Going It Alone

A quarter-spin around the globe from NATO's Europe lies another deferred problem. Viet Nam is not an area in which the U.S. must either deal with allies or depend on them. If there is to be a solution in Viet Nam, the U.S. must pretty much go it alone.

Emerging from his Texas talk with President Johnson last week, Defense Secretary McNamara purported to see some light on the horizon. "At last," he said, "we have a civilian government, a government that gives some indication of being able to develop a consensus among the hard groups in the nation and move the nation ahead to a more effective response to the Viet Cong guerrillas who are attacking and harassing the people ... So I think that today, compared to a month ago, we can look forward with greater confidence."

As McNamara must have known, all this begged the fact that the last previous civilian South Viet Nam government, that of Ngo Dinh Diem, was overthrown by a military junta with at least the tacit connivance of the U.S., that the new government is the shakiest anywhere in the world, that militarily the South Viet Nam war has been going from worse to worst, and that any expression of optimism was pure whistling in the dark.

How to Do It? As late as last May, before the U.S. political campaign really got under way, the U.S. had at least four options as to what to do about Viet Nam. They were: 1) to follow the advice of such men as Charles de Gaulle and join in a scheme to neutralize the war-torn area, 2) to expand the war and win it, 3) to get out, or 4) to muddle along as before, at least until after the election.

President Johnson took the fourth choice. But now that the election is over the U.S. cannot keep on muddling along, and the success-filled Communists are not likely to settle for any sort of meaningful neutralization. That leaves two alternatives: win or get out.

Getting out would be a horrifying political humiliation, particularly since President Johnson said time and again during his campaign that the U.S. would never desert its friends in Southeast Asia. And that would seem to leave just one choice: winning.

But how to do it? The President has ordered all the involved agencies of government--the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA, USIA and AID to review and re-form each of their plans for dealing with Viet Nam. Some old ideas have been newly advanced. The most obvious answer is to extend the war to North Viet Nam with bombing raids and stepped-up guerrilla attacks. But the Administration is most reluctant to make such a move, fearing that it would bring the U.S. into a dangerously real confrontation with Red China.

Nibbling at the Edges. Thus, under apparently more favorable consideration are such notions as launching air strikes against the Laotian section of the Ho Chi Minh trail from North Viet Nam or pressuring Cambodia, which serves as a sanctuary for Viet Cong raiders, by cutting off Cambodian shipping that moves down the Mekong River through South Viet Nam to the sea. "We shall start," said a high State Department official, "by nibbling around at the edges."

Nibbling around the edges has been largely a Communist tactic in Asia, and so far it has won only for them and not for the West.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.