FOREIGN FOCUS
An end to globalism
CRABRO
The frequent assessments of the progress of the reign of President Nixon provoked Murray Kempton, in last week's SPECTATOR, to the unkind thought that his electors possibly needed them to reassure themselves that he was still around. In fact, Kempton himself went on to acknowledge, any be- wilderment about the retiring nature of the present regime is largely attributable to the excessive addiction of the two previous Presidents to the limelight. A less interven- tionist presidency is healthy at this time for the balance of the American democracy. There is, however, one aspect of govern- ment from which no President can properly withdraw: the conduct of foreign policy. Mr Nixon himself recognised this in his reported comment, before he came to the White House, that he regarded foreign policy as the first priority for the Presi- dency. This applies with all the more force to his own Administration in that he largely owed his election to the conviction that a change of occupancy at the White House was the necessary precondition to a settle- ment of the foreign policy dilemma which had become the first preoccupation of the electorate—the war in Vietnam.
So far progress towards a settlement has been minimal. The peace talks in Paris con- tinue, but they were started by President Johnson, and have not visibly advanced since his departure. The scale of the war on the ground and the level of American casualties have been reduced this year, but these reductions also antedated the transfer power in Washington to the Republicans. Even the phased withdrawal of American troops was initiated by Mr Johnson's last Defence Secretary, Mr Clark Clifford, and resident Nixon has now felt obliged to fer the next repatriations.
Yet there has been a change, and a vital ange at that. The repercussions in the nited States of the Vietcong Tet offensive n the spring of 1968 showed that American electorate's patience with war was exhausted. The determination
President Johnson and his Secretary of tate to stare down Ho Chi Minh was no onger acceptable. This being so—and given e limitations imposed by the existence of eapons of unlimited destructiveness—on e freedom of action of even the world's ost powerful nations today—the only pos- ble termination of the war became the ithdrawal of United States troops from the ainland of Asia. But before this could be hieved without intolerable loss of face it as essential that the war should be down- 'Wed in importance. President Johnson's estige was too heavily committed. His ccessor's first task was to divert the atten- on of his countrymen from Vietnam. This is the context in which all his plomatic initiatives should be seen. Hence
decision to make western Europe the stmation of his first overseas tour as resident; hence also the visit to Rouniania neatly calculated to steal the limelight from
matters of substance discussed with the lies in South East Asia during the same pi: and hence, in part at least, the eager- ss for discussion of arms limitation with
the Soviet Union. It has worked: Vietnam no longer dominates the headlines of the American press in the way that it did a year ago.
Behind this reversal of priorities the thinking of the President's principal foreign policy adviser, Professor Henry Kissinger, has been detected. Mr Kissinger's public reputation was that of a critic of the legalistic-moralistic' approach to inter- national relations, and of the over-extension of American commitments abroad. As a man of central European origins himself. he was known to be out of sympathy with both the excessive preoccupation of the Johnson Administration with South-East Asia, and the attempt of the Kennedy Ad- ministration to impose 'designs' and systems on its allies.
Many of these judgments are confirmed in the three essays on American Foreign Policy from Mr Kissinger's pen published in this country this week (Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 30s). The author emerges as some- thing of a pessimist. He is disturbed by the hankering of his countrymen for absolute solutions. He reminds them that in a world where statesmen lack all identity of back- ground, and where the energies needed to move massive bureaucratic machines to the point of decision are so considerable that strategy is often at a discount, unsatisfac- tory compromises are the most to be hoped for. Most constructively, perhaps, he draws attention to the fact that 'bipolarity' of military power now exists side by side with 'multipolarity' of political power. This leads him to the conclusion that the United States should aim to be a partner in foreign alli- ances whose purposes should be properly restricted to individual geographical areas, in which American influence should not be too dominant, and whose members' interests may well conflict with those of the United States elsewhere. The concept of a global American security system is dead.
Interest will inevitably centre on the essay on Vietnam: yet this is the least satisfactory of the three. Mr Kissinger is critical of the failure of the Kennedy and Johnson Ad- ministrations to define precisely their objectives in South-East Asia, and in par- ticular of the insistence on bringing Saigon into the substantive negotiations in Paris. Yet although he recognises that 'the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. fighting in their own country, needed merely to keep in be- ing forces sufficiently strong to dominate the population after the United States tired of the war', he apparently subscribes, at least in modified form, to Mr Rusk's often-stated opinion that American withdrawal would destroy the value of pledges given to allies elsewhere in the world.
He is thus driven to conclude that the right way to bring the war to an end is to secure agreement with the North Vietnam- ese on the mutual withdrawal of forces, and to a highly unconvincing explanation of why Hanoi should accept such an agree- ment: exhaustion, the danger of a loss of sovereignty to allies who are sustaining its war effort, and the probability that the war will be downgraded in importance to the Communist bloc by the Sino-Soviet struggle. This shows little recognition of what is surely the crucial political reality of the struggle: that President Nixon will not secure re-election in 1972 unless he has brought home the troops from Vietnam first. Hanoi's patience must be greater than Washington's.
Fortunately the contradictions between Mr Kissinger's philosophical survey and his practical suggestions for terminating the war in Vietnam make it possible for Presi- dent Nixon to accept the one while rejecting the other. A few straws in the wind, such as last week's announcement about forth- coming withdrawals of American forces from Thailand, suggest that this may be in Mr Nixon's mind. though it is too early to be sure. The abandonment of the attempt to impose an American pattern on world events coincides with what we have learnt of Mr Nixon's concept of the Presi- dency in domestic terms. and a greater diversity of objectives in different parts of the world would help to divert attention from Vietnam.
There is only one real danger here. President Nixon could come to believe, as President de Gaulle was in danger of believ- ing in the early years after his return to power, that if people can be induced to think about other things than the war he was called in to conclude, it will somehow fade into political insignificance. That was a mistake which almost cost de Gaulle his job, and even his life. President Nixon is a good learner, and he should not neglect the Algerian experience of President de Gaulle.
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