"Now, We Can"

For the eighth time in the past 15 months, South Viet Nam underwent a major change in its government (see THE WORLD), and in the U.S. the chorus of discontent about policy grew louder. Some of the most outspoken opinion expressed so far came from New York Lawyer Richard Nixon.

"We are losing the war in South Viet Nam," said Nixon in a speech to the Sales Executive Club of New York, "and if there is not a change of strategy, we will be thrown out in a matter of months, certainly within a year."

The consequences, Nixon continued, are almost too great to contemplate. "If Viet Nam is lost, all of Southeast Asia is lost. Look at the surrounding countries. Laos--already gone. Cambodia--leaning so far in the direction of Communism that Viet Nam could push it over the brink. Thailand is a country that wants to be on our side, but it is a nation that has always been on the winning side, and this is the only way its independence has survived for a thousand years. Burma is an economic slum, with immense problems and immense pressures, and it will go. Malaysia couldn't possibly stand with its 10 million people surrounded by a sea of Communism." As for Indonesia, "the news has not been pleasant lately."

Beyond that, Nixon said, "the battle for Viet Nam is the battle for Asia. It affects Southeast Asia and Japan. In the long run, the Pacific could become a Red Sea." To prevent the loss of this vast area, Nixon said, the U.S. must "quarantine the war and use American air-and seapower to cut supply lines and destroy staging areas in North Viet Nam and Laos, which now make it possible for the guerrillas to continue their actions. We should use American man power only in the air and on the sea. The South Vietnamese can handle the ground fighting."

As for the risk that Red China might then intervene, Nixon said he did not believe that it would. But, he added, "we must recognize that they might. My answer is that this is the time to take that risk. Time is not on our side, but on China's side. Every day that passes, China's nuclear capability increases. Five years, ten years--we might not be able to make a stand there, or any place else, without risking nuclear world war. Now, we can."

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