Power Politics and Vietnam

...Relatively few Americans have any concrete idea what the war is about or see any good reason for it except Communist aggression vaguely conceived...

...Carl Landauer is a professor of economics at the Berkeley campus of the University of California...

...The correspondence between President Eisenhower and Ngo Dinh Diem in 1954 made it clear that our commitment was contingent on the achievement by the Saigon government of "needed reforms" and "standards of performance, which of course were never achieved...

...It should not be taken for granted that even then the Administration would really have been unwilling to negotiate if it had found Hanoi prepared to do so on terms that left hope for an agreement...

...In other words, after a war involving enormous risks and losses, our victory would present us with an insoluble problem...

...But while this need of the giants for each others' existence provides the hope for peace in the future, at the moment it is being vitiated by the "anti-imperialist" ideology in Peking, and, to a lesser extent, in Moscow...

...The most conspicuous recent exception, the case of the French in Algeria, ended disastrously...

...One of the more obvious truths, which cannot have been overlooked in shaping our policy in Vietnam but which has been disregarded in practice, is the impossibility of containing China without the cooperation of the Soviet Union...

...The principles of the 1954 Geneva Agreement seem to be well suited for this purpose, provided that the guarantees against reprisals are strengthened and the role of the United Nations is increased...

...The defeat, of course, would have to be complete, for the same reasons that Hitler's defeat had to be complete...

...America has tended to destabilize the peace by its blunders...

...On the other hand, some of the escalators, perhaps infatuated by their success in recognizing the Chinese Communists as Communists in the '30s, have concluded that it is wise and necessary to attack anything that marches under the Red flag, regardless of circumstances...

...The effect would be a widespread and disastrous mistrust of U.S...

...It is misleading to cite the examples of other powers, especially France in Indochina and Algeria, who found military failure an acceptable reason for relinquishing commitments...

...Thus the U.S...

...There is a strong case for the demand that we permanently cease bombing the North, declare readiness to negotiate with the NLF, and accept a cease fire on the basis of the military status quo...

...It is unlikely that domestic resistance to the Vietnam war will reach the same intensity: For one thing, the memory of World War II, which increased war weariness in the Korean case, is less vivid today...

...But we cannot presume that these policies will be welcomed and spontaneously reciprocated by the other side...

...But it was absurd to believe that any good purpose would be served by hiding the unwillingness to negotiate if that willingness existedand so was the whole policy absurd if the willingness to negotiate did not exist, and it was assumed that the war could be terminated without negotiations...

...Yet even though we have missed the opportunity to disengage in Vietnam, it is of some use to reflect on the futility of globalism...

...But this example can be turned around: Would Hitler have responded favorably to conciliatory gestures as long as he saw a chance for victory...

...Invite the Soviet Union to take over and see if it can do better than the Mongols in holding together an empire from the Yellow Sea to the Baltic...

...It is important to face up to the implications of this alternative because the belief in its availability may detract from the energy with which we seek a negotiated settlement...

...PERSPECTIVES Power Politics and Vietnam By Carl Landauer The Vietnam war was born of the illusion-termed "globalism" by Walter Lippmann-that the United States has the power to stop Communist expansion anywhere and is required by its vital interests to use it...

...It would be another illusion, however, to believe that we still stand where we stood in 1954, 1960 or even 1964...

...emphasized its freedom to leave the fight against the Communists to the native government if the conditions it considered necessary for success remained unfulfilled by South Vietnam...

...Such loss of initiative is dangerous now...

...But maintaining a will to persevere depends in part on a strategy which enables us to keep an eye on our losses as well as our goals...

...We shall not achieve such a settlement if we raise our sights too high...

...Such a limitation of our goals will make it possible to keep our military effort within tolerable limits until the other side comes to the conclusion that it cannot achieve by violence what it could achieve by negotiations: elimination of foreign troops from the country...

...But since we did not avail ourselves of that opportunity, unhappiness with the Saigon regime would no longer suffice as grounds for withdrawal but would seem a mere pretext for unwillingness to pay the price which our pledges entail...

...Such a scheme presupposes a degree of confidence in the Soviet Union's peaceful and friendly intentions which, to say the least, would be presumptuous...

...Even in 1960, Eisenhower tied our promise of help to the clause "so long as our strength can be useful...

...What was less certain, but has become apparent now, is the hesitancy of the Soviet Union to exert much moderating influence in Hanoi...

...No matter how strong the President's will to terminate the war by negotiations may be, nothing has occurred to suggest that the other side will ever come willingly to the peace table, or that even under political pressure such willingness will come soon...

...Yet like any military posture, the power of frustration is not worth anything unless it can be translated into the ability to achieve a political settlement...

...On this point, the ideas frequently heard on the Left are just as illusory as the daydreams of escalators who expect victory from extended bombings...

...By speaking of our commitment as if it were unconditional, President Johnson and his Cabinet members have made it unconditional...

...Indeed, in recent weeks it has been orchestrated and proclaimed...

...We are certainly not confronted by opponents who are basically peaceloving and anxious to drop their guns as soon as we drop ours...

...By the same token, Moscow is still vitally interested in Chinese independence not only because China may still be an ally against the United States in some conceivable situations, but primarily because the Soviets cannot hope to permanently dominate the territory and cannot leave it to an American satellite government...

...It will perhaps never be known who persuaded President Johnson that bombing North Vietnam would force Hanoi to stop supporting the Vietcong, or that the posture of "no negotiations, just stop molestation," taken in the first quarter of 1965, was in any way tactically expedient...

...General Taylor and Secretary McNamara deserve great credit for their reported insistence on this most unpopular method and for their disparagement of "shortcuts" involving more extended air strikes...

...The very thought is ridiculous...

...Should in such inconclusive combat it is probable that we will reach a point when public opinion will only tolerate holding operations, it is important to undertake "contingency planning" that would enable us to shift from the offensive if this becomes necessary...

...Whatever the other side will do or fail to do, the United States has one trump card: It is now recognized that we cannot be dislodged from Vietnam by military force...

...Since last spring the willingness to negotiate has not only existed but has been professed...

...These rumors may in most instances have sprung from gossip, misunderstandings, or stories deliberately planted for political purposes...

...The Left is in a sounder position when criticizing the government for its assumption that our bombings could discourage North Vietnam from intervening in the South...

...But what are we going to do after a more conclusive victory...

...Denials of the key importance of Communist leaders in the National Liberation Front (NLF) are no more realistic than the conjectures of the 1930's that Mao Tse-tung's armies represented essentially a movement of agrarian reformers...

...promises...

...In 1964, at the time of the last palace revolution in Saigon, we could still have taken the position that our patience was exhausted and that a governing clique which would not bury internal quarrels in the face of a deadly threat has no claim on us even for such support as it had already received-not to speak of the far more costly support then being contemplated...

...in Korea, we achieved a compromise when popular pressure threatened to make continuation of the struggle there politically prohibitive...

...Then as now, the chances for the United States to separate followers from leaders, or to frustrate the leaders' policies once the movement has achieved total victory, are minimal...

...Though support for the war continues to be widespread in the United States despite lengthening casualty listsand though the tendency to rally around the flag, strengthened by the popularity of the President who is holding it up, has so far been surprisingly durable-the roots of the support do not go deep...

...Yet while the present Soviet diplomacy of folded arms, whatever its motives, is neither humane nor very far-sighted, Moscow still holds the key to peace in Vietnam and Washington ought to ask itself how Messrs...

...Regardless of the course taken by the Soviet Union, however, the United States will face increasing difficulties in prosecuting the war...

...For defense against Communist aggression and subversion in the vital spots that must be held if Moscow or Peking are not to dominate the globe, the non-Communist world does not look to France but to the United States...

...to leave Communist China in the position of, say, Germany after World War I would be to invite the almost certain disaster of a comeback and a war of revenge...

...Still, the ultimate need for interdependence remains and for the United States the most important lesson to draw from it is the futility of waging a war that-no matter how successful its outcome-would hopelessly disrupt the international power system...

...This alone is a strong argument against an indefinite prolongation of the Vietnamese war...

...Having originated in illusions, the war has also been influenced by wishful thinking in high places...

...The official statements, though, have been accompanied by uninterrupted rumors about imminent escalation in forms more spectacular than the continuous additions of men and equipment...

...Invite Chiang Kai-Shek to Peking...

...Then as now, many of their followers were non-Communists...

...CLEARLY, IN A WORLD where violence is not precluded, only a power equilibrium can provide a basis for peace: In the present "power triangle"-the United States, the Soviet Union and China -each side needs the two others...

...With all the hostility between the United States and China-which, despite a widespread legend to the contrary, cannot be removed merely by good American intentions-the existence of an independent China is a necessity for us because we can neither control the Chinese nation nor leave it to the Soviet Union...

...Hitler, in the face of far more severe air attacks and without any chance for such backing as Hanoi receives from Peking and Moscow, did not give up until defeated on the ground...

...One shudders to think what a technologically advanced China might do to us in other places after entangling much of our power in a theater of less than secondary importance like Vietnam...

...Establish an American Military Government of China to develop Chinese democracy...

...Even if we have to give up the rainbow chase for military victory, we can frustrate the efforts of the NLF to establish an effective national government of South Vietnam, or to merge North and South Vietnam by dictation...

...Obviously, to say that we shall defend every spot on the globe into which Communist nations might expand, leaves to them the selection of the scene of the struggle...

...Especially after the great sacrifices which we are now making, we do not have to hold out for more than an arrangement which gives our allies a breathing space during which they might still try to win the allegiance of the peasant population, and if that fails, at least a chance to make arrangements with the Communists for their own personal security, under international supervision...

...There is not the slightest reason to assume he would improve on his performance in the 1940s...

...But most of the colonial powers mitigated their problems by avoiding the use of conscript armies in their colonies: The French and Spanish had their foreign legions in addition to hired native troops, the British their volunteer army and native mercenaries...

...But, apparently, the Soviet Union is not displeased with the present situation and is in no hurry for it to end...

...One of the most tragic aspects of the Vietnam conflict is the fact that the least dangerous and provocative form of military pressure we can apply is the one that imposes the greatest sacrifices on the American people: increases of troop strength in South Vietnam...

...Moscow, to be sure, also needs the United States, and a little reflection will suggest that even Peking cannot really wish to be left in the world with no other super-power to contain the Soviet Union...

...But in the beginning this belief was held only with important qualifications...

...or Moscow may vaguely desire a war between its two main rivals, as it has alleged Great Britain hoped for a war between Russia and Germany...

...but the increasing commitment of American soldiers makes more likely an eventual attempt to cut off supplies to the North by bombing or mining the port of Haiphong...

...Such pressure can be mobilized only if the United States makes its desire for a genuine negotiated peace so clear that it cannot be overpowered by extreme-left or anti-American bias and propaganda...

...Kosygin and Brezhnev can be induced to make a real effort to moderate North Vietnamese intransigence...

...The larger part of the world entertains such a bias...

...Although this boundary was not originally intended to be permanent, there is good reason to believe that it represents the most viable territorial arrangement that can be made in this area...

...Nor are we in any way obliged to fight until we have obtained such an absolute assurance...

...it refuses to recognize that despite all the American mistakes and even wrongs, the American posture in the Vietnam conflict is essentially defensive, because the United States is trying to maintain the existing boundary between North and South Vietnam...

...Even a step like the bombing of Hanoi or Haiphong, which might or might not lead to war with Peking, would surely worsen our relations with Moscow...

...Once we have improved the climate of opinion, it should not be impossible for us to make the major part of the non-committed world see that it is wrong not only to let the call for negotiations go unheeded, but also to withhold one's good offices for mediation of the war as the Soviet Union is doing...

...We naturally want as much freedom and stability as possible for South Vietnam, but we cannot hope to obtain an absolute and permanent guarantee that the country will not slip under Communist control...

...While the Administration may not resort to this measure, or to the bombing of Hanoi or China, or to the invasion of North Vietnam by ground forces, the potential threat of such escalation will still have some influence on current events...

...in the future, it may be fatal...

...it may be holding out for a huge quid pro quo, perhaps the exclusion of West Germany from nuclear planning, the recognition of East Germany or economic concessions...

...It seems likely that the Kremlin could exert such an influence, since according to all reports North Vietnam is waging the war mainly with Soviet materiel...

...There are three possible explanations for Moscow's attitude: It may simply enjoy presenting herself to the new nations as more effectively anti-imperialist than China...

...A large part of present day humanity also does not want to recognize the incompatibility of "wars of liberation" with peace among the great powers, and is therefore unwilling to condemn the zeal with which China is promoting such wars...

...But the prospect of an indefinitely protracted ground war, with offensive as well as defensive operations, is also a mirage...

...Even sober-minded government advisers and officials with great inhibitions against territorial extension of the war occasionally imply that, in extremis, major escalation would be a reasonable alternative to withdrawal...

...Let us assume for a moment that we have defeated China...

...There is no way for us to change this situation fundamentally in the near future, but we can weaken this reluctance to accept our good faith by demonstrating, not merely professing, our peacemindedness, and there is no better means to this end than maintaining the present stoppage of our bombing raids in North Vietnam...

...That Moscow now considers itself bound to increase its support to North Vietnam is understandable and ought to have been expected as a consequence of our bombing attacks...

...rather, they should be adopted as prerequisites for an effort to organize political pressure on Hanoi and, especially, on Moscow...

...Since the "rollback" proclamations of the early Dulles years, the United States has not entertained such dangerous notions as the Chinese "wars of national liberation...

...Almost all colonial wars-and the Vietnam war is a colonial one for the United States in many of its outward features, though not in purpose-have seemed strange to the people in the homeland...