THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF THE TERRIBLE AFFAIR
The quiet American defeat
THERE IS a sense in which it does not matter much, except in terms of blood- shed, what eventual response Hanoi will make to President Nixon's proposals for putting an end to the war in South Viet- nam and to the American involvement in hostilities throughout Indochina. The only interpretation of the President's ad- dress to the American nation last week is that he has decided to end the American military presence in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. After all the terrible years of the American affair in. Saigon, during which the highest ideals were adduced and the lowest atrocities committed, we now see clearly enough the beginning of the end of the affair. Hanoi has never showed much concern for the saving of life; and the Vietcong even less: but it is to be hoped that they will respond to the Nixon proposals for those humanitarian ideals in which, as communists and nationalists, they profess to believe. A ceasefire as of now, without conditions; an exchange of prisoners, without conditions; and an agreed timetable for the complete with- drawal of all American troops—Hanoi has only to indicate 'yes', and the killing other than fratricidal would stop, the foreign troops would go home, and the people of North and South Vietnam, of Laos and of Cambodia would be left to sort out, in their own way, the mess.
But even if Hanoi says 'no' and keeps on saying 'no' to any deal with the United States, and even if the Vietcong refuse any offer of a ceasefire and harass the American forces until the last GI has left the hated and wasted land, it will still remain the case that the people of Indo- china who were colonised by the French will be left, at least by the Americans, to sort out in their own way the mess created by the French, the Americans and them- selves. Should Hanoi say 'no' the mess will be that much worse, the casualties that much greater, the time for the sorting- out. that much deferred. It may be that this will suit Hanoi, and that the successors to Ho Chi Minh, seeing victory of a kind already conceded, will refuse any deal in the hope that thereby a greater victory will be achieved. This dangerous and in- humane course can do nothing but benefit the men in Peking. The weaker Indo- china becomes through divisions among its peoples and further prolonging of the fighting, the easier will it be for the men in Peking to exercise China's ancient claim to hegemony. Prudent and humane rea- soning may yet incline Hanoi to the better course of accepting the offered American deal; but little of such reasoning has come out of the North Vietnamese capital in the recent past, and some of the Hanoi men are doubtless Chinese lackeys anyway, seeking to advance the cause of Chinese hegemony rather than to preserve the inde- pendence of the Vietnamese of the Red and Mekong river plains and deltas. Hanoi and Washington may in time clearly be seen to have conspired, in effect, if not in intention, to present Indochina to China.
SUCH WOULD be the worst outcome of the American intervention. The best out- come would be the emergence, after the last of the troops have left, of a reason- ably powerful and reasonably united Vietnam, possibly a Federation of North and South, which, whether communist in whole or in part, was sufficiently Vietnam- ese, sufficiently nationalist, to resist Chinese pressure and achieve a kind of Yugoslav status, doubtless blessed and aided by the Soviet Union and the United States alike. But whatever the final out- come may be, we are not likely to see it clearly take shape until months or even years after the American withdrawal.
Now we can do no other than look into a glass darkly, and there we can see only yet more horror of war and civil war to come, as the United States extricates itself. In a sense the United States has fallen into a trap of its own making, a great pit filled with barbed wire which will not kill its maker and victim but which will cause him countless more wounds and blood- letting as, unaided, he claws and scrambles his way out of the pit he has dug for him- self. That the decision to get out of the pi had to be taken does not lessen our relief that it has been taken, nor mitigate the hope that the painful process can be to over with quickly, whatever its unfomer able outcome.
WE NEED not feel particularly appalled that the necessary decision to withdraw appears to have been taken for what many moralists will regard as the wrong reasons It is not necessarily to disparage President Nixon to observe that he does not appeal to be a man who will base his main pole tical decisions upon ostensibly moral grounds. He will doubtless feel compelled by the conventions of American public utterance to justify his decisions as often as not on moral terms; but that is an entirely different matter. The constant justification of the American presence in Vietnam in vague moralisings was toter• able in the early years, when that presence could legitimately. be considered to fir helpful to the people of South Vietnam, when brave and able and selected Ameei can officers and sergeants would advis their South Vietnam counterparts on hot best to cope with problems of insurgent"; and when the prospect still existed of successful end to that presence. But N several years now the argument that tic good of the people of South Vietnam, and the cause of the free world, were 664 served by an American presence whid had far outgrown its earlier advisory rote whose quality had naturally degenerated as its quantity was grossly magnified and whose concern for the people of South Vietnam themselves had been contempt, has been a false and fooli4 argument. Increasingly, too, it has an offensive argument. The military 0 cesses committed by American troops, almost wholly indiscriminate use of appalling weight of American fire-pow bombs, napalm and other and we weapons, and the corruption caused wri in South Vietnamese society, all beca more and more obvious: and the TO obvious were these military and so, resses and corruptions, the worse be- me the smell of the moralising justifica- ms made on their behalf. That President Nixon has almost cer- inly made his decisions following poli- :al calculations—that he announces his ans now, before next month's Congres- )nal elections. and that he doubtless in- nds to have the United States out of idochina before the Presidential elec- xi of 1972—is neither to render those xisions morally indefensible nor without erit other than electoral. It may indeed that in no other way than under the In political pressure of electoral calcula- m could the right decision to clear out f South Vietnam have been arrived at. ut otherwise, the war could not have Den ended until it seemed as if the Amen- in public. for one reason or another. was ) sick of it that the ending of it became lvisaged by politicians as a politically ;warding act.
And it need not be considered as para. Jlarly ironic that a Republican President ould have taken this decision, and will esumably reap electoral. benefit, even ough the most eloquent (and moralising) position to the war has usually emana- from members of the Democratic rty. Although the seeds of the American sence in South Vietnam were sown by ident Eisenhower, the gigantic growth that presence was the work of Presi- ts Kennedy and Johnson, both of om chose, in their moralising public erances on the subject, to see the erican presence in Vietnam in the ure of a crusade for freedom. Presi- t Nixon also moralises about his latest ision, and doubtless dissembles in the but, this said, the Republican sident's latest words on the subject are eat improvement over the equivalent toric of his two Democratic prede- sors:
In my talks with leaders all over the world I find that there are those who may not agree with all of our policies. But no world leader to whom I have talked fears that the United States will use its power to dominate another country or destroy its independence. We can be proud that this is the cornerstone of America's foreign policy.
There is no goal to which this nation is more dedicated, and to which I am more dedicated, than to build a new structure of peace in the world where every nation including North Vietnam as well as South Vietnam can be free and independent with no fear of foreign aggression or domination.
I believe every American deeply be- lieves in" his heart that the proudest legacy the United States can leave during this period when we are the strongest nation in the world is that our power was used to defend freedom, not to destroy it; to preserve the peace, not to break the peace.
It is in that spirit that I make this proposal for a just peace in Vietnam and in Indochina. I ask the leaders in Hanoi to respond to this proposal in the same spirit.
Let us give to our children what we have not had during this century a chance to enjoy, a generation of peace.
•• • WITHIN this rhetoric are concealed some very practical concessions and acknow- ledgments. To 'build a new structure of peace' as a goal of American foreign policy, in the whole context of the Presi- dential statement anticipating a with- drawal from Indochina, is to concede that area to local or to communist rule, or to both. The notion that anywhere, anytime, on the earth where 'freedom' is threatened by communist expansion, there will that expansion be resisted and there will that freedom be upheld, is abandoned: and in the hope that the alternative, 'a generation of peace', may be enjoyed. The President's crucial acknowledgements are, however, to be discovered in the pas- sage 'I believe every American believes in his heart that the proudest legacy the United States can leave during this period when we are the strongest nation in the world is that our power was used to defend freedom, not to destroy it; to preserve the peace, not to break the peace'. Here is an oblique concession that in latter years, at least, the United States in Vietnam may have been using its power to destroy free- dom. to break the peace. Here, more to the point, is an oblique acknowledgment that the period when the United States 'are the strongest nation in the world' is coming to its end and its legacy must therefore be seen to: and that legacy should be a generation of peace.
This is both a noble ambition and a sensible interest. It is not only the outside world which requires a generation of peace: it is also the inside of the United States. It may be that this requirement for internal peace has been the most powerful single consideration inducing American politicians to regard the with- drawal of troops from Vietnam and Indo- china as a policy of electoral advantage. Such a withdrawal cannot be anything but the acknowledgment of a defeat, a military humiliation, the admission that the most powerful single country on earth has been unable to overcome the guerrilla activities of little men in black pyjamas. But if the Vietcong and Hanoi will claim eventual victory, as the last American troops finally depart, and they will, they share that victory over the military estab- lishment of the United States with Senator McCarthy and his peace campaign, with the demonstrators of the United States and much of the rest of the world besides, and, last but not least, with President Nixon: for his tacit concession of military failure in Vietnam is also an overt ac- knowledgment of the ability of the civil politicians of the United States eventually to respond to popular demand that the war be ended in Vietnam even if it be not won.
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