Peace breaks out
AMERICA JOHN GRAHAM
Washington—The Vietnam War is over. There was a time when it commandeered every con- versation in Washington, when someone who didn't know the difference between Dak To and Con Thien was not only unpatriotic but socially maladroit to boot. Now people talk of other things : of how the Onassises have not spent Christmas with the Kennedys, of children home from school, of how frightfully dull the new Republicans are.
They are not even fighting so hard either, away out there in the paddy fields and the mountains. The demilitarised zone is unusually quiet. The North Vietnamese aren't sending anything like as many men to the South as they used to : there has been only one bat- talion-strength attack in the past seven weeks, and casualties on both sides are down. Quite literally, the Hong Kong 'flu is proving to be more deadly than Vietcong bullets.
Besides, all parties have at last gathered to- gether in Paris. They are playing out a farcical geometric game of hide-and-seek with the tables and chairs, and no doubt their even- tual arguments and aims will be as twisted and devious as the placement. Still, they are there, and it is only charitable at this season to hope that something good will come from it all. Mr Clark Clifford, the Secretary of Defence, says he thinks both sides can start reducing their troops in January; his successor-to-be, Mr Laird, says be hopes the war can be ended in 1969. In less than one month there will be a new government, with a new chance to get the dreadful business finished with.
So much is true, and is some reason to be cheerful. The war today bears very little re- semblance to the war of last year, or the war of the first half of this year. Peace has a momentum of its own, just as war has, and the momentum has been maintained for many months now, despite the achingly slow process in Paris. It is difficult to believe that the Americans at any rate will now start up the war again. It is easier to believe that America wants out, that out she will get, and that the man who will take her out will be—wonder of wonders—Richard Nixon, the staunchest anti-communist of them all.
Consider Mr Nixon's position. His advan- tages are that he is not personally identified with the war in any way; that the mechanism for constructing peace is at least being set up; and that he has had the experience of watch- ing President Eisenhower end an inherited war. His disadvantages are that he is not exactly known as a peacemonger; that by any reckon- ing the Vietpam War is a devilishly tricky affair, with allies almost as intractable as opponents; and that even if he makes an arrangement which does not involve an imme- diate accretion of territory for the communists, it will be quite a trick to convince non-com- munist Asia that the United States is not revert- ing to isolationism.
Anyone who says he knows how Mr Nixon will do it is telling a lie. For the President- elect has dropped even fewer clues on Vietnam than on other matters. Take a look at his foreign affairs team : Rogers, Laird and Kis- singer. Mr Rogers, the Secretary of State, has virtually no experience of the conduct of foreign policy. He has kept silent on Vietnam, as indeed on all foreign affairs. The only clue is contained in Mr Nixon's praise of him as 'a superb negotiator.' Mr Laird, too, has DO definite public position on Vietnam. He is by instinct hawkish, but was one of the first Republicans in the Congress to switch to a doveish line, This was not so much from prin- ciple as from a political wish not to let the Democrats have the peace stand all to them- selves, and probably because he recognised that disengagement would become fashionable. Mr Laird has a highly trained political nose. He did choose, after all, in his first statement as Secretary of Defence-designate, to express his hope that the war could be ended next year.
Dr Kissinger, the new National Security man in the White House, is different, in that he has recently been much closer to the war than the others. His associations with the Johnson administration have kept him informed of the course of the war, and of the details of the talks in Paris. He is credited with having drafted Nelson Rockefeller's four-point peace plan earlier this year.
What are we to make of this trio? None of them has a known scheme for solving the puzzle. All of them appear to be practical men, but none of them has had executive experience of the sort that might be helpful. They ate tough, pragmatic, strong-minded: common sensible . . . the solid, boring epithets fall over one another.
But they are one other thing as well, and even though it is a negative thing, it is price- less in the present situation : they are uncom- mitted to the past. They are not bound by records of involvement in official foreign policy, like John Foster Dulles. They are not preoccupied with South-East Asia or tied to a particular policy there, like Dean Rusk. They have no special fields of expertise, such as Walt Rostow's so-called 'science of counter-insur- gency.' They should be able tb see the war in Vietnam as no Democrat in high office could,
If 1 give you all a degree, how about you giving me a riser
simply because it is not a war that they built. A new look is not necessarily a good look. But Mr Nixon ,and his men are already turn- ing away from Asia and towards Europe. Many times during, his campaign Mr Nixon talked about reorientating American foreign policy, with more emphasis on Europe and less on Asia. Dr Kissinger is primarily interested in Europe and the Soviet Union.
This does not mean to say that Richard Nixon agrees with Professor Galbraith, that the countries of South-East Asia should be allowed to return to the obscurity they so richly deserve. In spite of the desire to get out, in spite of the greater chance that a Repub- lican administration has to end the war than a Democratic one, there is still the small matter of the American commitment (however you define it), not to mention 30,000 dead. A complete sell-out is impossible; a complete victory is not credible; Mr Nixon's solution must lie between the two, and it may well be on the sell-out side of the scale.
There are still a good many people opposed to an easy exit, and not only those who live in Saigon. This brings up one final matter worth mentioning. At any moment the tempo of the war could change. It has been an unpredictable war, and few of the statements made about it have stood the test of time. Only this time last year all was quiet on the eastern front, when suddenly the North Viet- namese sprung the Tet offensive on an un- suspecting opposition. Recently Mr Clark Clifford has been making puzzling statements about new attacks in preparation. It does not seem that both sides have fully abandoned the idea that there can be a military solution. Any resurgence of the 'military victory' psychology would make Mr Nixon's job that much harder. But I suspect that the impetus towards peace is the stronger force. Eighteen months ago a craggy, white-haired senator from the State of Vermont made a statement about the war that contained much common sense: 'We should declare victory, and go home.'
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