VIET NAM: The Right War at the Right Time

THE Caribbean is closer to U.S. shores than the South China Sea, but despite the nearby uproar in the Dominican Republic, the crucial test of American policy and will is still taking place in Viet Nam.

By and large, U.S. public opinion seems strongly behind Lyndon Johnson's unyielding strategy of bombing the North and stepped-up ground action in the South. At the same time, an insistent--if by no means unanimous--chorus of criticism is heard, particularly on college campuses, from faculty as well as students. "Teach-ins," petitions and picketing get headlines. Most of the critics argue that the U.S. should stop the bombing and get out quickly, giving an odd combination of pragmatic and supposedly ethical reasons.

The pragmatic reasons add up to the notion that the U.S. either cannot win or need not win in order to safeguard its interests. The moral objections are often weakened by the fact that, while the critics condemn the use of force against North Viet Nam, they either condone or ignore it in other situations--such as Sukarno's guerrilla war against Malaysia, Red China's conquest of Tibet or, most important, the Viet Cong's own terror against South Vietnamese peasants.

Questions of Reality

Herewith a discussion of the six principal arguments.

?The struggle in Viet Nam is a "civil war" and the U.S. has no right to interfere. Certainly, there are elements of a civil war present. Many Viet Cong are not hard-line Communists but nationalistic and social revolutionaries whose aims include land reform and reunification. But as elsewhere, the local revolution has been captured by Communism. The Viet Cong have some autonomy, but they are trained, directed and supplied by North Viet Nam. In the Communist rebellions in Greece and Malaya, for example, almost identical arguments were heard; these were called civil wars in which the U.S. was supposedly backing reactionary regimes that lacked popular support and could not win. And yet in both cases, when outside Red help was shut off, the rebellions collapsed. Because the West has lately learned to live with Communist regimes that have been forced to cut back their export of revolution, it is sometimes forgotten that Communism still remains an international aggressive movement, that "infiltration" and "subversion" remain realities, not words to frighten children. No struggle in which Communism is involved is ever truly a civil war.

?The South Vietnamese people don't care whether they live under Communism or not, as long as they get peace. Obviously they desperately want peace, and they need more positive hopes than just anti-Communism to keep them going. But after a decade, South Viet Nam's army is still fighting, and sustaining casualties proportionately higher than U.S. casualties in two world wars. This is an amazing fact, recently heightened by the decline in government desertions, and in the increase in new recruitment.

?The U.S. cannot fight for democracy by backing more or less undemocratic regimes in Saigon. A democratic regime is hardly possible in a war-torn country without much democratic tradition. What the critics fail to admit is that even a bad non-Communist regime is usually subject to change, but once a Communist regime is established, it is virtually irreversible. Taking up the argument that the integrity of U.S. democracy at home depends on an end to the war, Columnist Max Lerner, himself a professor, recently replied: "No, it depends on not flinching from the reality principle, on maintaining clear goals without hypocrisy, and in showing that democracy has what it takes for survival against ruthless forces both at home and abroad."

?North Viet Nam's Ho Chi Minh might turn into the Tito of Asian Communism. This is possible, but only if Red China changes its nationalist-expansionist direction. Tito's Yugoslavia is separated by 200 miles of Carpathian wilderness from Russia, while North Viet Nam has a common frontier with China. Moreover, the Chinese have traditionally pushed south. Ho, whose basic training and sympathies derive from the Soviet Union, is now 75; most of his rising lieutenants are pro-Peking. A Viet Nam united under Communist rule would, for the foreseeable future, remain a Peking satellite. It is absurd to suggest that after winning all of Viet Nam the Communists would then sit back and turn "mellow." Inevitably, they would seek domination of the whole area, and there is no sign that they would be resisted except in Thailand--and even here the Red pressure would be enormous.

?U.S. escalation in Viet Nam is pushing Red China and Russia together. Despite some parallel warlike noises from Moscow and Peking, there is little to support this belief. China seeks to control the Communist movement throughout the world, hopes to win that control by showing that "wars of liberation" pay off. Russia, on the other hand, is unwilling to give up the hard-won detente with the West, which permits Moscow greater concentration on internal development, in favor of the Chinese hard line. Should Mao prove his point by winning in South Viet Nam, Russia might well be forced into greater militancy.

?Asia is not of vital importance to the U.S. After all, so runs this argument, the U.S. is not omnipotent. Walter Lippmann contends that Asia is legitimately the sphere of Chinese influence, just as the Western Hemisphere is America's.* That contention is questionable. Since the early 19th century, the U.S. has grown to a major Pacific maritime power; to surrender the Pacific to China now makes no more sense than surrendering it to Imperial Japan would have in 1941. With Southeast Asia gone, the U.S. would rapidly approach a point where it might have no foothold in Asia from Okinawa to Australia. Beyond that, the argument cannot be sustained in the light of modern weaponry: geographic spheres of influence are simply not pertinent in an era of ICBMs. The Chinese themselves pay no attention to the theory, as is shown by their activities in Africa and Latin America.

Dangers of Inaction

The chief immediate demand of the critics is that the U.S. negotiate. But such an argument leaves out of account the fact that the Communists use negotiations only as a tactic to make further gains--unless they are forced by superior power or self-interest to stick to their bargains. They quickly broke the Geneva Agreement of 1954 and the Laos Agreement of 1962 by refusing to withdraw Communist guerrilla forces. Despite vague talk, no one has advanced even the outlines of an international arrangement that could keep South Viet Nam secure from Communism. Hanoi and Peking show no sign of considering any international agreement except the kind of "neutralization" that would put the Viet Cong in a position to capture power in Saigon.

Obviously, after overcoming his early hesitation, Lyndon Johnson will not allow the U.S. to be pushed out of Viet Nam. For if that were to happen, Americans would only have to make another stand against Asian Communism later, under worse conditions and in less tenable locations. As Demosthenes said about expansionist Macedonia in the 4th century B.C.: "You will be wise to defend yourselves now, but if you let the opportunity pass, you will not be able to act even if you want to." Despite all its excruciating difficulties, the Vietnamese struggle is absolutely inescapable for the U.S. in the mid-60s--and in that sense, it is the right war in the right place at the right time.

* Irritated by the Lippmann argument, Pentagon officials made a study of his columns during the Greek crisis of 1947-49 and concluded: "My God, Walter would have given away Greece too!"

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