Johnson's Advice
DAVID WATT writes from Washington:
If the United States has taken a step at last on a road hitherto barred by almost sacred inter- dict to a ground war on the Asian mainland, it is because nobody can think of anything better to do.
This can be said without too many overtones of incredulous horror. In the face of an in- soluble problem, the natural reaction at a point where argument has been exhausted is simply to do what seems immediately necessary and hope for the best. Such was the mood in which the President took the revolutionary step of trying to combat guerrillas by a generalised punishment of their masters. It is not the style in which heroic decisions or even correct ones are often made and an astonishing volume of criticism has accordingly been heard here, not least because the President has characteristically declined to show his cards either to friend or enemy. All the same, in the midst of the general gloom it is worth pointing out that Johnson's final conver- sion to a course which admittedly reduces his freedom of action and whose consequences he cannot possibly foresee has unjustly over- shadowed a significant corollary to it: the
tenacity with which this extremely cautious political tactician has resisted over so many months the consistent advice of his chiefs of staff and growing chorus of belligerence among his closest advisers. Throughout the long argument it has been Johnson who has been the leading member of the 'never again' school which con- jures up the gory visage of Korea every time a 'hawk' seems likely to take off into the upper atmosphere.
American policy has been a slow progression. It started with a careful course of non-retaliation to Viet Cong attacks on United States instal- lations last autumn and Christmas: it proceeded with the bombing of guerrilla supply routes in Laos during January and it culminated only last week in the final explosion of action across the seventeenth parallel. This route has been traversed against the pressure of a constant rear- guard action by the President which broke down only when all available advice pointed in the opposite direction, when preliminary feelers to- wards negotiations had proved negative, when a sizeable loss of American life provided both the final impetus and the convenient moral justi- fication, and when no alternative seemed to be at hand.
It is pretty clear that the most important of these forces was the failure of diplomatic sound- ings in Hanoi. Of course every official in Wash- ington swears himself puce that no peace talks have ever taken place. Strictly speaking, they have not, but that doesn't prevent every official also asserting with ironclad conviction that 'Hanoi is just not interested in negotiation.' It is plausible as well as charitable to assume that discreet inquiries were made through the French and others with results which induced anew and ominous unanimity in the advice reaching the President.
State Department advice had been as finely balanced as ever. It appears to have stressed throughout the danger that strikes across the border would sooner or later provoke the direct intervention of Chinese and North Vietnamese, but added the. alternative argument that interven- tion might be justified for the purpose of increas- ing the American bargaining position in subse- quent negotiations. The Defence Department and latterly political advisers have taken the line that the war could still be won in the south if infiltration could be stopped, and that there was no way of stopping it that had not been tried except that of making it too expensive for Hanoi to continue. As soon as it was shown to the satisfaction of President Johnson that the North Vietnamese government was riding too high to have any incentive to parley, the State Depart- ment's alternative argument and the Pentagon's came together.
In the face of this, it would have taken a superhuman detachment to reject the conclusion, ar well as great imaginative fertility to produce an alternative which did not amount to capitulation. Nevertheless, these are qualities now urgently required. Fundamental arguments on which the whole of American policy depends are still raging within the administration. Can the war be won even if infiltration were eliminated? Would negotiation lead inevitably to the loss of Vietnam in the long run? How does the risk to the West of the loss of Vietnam compare with the risk to the West of confrontation with China, and perhaps Russia?
The President failed to demand the answers to these questions before he acted. Hardly anyone in Washington is confident that subsequent debate will-bring his advisers nearer to agreeing on what the answers are.
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