to yield another inch of territory to those who would interfere with investment...
...Steel can find "Titoist" examples to cite in ostensible support of his proposal for appeasement and surrender...
...This would not happen if the situation were as black and white in favor of Saigon as Roche paints it...
...Unfortunately, however, Eisenhower, as Stampwick pointed out, is quite specific, and to settle this question once and for all, I hope that The New Leader will print his remarks in Mandate For Change in full...
...Polycentrism, Titoism, decentralization, creeping capitalism, "liberalism" and Libermanism-all have developed because we quickly sensed and nurtured the centrifugal potential of the TitoStalin split while at the same time we maintained a careful distinction between legitimate Soviet defense needs behind its perimeter and its geopolitical aggressions-its threats and harrassments in Berlin and its leap-frog to Cuba, with the missile gambit aimed at our survival...
...All this with brutal disregard of the wishes of its victims...
...And to validate Steel's half-truth, wouldn't it be ironic if, in a conceivable circumstance, a non-Communist South Vietnam and a Titoist North Vietnam jointly appealed (Steel's words) "to both America and Russia for help against the Chinese Dragon...
...Army should stay home...
...Metaphorically "Dr...
...The present all too public "peace offensive" omits the Vietcong...
...1 think we are much better off with Steel's argument that the objective must be to contain Red China-at least until Washington gets serious about pushing through some reforms in the South which will lay the basis for a good moral case...
...If these anti-viral elements need a booster shot he can "appeal to both America and Russia for help...
...Diem did come to power in 1954, and one could interpret remarks as indeed referring to Diem...
...Stampwick had then gone on to quote from Eisenhower to show that the statement had been made in 1954 with reference to Bao Dai...
...It is the sad and callous record of the people who have run things from Saigon for many decades that has, along with Ho Chi Minh's resources, fed the rebellion for so long and so effectively...
...To the extent our commitment to containment is credible, the moderate tyrants must confront their immoderate colleagues in each of the Politburos of the Communist world and redirect their conspiracies against their Soviet and Chinese overlords...
...Nonetheless, the establishment peace position, though a lie, should be presented but surely not by a naif like John Roche, who talks of "morality...
...In short, survival of South Vietnamese independence is a victory for China, while absorbtion by Ho of South Vietnam is a defeat for China...
...Davtd Mandel In his letter (NL...
...But even to leave Vietnam will not be enough...
...As one Frenchman said to me, 'What Vietnam needs is another Syngman Rhee, regardless of all the difficulties the presence of such a personality would entail.'" (p...
...DEAR EDITOR VIETNAM EXCHANGE Ronald Steel's "Our Asian Illusions" ("The Vietnam War-An Exchange," including a reply by John P. Roche, "Machtpolitik Liberal Style," NL, January 3) must be reread several times to be fully depreciated...
...Moreover, we have used our power, itself, in a discriminating mix, i.e., military aid to South Vietnam and the Mekong Delta Regional Development Plan...
Vol. 49 • January 1966 • No. 2
