TRAP IN VIETNAM

...In the case of South Vietnam, there were reports attending the American military moves that Diem had agreed, at long last, to institute a program of political and social reforms...

...Will Vietnamese peasants love Diem the more if the U.S...

...But last December the United States suddenly increased the size of its small MAAG contingent in South Vietnam to 1,500 and introduced substantial quantities of new equipment—particularly military planes...

...The Communist Vietminh, when it withdrew north of the 17th Parallel in accordance with the terms of the 1954 agreements, had left behind an underground organization manned by skilled cadres and provided with hidden caches of arms...

...The Kennedy Administration in Washington is therefore directly confronted with the near certainty that it will be -called upon to put American ground forces into the field to fight Asians—Communists perhaps, but still Asians...

...In October, General Maxwell D. Taylor headed a military mission to Saigon...

...imperialists," although "eager" to help the French colonial power in Vietnam in 1954, did not undertake direct intervention "because they knew that if they gave France armed assistance Vietnam would receive the same kind of assistance from China, the Soviet Union, and the other socialist countries, and that the fighting could develop into a world war...

...The Nationalist generals in the final days of the Chinese civil war were often reluctant to send their forces into the field for fear that they would go over to the Communists—as many actually did...

...He trusts no one except his family...

...It insists they will not shoot—"unless they are shot at...

...Following Diem's refusal to go through with the scheduled 1956 elections for reunification of North and South Vietnam, North Vietnam began to work for subversion of his regime...

...Thailand must consider the near proximity of Communist China to its rugged frontier...

...And the Staley Report was only a "plan...

...Such periods of time are actually being discussed in Washington dispatches, and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara recently conceded that the conflict "will extend for a long period in the future...

...By that time the United States had invested some two billion dollars in Diem's political establishment, even as we had contributed two billion to the French colonial effort...

...It relies on an understanding of the desperate plight of the people and the idenfication of the guerrilla with their needs and aspirations...

...Such a fundamental political change may indeed be realized—but in view of the notable lack of success enjoyed by the United States in bending "client" dictators to its will, it is far more realistic to assume that Diem will not change, but rather continue his dictatorial rule on the ground that reform is not possible because of the existing "military emergency"—the very emergency created in considerable measure by his resistance to reform...

...In certain circumstances, foreign intervention can find a legal warrant...

...The Philippine government is, one would judge, too well aware of the possible consequences of association with the white man's war in Asia to risk the venture...

...He has written extensively on the Far East for a number of scholarly journals...

...In South Vietnam, the Viet Cong are indistinguishable from, and are mixed with, the peasantry of the countryside...

...The Hanoi broadcast report of January 18 that a "Vietnam Peoples Revolutionary Party" has been formed in South Vietnam in late December would appear to fall into that pattern—as evidently marking a technical disengagement of North Vietnam from the South Vietnam operation...

...military (ommand in Saigon...

...Air Force destroys their food supply...

...The political prisoners in his jails have been estimated to number as high as 30,000...

...It is clear from recent history that unpopular Asian regimes cannot be propped up permanently with Western arms...

...Diem was successful in introducing an element of political stability into a situation where no stability had appeared possible...

...And, "President Ngo Dinh Diem's government has let it be known that direct military aid from countries other than the United States would be welcomed...

...There remains Chiang Kai-shek and the massive "anti-Communist" military establishment we have built up for him on Formosa...

...And the historical precedents sound a warning note of grave danger...

...The South Vietnam situation had, of course, become critical much earlier...

...Would we not this time, freed of the "encumbrances" imposed upon us by our United Nations allies in the Korean fighting, discard the "legalistic technicalities" restraining our military operations, and carry the war into the enemy rear areas—even over the boundaries of other, Communist countries...

...The defoliation of the forests and poisoning of crops would only further alienate the population...

...Senate for ratification...

...Nevertheless, the experience of Korea, Peking's declaration of February 24 that China's security was being seriously affected by the American "undeclared war" in South Vietnam, and Pravda's warning of February 27 that the American action held the possibility of "alarming consequences" for world peace, should keep us from any easy confidence that the Chinese, backed up by the Soviet Union, will not intervene with "volunteers" in support of their Vietnamese "fellow Asians...

...The Kennedy Administration has taken pains to explain that the American forces are not, strictly speaking, "combat troops...

...At the end of his visit to Saigon, he and Diem issued a joint communique in the names of their respective governments in which it was agreed "to extend and build upon existing programs of military and economic aid . . ." In particular, it was agreed in principle that the strength of the regular Vietnamese armed forces should be increased...

...The New York Times reported February 26 that, according to Administration officials, "The United States is not interested in engaging in any international consultations over the situation in Vietnam as demanded by Communist China . . ." Nevertheless, as the threat to the peace increases in Vietnam, it is to be expected that voices other than those of the Chinese will be raised to demand that the matter be brought before an international body lor solution...

...and their war of attrition threatened to overturn Diem's regime, defended though it was by 170,000 trained troops...

...There is hopeful reference to the successful British campaign against the Communist insurgents in Malaya, and to the suppression of Communist insurgency in Greece with American aid in the postwar period...

...For South Vietnam, the Staley recommendations envisage an extension of the fortified "agrovilles" into which the peasantry is to be moved...

...In that case, might our newly evolved "guerrilla tactics" save the day...

...on the eve ol his departure for a conference in Hawaii with "military and diplomatic officials connected with the Vietnam operation," Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, in a speech described as "a rationale for United States involvement in South Vietnam," referred to the Communist "liberation war" strategy and warned Soviet Premier Khrushchev that the United States was training men to fight in "the twilight zone" of "covert aggression" lying between open combat and political subversion and would also train people of free but still struggling nations in such tactics...

...The United States, on the other hand, is described as being anxious to avoid the impression that Americans are "running the show" in South Vietnam...

...The answer is that South Vietnam abuts Communist North Vietnam and parts of Laos under pro-Communist Pathet Lao control, and that those areas would almost certainly render support to the Viet Cong...

...It can be predicted that the "necessity" will probably soon arise...

...Walter Lippmann summed it up succinctly when he wrote: "Our man [Diem] is extremely unpopular, being both reactionary and corrupt...

...In those hypothetical but probable circumstances, as the 1946-49 China example amply demonstrates, Diem's army, even if doubled in size, could not by itself win the civil war and keep him in power...

...Khrushchev, in the same January, 1961, speech quoted by Secretary McNamara, said something else: that the "U.S...

...Now, as in similar circumstances in the past, our allies are not rushing in to share the military burden...

...The noteworthy element in Khrushchev's statement was the clear threat of a Communist intervention to match any American intervention...

...Given the nagging, ever-present desire for "decisive victory," the urge would be there...

...One can speculate that Khrushchev and Mao alike probably welcome the present American involvement and will follow a course designed to lead the United States ever deeper into the morass of an "Asian colonial war" while keeping their own armed forces out of the picture...

...Even granting the somewhat unlikely assumption that Chiang would supply ground forces to fight under American generalship in South Vietnam, such an association would probably finish whatever might be left of American prestige in Asia...

...Here, further reference to recent history may be helpful...

...A protocol to the SEATO treaty of 1954 provided for the extension of SEATO protection, in certain specified circumstances, to Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, but we do not act now in South Vietnam by virtue of any SEATO decision...

...Washington has underO. EDMUND CtUBB served as an officer in the U.S...

...American troops will stay until victory...

...In late 1955, after brief rule by Chief Executive Bao Dai, Premier Ngo Dinh Diem became President of South Vietnam...

...Britain and Canada did not join us, but instead restrained us, when we stood ready to fight Mao Tse-tung's legions in the Formosa Strait crisis of 1955...

...The United Nations has not invited the United States to assume responsibility for the security of South Vietnam...

...France was early alienated from our policies in its former colonial possessions of Southeast Asia...

...Thus financial and material aid from the United States was enough: Americans did not fight Greeks...

...His is an autocratic one-man rule, and as a result his government rests upon an extremely narrow political base...

...The United States, which had supported both the French and Bao Dai ever since 1950, and had strongly opposed the "compromise peace," promptly swung its financial and economic support behind Diem's government—to the extent of approximately $300 million a year...

...For the French had been fighting a war of Occidentals against Asians in an area where and in an era when the white man's dominance had come to an end...

...The United States provided liberal quantities of military equip ment to the Chinese Nationalists during their 1946-49 civil war with the Communists, and maintained a U.S...

...The February 27 raid on Diem's palace by two planes of his own air force was further evidence of the unreliability of Diem's forces demonstrated by the earlier paratroopers' revolt...

...He called it 'war...

...Kolchak was defeated and executed by the Red Army in early 1920, and the American and other Allied forces withdrew from Siberia soon afterwards...

...We return, that is, to the "privileged sanctuary" situation that harassed the United States during the 1950-53 Korean War...

...Brigadier General Thomas R. Phillips (Retired), military analyst for the St...

...it was, after all, not a treaty but an "executive agreement...

...Successful guerrilla warfare depends upon the general support of the population in resistance to bad government...

...The United States supported the "Supreme Ruler of Russia," Admiral Alexander V. Kolchak, against the Bolshevik revolutionaries in the Siberian intervention of 1918-20...

...For the French colonialists, however, half a loaf was not enough...

...Army planes are now operating in Vietnam and American personnel is flying missions for reconnaissance and in logistical support of the South Vietnamese army in operations against the revolutionary Viet Cong...

...We seem to have prepared our own trap...

...The "Viet Cong" of South Vietnam are the direct successors of the Vietminh, and they were supported and directed from the North in the first stage of their movement...

...Two questions thus confront the American people today: With all the military, economic, and financial aid we are to provide, and tactical and strategic advice from General Harkins' command, can Ngo Dinh Diem's government win the war against the Viet Cong rebels...

...Military Aid and Advisory Group (USMAAG) to assist Chiang Kai-shek with military training and strategy...

...That is what Attorney General Kennedy said here [Saigon] last week...

...But the French effort ended in the disastrous defeat suffered at Dienbienphu in May, 1954...

...taken to sustain the Ngo Dinh Diem government in South Vietnam against the growing pressures of a political and social revolution which, for all of the outside Communist interference, has deep, indigenous, popular roots...

...Direct American military intervention would actually add a new element of power to the Vietnamese revolutionary movement...

...Foreign Service in Asia for two decades and for a time as director of the Office of Chinese Affairs in the State Department...

...Dulles would have disputed Khrushchev regarding the reason for our non-intervention in 1954, but that is not the point...

...Nor has the Administration received sanction from either Congress or the American people for that action...

...The American moves of last December resulted from that decision...

...An attempted coup d'etat by trusted parachute troops in November, 1960, sounded an ominous alert for the future...

...Whether it is with indirect or direct military aid, whether by North Vietnam or China, the Communist bloc will be in the picture...

...But if France put 200,000 men into its eight year Indo-China war and lost, might not we have to, over a decade if required, put in 500,000 men...

...The Johnson-Diem communique of last May stated, "The assistance of other free governments to .., Vietnam in its struggle against Communist guerrilla forces would be welcome...

...In the Korean War, the American action had the sanction of the United Nations...

...Ideas circulate for defoliation of Vietnam's forest cover and the poisoning of crops to deprive the guerrillas of both shelter and sustenance...

...Where the Vietnamese rebels were motivated before only by opposition to Diem's government, they would now be armed with the modern Asian weapon of "anti-imperialism"—to be directed against the United States where previously the target was France...

...in the very real sense of the word.' He said that President Kennedy had pledged that the United States would stand by South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem 'until we win.' " That there is civil war in South Vietnam is evident enough...

...That Communist-controlled North Vietnam has been involved is equally clear...

...But South Vietnam is not Malaya...

...Some three months later, a Presidential mission headed by Dr...

...To survive, they must become viable in their own right...

...But the concept can hardly be realized...

...By the end of 1961, Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam numbered some 20,000...

...The military project would seem on the surface to be technically feasible: South Vietnam has a population of only some 14,000,000, and the United States is the most powerful air and naval power on earth...

...Nor is the Greek example a good parallel, for Yugoslavia's defection from the Soviet bloc deprived the Communist ELAS of a rear area for its support...

...Joseph Alsop offered a summary estimate of the situatJK in the New York Herald Tribm when he wrote: "All this adds up to a solid American commitment to defeat the North Vietnamese Communists' guerrilla attack on South Vietnam at all costs...

...Chiang's regime collapsed in 1949, and the remnants that survived took refuge on Formosa...

...In February ttlso...

...government has set out, clearly unintentionally, to prove the truth of Santayana's penetrating observation: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it...

...How, then, did the South Vietnam conflict become "our war," and one that "we cannot afford to lose...

...The American hypothesis regarding the probable effectiveness of these new tactics is based upon a failure to appreciate the very essence of guerrilla warfare...

...Now the U.S...

...In South Vietnam, however, American actions contravene the 1954 Geneva agreements...

...Newsweek put it flatly: "The legality of this course was the least of Washington's worries...

...In Malaya there was good government (British), and the guerrillas were alien Chinese, not Malayans...

...If he were really to do so, then his government would have a chance for survival, late though the hour is...

...The Republican policy in 1952 was to "let Asians fight Asians," and as John Foster Dulles' doctrine of "massive retaliation" was developed in 1954, it envisaged the use of American air and naval power, but Asian ground forces, in any Asian wars in which we might engage (as in Vietnam...

...government, which did not sign those agreements, does not actually contend that we are entitled at our own discretion to violate the international agreements of others (including our allies), ft simply ignores the American commitment made at Geneva not to overturn the agreements by threat or use of force, and cites the prior violation of those same agreements by North Vietnam as sufficient warrant for its stand...

...Recent history, however, confirms the coolness of our allies toward certain American policies in the Far East...

...Reporting from Saigon in late February, New York Times correspondent Homer Bigart confirmed this analysis...

...The clear implication is that such American forces will be used if it becomes "necessary...

...The Viet Cong number only 20,-000 men in South Vietnam, and it has been well advertised that the American troops being sent there have been trained in guerrilla tactics...

...Nevertheless, even as Vice President Richard M. Nixon said in 1954 regarding the war then being waged in Indo-China—"It is impossible to lay down arms until victory is completdf won,"—so the word is now being culated that this is "a war we cannfl afford to lose...

...In Vietnam, acting outside the U.N., we want supporting "allies...

...General Taylor's visit, however, was not concerned with the making of plans, but with their implementation...

...The United States," he said, "is involved in a war in Vietnam...

...By mid-February, our troop strength there numbered 4,000...

...The current American moves present the Moscow-Peking axis with a multiple choice of strategic responses...

...It presented President Kennedy with a concrete plan envisaging an increase of Diem's regular forces to a strength of 200,000, reorganization of the civil guard of 100,-000 men along military lines, and expansion of the American aid program to $400 million annually...

...The basic decision evidently had already been made in May...

...The "let Asians fight Asians" corollary has obviously not been forgotten...

...There is then only the United States...

...It is to be hoped that when that time comes we shall not choose to persist in our present unilateral course, but will consent to negotiate with others interested in the fate of Southeast Asia...

...A Saigon dispatch published in the New York Times said flatly: "It is understood in Saigon that Washington stands ready to provide all the military muscle to beat the Viet Cong, including ground troops if necessary...

...The U.S...

...It is hardly likely that they will consent to fight Ngo Dinh Diems battles in 1962...

...And it would be hard to imagine anything more like a fish out of water than an American guerrilla fighting in the Vietnamese countryside for Diem's dictatorial and reactionary government...

...The 1954 Geneva accords that marked the end of French colonial rule in Indo-China prohibited the entry of additional military units into Vietnam, or the importation of new military equipment except for replacement purposes...

...The French were forced to fight what they themselves came to call a "dirty war" in Indo-China...

...Eugene Staley of the Stanford Research Institute visited South Vietnam to survey the situation...

...They were followed February 8 by the announcement that General Paul D. Harkins would head a new U.S...

...But he failed to undertake greatly needed and frequently promised social and political reforms, with consequent gradual alienation of the peasantry and intelligentsia...

...American military elements also accompany South Vietnamese ground forces on combat missions...

...But they exploited existing local discontents, and increasingly recruited South Vietnamese into their ranks...

...As Chinese guerrilla leader (and later Peking Defense Minister) P'eng Teh-huai put it: The people are the water, and the guerrillas the fish, and "without water the fish will die...

...We are "involved" in South Vietnam, in the place formerly occupied by the French, solely by reason of those "informal" arrangements with Ngo Dinh Diem...

...The Japanese would not volunteer so soon to fight in the service of a country that had blocked their own "Asian policy" and shattered their empire...

...In Indo-China in 1946, the French could have had a compromise settlement with the forces of nationalism represented by the Vietminh...

...This is the stuff of which modern Asian revolutions are made...

...Emphasis added...

...The prospect of resorting to that device and thus avoiding the deadly charge that "Americans are fighting Asians" has a logical attraction...

...Official statements indicating that the United States does not "at this time" envisage use of American combat forces in the field (presumably, as integral military formations) are not so reassuring as they are obviously intended to be...

...Our NATO allies were not with us when we proposed to fight the Pathet Lao in 1961...

...The United States would be in the same position...

...But the Geneva accords established an International Control Commission to supervise the peace in Vietnam, and other international machinery designed to maintain the peace are also available...

...But if warfare against the guerrilla forces menacing Diem's regime threatens to be a prolonged, bloody, and profitless undertaking, the carrying of the war to "privileged sanctuaries" would patently involve even greater dangers...

...Why should the United States then not be able, with its airpower and napalm bombs—and nuclear weapons "if necessary"-—to impose its military will upon that minor, backward Asian country...

...And in 1959 they launched a broad guerrilla war against Diem's rule...

...The French "Navarre Plan" of 1953, which received the full support of the United States, called for the creation of Vietnamese armies to take over garrison duties and the launching of an all-out French offensive against the Vietminh...

...Louis Post-Dispatch, was even more emphatic: "Diem operates a police state, with secret police harassment, arbitrary arrest, police brutality, political prisons, and economic favoritism...

...International action leading to a peaceful political solution would provide a firm foundation for implementation of a program of genuine economic and social reforms—to the benefit of all concerned...

...In May, 1961, shortly after the disastrous invasion of Cuba, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson made a Far Eastern tour, devoted to our "client" countries...

...That circumstance will strengthen Diem's natural inclination to rely upon American armed forces —-since they seemingly are to be available—to accomplish the difficult military task ahead...

...If Diem cannot win, can we...

...History would seem to teach, on the other hand, that even the mighty United States cannot arbitrarily impose its own solution in Vietnam...

...When France's eight years of bitter warfare ended in defeat and the 1954 Geneva Conference terminated French colonial rule in Indo-China, an independent Vietnam was left divided into Communist North and non-Communist South...

...A Saigon report in the New York Times mentioned Britain, Malaya, Thailand, Australia, and "Nationalist China" (Chiang Kai-shek's Formosa) as countries "likely to take an active role" in aiding South Vietnam "if the Vietnamese Communist threat increases...

...In Indo-China, following World War II, we supported the French in their long war against the Vietminh, at the cost of a couple of billion dollars more, yet the Vietminh won the war anyway...

...The Johnson-Diem arrangement was not submitted to the U.S...