Vietnam: the Road to Peace

By J. ENOCH POWELL, MP

To read Lord Avon's little book on peace in Indochina* is to be reminded how swiftly current events remould our memory of even the recent past. The Geneva agreements of 1954 and the co- chairmanship of Britain and Russia at the con- ference that reached them have entered into the vocabulary in which the war in Vietnam is dis- cussed.. Not a speech on that subject in a foreign affairs debate, not an exchange of ques- tions and answers on 'arms for Vietnam,' has proceeded many sentences before Britain's `position as Geneva co-chairman' has got itself invoked.t Few who bandy the phrase could set it in the context of its origin.

The Geneva Conference of 1954 was con- cerned with France's final relinquishment of her former empire in Indochina and with the 'civil war' in the countries of Indochina which had accompanied the expulsion of the French. The conference sought to establish those countries —Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam—as independent sovereign states; but as the country called Viet- nam was divided by an armistice line, the agreements recognised 'zones' North and South of that line, which for the time being would have their own governments until 'free, nation- wide elections' could take place two years later, in 1956. The armistice, and the eventual elec- tions, were to be supervised by an International Commission of Canada, India and Poland. The conference had two co-chairmen, Eden and Molotov, to provide a balance while avoid- ing the inconvenience of rotation between all the countries represented. That the co-chairmen should survive the conference as the kind of permanent, if highly abstract, institution they have become, was nobody's intention. It simply happened because there was no secre- tariat, and since somebody had to be left to settle the costs of the International Commission, the co-chairmen were told to do it.

From the beginning the United States was dis- satisfied with the outcome of the conference, and simply 'took note.' The forces in the North zone of Vietnam, which had driven the French out of the basin of Tonkin, were after all Communist, with Communist China behind them. The agree- ments were not good enough. A certain Senator Lyndon Johnson claimed that 'American foreign policy has never in all its history suffered such a stunning reversal. . . . We stand in clear danger of being left naked and alone in a hostile world.'

From that moment onwards the Americans applied themselves to building up the South zone, or South Vietnam, politically, economically and militarily, into a solid bulwark against the North and against 'Communism.'

When in May 1956 the co-chairmen, now Lord Reading and Molotov, reminded the two governments in Vietnam of their duty to keep the peace and to organise 'free, nation-wide elections,' they were already in the realm of romance.

As time went on, especially after 1959, the cost of United States policy in South Vietnam mounted: internal political dissensions, Com- munism and infiltration from the North drew in an ever-rising volume of aid and arms and an ever-increasing number of American military • TOWARDS PEACE IN INDocioNA. By the Earl of Avon. (Chatham House/O.U.P., 7s. 6d.) t the' Prime ' Minister, July 12, 1966, Hansard, written answers, col. 191. 'advisers.' In June 1962 the International Com- mission a majority, reported that both North and Sou were in breach of the agreement— the North by fomenting hostilities in the South, the South by the de facto military alliance with America and the acceptance of American arms and forces. The present phase began only last year, with the direct engagement of United States forces in South Vietnam and by air against North Vietnam, on a scale which is still rising.

Meanwhile, what of the other parties to the Geneva Conference? France has vanished from the scene. Britain, which in 1954 was still the major military power in Africa, the Middle East and the chersonese of South-East Asia, has gone, or given short notice, everywhere but in Singa- pore and Hong Kong. Russia, the other co- chairman of 1954, is no longer the friend and helper, but the bitter rival and butt of an in- creasingly alarming China. Candidly, one would hardly think that a Geneva conference, revived under its co-chairmen to give guarantees 'on the Locarno model' to North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia against violation of their territories and 'neutrality,' was a very hopeful route 'towards peace in Indochina'; for such, in its essentials, is the Avon plan.

What sort of guarantee is France in a position to give? Or Britain, for that matter? The time when either could 'guarantee' the borders of Laos or the seventeenth parallel is as far away in fact, if not in time, as Locarno itself. As Lord Avon says of one part of his proposals: 'The odds are evidently against the success of such a scheme as this.'

Where he uses those words, he is discussing how the United States could withdraw from its embattled position in South Vietnam leaving 'sufficiently stable conditions' and 'an adminis- tration which can command a positive follow- ing.' That indeed is the crux of the problem. The tragic irony is that with each successive intensi- fication of their efforts to break out, the Americans dig themselves deeper in. Lord Avon is clear-sighted in his analysis of this irony: There is no doubt of the deep hatred for Communist rule sincerely felt by many South Vietnamese, often as a result of personal ex- perience. Yet it will never be easy to enlist this hostility, which can be due to a variety of causes, except by leadership which has a national appeal. This is an inescapable political problem for the Americans and their allies, and no doubt the Americans know it.

On the controversial subject of the bombing of North Vietnam, Lord Avon, in my opinion, is also right when he says that its influence on the actual fighting is more remote than its protagonists will admit. This reservation also applies to attempts to disrupt Vietcong supply lines in South Vietnam and in Laos by air action, or even to bombing

attacks by day on road blocks set up by the

Vietcong. However complete the devastation, the effect is temporary and therefore not de- cisive. In the conditions of the present fighting in Vietnam, the claims for the military, as apart from the horror, influence of bombing are exaggerated.

For what my own war experience is worth, gathered during many months' observation and study of the military effects of air bombardment, I would respectfully concur, and add that the 'horror' itself may well be counter-productive.

Yet even Lord Avon repeats the familiar assertion that 'the United States cannot be beaten.' This is one of those statements which look precise and definite, but in reality are both ambiguous and vague. Such statements are apt to be dangerous, just because they escape examination.

Of course the United States cannot be beaten in the sense in which Germany was beaten in 1945. But where lesser interests than the supreme national interests are at stake in a war, the effort to attain them may at a certain point appear to be more than they are worth. In this (very different) sense it undeniably is possible for the United States to be beaten. There can come a point where even the importance with which the Americans themselves—and largely, as a matter of historical fact, the Americans alone —have endowed South Vietnam is exceeded by the cost, in moral and physical terms together, of the Vietnamese war.

After all, they do not live there. The other parties—the South Vietnamese, the North Viet- namese, the Chinese—do live there, and will go on living there when the American carrier fleets have dropped below the Pacific horizon again. In this fact there lies an immense, residual, negative strength. For Hanoi, for China, for the Vietcong, it is enough 'not to be beaten'; for the Americans, it is necessary to win.

Yet because to win, to dictate peace on one's own terms, is not available, it does not follow that the opponent, real or imaginary, will there- fore be able to attain the aims with which one credits him. Often, in war, the difficulties on the other side of the hill are equal to those on this. 'There is not a remote chance,' writes Lord Avon, 'of even a partial American withdrawal unless North Vietnam plays its part, although a negative one, to make this possible.' The italics are mine. If I had to guess how peace may one day come in Indochina, I would imagine the process to commence not when a Geneva con- ference assembled again under its co-chairmen after so many years, but when the United States began to withdraw her forces and, like the snark, 'softly' (if not 'suddenly') to 'vanish away.'

On that day North Vietnam's new problems would begin, and China, if her aspiration really is to rule in Hanoi and Saigon, would find herself farther away from it than before.