Plain Talk About Vietnam

...If a given nation has not held an election in a decade or two, does it follow that we could not care less if it went Communist tomorrow...

...Perspectives PLAIN TALK ABOUT VIETNAM BY KENNETH KATZNER The withdrawal of both opposition candidates from the lecent Presidential election was a grievous setback foi dem-ociacy in South Vietnam Right...

...We cannot tell at this stage One should be wary of anticipating the verdict ot history before the final returns are in Most people have made up their minds already, but future generations may see things differently With the progress of time history tends to gloss over the personal suffering inflicted by wars and to pass judgment largely on the basis of what was accomplished and what the consequences weie And on this basis its verdict may not be all that unkind...

...Wrong Democracy, as the term is understood in this country, has never existed m Vietnam or, for that matter, anywhere else m Southeast Asia A Presidential contest with only one candidate may not be our idea of a true election, yet the tact that an opposition party did enter candidates in most of the legislative races, and that many of them won, puts the South Vietnamese electoral process far ahead of that of three-fourths of the world's nations Hardly a country in Southeast Asia has held a genuine election at all in the last decade or so, unless one counts this year's single-party affair in North Vietnam, where policemen carefully scrutinized each "voter" as he filled out his ballot In fact, the story is the same over most of the globe Two-party elections, offering a real choice to the voter, are the nearly exclusive property of nations with a stable political system and a long-standing democratic tradition It is totally unrealistic suddenly to expect full-fledged Western-style democracy in an area that has virtually no conception of what the word means But we did not send troops to fight and die in other coun'ries For reasons that are still unclear, we did decide on South Vietnam, committing half a million troops to battle foi what we were told was democracy And now we get a one-man Presidential lace that makes a joke of democracy and proves once and for all that 45,000 U S soldiers have died foi nothing Right...

...Wrong The American objective in Vietnam was never the immediate establishment of Western-style democracy That was clearly out of the question for a nation with such a fragile political base and a savage guerrilla war on its hands The United States intervened to prevent a forcible Communist takeovei?which would most certainly have taken place by now—and the imposition of a harsh oppressive, single-party system that, rather than merely intimidating or harassing the opposition, physically destroys it There is hope that, given time and patience, democratic institutions can gradually emerge in South Vie nam, they are beginning to develop aheady, and it cannot be denied that the American presence has greatly accelerated this evolution So we've been fighting to prevent the imposition of a Communist dic-tatorship m South Vietnam and have wound up with another kind of dicKENNETH KATZNER, an editor with American Heritage Publishing Co , often wntes on international affairs tatorship instead When you come right down to it, an illiterate peasant would be no worse off under a Communist system than he is under the Thieu legime It is therefore ridiculous to try to prevent South Vietnam, or any other country with a totalitarian government, from going Communist Right'' Wrong In the first place, there is a huge difference between a system in which candidates drop out of the running because they feel the election is rigged, and one in which elections by definition allow a solitary candidate for each office The former is a situation that hopefully will be corrected m time, the latter, if the history of the past 50 years is any indication, is utterly permanent?with the rigid exclusion of unorthodox ideas as well as opposition parties, it tends to become even more absolute as time goes by Furthermore, is it valid to assume that a less than democratic non-Communist country might just as well fall into the Communist orbit...

...The meanmg of the word Coin-munism has changed significantly over the last 10-20 years In the '50s it was truly a monolith, all its members spoke with one voice and acted as if one Today, however, each is going its own way, many are bicker-ring among themselves, and the two great Communist powers are virtually at swords points There are so many kinds of Communism now?Soviet Communism, Chinese Communism, Rumanian Communism, Vietnamese Communism—that the doctrine of containment has become an anachronism Right'' Wrong ft is true that the Communist world is vastly different from what it was a decade ago The rift between the Soviet Union and China, to say nothing of the shook waves it has sent through other Communist countries, is profound, and will probably widen rather than narrow in the years to come Nonetheless, it is important to remember that the arguments between the various Communist powers arc exclusively about internal issues—independence of the small nations fiom the big ones, orientation of the economy, personal freedoms, and the like When it comes to any sort of confrontation with the non-Communist world, they are remarkably quick to paper over their differences and woik together All Communist countries have consistently thrown their support behind the Vietcong, no non-Communist country has dared do so Especially revealing is the Middle East situation, where the Soviet Union, for reasons of its own, has decided to cast its lot with the Arab side Though it is not an area of vital interest to any Communist country, virtually every one of them has gone along with the game, lending its voice to the shrill chorus denouncing the "Zionist aggressors " This monolithic umty vis-a-vis the outside world remains the overriding consideration in determining our approach to the Communist Bloc And now Piesident Nnon is going to Peking to make peace with out ei stwhile enemies, after years of telling us that our presence in Vietnam was necessary to prevent Communist expansion in Asia The China tup clearly negates the entire put pose of our ad-venture m Vietnam, and points up once again the wholly illogical and contradictoiy nature of American foreign policy Right7 Wrong While our new relationship with China does represent a dramatic departure from the past, it is fully consistent with the stance we have taken toward the other Communist countries for the past 15 years Our policy toward the Soviet Union has always been to resist with all available means any attempt to subjugate an independent country, trying at the same time to achieve a better understanding and to find areas ot common interest During the numerous "Berlin crises" of only 10 years ago, President Kennedy made it absolutely clear that under no circumstances would he allow West Berlin to be gobbled up, even if that meant using nuclear weapons in its defense Simultaneously, a series of exchange agreements were worked out that led to a noticeable lessening of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, eventually resulting in a number of important treaties and concords It is to be hoped that similar progress can be made with China now that the fust step has been taken Today, after their experience in Vietnam, the American people are no longer willing to "bear any burden or pay any price" to resist Communist expansion, as they were a decade ago This makes an entirely new ball game out of the international situation, and the big question is to what extent the other side will attempt to exploit this advantage Judging by the way North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops are currently overrunning Laos and Cambodia, prospects are not encouraging Well, I still say that the American intervention in Vietnam was a ghastly mistake and that the recent one-man election was simply the last straw Histoiy will undoubtedly judge this as one of America's saddest hour's Right...

...Few African countries have ever held elections, they are too busy trying to get themselves on their feet Were they all to be swallowed up next week, would we simply shrug our shoulders...