THE CONTAINMENT OF IDEAS
Lasch, Robert
Pulitzer Prize Editorial The Containment of Ideas by ROBERT LASCH The Pulitzer Prize for distinguished editorial writing went this year to Robert Lasch, editor of the editorial page of the St....
...Social change will sometimes take revolutionary forms in some countries, no matter what the United States or any other nation thinks about it...
...Lasch's work...
...and that we have enough faith in the ideas of freedom to entrust to them, rather than to arms, the task of containing the ideas of Communism...
...When the day comes for American forces to leave Vietnam after ten years of vain effort to build an anti-Communist bastion there, not only will our national pride be hurt, but some basic assumptions of our postwar foreign policy will be called into question...
...policy in Vietnam but singled out the editorial below as especially representative of Mr...
...that we are prepared to accept revolutions even when we do not approve of them...
...It appeared early in 1965...
...We shall improve our position with the developing nations and the world at large not by proving that we can wage endless war in Vietnam, but by showing, through actual conduct, that the CIA is not enfranchised to swagger around the world setting up governments and knocking them down...
...Ours is not a revolutionary society, and we should not try to behave as if it were...
...Aspirations for independence, self-respect, and self-government are too universal and too powerful to be subdued by any ideology...
...More important, it is a role that lies beyond the capabilities of any nation...
...and the passage of time has indicated that even there, subjugation is most likely temporary...
...Change is the law of life...
...Communism as an idea cannot be contained by such methods, but only by a better idea...
...A wise foreign policy begins with recognition of this fact...
...that we do not undertake to dictate the form and pace of political change anywhere...
...There could be no better evidence that the Communists are not going to rule the world, and neither are we...
...Wherever oppressed masses struggle toward a better life, millions of persons look upon the United States as their natural enemy, which means that they inevitably look elsewhere for friends...
...We undertook to apply the methods appropriate to a national power struggle— the methods of diplomatic maneuver, armed confrontation, and in some cases war itself—in a realm where they are totally ineffective...
...In the meantime, however, American policy increasingly has tended to confuse the containment of Russian (and later Chinese) national power with the containment of Communism...
...That is one reason why our government would be wise to encourage a political settlement through negotiation before we are thrown out—unless it is already too late...
...Louis Post-Dispatch, whose brilliant editorials on U.S...
...Unfortunately it is true that if we got thrown out of Vietnam, millions of people would be delighted...
...foreign policy in general and Vietnam in particular have been in the finest traditions of creative criticism...
...The first step is to cast off the illusion of omnipotence, under the spell of which many of us have for years assumed that our mission in the world is to contain, roll back, destroy, or otherwise combat Communism...
...Unpleasant as it may be, the time for reappraisal has come, and thoughtful Americans should resolve to be realistic about it...
...But we can behave like a mature nation which knows that it has no right and no power to decide for the people of Cuba, Vietnam, or central Africa what form of revolution they should have...
...After World War II, the Soviet Union sought to expand its national power wherever possible...
...Lasch's penetrating critiques of U.S...
...As fresh thinking is always more painful than mouthing shibboleths, this is going to cause a certain degree of anguish...
...It is often said that we must hang on in Vietnam, even to the point of an escalated war, because the effects of defeat there would be so damaging elsewhere in Asia and Africa...
...American foreign policy is in deep trouble in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America precisely because we have let ourselves be pushed into a counterrevolutionary posture...
...The United States, as the leader of the free world, was thoroughly justified in undertaking to contain that thrust, and it was contained...
...National identities have survived and are persistently asserting themselves...
...The Editors Zooming events in South Vietnam ^ promise for many Americans a profound psychological shock, which a foresighted Administration would be preparing to offset...
...The judges cited several of Mr...
...It is not the American function to combat revolution everywhere—to stand as the universal, all-embracing guardian of the status quo...
...We can behave like a nation which is prepared to accept change, even in forms unpalatable to it, and is ready to work with peoples of any political faith for a peaceful world of diversity...
...Only where the Red Army stood on land taken away from the Nazis—which is to say, only in Eastern Europe—were the Russians able to impose their national will on other peoples...
...Whatever happens in Saigon, however, the American cause will not be damaged thereby half so much as it is already being damaged by the growing conviction that our power and influence are dedicated to the suppression of social revolution and political change wherever they occur...
...This is an odd role, by the way, to be thrust upon a nation that was itself born of revolution less than two centuries ago...
Vol. 36 • June 1966 • No. 6
