The Need for American Self-Confidence

...The tragedy of Vietnam was due to an error in judgment, not a fundamental moral defect...

...But if we are to learn from the difficult experience, it is necessary now to determine how and in what sense the war was wrong...

...The Mideast is one example...

...War, moreover, has its own logic, and since Vietnam strained our patience, making us feel cornered, we pursued cruel expedients...

...Surely, we must not close our eyes to the mistakes we have committed, but we must not let our acknowledgment of these things crush our sense of self-reliance...

...Still, critics of American policy have often underrated the limitations objective circumstances impose on the selection of allies...

...We should not try to minimize their consequences...

...Only a minority outside the Communist nations would say that the pluralist notion of political relations America feels committed to is not vastly superior to its Communist rival from a humanitarian point of view...

...That one cannot always choose one's allies, I should also point out, was demonstrated on the grandest scale during World War II: The only justification-but a sufficient one-for fighting on the side of Stalin was the recognition that Hitler represented the larger immediate threat to democracy...

...This we should have foreseen...

...But again, there is nothing wrong with this...

...No doubt quite a few problems will arise in assimilating Vietnamese children into American life...

...Not for economic reasons...

...it is not even trying to eliminate America's global prestige and power, because it both hopes to profit from our economic strength and needs us as a counterweight to China...

...But a nation, like an individual, with great tasks to fulfill, needs self-respect more than anything else...

...So far, so good...

...In the light of all this, to play the role we must play, an adequate military is clearly a necessity-though whether we need the nuclear overkill capacity we have or whether our conventional armaments and those of our allies are sufficient are questions I do not have the expertise to answer...

...To ignore the possibilities a relatively relaxed atmosphere opens up would be a great mistake...

...In other words, we felt obliged to play the role of universal policeman against Communism...

...for its "arrogance of power," as many have done, is to raise an objection based on a half-truth...

...The United States has often been blamed for allying itself with reactionaries...

...We should recognize our mistakes in Vietnam...

...But there is nothing wrong with the token of a humanitarian spirit if no more can be done...

...activity in the international sphere...

...we came close to the paradox of trying to protect a country by destroying it...

...At present, ridicule and contempt are being heaped upon that thinking...

...Like many others, I was from the outset opposed to the venture...

...The Soviet Union is not now posed for an attack on the United States or its allies...

...The age of the Cold War fostered smugness and self-glorification in the U.S...

...This the United States failed to do...

...This was the original inspiration behind the United Nations...

...A similar judgment holds true for the Cold War in general: Our mistakes have resulted from knowing that we stood for human liberty while losing sight of the limitations objective conditions imposed on us...

...These guilt feelings also account for one kind of opposition to the "baby lift" out of Vietnam...

...Indeed, it is indisputable that Washington has frequently accepted anti-Communism as the only credential necessary for its support-without considering a government's moral qualities or carefully examining what contribution the regime might make to the strengthening of the American cause...

...efforts there was deserved only because, in any political effort, one has an obligation to measure the means required for the end and to estimate what might be thought necessary, should it turn out that one has overrated one's strength...

...Yet, to repeat, American aims in Southeast Asia were eminently worthwhile and went beyond mere national interest...

...Yet we should realize as well that, in the main, our errors originated not in arrogance or in a lust for power, but in striving for an unattainable goal that, could it have been attained, would have benefited everybody...

...This, too, we should have foreseen...

...We intervened because we regarded North Vietnam and its followers in the South as a spearhead for World Communism, and we believed such aggression could not be allowed to succeed anywhere beyond the Iron Curtain lest a fatal precedent be set and countries everywhere start to fall...

...I do know that even the best equipment would not allow us to function as we must in the world if we lack confidence in ourselves...

...Remembering this is critical at the present time...

...there was no American investment to speak of in Vietnam, and future economic opportunities seemed remote and doubtful...

...These arguments, it would appear, are rationalizations of an emotional disapproval of all U.S...

...A fight to achieve total victory in Southeast Asia was beyond our power from the very beginning...

...In addition, we have burdened ourselves with false rhetoric: Speaking of the late Chiang Kai-shek's one-party state as "Free China," or describing our backing of the Kys and Thieus in Saigon as an effort to establish freedom for the people of Indochina simply did not square with the facts...

...Consequently, when the U.S...

...it would have required so large a commitment as to leave our more vital domestic and foreign interests unattended...

...An optimist might imagine detente advancing sufficiently to permit the United States and the Soviet Union to keep the peace together...

...of wrongfully depriving Vietnam of some of its children-when Southeast Asia, despite its high infant mortality rate, is threatened with overpopulation-does not make any more sense...

...sought to become a universal policeman, it tried to do something no other nation or collectivity could do, and something that would definitely have made for a better world...

...In this way we have acquired "friends" whose methods were neither more democratic nor more humanitarian than those of our Communist adversaries...

...Condemnation of U.S...

...Yet would the world not be a better place if one nation had power enough to be the global guardian of peace, assuming it had a concept of government and international relations more conducive to liberty and happiness than competing concepts...

...The recognition of the wrongness of our Vietnam policy has spread far beyond the circle of people who opposed it from the outset...

...And we probably could have done more than we did to impress governments dependent upon us that we would not tolerate medieval abuses like South Vietnam's "tiger cages...

...Why did we get involved in the first place...

...Doing a little good to reduce our guilt, even by a trifle, is a perfectly honorable undertaking...

...A lover of liberty in the '50s or '60s may have found little to choose between Saigon and Hanoi, yet North Vietnam's allegiance to an utterly repressive global philosophy rendered its expansion much more undesirable than a continuation of South Vietnam's home-grown despotism...

...Today the overwhelming majority of Americans is convinced that the United States should never have sent troops into Indochina...

...Nations, political groupings or individuals pursuing a laudable objective rarely remain free from excessive pride, from undue pleasure in a virtuous endeavor...

...Many Americans lack a clear understanding of the task their country must fulfill in the world, and have difficulty recognizing shifts in the international situation smaller than total upheavals...

...Nor can it be validly argued that the United States is unfit to be a protector of liberty and tranquility because it is no paragon of virtue: Moral purity is not an indispensable qualification for preserving peace either on the domestic or on the international scene...

...it is widely regarded as a sign of arrogance that has finally met with its nemesis...

...Nor is that goal negated by the need to work with those who are essentially unsympathetic to it...

...The Roman peace was a boon for the peoples of antiquity although much in the Empire was evil...

...To accuse the U.S...

...A good case can of course be made for the proposition that a group of countries, instead of one, can best fill the role of guardian...

...There is also reason to believe-despite the absence of conclusive evidence-that Moscow has given free rein to the Portuguese Communists because Communist influence in Portugal would weaken nato without offering the United States an occasion for effective counteraction...

...on the other hand, to assume that the potential for conflict has entirely disappeared, that we are no longer confronted by a serious rival, would be at least as great an error...

...It will help us to assess our recent unfortunate experiences and to realistically plot our future course...

...that a policy maker succumbs to the temptations of hubris does not detract from the value of his goal...

...It is to a large extent a "guilt trip," too...

...Therefore, to reprove the U.S...

...In real terms, this means we can perhaps do a little more business with the other side than in the past, but we still have to be on our guard...

...To be sure, the baby lift is "tokenism...

...Even if a nation has no strategic significance, and from a democratic standpoint is no better than the Soviet Union and its satellites, the fact that it is not part of a hostile worldwide bloc could make its existence important for the United States...

...At the moment, though, such an arrangement is not possible, and in the 1950s, as the initial decisions on Vietnam were being made, its impossibility was, if anything, greater still...

...Although Martin Luther's advice, "pecca fortiter," sin with strength, may be open to a great deal of misinterpretation, it expresses the truth that one cannot live without sinning and that the most valuable and necessary achievements would not be possible if people permitted themselves to be paralyzed by the consciousness of sin...

...It will help us to overcome the danger of moral despair...

...Now they tend to join those who have long opposed every exercise of American power in international affairs...

...The leopard is supposed to either change his spots or remain exactly the same as before...

...If a country controls straits, ports or other vital locations, or possesses raw materials we would need in the event of a conflict with the Soviet Union or China, we have to seek its friendship irrespective of its internal policies...

...The UN General Assembly has clearly been unwilling to censure even the most palpable acts of aggression when these have served what the majority of member states regards as the struggle against imperialism, and the Security Council more often than not has been paralyzed by the veto...

...We must continue to expect the USSR to take advantage of opportunities where it finds them...

...Very often, however, spots simply lose some of their color...

...In fact, those who cannot forgive themselves for once having approved the intervention seem particularly susceptible to crippling guilt feelings...

...But it is against common sense to argue that these orphans would have a better chance for happiness in a war-ravaged Vietnam (whose internal peace after a Communist takeover is by no means assured) than in the United States...

...But in reality no trustworthy collectivity now exists in the world, and there was none at the time America intervened in Indochina...

...Now that Communism has broken through some of the dikes built in those years, thanks to the strain on American resources and various unwise policies, there is an opposite tendency toward self-condemnation without limit...

...Aconnection exists, it seems to me, between the fanaticism of the present self-accusation and the failure to develop a realistic attitude toward the Soviet Union and Communism...