CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

July 27, 1966

Page 17324

U.S. POLICY IN VIETNAM -- VIEWS OF FIVE EXPERTS

Mr: MUSKIE. Mr. President, the August 9, 1966, issue of Look magazine contains an article entitled: "Vietnam: What Should We Do Now?"

It is composed of answers to this question by five foreign policy and military affairs experts: Hans Morgenthau, Henry Kissinger, Hanson W. Baldwin, Herman Kahn, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Each of the five experts has a particular view on our policies in southeast Asia. Each disagrees with the others.

We must assume that if each of these experts were President of the United States, each would pursue a different policy and each would have harsh criticism of the others.

I think the article underscores the fact, Mr. President, that we are not confronted with a simple choice in Vietnam. We have a series of alternative policies, each of which can be defended or attacked by articulate experts.

I commend the article and the differences of opinion to Senators and ask unanimous consent that the article be printed at this point in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

SUPPOSE THE PRESIDENT ASKED YOU "WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?" -- FIVE EXPERTS GIVE THEIR ANSWER

(NOTE. -- We are at war in Vietnam. Whether we should have gotten into it or not is a separate issue. We are in Vietnam.

(Americans have always backed their armies with the moral certainty that in our victory right would triumph. But to many today, our cause seems stained by doubt. Never, during a foreign war, have Americans debated our national policy with such passion: "Get out ... Escalate ... Negotiate ... 'Hole in' at coastal enclaves ... Blockade Haiphong ... Push 'hot pursuit' into Laos." The bitterness of the partisans consolidates the confusion.

(Look invited five experts, who hold varying views about Vietnam, to answer this question:

"Suppose the President today asked you, 'What should we do now?' " We urged each to reply in the intentionally brief space of 1,000 words -- for we sought not a pablum of agreement but sharp, specific proposals.

(Here are their answers. Each man presents a program that millions would no doubt support.)

(Hans Morgenthau: Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and Modern History, University of Chicago; director, Center for the Study of American Foreign and Military Policy; has served as consultant to the Department of State and the Department of Defense; author of "In Defense of the National Interest, The Purpose of American Politics," etc.).

President Johnson is wont to ask the critics of his Vietnam policy, "What would you do if you were in my place?" This is a legitimate question, and it deserves an answer. Having been a consistent critic of our Vietnam policies for more than four years, I have tried to answer that question before and am glad to do so again.

Mr. President, I would say, you must choose between two alternative policies. You can start with the assumption that in Vietnam the credibility of the United States and its prestige as a great power are irrevocably engaged; that the war in Vietnam is a test case for all "wars of national liberation"; and that in consequence, the fate of Asia, and perhaps even the non-Communist world at large, might well be decided in Vietnam. If you believe this, then you must see the war through to victory. That is to say, you must escalate the war both in the South and in the North by committing what will amount (according to authoritative estimates) to a million American combat troops and by bombing, without restrictions, the industrial and population centers of North Vietnam. By doing this, you will destroy Vietnam, North and South, and risk a military confrontation with China or the Soviet Union or both. Yet these risks are justified by the magnitude of the issues at stake.

This is the policy that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been advocating and that you have pursued since February, 1965, even though you have been anxious to differentiate your policy from that of the Joint Chiefs. In truth, the difference between the two has not been one of kind but rather of degree. You have been escalating the war at a slower pace than the Joint Chiefs recommended. But escalate you did, and you will continue escalating because the assumptions from which you have started leave you no choice.

There is another policy, Mr. President, which you could and, in my view, should have pursued. This policy assumes that the war is primarily a civil war; that its global significance is remote; that, far from containing China and communism, it opens the gates to both -- by destroying the social fabric of Vietnamese nationalism, which is implacably hostile to China; and that, in consequence, the risks we are taking in the pursuit of victory are out of all proportion to the interests at stake.

We should never have gotten involved in this war, but we are deeply involved in it. The aim of our policy must be to avoid getting more deeply involved in it and to extricate ourselves from it while minimizing our losses. Recent events in Vietnam offer us the opportunity of initiating such a new policy of disengagement.

These events have clearly demonstrated two facts: The Saigon government is hardly worthy of the name; and the great mass of the people of South Vietnam prefer an end to the war rather than a fight to the finish with the Vietcong. The two main arguments with which our involvement has been justified have thus been demolished: that we have a commitment to the government of Saigon to assist it in the fight against the Vietcong; and that the people of South Vietnam want to be saved by us from the Vietcong -- even at the risk of their own destruction. The prospect of elections to be held in South Vietnam provides us with the chance to use these new facts for the initiation of a new policy of disengagement. Such a policy would proceed on two fronts, the political and the military.

Politically, we ought to work for the achievement of four goals.

1. We must promote the establishment of a broadly-based government in which the elements seeking an end to the war would have decisive influence. This government would have the task of organizing elections for a constituent assembly and a legislature at an early date. It must be recognized that such elections will neither be representative nor "free." The group that organizes them is likely to win them. Hence, the crucial importance of the composition of the government presiding over the elections.

2. We must see to it that the government that emerges from these elections will negotiate with the Vietcong for a modus vivendi. Such a settlement would no doubt increase the risk of a complete takeover by the Vietcong. However, it is quite possible to visualize a coalition government under which different sections of the country, after the model of the Laotian settlement, would be governed by different factions. One can even visualize a South Vietnamese government that would be anxious to maintain its independence vis-a-vis the North.

3. We should put United States military forces stationed in South Vietnam at the disposal of the government that emerges from the elections, to be used as bargaining counters in negotiations with the Vietcong. In other words, we would honor our commitments and would leave it to the South Vietnamese Government to interpret them -- in order to bring the war to an end.

4. Our ultimate goal would be the withdrawal of our armed forces from South Vietnam. Such a withdrawal would be coordinated with the progress of negotiations between the government of South Vietnam and the Vietcong. Our military forces would be gradually withdrawn, and our military presence would always be commensurate with the political purposes it is intended to serve.

Pending such withdrawal, our military policy would come in three parts:

1. We would stop both the bombing of North Vietnam and the search-and-destroy operations in South Vietnam that seek to kill the Vietcong and occupy territory controlled by them. For the continuation of such operations in the North and South is compatible only with a policy aiming at victory, not with one seeking a negotiated settlement among the Vietnamese factions.

2. We would hold the cities and coastal enclaves that we and the South Vietnamese military now control. That is to say, we would be satisfied with a de facto division of South Vietnam.

3.We would expect the Vietcong to reciprocate by ceasing attacks upon the perimeter of our positions and by stopping sabotage within them. It can be assumed that we and the Vietcong have a reciprocal interest in maintaining the military status quo pending negotiations.

The policy here advocated, Mr. President, is anathema to the men who advise you. Yet it has always been supported by officials fairly high in your administration. It now has the support of a number of senators who in the past have been "hawks" rather than "doves."

You, Mr. President, will have to decide whether the present policy -- morally dubious, militarily hopeless and risky, politically aimless and counterproductive -- shall be continued or whether a better policy shall take its place. You aspire to be a great President. Whether you remain the prisoner of past mistakes or have the courage to correct them will be the test of your greatness.

(Henry Kissinger: Professor of government, Harvard, and member of The Center for International Affairs; consultant to the National Security Council under President Kennedy; author of "The Troubled Partnership, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy," etc. "We are no longer fighting in Vietnam only for the Vietnamese. We are also fighting for ourselves and for international stability.")

The war in Vietnam is dominated by two factors: Withdrawal would be disastrous, and negotiations are inevitable. American policy must take both of these realities into account.

1. The impossibility of withdrawal. An American withdrawal under conditions that could plausibly be represented as a Communist victory would be disastrous for these reasons:

Within the Communist world, Chinese attacks on Soviet "revisionism" have focused on the Russian doctrine of peaceful coexistence. A victory by a third-class Communist peasant state over the United States must strengthen the most bellicose factions in the internecine Communist struggles around the World.

In Southeast Asia, it would demoralize those countries -- especially Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand -- that have supported our effort.

The long-term orientation of such countries as India and Japan will reflect to a considerable extent their assessment of America's willingness and ability to honor its commitments. For example, whether or not India decides to become a nuclear power depends crucially on its confidence in American support against Chinese nuclear blackmail.

A demonstration of American impotence in Asia cannot fail to lessen the credibility of American pledges in other fields. The stability of areas geographically far removed from Vietnam will be basically affected by the outcome there.

In short, we are no longer fighting in Vietnam only for the Vietnamese. We are also fighting for ourselves and for international stability.

2. The inevitability of negotiation. Historically, the goal of a war, for the United States has been the destruction of enemy forces. Negotiations could start only after the enemy had been crushed. But the primary issue in. Vietnam is political and psychological, not military.

What makes the war so complicated is the existence of a Communist "shadow government," permeating every aspect of Vietnamese life. A favorable outcome depends on the ability to create a political structure that can command the loyalties of the Vietnamese people.

A purely military solution is impossible also because Vietnam directly engages the interests and the prestige of so many major powers. Finally, the Administration has stressed its unconditional readiness to respond to any overture by Hanoi for negotiations.

In these circumstances, the political program -- both within Vietnam and for negotiations -- is crucial.

Military victories will prove empty if they are not coupled with an effort to build political structures. Negotiations will be sterile or dangerous unless we enter them with significant areas of the country substantially free of terror.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

1. Negotiations are likely when Hanoi realizes that its political apparatus in the countryside is being systematically reduced, and that this process will accelerate the longer the war lasts. It follows that the primary goal of military operations should be the creation of secure areas. It is better to have 100-percent control in 40 percent of the country than 40-percent control in 100 percent of the country. This is not to say that we should adopt a static "enclave" theory which would leave us with three Hong Kongs and two Berlins in the midst of hostile populations. Nor does it mean that we must write off all the territory that we cannot securely control. We will always retain a capacity for preventing the consolidation of Communist control even in areas that we do not control ourselves. It does mean that the highest priority must be given to creating "secure" zones that contain a maximum of population -- zones that can be expanded if the war continues and that will give us reliable negotiating counters at a conference

2. We must understand that political instability in Vietnam reflects the transformation of an essentially feudal structure intc a modern state -- a process that took centuries in the West. Such a process involves a profound shift of loyalties -- a task that would be searing in the best of circumstances, but is compounded by the pressures of civil war This imposes two requirements on us: (a) We.must have compassion for the travail of a society that has been wracked by war for two dacades and not use its agony as an alibi for failing in our duty; and (b) we must give special emphasis to building political structures from the ground up.

3. The notion drawn from our experience in Europe, that economic assistance automatically produces political stability, does not apply in Vietnam. On the contrary, there is a danger that our enthusiasm and our concern with technical refinements will overwhelm slender administrative resources and compound political demoralization. The test should be whether a program can enlist local support and thus give the rural population an incentive to defend it. Efforts should be concentrated in areas of maximum military security and spread out from there.

4. It may prove impossible to settle the war at a large conference that deals with all issues simultaneously. If the negotiations are conducted in a forum consisting of many nations that are already rivals (e.g., the U.S.S.R. and Communist China, or the U.S. and France), energies may be dissipated in political jockeying that is peripheral to the central problems in Vietnam. It may be wiser to separate the issues into their component elements, each to be settled by the parties primarily involved. A larger conference could then work out guarantees for settlements already achieved in other forums.

5. The war in Vietnam is a crucial test of American maturity. In the lives of nations, as of individuals, there comes a point when future options are limited by past actions. The choices of 1966 are not those of 1961. We must recognize that to be on the defensive often forces us to be engaged in places chosen by opponents for their difficulty and ambiguity.

We do not have the privilege of deciding to meet only those challenges that most flatter our moral preconceptions. If we cannot deal with political, economic and military problems as an integrated whole, we will not be able to deal with them individually.

(Hanson W. Baldwin: Military editor of the New York Times, Pulitzer Prize winner for journalism, graduate of Annapolis, war correspondent in the South Pacific, North Africa, Normandy, Korea, Vietnam)

It's the eleventh hour in Vietnam. The United States must decide to win or get out. It is not too late to win, but it soon may be.

Victory means, first of all, a Governmental and national determination to win. Congress should declare a state of national emergency and authorize a limited mobilization. Our trained and ready military power is spread thin all over the world. Limited mobilization would provide -- more quickly than any other means -- a pool of at least partially trained manpower and organized logistical, training and combat units to sustain a rapid buildup in Vietnam and, ultimately, to strengthen our weakened positions in other parts of the world.

The President should be authorized to mobilize up to 500,000 reserves for two-year service. Draft calls should be increased as necessary. All enlistments should be extended for a minimum of six months.

South Vietnam, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand must be regarded as a strategic whole. The war in South Vietnam is clearly nourished from outside. Soldiers, medicines, supplies, and especially arms and ammunition, today reach South Vietnam by sea, from Cambodia, through Laos, and from North Vietnam by any and all methods. Most of the small arms now used by the Vietcong "main-force" units are standardized on the Soviet 7.62-mm caliber basis and are Chinese-manufactured. All of the heavy arms -- mortars, antiaircraft guns, SAM missiles, MiG's, IL-28 bombers, and the world's largest helicopter, the Mi-6 -- are either Chinese- or Russian-manufactured.

We must shut off, to the best of our ability, the stream of Communist supplies into North Vietnam. We should turn off the faucet, not merely put a stopper in the drain. This means blocking the seaborne arms traffic to North Vietnam -- by mining, bombing, naval gunfire; the sinking of a dredge in the narrow, silted ship channel to Haiphong; by so-called "pacific blockade" or "quarantine" or other means.

The land supply routes, even more important to the Communist war effort, must also be interrupted. Past limitations upon the bombing of railroads and roads, and of the choke points and communications bottlenecks in North Vietnam's extensive road network, must be removed.

We must reduce the flow of supplies from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia. Many of these supplies move partway by truck; we have been bombing the trucks but, until recently, not the fuel-oil supplies that power them. We should bomb all the fuel-oil depots in North Vietnam. Electric power plants which provide power for a variety of war purposes, should also be bombed.

Interdiction of the many branches of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (which leads over various passes from North Vietnam through Laos or Cambodia into South Vietnam) must be improved -- by eliminating some of the restrictions that now hamper bombing and particularly by assigning more trained Forward Air Controllers, both on the ground and in the air.

Air Cavalry raids by helicopter against Laotian bottlenecks on the supply route should be undertaken whenever possible. The doctrine of "hot pursuit" must be applied to any guerrilla forces that use Cambodia as a sanctuary.

At sea, the Navy's coastal surveillance and river patrols must be extended and tightened -- to stop Vietcong gunrunning by junks and sampans. This will require more air and small-craft bases in South Vietnam and Thailand..

U.S. troop strength in South Vietnam should be doubled to a figure of 500,000 to 700,000 men, to enable U.S. and South Vietnamese forces to patrol areas that have been Communist sanctuaries for years. We must find and fix the main force of the enemy, and force him to expend his supplies in action, if possible. An enemy "body count" is not the proper yardstick by which to judge success in this kind of war. Even if the enemy refuses action and fades away into the jungles, or into the shadows of the U Minh Forest, the capture and destruction of his base camps, of his rice and food supplies, of his medicines and weapons and ammunition will reduce his combat capabilities.The war must ultimately be won on the ground by destroying or breaking up the main force units of the Vietcong, and especially by destroying the enemy's bases of operations.

The final part of the strategy for victory -- the part that will shape the peace -- is the pacification program. The American and South Vietnamese military can launch search-and-destroy and search-and-clear operations; but only specially trained South Vietnamese administrative and paramilitary forces can hold the areas that are cleared. The pacification program -- in the past mishandled and under-emphasized -- has this year started slowly but well; it must be pushed to the maximum. For one can confirm victory in a guerrilla war only if one wins the people over and protects them against the enemy.

This is a slow, a comprehensive, a tedious process. The administrative, police, educational and health authority of the central government must be built up from what Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge calls "the precinct level."

The enemy cannot win in a military sense: he is stymied on the field of battle. But political instability in Saigon, and U.S. impatience at home may cause us to lose the struggle -- politically and psychologically.

We have no easy choices -- only grim alternatives. Victory, which means making it possible for a South Vietnamese government to govern without interference from outside, is possible; but it may not be possible soon.

The victory road will be long and hard and bloody. But defeat or stalemate in Vietnam will gravely impair the U.S. position in Asia and in the world; and if we lose, our children and grandchildren will face tomorrow a far worse problem than we face today.

(Herman Kahn: Director of the Hudson Institute (a nonprofit organization conducting research in the area of national security and international order) ; former member of the Rand Corporation; author of "Thinking About the Unthinkable, On Thermonuclear War, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios")

I have been asked by Look to describe my personal position, rather than give an analysis of the pros and cons. The first and overwhelming point is that whether or not one agrees with the steps that led to it, our present commitment to oppose force and terror by the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam is as solemn an engagement as any modern nation has made. I do not believe that commitments must be blindly kept, regardless of costs; but just as we should be careful about making commitments, we should be very careful about honoring them.

Maintaining the credibility of our commitments is not just a matter of "saving face." Our ability to support world peace and security, particularly without using excessive force, depends in great measure upon the faith that other nations repose in American commitments. (Germany, Japan, India and Israel, for example, restrain their activities in obtaining nuclear weapons partly because of American commitments.)

To renege on commitments as serious as those we have made in Southeast Asia could be a major step in a disastrous erosion of faith in the United States. If faith in our commitments became so weak that we would have to give excessive commitments in order to make them believable -- for example, giving minor states control over our policy (as the British had to do with Poland in 1939) -- then the likelihood of major escalation, such as a war with China, would be dangerously increased.

The United States also has a crucial interest in dispelling two illusions that have grown up since World War II: that radical terrorists almost always win; and that radical regimes can subvert, or intervene in, a neighboring area with little risk. History is replete with examples of how a victory by terrorists in one area powerfully influenced the likelihood and the tactics of subversion in other areas. The invalidity of oversimplified "domino theories" should not lead us to underestimate the worldwide costs of letting the Vietcong succeed with their resort to violence.

In addition, I am seriously concerned about the political and moral repercussions within the United States were we to "pull out" of Vietnam.

Our cause in South Vietnam is not immoral. Many think we are creating more destruction, more death, more human suffering than our cause justifies. But what would happen were we to let South Vietnam fall into the hands of the National Liberation Front? It is not likely that a victorious NLF would treat with restraint the Cao Dal, the Hoo Hao, the Catholics (each a community of about 1,000,000 human beings); the 500,000 South Vietnamese soldiers; the many other groups that have demonstrated they are anti-Communist; the tens of thousands who would probably be labeled.enemies of a Communist state. Those who dismiss this likelihood need only look at how the Chinese Communists and the Indonesian Army treated their opponents, and might ask themselves if the victorious NLF is likely to be more restrained. Nor should the West view with equanimity 15,000,000 people passing behind a Communist Iron Curtain.

What, then, should we do in Vietnam now?

1. An important aspect of the battle for "the hearts and minds of men" is this: Which side will succeed in symbolizing national identity? Many Vietnamese prefer good government to bad government, but even more prefer self-government to foreign control. We should encourage self-government, and should minimize our nonmilitary role.

2. Thus, we should accept and encourage more independence by the South Vietnamese in handling their political and economic problems. Even if a Buddhist nationalist comes to power, he is likely to be more opposed to the NLF than to the Americans; and if his government does not want our protection, or makes it impossible, we can then leave with honor -- having fully honored our solemn commitment. (I assume we would not have connived at his election or policy.)

3. To the extent that it can be encouraged to, the Saigon government should compete with the Vietcong in promises of social reform, should launch selective but significant social-reform programs now, and should carry out pacification programs in a legal and humane way.

4. We should replace the present system of four levels of American advisers in the Vietnamese Army (which tends to result in four levels of double veto) with a singular, more unified system.

5. We should urge the South Vietnamese Army to make promotions and assignments on the basis of merit. The efficiency of the fighting forces would be greatly increased if the army adopted the simple expedient of promotions on the battlefield, raising enlisted men to officer rank, regardless of education, rewarding proven ability, aggressiveness and dedication.

6. The amnesty program offered to the Vietcong should be broadened and liberalized. The counterinsurgency wars that have been won since World War II often involved generous, well-publicized amnesty programs. (The Philippine Government, for instance, promised and gave farms to many Huk guerrillas who surrendered.) Although the South Vietnamese think it wrong to treat rebels better than loyal peasants, it is clearly worth a good deal to South Vietnam to make surrender safe and attractive, and to guarantee a decent, useful life to the man who surrenders.

7. We probably do not need to escalate military activities against North Vietnam. The military tactics we have introduced -- aggressive patrolling to carry out search-and-destroy and clear-and-hold operations -- contain many significant benefits that have not yet been fully realized, but should soon show important results.

8. I believe we can pacify Vietnam. A stable, reasonable government there is possible. Although the political situation looks bad today, many current political problems are likely to be solved following, and as the result of, military victories. The political difficulties in South Vietnam are likely to be diminished when and after elections are held -- especially if the elections follow military victories.

Our present policy is the only realistic alternative the United States really has. It is a hopeful policy. If we are patient, resolute, realistic, that policy can probably realize our goals. I have yet to hear of an alternative that is not likely to involve costs far greater, far more deplorable, far more inhumane in both the short and long run.

(Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.: Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, City University of New York; professor of history, Harvard, 1954-61; twice winner, Pulitzer Prize; winner, National Book Award; assistant to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; author of "A Thousand Days," etc.)

The moderate critics of the administration's Vietnam policy do not question its proclaimed purposes: resistance to Communist aggression, self-determination for South Vietnam, a negotiated settlement in Southeast Asia. They do question, with the greatest urgency, the theory that the way to achieve these objectives is to intensify the war. The more we destroy Vietnam, North and South, in their judgment, the less chance there will ever be of attaining our objectives. The course of widening the war, moreover, will mire our nation in a hopeless and endless conflict on the mainland of Asia, beyond the effective use of our national power and the range of our primary interests -- and may well end in nuclear war with China.

And the alternatives? Instead of supposing that a guerrilla movement can be crushed by strategic bombing, instead of using military methods to solve a political problem, we must adapt the means we employ to the end we seek.

1. Stop the Americanization of the war. The bitter fact is that the war in Vietnam can never be won as a war of white men against Asians. It cannot be won "unless the people [of South Vietnam] support the effort .... We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam" (President Kennedy, 1963). The more we Americanize the war -- by increasing our military presence, by summoning Saigon leaders, like vassals, to conferences in an American state, by transforming a local war in Vietnam into a global test between America, and China -- the more we make the war unwinnable.

2. A civilian government in Saigon. We have never had a government in Saigon that could enlist the active loyalty of the countryside, and we certainly do not have one in Marshal Ky's military junta. Instead of identifying American interests with Marshal Ky, and rebuffing the broader political impulses of the South, we should long since have encouraged a movement toward a civilian regime that represents the significant political forces of the country and is capable both of rallying the army and carrying out programs of social reform. If such a government should favor the neutralizationof South Vietnam, if it should want to negotiate with Vietcong, even if it should wish to release us from our commitment to stay in Vietnam, we cannot and should not object.

3. Reconvene the Geneva Conference. We should persevere in the quest for negotiation. Since the Vietcong are a principal party to the conflict, it would appear obvious that peace talks at Geneva are meaningless without their participation. And since they will never talk if the only topic is their unconditional surrender, we must, unless we plan to exterminate them, hold out to them a prospect of a say in the future political life of South Vietnam -- conditioned on their laying down their arms, opening up their territories and abiding by the ground rules of democratic elections, preferably under international supervision.

4. Hold the line in South Vietnam. Obviously, Hanoi and the Vietcong will not negotiate so long as they think they can win. Since stalemate is thus a precondition to negotiation, we must have enough American ground forces in South Vietnam to demonstrate that our adversaries cannot hope for military victory. I believe that we have more than enough troops and installations there now to make this point.

It is an illusion to suppose that by increasing the size of the American Army we can ever gain a reliable margin of superiority; for, by the Pentagon's preferred 10:1 ratio in fighting guerrillas, every time we add 100,000 men, the enemy has only to add 10,000, and we are all even again.

Nor does "digging in" mean a static strategy with initiative relinquished to the enemy. The South Vietnamese Army of half a million men is better suited in many ways than are Americans to search operations in the villages.

We should also limit our bombing in the south. Have we really no better way to deal with guerrilla warfare than the aerial obliteration of the country in which it is taking place? If this is our best idea of "protecting" a country against communism, what other country, seeing the devastation we have wrought in Vietnam, will ever wish for American protection?

5. Taper off the bombing of North Vietnam. Secretary McNamara has candidly said, "We never believed that bombing would destroy North Vietnam's will," and thus far, bombing the North has neither brought Hanoi to the conference table, demoralized the people nor stopped infiltration. As a result, pressure arises for ever-wider strikes -- first oil depots, then harbors, factories, cities, the Chinese border. But these won't work either. As we move down this road, we will only solidify the people of North Vietnam behind their government, make negotiations impossible and eventually assure the entry of China into the war. And even if we bombed North Vietnam back to the Stone Age and earned thereby the hatred of the civilized world, this still would not settle the present war -- which, after all, is taking place not in North but in South Vietnam.

6. A long-run program for Southeast Asia. We should discuss with Russia, France, China and other interested countries a neutralization program, under international guarantee, for Cambodia, Laos, North and South Vietnam. If these states could work out forms of economic collaboration, as in the development of the Mekong Valley, the guarantors should make economic and technical assistance available to them.

A program of limiting our forces, actions and objectives still holds out the possibility of an honorable resolution of a tragic situation. A program of indefinite escalation offers nothing but disaster; for our adversaries can, in their own way, match our every step up to nuclear war -- and nuclear war would be just as much a moral and political catastrophe for us as it would be a physical catastrophe for the Far East and the whole world.