THE END OF EMPIRE

...None denies the power of the U.S...

...World War II, by destroying the power of Japan and bringing about the exodus of Occidental colonial powers from Asia, had left in its wake what the military mind would see as a power vacuum: The new-born Asian states might conceivably be subjected to the superior power or politically heterodox blandishments of either the Soviet Union or the new Communist power on the Asian mainland, China...

...We wage the Vietnam war almost entirely alone—and according to our own dictates...

...Second, still bound by the hallowed tradition of American "anti-colonialism," Washington finds itself impelled to pretend that the puppet regime in Saigon is a sovereign entity, and it is thus debarred from simply installing an effective colonial government to administer South Vietnam...

...Less than a generation after having shattered the Japanese empire, we openly yearn to have the Japanese act as our shield-bearers in the mission of extending the benefits of the American Great Society across the Pacific to Asia...

...He served subsequently as Consul General at Vladivostock, in Soviet Russia, from 1944 to 1946 and in the postwar period at Mukden in Manchuria...

...We may remain scornful, in our textbooks, of King George Ill's employment of Hessians to fight the American revolutionaries, but we pay heavily for South Korean legions to help fight our war in South Vietnam...

...This would lead to developments not to be accepted by any power deeming itself charged by history with determining human destiny...

...Imperialism as an acceptable principle is dead, having been displaced by that nationalism which demands full political independence secure from the intervention of great powers—even when they come with professions of sterling intentions...

...Those Vietnam as a whole: We should truly have to wage Ludendorff s total warfare and destroy the Vietnamese nation in order to "save" it—from taking a road of political change contrary to our will...

...In that Asian front line now, there are perhaps three-quarters of a million American fighting men...

...At the present juncture, the NATO sector of our Great Wall of "containment" is crumbling, and the focus of our military attention and effort is on Asia...

...Most of them are at present engaged in a war centered in one sector of that vast military front, Vietnam...

...the war will therefore probably go on...

...On the evidence of the initial move, then, the Administration is still not yet prepared to accept a settlement which would be tantamount to a political defeat...

...Empires through the centuries have waxed or waned depending upon domestic unity and strength...

...World War I had wounded, and gravely weakened, Occidental imperialism...

...Is Washington prepared to accept the National Liberation Front as a full participant in a peace conference...

...World War II effectively destroyed the Western imperial dominion over the East...

...In April of that year, in connection with proposals for American air-strikes to save the besieged French garrison at Dienbien-phu, it was contemplated that, in the event of Chinese intervention, atomic weapons should be used...

...Government, in the light of the ethos of anti-colonialism constructed painstakingly by our educational system and political propaganda, was put to some difficulty to rationalize its postwar policies, but successive Administrations in Washington came in time to oppose Communist "anti-imperialism" with a messianic "anti-Communism" which provided a self-image of the United States conducting a religious crusade...

...Our ring of military bases around Eurasia is designed to keep revolution from reaching the emerging non-Communist nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America...

...There are ways of testing the Administration's intent...

...hopes will probably prove vain in the future as they have in the past...

...And the elements of those several continents that accepted our military alliances and our bases, and our sheltering nuclear wing, became our protectorates—our empire...

...His power is his ultimate sanction...

...in March, after the buffeting of the Tet offensive, he called for austerity, and "a total national effort to win the war . . ." In essence, the Administration's position has admitted of no peace except on American terms, which would have South Vietnam remaining solidly in the American camp...

...The United States, after World War I, confronted Japan as its major competitor for the China market and naval preeminence in the Pacific...

...The American empire in Asia is largely the product of the strategic planning and implementing action of the Executive branch, alone, of the U.S...

...Foreign Service, eighteen of them in China...

...The United States, which had clung all during the years of its existence to a philosophical anti-imperialism, now swifdy took on the attributes and functions of the world's major imperial power...

...The Saigon government will not save us: It has no stomach for fighting the war, but only for benefiting materially, or in power terms, from the war waged by Americans...

...Thus from the enunciation of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, which proposed to save Greece for "democracy," we went on to construct NATO to contain Communism in Eastern Europe, and then promptly extended our network of alliances and bases to the western Pacific—to "contain" Communist China...

...This is the lesson of the Vietnam war, in which the United States has endeavored through mobilization of its vast military resources to crush a manifestation of Asian nationalism disapproved by us...

...A world that remembers with revulsion the German bombing of Guernica, fascist Italy's brutal conquest of Ethiopia, and the fate of Hiroshima, and had aspired to have done with such inhumanity, could only be critically alienated from such a "victorious" United States...

...Clubb wrote then...

...This underlines the painful crux of the matter: We have not yet won our war against the Vietnamese...

...In the event, the United States refrained from military action at Dien-bienphu...

...The basic thought was voiced anew by Secretary of State Dean Rusk in October, 1967, when he said that the issue in Southeast Asia was China, which in 1980 would have a billion people and be possessed of a complete arsenal of nuclear weapons...

...He was U.S...

...This done,, from the 1950s on American statesmen have talked grandly of "the responsibilities of world power," with the implication that the possession of such power as ours entitles, even requires, the United States to act as did imperialist powers in the Nineteenth Century, without regard for "legal technicalities," that is, without consideration for existing international law or the project designed to make the United Nations into a reality—if such consideration interferes with the "national purpose...

...Finally, our political strategists, under the pervasive influence of the military factor, have been unable to arrive at an adequate appreciation of the force of Asian nationalism in the Twentieth Century...

...and it has already been reported that Saigon has been given "fresh assurances of continuing support" (The New York Times, April 3...

...but he ordinarily formulates a philosophical justification...

...The empires built by modern seafarers and landsmen in Asia from the Sixteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries were the products of the same urge to subjugate others to the conqueror's will, but the underlying philosophy was rather more crass than in the case of the Romans and ancient Chinese...

...It has a faulty foundation, and cannot stand...

...Unintentionally, be was describing the American position in Our objectives in Vietnam can be achieved only through the devastation of the country and destruction of the Vietnamese people...

...The participation of the Front in a peace settlement would mean inevitably the submergence of the Saigon regime in a new order of things...

...Washington, however, found Tokyo's rationale insufficient, and viewed those Japanese-supported regimes as simply "puppets" of an imperial power—as indeed they were...

...For example, in April, 1962, we published his article, "Trap in Vietnam," in which he predicted that U.S...

...The reasons counseling restraint have thus far proved compelling: The operation would require the build-up of the American ground forces in Vietnam to at least a million men...

...Consul General in Peiping and was there when the Chinese capital was captured by the Communists in January, 1949...

...One can perceive the projections of the official reasoning...

...The worldwide outburst of approval that greeted the initial announcement of suspension of bombing of North Vietnam, and the wave of distress which followed upon discovery of the real significance of the qualifying phrase "except in the area north of the demilitarized zone," alike showed the depth of mankind's hopes for peace in Southeast Asia...

...Clubb, now a lecturer at Columbia University, spent twenty-four years in the U.S...

...Did Japan, in embarking upon its conquest of Asia, carry little conviction with its proposal to establish a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere...

...We seem to have prepared our own trap," Mr...

...Given the basic objective of maintaining an independent, non-Communist South Vietnam against all challenges, purist military logic would then inescapably demand that the present strength of some 600,000 American troops (counting land, sea, and air forces directly engaged in the fighting) be increased, and the American effort escalated—even to the point of invasion of North Vietnam...

...Government yet ready to accept a resolution of the matter which would require abandonment of our strategic objectives in Vietnam...

...Strategic Air Command, or of the mighty Sixth and Seventh U.S...

...In the jungles of Southeast Asia, many American lives are being lost...

...There is another inference readily to be drawn: With an American military victory in Vietnam, but with China still in existence, we should still have to remain on our bases in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Vietnam, in service of our "commitments" to protect "the free world...

...But the grudging character of the first "unilateral act of de-escalation," combined with the designation of 13,500 additional troops for duty in Vietnam and the Pentagon's subsequent action in calling 60,000 reservists into service, justifies the inevitable question: Does the President really intend to gain peace...

...And the victorious states, shuddering at the sight of what had been done in the service of the total warfare and "unconditional surrender" doctrines in World War II, and cognizant of the danger of humanity's self-destruction in a new total war waged with nuclear weapons, turned to the United Nations organization for salvation: The sovereign states professed themselves ready to renounce some of their sovereign privileges, for safety's sake...

...But in certain quarters there was felt a need to have recourse to some of the devices of imperialism...

...In the Pacific phase of World War II that began in 1941, the United States with the help of its allies destroyed the competitive Japanese empire...

...Pax Americana in Asia promises not peace, but counter-revolution and destruction...

...Consul in Hanoi in 1941 and was interned by the invading Japanese...

...The process was as uneven as it was frenetic, but under the compulsions of a newly awakened Asian nationalism the Occidental powers withdrew, in a variety of ways, from India and Burma, Indonesia and Indo-China, and the Philippines...

...And China would then be "unconMr...

...The Latin imperium signifies absolute power, and the true imperialist feels himself endowed with all the attributes requisite for universal rule...

...As Vice President Humphrey put it, speaking about the same time as Secretary Rusk, the United States must contain Chinese expansionism as it contained Soviet expansionism after World War II...

...Instead, on present terms, the United States is losing the war in Vietnam...

...There was no reference to the Southern revolutionaries in the President's speech, only—as usual—the "message" to Hanoi...

...There was no sense of a common humanity, but the mercantile urge and a concomitant felt need for protection of foreign investments...

...policy there would involve this country in a prolonged, hopeless adventure in the jungles of Vietnam...

...It is the official fashion in Washington to insist that we fight only a limited war, and to take pride in our "restraint...

...A Pax Americana would replace the Pax Britannica in the Indian Ocean, and American power and influence would take the place of the French mission civilisatrice in Southeast Asia...

...We thus seek other, more stalwart, partners in the venture...

...But first of all, the United States assumed the former role of imperial Japan as the self-appointed custodian of peace and order in East Asia...

...Further escalation, in short, would provoke counter-escalation...

...The Chinese emperor was regarded in Confucianism as holding the Mandate of Heaven to rule all mankind...

...Clubb as Prophet O. Edmund Clubb, one of the nation's foremost authorities on Southeast Asia, has displayed an extraordinary command of the situation in South Vietnam in articles he has written for The Progressive over the past decade...

...and, beyond North Vietnam stand the two ultimate rear-base areas, China and the Soviet Union...

...Absolute power was viewed as the final arbiter...

...As evidenced by events, we have been endowed with no acknowledged Mandate of Heaven to mold the destiny of modern Asia...

...Does the March 31 statement bring peace substantially closer...

...there exists no national consensus to support it...

...And then, in World War I, the imperial concept was further debased by a reversion to the idea that flowered in earlier religious wars: that one's own nation is the embodiment of good, whereas the enemy personifies evil...

...But it was in 1964 that Dulles convinced President Eisenhower of the desirability of remaining in a "viable military position" in South Vietnam...

...The United States now finds "the white man's burden" of empire heavier than it had thought at the outset...

...The President in his March 31 statement said that "the heart of our involvement in South Vietnam . . . has always been America's own security," and concluded by saying that the United States seeks an "honorable" peace, and stands ready (still) "to defend an honored cause, whatever the price...

...He said in January that "America will persevere...

...Government, and also because the United States is seen to be acting in violation of international commitments as incorporated in formal treaties, in contradiction of the accepted national ethos, and in opposition to the mainstream of the present world era, there is widespread dissent in the American community from the national purpose as defined by Washington...

...The monetary cost to even this rich nation has brought heavy strains in its wake, distorting the American economy, inducing an unfavorable balance of payments, and weakening the dollar...

...Empires are built to satisfy the primordial urge of an expansive political entity to impose its will upon other nations or states...

...The Saigon government will not save us: It has no stomach for fighting the war, but only for benefiting materially, or in power terms, from the war waged by Americans...

...Later he was U.S...

...It was the end of an era...

...The President, right up to the dramatic demarche of March 31 in which he announcved a measure of de-escalation, has insisted in every relevant public declaration that victory will be ours...

...and by the introduction of the German strategist Erich Ludendorffs concept that wars should be total, without any of the traditional recognition of sanctuary or non-combatants on the enemy side...

...That war is in line with the "massive retaliation" doctrine, formulated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in January, 1954, which envisaged the use of nuclear weapons "whenever and wherever it would be advantageous to do so, taking account of all relevant factors...

...Even the Mongol conquerors viewed themselves as possessing, in the Great Yasa (decree) of Genghis Khan, definitive sanction for world empire...

...Indeed, if the present "peace move" fails, the greater probability is that the war will be escalated to dimensions not heretofore seen...

...The postwar world was to be an orderly one governed by law, with maintenance of peace by the United Nations as a body, not by the king of a jungle...

...Westward the course of empire takes its way...

...That war should be terminated, to the end that the pressing needs of both the American nation and humanity as a whole might better be served...

...These developments should have spelled the end of empire...

...tained" on east and south except by other Asians and the combined strength of the United Nations—none of whom, however, could be trusted to perform the task as we might wish...

...In the actuality, we are forced for the most part to pay for the participation of others...

...The war has consequently continued until the present time, with ever-increasing intensity...

...In the 1930s Japan advanced its imperial cause by undertaking the progressive conquest of China—on the grounds that it was protecting its national interests and fighting Communism—put the Manchu prince P'u-yi on the throne in Manchukuo, and set up governments of its own molding in Inner Mongolia, North China, and Nanking...

...In the same article, written at a time when the United States had a mere 4,000 "advisers" in Vietnam, Mr...

...The situation in Vietnam is, however, one in which an American officer, commenting on the virtual obliteration of the little town of Ben Tre in an effort to overcome the Vietcong who had occupied it during the February offensive, could say, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it...

...From 1950 to 1952, he was director of the Office of Chinese Affairs in the State Department...

...There are three chief reasons for this: First, American ground forces have not as yet undertaken the invasion of what is the rear-base area for the National Liberation Front—North Vietnam...

...New hopes are now being voiced that the Thieu-Ky regime will rehabilitate itself, and shoulder a greater load of political and military responsibilities...

...Even though the United States were to employ the methods of total warfare, including the use of nuclear weapons, in North Vietnam, therefore, and were to undertake to commit genocide, it still would not stand a chance to "win" the escalated war: Before the stage of complete destruction was reached, there would probably be the intervention of new forces employing advanced types of weapons, to transform the Vietnam fighting into "a new war...

...In pursuit of our national ' purpose, the ways of peace offer greater promise than do the ways of imperial wars...

...The imperialists in Asia recognized no philosophical or divine principle restrictive of their national sovereignty...

...This points up the ultimate issue: Is the U.S...

...If it were not for China, ran the easy inference, we would not be fighting in Vietnam...

...This strategy would be in full disregard of the reiterated statements of Chinese Premier Chou En-lai and Soviet Premier Kosygin that China and the Soviet Union respectively will not permit the United States to destroy North Vietnam...

...Naturally—but we assume that Asians will be swept up in enthusiasm by our proposal to extend the American Great Society to Asia...

...Acceptance of defeat, instead of the gaining of victory, in Vietnam, would signify a readiness to acquiesce in the possible "loss" of Laos to Communism...

...The U.S...

...but then Americans and all the world would put the question: "What price victory...

...Roman imperialism was based upon the Stoic concept of the unity of Man...

...An empire based upon the outworn ideology of a military dominance exercised unilaterally cannot prosper, for it is a historical anachronism...

...It is safe to predict that the Japanese, a disciplined people possessing an admirable sense of history—and a people that is Asian—will have no part in that Occidental enterprise...

...So the United States has erected a ring of steel on the sea side of China, and has designated this our first line of defense...

...But there is good reason to doubt the internal stability of the United States under the strains of a war against a small, poverty-stricken Southeast Asian nation which has so distorted the national purpose that pressing problems of race relations, urban renewal, and income distribution must rest unsolved, even unapproached...

...They all thought themselves to possess the Truth...

...Because this war has first priority with the U.S...

...And what shall it profit the United States if it gain Vietnam, but lose the whole world...

...It proposes to dictate the terms of peace, but it leaves the winning of the war to us...

...Fleets deployed respectively in the Mediterranean and the West Pacific...

...Government...

...Hanoi has indeed agreed to discuss with Washington the cessation of all acts of war against North Vietnam so that talks may start...

...And where Japan may have failed to dominate China, we, in our optimistic view, will succeed...

...Clubb suggested that the trap in Vietnam would in time require 500,000 American troops—a figure regarded as preposterous at the time...

...We think that we have discovered that we are, after all, as President Johnson has said, a Pacific power...

...a withdrawal from our bases at Danang and Camranh Bay might suggest the abandonment of our "island defense chain" (including Okinawa) in the West Pacific, and toleration of a "power vacuum" in the vast Indian Ocean...