Twenty-five years ago, Dwight Macdonald published a series of articles
in Politics on the responsibility of peoples and, specifically,
the responsibility of intellectuals. I read them as an undergraduate,
in the years just after the war, and had occasion to read them again
a few months ago. They seem to me to have lost none of their power
or persuasiveness. Macdonald is concerned with the question of war
guilt. He asks the question: To what extent were the German or Japanese
people responsible for the atrocities committed by their governments?
And, quite properly, he turns the question back to us: To what extent
are the British or American people responsible for the vicious terror
bombings of civilians, perfected as a technique of warfare by the
Western democracies and reaching their culmination in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, surely among the most unspeakable crimes in history.
To an undergraduate in 1945-46—to anyone whose political and moral
consciousness had been formed by the horrors of the 1930s, by the
war in Ethiopia, the Russian purge, the "China Incident," the Spanish
Civil War, the Nazi atrocities, the Western reaction to these events
and, in part, complicity in them—these questions had particular
significance and poignancy.
With respect to the responsibility of intellectuals, there are
still other, equally disturbing questions. Intellectuals are in
a position to expose the lies of governments, to analyze actions
according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions.
In the Western world, at least, they have the power that comes from
political liberty, from access to information and freedom of expression.
For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure,
the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden
behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and
class interest, through which the events of current history are
presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are
much deeper than what Macdonald calls the "responsibility of people,"
given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.
The issues that Macdonald raised are as pertinent today as they
were twenty years ago. We can hardly avoid asking ourselves to what
extent the American people bear responsibility for the savage American
assault on a largely helpless rural population in Vietnam, still
another atrocity in what Asians see as the "Vasco da Gama era" of
world history. As for those of us who stood by in silence and apathy
as this catastrophe slowly took shape over the past dozen years—on
what page of history do we find our proper place? Only the most
insensible can escape these questions. I want to return to them,
later on, after a few scattered remarks about the responsibility
of intellectuals and how, in practice, they go about meeting this
responsibility in the mid-1960s.
IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to
expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass over
without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it
is not at all obvious. Thus we have Martin Heidegger writing, in a
pro-Hitler declaration of 1933, that "truth is the revelation of that
which makes a people certain, clear, and strong in its action and
knowledge"; it is only this kind of "truth" that one has a responsibility
to speak. Americans tend to be more forthright. When Arthur Schlesinger
was asked by
The New York Times in November, 1965, to explain
the contradiction between his published account of the Bay of Pigs
incident and the story he had given the press at the time of the attack,
he simply remarked that he had lied; and a few days later, he went
on to compliment the
Times for also having suppressed information
on the planned invasion, in "the national interest," as this term
was defined by the group of arrogant and deluded men of whom Schlesinger
gives such a flattering portrait in his recent account of the Kennedy
Administration. It is of no particular interest that one man is quite
happy to lie in behalf of a cause which he knows to be unjust; but
it is significant that such events provoke so little response in the
intellectual community—for example, no one has said that there is
something strange in the offer of a major chair in the humanities
to a historian who feels it to be his duty to persuade the world that
an American-sponsored invasion of a nearby country is nothing of the
sort. And what of the incredible sequence of lies on the part of our
government and its spokesmen concerning such matters as negotiations
in Vietnam? The facts are known to all who care to know. The press,
foreign and domestic, has presented documentation to refute each falsehood
as it appears. But the power of the government's propaganda apparatus
is such that the citizen who does not undertake a research project
on the subject can hardly hope to confront government pronouncements
with fact.
[1]
The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of
Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.
It is therefore useful to recall that although new levels of cynicism
are constantly being reached, their clear antecedents were accepted
at home with quiet toleration. It is a useful exercise to compare
Government statements at the time of the invasion of Guatemala in
1954 with Eisenhower's admission—to be more accurate, his boast—a
decade later that American planes were sent "to help the invaders"
(New York Times, October 14, 1965). Nor is it only in moments
of crisis that duplicity is considered perfectly in order. "New
Frontiersmen," for example, have scarcely distinguished themselves
by a passionate concern for historical accuracy, even when they
are not being called upon to provide a "propaganda cover" for ongoing
actions. For example, Arthur Schlesinger (New York Times,
February 6, 1966) describes the bombing of North Vietnam and the
massive escalation of military commitment in early 1965 as based
on a "perfectly rational argument":
so long as the Vietcong thought they were going to win the war,
they obviously would not be interested in any kind of negotiated
settlement.
The date is important. Had this statement been made six months
earlier, one could attribute it to ignorance. But this statement
appeared after the UN, North Vietnamese, and Soviet initiatives
had been front-page news for months. It was already public knowledge
that these initiatives had preceeded the escalation of February
1965 and, in fact, continued for several weeks after the bombing
began. Correspondents in Washington tried desperately to find some
explanation for the startling deception that had been revealed.
Chalmers Roberts, for example, wrote in the Boston Globe
on November 19 with unconscious irony:
[late February, 1965] hardly seemed to Washington to be a propitious
moment for negotiations [since] Mr. Johnson…had just ordered the
first bombing of North Vietnam in an effort to bring Hanoi to
a conference table where the bargaining chips on both sides would
be more closely matched.
Coming at that moment, Schlesinger's statement is less an example
of deceit than of contempt—contempt for an audience that can be
expected to tolerate such behavior with silence, if not approval.[2]
TO TURN TO SOMEONE closer to the actual formation and implementation
of policy, consider some of the reflections of Walt Rostow, a man
who, according to Schlesinger, brought a "spacious historical view"
to the conduct of foreign affairs in the Kennedy administration.[3]
According to his analysis, the guerrilla warfare in Indo-China in
1946 was launched by Stalin,[4] and
Hanoi initiated the guerrilla war against South Vietnam in 1958
(The View from the Seventh Floor pp. 39 and 152). Similarly,
the Communist planners probed the "free world spectrum of defense"
in Northern Azerbaijan and Greece (where Stalin "supported substantial
guerrilla warfare"—ibid., pp. 36 and 148), operating from
plans carefully laid in 1945. And in Central Europe, the Soviet
Union was not "prepared to accept a solution which would remove
the dangerous tensions from Central Europe at the risk of even slowly
staged corrosion of Communism in East Germany" (ibid., p.
156).
It is interesting to compare these observations with studies by
scholars actually concerned with historical events. The remark about
Stalin's initiating the first Vietnamese war in 1946 does not even
merit refutation. As to Hanoi's purported initiative of 1958, the
situation is more clouded. But even government sources[5]
concede that in 1959 Hanoi received the first direct reports of
what Diem referred to[6] as his own
Algerian war and that only after this did they lay their plans to
involve themselves in this struggle. In fact, in December, 1958,
Hanoi made another of its many attempts—rebuffed once again by Saigon
and the United States—to establish diplomatic and commercial relations
with the Saigon government on the basis of the status quo.[7]
Rostow offers no evidence of Stalin's support for the Greek guerrillas;
in fact, though the historical record is far from clear, it seems
that Stalin was by no means pleased with the adventurism of the
Greek guerrillas, who, from his point of view, were upsetting the
satisfactory post-war imperialist settlement.[8]
Rostow's remarks about Germany are more interesting still. He does
not see fit to mention, for example, the Russian notes of March-April,
1952, which proposed unification of Germany under internationally
supervised elections, with withdrawal of all troops within a year,
if there was a guarantee that a reunified Germany would
not be permitted to join a Western military alliance.[9]
And he has also momentarily forgotten his own characterization of
the strategy of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations: "to avoid
any serious negotiation with the Soviet Union until the West could
confront Moscow with German rearmament within an organized European
framework, as a fait accompli"[10]
—to be sure, in defiance of the Potsdam agreements.
But most interesting of all is Rostow's reference to Iran. The
facts are that there was a Russian attempt to impose by force a
pro-Soviet government in Northern Azerbaijan that would grant the
Soviet Union access to Iranian oil. This was rebuffed by superior
Anglo-American force in 1946, at which point the more powerful imperialism
obtained full rights to Iranian oil for itself, with the installation
of a pro-Western government. We recall what happened when, for a
brief period in the early 1950s, the only Iranian government with
something of a popular base experimented with the curious idea that
Iranian oil should belong to the Iranians. What is interesting,
however, is the description of Northern Azerbaijan as part of "the
free world spectrum of defense." It is pointless, by now, to comment
on the debasement of the phrase "free world." But by what law of
nature does Iran, with its resources, fall within Western dominion?
The bland assumption that it does is most revealing of deep-seated
attitudes toward the conduct of foreign affairs.
IN ADDITION to this growing lack of concern for truth, we find,
in recent published statements, a real or feigned naivetÉ about
American actions that reaches startling proportions. For example,
Arthur Schlesinger, according to the Times, February 6, 1966,
characterized our Vietnamese policies of 1954 as "part of our general
program of international goodwill." Unless intended as irony, this
remark shows either a colossal cynicism, or the inability, on a
scale that defies measurement, to comprehend elementary phenomena
of contemporary history. Similarly, what is one to make of the testimony
of Thomas Schelling before the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
January 27, 1965, in which he discusses two great dangers if all
Asia "goes Communist"?[11] First,
this would exclude "the United States and what we call Western civilization
from a large part of the world that is poor and colored and potentially
hostile." Second, "a country like the United States probably cannot
maintain self-confidence if just about the greatest thing it ever
attempted, namely to create the basis for decency and prosperity
and democratic government in the underdeveloped world, had to be
acknowledged as a failure or as an attempt that we wouldn't try
again." It surpasses belief that a person with even a minimal acquaintance
with the record of American foreign policy could produce such statements.
It surpasses belief, that is, unless we look at the matter from
a more historical point of view, and place such statements in the
context of the hypocritical moralism of the past; for example, of
Woodrow Wilson, who was going to teach the Latin Americans the art
of good government, and who wrote (1902) that it is "our peculiar
duty" to teach colonial peoples "order and self-control…[and]…the
drill and habit of law and obedience…." Or of the missionaries of
the 1840s, who described the hideous and degrading opium wars as
"the result of a great design of Providence to make the wickedness
of men subserve his purposes of mercy toward China, in breaking
through her wall of exclusion, and bringing the empire into more
immediate contact with western and Christian nations." Or, to approach
the present, of A.A. Berle, who, in commenting on the Dominican
intervention, has the impertinence to attribute the problems of
the Caribbean countries to imperialism—Russian imperialism.[12]
AS A FINAL EXAMPLE of this failure of skepticism, consider the
remarks of Henry Kissinger in his concluding remarks at the Harvard-Oxford
television debate on America's Vietnam policies. He observed, rather
sadly, that what disturbs him most is that others question not our
judgment, but our motives—a remarkable comment by a man whose professional
concern is political analysis, that is, analysis of the actions
of governments in terms of motives that are unexpressed in official
propaganda and perhaps only dimly perceived by those whose acts
they govern. No one would be disturbed by an analysis of the political
behavior of the Russians, French, or Tanzanians questioning their
motives and interpreting their actions by the long-range interests
concealed behind their official rhetoric. But it is an article of
faith that American motives are pure, and not subject to analysis
(see note 1). Although it is nothing new in American
intellectual history—or, for that matter, in the general history
of imperialist apologia—this innocence becomes increasingly distasteful
as the power it serves grows more dominant in world affairs, and
more capable, therefore, of the unconstrained viciousness that the
mass media present to us each day. We are hardly the first power
in history to combine material interests, great technological capacity,
and an utter disregard for the suffering and misery of the lower
orders. The long tradition of naivetÉ and self-righteousness that
disfigures our intellectual history, however, must serve as a warning
to the third world, if such a warning is needed, as to how our protestations
of sincerity and benign intent are to be interpreted.
The basic assumptions of the "New Frontiersmen" should be pondered
carefully by those who look forward to the involvement of academic
intellectuals in politics. For example, I have referred above to
Arthur Schlesinger's objections to the Bay of Pigs invasion, but
the reference was imprecise. True, he felt that it was a "terrible
idea," but "not because the notion of sponsoring an exile attempt
to overthrow Castro seemed intolerable in itself." Such a reaction
would be the merest sentimentality, unthinkable to a tough-minded
realist. The difficulty, rather, was that it seemed unlikely that
the deception could succeed. The operation, in his view, was ill-conceived
but not otherwise objectionable.[13]
In a similar vein, Schlesinger quotes with approval Kennedy's "realistic"
assessment of the situation resulting from Trujillo's assassination:
There are three possibilities in descending order of preference:
a decent democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime
or a Castro regime. We ought to aim at the first, but we really
can't renounce the second until we are sure that we can avoid
the third [p. 769].
The reason why the third possibility is so intolerable is explained
a few pages later (p. 774): "Communist success in Latin America
would deal a much harder blow to the power and influence of the
United States." Of course, we can never really be sure of avoiding
the third possibility; therefore, in practice, we will always settle
for the second, as we are now doing in Brazil and Argentina, for
example.[14]
Or consider Walt Rostow's views on American policy in Asia.[15]
The basis on which we must build this policy is that "we are openly
threatened and we feel menaced by Communist China." To prove that
we are menaced is of course unnecessary, and the matter receives
no attention; it is enough that we feel menaced. Our policy
must be based on our national heritage and our national interests.
Our national heritage is briefly outlined in the following terms:
"Throughout the nineteenth century, in good conscience Americans
could devote themselves to the extension of both their principles
and their power on this continent," making use of "the somewhat
elastic concept of the Monroe doctrine" and, of course, extending
"the American interest to Alaska and the mid-Pacific islands…. Both
our insistence on unconditional surrender and the idea of post-war
occupation…represented the formulation of American security interests
in Europe and Asia." So much for our heritage. As to our interests,
the matter is equally simple. Fundamental is our "profound interest
that societies abroad develop and strengthen those elements in their
respective cultures that elevate and protect the dignity of the
individual against the state." At the same time, we must counter
the "ideological threat," namely "the possibility that the Chinese
Communists can prove to Asians by progress in China that Communist
methods are better and faster than democratic methods." Nothing
is said about those people in Asian cultures to whom our "conception
of the proper relation of the individual to the state" may not be
the uniquely important value, people who might, for example, be
concerned with preserving the "dignity of the individual" against
concentrations of foreign or domestic capital, or against semi-feudal
structures (such as Trujillo-type dictatorships) introduced or kept
in power by American arms. All of this is flavored with allusions
to "our religious and ethical value systems" and to our "diffuse
and complex concepts" which are to the Asian mind "so much more
difficult to grasp" than Marxist dogma, and are so "disturbing to
some Asians" because of "their very lack of dogmatism."
Such intellectual contributions as these suggest the need for a
correction to De Gaulle's remark, in his Memoirs, about the
American "will to power, cloaking itself in idealism." By now, this
will to power is not so much cloaked in idealism as it is drowned
in fatuity. And academic intellectuals have made their unique contribution
to this sorry picture.
LET US, HOWEVER, RETURN to the war in Vietnam and the response
that it has aroused among American intellectuals. A striking feature
of the recent debate on Southeast Asian policy has been the distinction
that is commonly drawn between "responsible criticism," on the one
hand, and "sentimental," or "emotional," or "hysterical" criticism,
on the other. There is much to be learned from a careful study of
the terms in which this distinction is drawn. The "hysterical critics"
are to be identified, apparently, by their irrational refusal to
accept one fundamental political axiom, namely that the United States
has the right to extend its power and control without limit, insofar
as is feasible. Responsible criticism does not challenge this assumption,
but argues, rather, that we probably can't "get away with it" at
this particular time and place.
A distinction of this sort seems to be what Irving Kristol, for
example, has in mind in his analysis of the protest over Vietnam
policy (Encounter, August, 1965). He contrasts the responsible
critics, such as Walter Lippmann, the Times, and Senator
Fulbright, with the "teach-in movement." "Unlike the university
protesters," he points out, "Mr. Lippmann engages in no presumptuous
suppositions as to 'what the Vietnamese people really want'—he obviously
doesn't much care—or in legalistic exegesis as to whether, or to
what extent, there is 'aggression' or 'revolution' in South Vietnam.
His is a realpolitik point of view; and he will apparently
even contemplate the possibility of a nuclear war against
China in extreme circumstances." This is commendable, and contrasts
favorably, for Kristol, with the talk of the "unreasonable, ideological
types" in the teach-in movement, who often seem to be motivated
by such absurdities as "simple, virtuous 'anti-imperialism,' "who
deliver "harangues on 'the power structure,' " and who even sometimes
stoop so low as to read "articles and reports from the foreign press
on the American presence in Vietnam." Furthermore, these nasty types
are often psychologists, mathematicians, chemists, or philosophers
(just as, incidentally, those most vocal in protest in the Soviet
Union are generally physicists, literary intellectuals, and others
remote from the exercise of power), rather than people with Washington
contacts, who, of course, realize that "had they a new, good idea
about Vietnam, they would get a prompt and respectful hearing" in
Washington.
I am not interested here in whether Kristol's characterization
of protest and dissent is accurate, but rather in the assumptions
on which it rests. Is the purity of American motives a matter that
is beyond discussion, or that is irrelevant to discussion? Should
decisions be left to "experts" with Washington contacts—even if
we assume that they command the necessary knowledge and principles
to make the "best" decision, will they invariably do so? And, a
logically prior question, is "expertise" applicable—that is, is
there a body of theory and of relevant information, not in the public
domain, that can be applied to the analysis of foreign policy or
that demonstrates the correctness of present actions in some way
that psychologists, mathematicians, chemists, and philosophers are
incapable of comprehending? Although Kristol does not examine these
questions directly, his attitude presupposes answers, answers which
are wrong in all cases. American aggressiveness, however it may
be masked in pious rhetoric, is a dominant force in world affairs
and must be analyzed in terms of its causes and motives. There is
no body of theory or significant body of relevant information, beyond
the comprehension of the layman, which makes policy immune from
criticism. To the extent that "expert knowledge" is applied to world
affairs, it is surely appropriate—for a person of any integrity,
quite necessary—to question its quality and the goals it serves.
These facts seem too obvious to require extended discussion.
A CORRECTIVE to Kristol's curious belief in the Administration's
openness to new thinking about Vietnam is provided by McGeorge Bundy
in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs (January, 1967). As
Bundy correctly observes, "on the main stage…the argument on Viet
Nam turns on tactics, not fundamentals," although, he adds, "there
are wild men in the wings." On stage center are, of course, the
President (who in his recent trip to Asia had just "magisterially
reaffirmed" our interest "in the progress of the people across the
Pacific") and his advisers, who deserve "the understanding support
of those who want restraint." It is these men who deserve the credit
for the fact that "the bombing of the North has been the most accurate
and the most restrained in modern warfare"—a solicitude which will
be appreciated by the inhabitants, or former inhabitants of Nam
Dinh and Phu Ly and Vinh. It is these men, too, who deserve the
credit for what was reported by Malcolm Browne as long ago as May,
1965:
In the South, huge sectors of the nation have been declared "free
bombing zones," in which anything that moves is a legitimate target.
Tens of thousands of tons of bombs, rockets, napalm and cannon
fire are poured into these vast areas each week. If only by the
laws of chance, bloodshed is believed to be heavy in these raids.
Fortunately for the developing countries, Bundy assures us, "American
democracy has no taste for imperialism," and "taken as a whole,
the stock of American experience, understanding, sympathy and simple
knowledge is now much the most impressive in the world." It is true
that "four-fifths of all the foreign investing in the world is now
done by Americans" and that "the most admired plans and policies…are
no better than their demonstrable relation to the American interest"—just
as it is true, so we read in the same issue of Foreign Affairs,
that the plans for armed action against Cuba were put into motion
a few weeks after Mikoyan visited Havana, "invading what had so
long been an almost exclusively American sphere of influence." Unfortunately,
such facts as these are often taken by unsophisticated Asian intellectuals
as indicating a "taste for imperialism." For example, a number of
Indians have expressed their "near exasperation" at the fact that
"we have done everything we can to attract foreign capital for fertilizer
plants, but the American and the other Western private companies
know we are over a barrel, so they demand stringent terms which
we just cannot meet" (Christian Science Monitor, November
26), while "Washington…doggedly insists that deals be made in the
private sector with private enterprise" (ibid., December
5).[16] But this reaction, no doubt,
simply reveals, once again, how the Asian mind fails to comprehend
the "diffuse and complex concepts" of Western thought.
IT MAY BE USEFUL to study carefully the "new, good ideas about
Vietnam" that are receiving a "prompt and respectful hearing" in
Washington these days. The US Government Printing Office is an endless
source of insight into the moral and intellectual level of this
expert advice. In its publications one can read, for example, the
testimony of Professor David N. Rowe, Director of Graduate Studies
in International Relations at Yale University, before the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs (see note 11). Professor
Rowe proposes (p. 266) that the United States buy all surplus Canadian
and Australian wheat, so that there will be mass starvation in China.
These are his words:
Mind you, I am not talking about this as a weapon against the
Chinese people. It will be. But that is only incidental. The weapon
will be a weapon against the Government because the internal stability
of that country cannot be sustained by an unfriendly Government
in the face of general starvation.
Professor Rowe will have none of the sentimental moralism that
might lead one to compare this suggestion with, say, the Ostpolitik
of Hitler's Germany.[17] Nor does
he fear the impact of such policies on other Asian nations, for
example, Japan. He assures us, from his "very long acquaintance
with Japanese questions," that "the Japanese above all are people
who respect power and determination." Hence "they will not be so
much alarmed by American policy in Vietnam that takes off from a
position of power and intends to seek a solution based upon the
imposition of our power upon local people that we are in opposition
to." What would disturb the Japanese is "a policy of indecision,
a policy of refusal to face up to the problems [in China and Vietnam]
and to meet our responsibilities there in a positive way," such
as the way just cited. A conviction that we were "unwilling to use
the power that they know we have" might "alarm the Japanese people
very intensely and shake the degree of their friendly relations
with us." In fact, a full use of American power would be particularly
reassuring to the Japanese, because they have had a demonstration
"of the tremendous power in action of the United States…because
they have felt our power directly." This is surely a prime example
of the healthy, "realpolitik point of view" that Irving Kristol
so much admires.
But, one may ask, why restrict ourselves to such indirect means
as mass starvation? Why not bombing? No doubt this message is implicit
in the remarks to the same committee of the Reverend R.J. de Jaegher,
Regent of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Seton Hall University,
who explains that like all people who have lived under Communism,
the North Vietnamese "would be perfectly happy to be bombed to be
free" (p. 345).
Of course, there must be those who support the Communists. But
this is really a matter of small concern, as the Hon Walter Robertson,
Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs from 1953-59,
points out in his testimony before the same committee. He assures
us that "The Peiping regime…represents something less than 3 per
cent of the population" (p. 402).
Consider, then, how fortunate the Chinese Communist leaders are,
compared to the leaders of the Vietcong, who, according to Arthur
Goldberg (New York Times, February 6, 1966), represent about
"one-half of one percent of the population of South Vietnam," that
is, about one-half the number of new Southern recruits for the Vietcong
during 1965, if we can credit Pentagon statistics.[18]
In the face of such experts as these, the scientists and philosophers
of whom Kristol speaks would clearly do well to continue to draw
their circles in the sand.
HAVING SETTLED THE ISSUE of the political irrelevance of the protest
movement, Kristol turns to the question of what motivates it—more
generally, what has made students and junior faculty "go left,"
as he sees it, amid general prosperity and under liberal, Welfare
State administrations. This, he notes, "is a riddle to which no
sociologist has as yet come up with an answer." Since these young
people are well-off, have good futures, etc., their protest must
be irrational. It must be the result of boredom, of too much security,
or something of this sort.
Other possibilities come to mind. It may be, for example, that
as honest men the students and junior faculty are attempting to
find out the truth for themselves rather than ceding the responsibility
to "experts" or to government; and it may be that they react with
indignation to what they discover. These possibilities Kristol does
not reject. They are simply unthinkable, unworthy of consideration.
More accurately, these possibilities are inexpressible; the categories
in which they are formulated (honesty, indignation) simply do not
exist for the tough-minded social scientist.
IN THIS IMPLICIT DISPARAGEMENT of traditional intellectual values,
Kristol reflects attitudes that are fairly widespread in academic
circles. I do not doubt that these attitudes are in part a consequence
of the desperate attempt of the social and behavioral sciences to
imitate the surface features of sciences that really have significant
intellectual content. But they have other sources as well. Anyone
can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems;
but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical
problems by "sophisticated" methods. Ergo, it is only problems of
the latter sort that are important or real. Responsible, non-ideological
experts will give advice on tactical questions; irresponsible, "ideological
types" will "harangue" about principle and trouble themselves over
moral issues and human rights, or over the traditional problems
of man and society, concerning which "social and behavioral science"
has nothing to offer beyond trivalities. Obviously, these emotional,
ideological types are irrational, since, being well-off and having
power in their grasp, they shouldn't worry about such matters.
At times this pseudo-scientific posing reaches levels that are
almost pathological. Consider the phenomenon of Herman Kahn, for
example. Kahn has been both denounced as immoral and lauded for
his courage. By people who should know better, his On Thermonuclear
War has been described "without qualification…[as]…one of the
great works of our time" (Stuart Hughes). The fact of the matter
is that this is surely one of the emptiest works of our time, as
can be seen by applying to it the intellectual standards of any
existing discipline, by tracing some of its "well-documented conclusions"
to the "objective studies" from which they derive, and by following
the line of argument, where detectable. Kahn proposes no theories,
no explanations, no factual assumptions that can be tested against
their consequences, as do the sciences he is attempting to mimic.
He simply suggests a terminology and provides a facade of rationality.
When particular policy conclusions are drawn, they are supported
only by ex cathedra remarks for which no support is even
suggested (e.g., "The civil defense line probably should be drawn
somewhere below $5 billion annually" to keep from provoking the
Russians—why not $50 billion, or $5.00?). What is more, Kahn is
quite aware of this vacuity; in his more judicious moments he claims
only that "there is no reason to believe that relatively sophisticated
models are more likely to be misleading than the simpler models
and analogies frequently used as an aid to judgment." For those
whose humor tends towards the macabre, it is easy to play the game
of "strategic thinking" à la Kahn, and to prove what one
wishes. For example, one of Kahn's basic assumptions is that
an all-out surprise attack in which all resources are devoted
to counter-value targets would be so irrational that, barring
an incredible lack of sophistication or actual insanity among
Soviet decision makers, such an attack is highly unlikely.
A simple argument proves the opposite. Premise 1: American
decision-makers think along the lines outlined by Herman Kahn.
Premise 2: Kahn thinks it would be better for everyone to be
red than for everyone to be dead. Premise 3: if the Americans
were to respond to an all-out countervalue attack, then everyone
would be dead. Conclusion: the Americans will not respond
to an all-out countervalue attack, and therefore it should be launched
without delay. Of course, one can carry the argument a step further.
Fact: the Russians have not carried out an all-out countervalue
attack. It follows that they are not rational. If they are not rational,
there is no point in "strategic thinking." Therefore,….
Of course this is all nonsense, but nonsense that differs from
Kahn's only in the respect that the argument is of slightly greater
complexity than anything to be discovered in his work. What is remarkable
is that serious people actually pay attention to these absurdities,
no doubt because of the facade of tough-mindedness and pseudo-science.
IT IS A CURIOUS and depressing fact that the "anti-war movement"
falls prey all too often to similar confusions. In the fall of 1965,
for example, there was an International Conference on Alternative
Perspectives on Vietnam, which circulated a pamphlet to potential
participants stating its assumptions. The plan was to set up study
groups in which three "types of intellectual tradition" will be
represented: (1) area specialists; (2) "social theory, with special
emphasis on theories of the international system, of social change
and development, of conflict and conflict resolution, or of revolution";
(3) "the analysis of public policy in terms of basic human values,
rooted in various theological, philosophical and humanist traditions."
The second intellectual tradition will provide "general propositions,
derived from social theory and tested against historical, comparative,
or experimental data"; the third "will provide the framework out
of which fundamental value questions can be raised and in terms
of which the moral implications of societal actions can be analyzed."
The hope was that "by approaching the questions [of Vietnam policy]
from the moral perspectives of all great religions and philosophical
systems, we may find solutions that are more consistent with fundamental
human values than current American policy in Vietnam has turned
out to be."
In short, the experts on values (i.e., spokesmen for the great
religions and philosophical systems) will provide fundamental insights
on moral perspectives, and the experts on social theory will provide
general empirically validated propositions and "general models of
conflict." From this interplay, new policies will emerge, presumably
from application of the canons of scientific method. The only debatable
issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn
to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions,
or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems
for insights into fundamental human values.
There is much more that can be said about this topic, but, without
continuing, I would simply like to emphasize that, as is no doubt
obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those
who propound it, and fraudulent. Obviously, one must learn from
social and behavioral science whatever one can; obviously, these
fields should be pursued as seriously as possible. But it will be
quite unfortunate, and highly dangerous, if they are not accepted
and judged on their merits and according to their actual, not pretended,
accomplishments. In particular, if there is a body of theory, well-tested
and verified, that applies to the conduct of foreign affairs or
the resolution of domestic or international conflict, its existence
has been kept a well-guarded secret. In the case of Vietnam, if
those who feel themselves to be experts have access to principles
or information that would justify what the American government is
doing in that unfortunate country, they have been singularly ineffective
in making this fact known. To anyone who has any familiarity with
the social and behavioral sciences (or the "policy sciences"), the
claim that there are certain considerations and principles too deep
for the outsider to comprehend is simply an absurdity, unworthy
of comment.
WHEN WE CONSIDER the responsibility of intellectuals, our basic
concern must be their role in the creation and analysis of ideology.
And, in fact, Kristol's contrast between the unreasonable ideological
types and the responsible experts is formulated in terms that immediately
bring to mind Daniel Bell's interesting and influential "The End
of Ideology," an essay which is as important for what it leaves
unsaid as for its actual content.[19]
Bell presents and discusses the Marxist analysis of ideology as
a mask for class interest, quoting Marx's well-known description
of the belief of the bourgeoisie "that the special conditions
of its emancipation are the general conditions through which
alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided."
He then argues that the age of ideology is ended, supplanted, at
least in the West, by a general agreement that each issue must be
settled in its own terms, within the framework of a Welfare State
in which, presumably, experts in the conduct of public affairs will
have a prominent role. Bell is quite careful, however, to characterize
the precise sense of "ideology" in which "ideologies are exhausted."
He is referring to ideology only as "the conversion of ideas into
social levers," to ideology as "a set of beliefs, infused with passion,…[which]
…seeks to transform the whole of a way of life." The crucial words
are "transform" and "convert into social levers." Intellectuals
in the West, he argues, have lost interest in converting ideas into
social levers for the radical transformation of society. Now that
we have achieved the pluralistic society of the Welfare State, they
see no further need for a radical transformation of society; we
may tinker with our way of life here and there, but it would be
wrong to try to modify it in any significant way. With this consensus
of intellectuals, ideology is dead.
There are several striking facts about Bell's essay. First, he
does not point out the extent to which this consensus of the intellectuals
is self-serving. He does not relate his observation that, by and
large, intellectuals have lost interest in "transforming the whole
of a way of life" to the fact that they play an increasingly prominent
role in running the Welfare State; he does not relate their general
satisfaction with the Welfare State to the fact that, as he observes
elsewhere, "America has become an affluent society, offering place…and
prestige…to the onetime radicals." Secondly, he offers no serious
argument to show that intellectuals are somehow "right" or "objectively
justified" in reaching the consensus to which he alludes, with its
rejection of the notion that society should be transformed. Indeed,
although Bell is fairly sharp about the empty rhetoric of the "new
left," he seems to have a quite utopian faith that technical experts
will be able to cope with the few problems that still remain; for
example, the fact that labor is treated as a commodity, and the
problems of "alienation."
It seems fairly obvious that the classical problems are very much
with us; one might plausibly argue that they have even been enhanced
in severity and scale. For example, the classical paradox of poverty
in the midst of plenty is now an ever-increasing problem on an international
scale. Whereas one might conceive, at least in principle, of a solution
within national boundaries, a sensible idea of transforming international
society to cope with vast and perhaps increasing human misery is
hardly likely to develop within the framework of the intellectual
consensus that Bell describes.
THUS IT WOULD SEEM NATURAL to describe the consensus of Bell's
intellectuals in somewhat different terms from his. Using the terminology
of the first part of his essay, we might say that the Welfare State
technician finds justification for his special and prominent social
status in his "science," specifically, in the claim that social
science can support a technology of social tinkering on a domestic
or international scale. He then takes a further step, ascribing
in a familiar way a universal validity to what is in fact a class
interest: he argues that the special conditions on which his claim
to power and authority are based are, in fact, the only general
conditions by which modern society can be saved; that social tinkering
within a Welfare State framework must replace the commitment to
the "total ideologies" of the past, ideologies which were concerned
with a transformation of society. Having found his position of power,
having achieved security and affluence, he has no further need for
ideologies that look to radical change. The scholar-expert replaces
the "free-floating intellectual" who "felt that the wrong values
were being honored, and rejected the society," and who has now lost
his political role (now, that is, that the right values are being
honored).
Conceivably, it is correct that the technical experts who will
(or hope to) manage the "industrial society" will be able to cope
with the classical problems without a radical transformation of
society. It is conceivably true that the bourgeoisie was right in
regarding the special conditions of its emancipation as the only
general conditions by which modern society would be saved. In either
case, an argument is in order, and skepticism is justified when
none appears.
Within the same framework of general utopianism, Bell goes on to
pose the issue between Welfare State scholar-experts and third-world
ideologists in a rather curious way. He points out, quite correctly,
that there is no issue of Communism, the content of that doctrine
having been "long forgotten by friends and foes alike." Rather,
he says,
the question is an older one: whether new societies can grow
by building democratic institutions and allowing people to make
choices—and sacrifices—voluntarily, or whether the new elites,
heady with power, will impose totalitarian means to transform
their societies.
THE QUESTION is an interesting one. It is odd, however, to see
it referred to as "an older one." Surely he cannot be suggesting
that the West chose the democratic way—for example, that in England
during the industrial revolution, the farmers voluntarily made the
choice of leaving the land, giving up cottage industry, becoming
an industrial proletariat, and voluntarily decided, within the framework
of the existing democratic institutions, to make the sacrifices
that are graphically described in the classic literature on nineteenth-century
industrial society. One may debate the question whether authoritarian
control is necessary to permit capital accumulation in the underdeveloped
world, but the Western model of development is hardly one that we
can point to with any pride. It is perhaps not surprising to find
Walt Rostow referring to "the more humane processes [of industrialization]
that Western values would suggest" (An American Policy in Asia).
Those who have a serious concern for the problems that face backward
countries, and for the role that advanced industrial societies might,
in principle, play in development and modernization, must use somewhat
more care in interpreting the significance of the Western experience.
Returning to the quite appropriate question, whether "new societies
can grow by building democratic institutions" or only by totalitarian
means, I think that honesty requires us to recognize that this question
must be directed more to American intellectuals than to third-world
ideologists. The backward countries have incredible, perhaps insurmountable
problems, and few available options; the United States has a wide
range of options, and has the economic and technological resources,
though, evidently, neither the intellectual nor moral resources,
to confront at least some of these problems. It is easy for an American
intellectual to deliver homilies on the virtues of freedom and liberty,
but if he is really concerned about, say, Chinese totalitarianism
or the burdens imposed on the Chinese peasantry in forced industrialization,
then he should face a task that is infinitely more important and
challenging—the task of creating, in the United States, the intellectual
and moral climate, as well as the social and economic conditions,
that would permit this country to participate in modernization and
development in a way commensurate with its material wealth and technical
capacity. Large capital gifts to Cuba and China might not succeed
in alleviating the authoritarianism and terror that tend to accompany
early stages of capital accumulation, but they are far more likely
to have this effect than lectures on democratic values. It is possible
that even without "capitalist encirclement" in its various manifestations,
the truly democratic elements in revolutionary movements—in some
instances, soviets and collectives—might be undermined by an "elite"
of bureaucrats and technical intelligentsia. But it is almost certain
that capitalist encirclement itself, which all revolutionary movements
now have to face, will guarantee this result. The lesson, for those
who are concerned to strengthen the democratic, spontaneous, and
popular elements in developing societies, is quite clear. Lectures
on the two-party system, or even on the really substantial democratic
values that have been in part realized in Western society, are a
monstrous irrelevance, given the effort required to raise the level
of culture in Western society to the point where it can provide
a "social lever" for both economic development and the development
of true democratic institutions in the third world—and, for that
matter, at home.
A GOOD CASE CAN BE MADE for the conclusion that there is indeed
something of a consensus among intellectuals who have already achieved
power and affluence, or who sense that they can achieve them by
"accepting society" as it is and promoting the values that are "being
honored" in this society. It is also true that this consensus is
most noticeable among the scholar-experts who are replacing the
free-floating intellectuals of the past. In the university, these
scholar-experts construct a "value-free technology" for the solution
of technical problems that arise in contemporary society,[20]
taking a "responsible stance" towards these problems, in the sense
noted earlier. This consensus among the responsible scholar-experts
is the domestic analogue to that proposed, internationally, by those
who justify the application of American power in Asia, whatever
the human cost, on the grounds that it is necessary to contain the
"expansion of China" (an "expansion" which is, to be sure, hypothetical
for the time being)[21] —that is,
to translate from State Department Newspeak, on the grounds that
it is essential to reverse the Asian nationalist revolutions or,
at least, to prevent them from spreading. The analogy becomes clear
when we look carefully at the ways in which this proposal is formulated.
With his usual lucidity, Churchill outlined the general position
in a remark to his colleague of the moment, Joseph Stalin, at Teheran
in 1943:
The government of the world must be entrusted to satisfied nations,
who wished nothing more for themselves than what they had. If
the world-government were in the hands of hungry nations there
would always be danger. But none of us had any reason to seek
for anything more…. Our power placed us above the rest. We were
like the rich men dwelling at peace within their habitations.
For a translation of Churchill's biblical rhetoric into the jargon
of contemporary social science, one may turn to the testimony of
Charles Wolf, Senior Economist of the Rand Corporation, at the Congressional
Committee Hearings cited earlier:
I am dubious that China's fears of encirclement are going to
be abated, eased, relaxed in the long-term future. But I would
hope that what we do in Southeast Asia would help to develop within
the Chinese body politic more of a realism and willingness to
live with this fear than to indulge it by support for liberation
movements, which admittedly depend on a great deal more than external
support…the operational question for American foreign policy is
not whether that fear can be eliminated or substantially alleviated,
but whether China can be faced with a structure of incentives,
of penalties and rewards, of inducements that will make it willing
to live with this fear.
The point is further clarified by Thomas Schelling: "There is growing
experience, which the Chinese can profit from, that although the
United States may be interested in encircling them, may be interested
in defending nearby areas from them, it is, nevertheless, prepared
to behave peaceably if they are."
In short, we are prepared to live peaceably in our—to be sure,
rather extensive—habitations. And, quite naturally, we are offended
by the undignified noises from the servants' quarters. If, let us
say, a peasant-based revolutionary movement tries to achieve independence
from foreign powers and the domestic structures they support, or
if the Chinese irrationally refuse to respond properly to the schedule
of reinforcement that we have prepared for them—if they object to
being encircled by the benign and peace-loving "rich men" who control
the territories on their borders as a natural right—then, evidently,
we must respond to this belligerence with appropriate force.
IT IS THIS MENTALITY that explains the frankness with which the
United States Government and its academic apologists defend the
American refusal to permit a political settlement in Vietnam at
a local level, a settlement based on the actual distribution of
political forces. Even government experts freely admit that the
NLF is the only "truly mass-based political party in South Vietnam"[22]
; that the NLF had "made a conscious and massive effort to extend
political participation, even if it was manipulated, on the local
level so as to involve the people in a self-contained, self-supporting
revolution" (p. 374); and that this effort had been so successful
that no political groups, "with the possible exception of the Buddhists,
thought themselves equal in size and power to risk entering into
a coalition, fearing that if they did the whale would swallow the
minnow" (p. 362). Moreover, they concede that until the introduction
of overwhelming American force, the NLF had insisted that the struggle
"should be fought out at the political level and that the use of
massed military might was in itself illegitimate…. The battleground
was to be the minds and loyalties of the rural Vietnamese, the weapons
were to be ideas" (pp. 91-92; cf. also pp. 93, 99-108, 155f.); and,
correspondingly, that until mid-1964, aid from Hanoi "was largely
confined to two areas—doctrinal know-how and leadership personnel"
(p. 321). Captured NLF documents contrast the enemy's "military
superiority" with their own "political superiority" (p. 106), thus
fully confirming the analysis of American military spokesmen who
define our problem as how, "with considerable armed force but little
political power, [to] contain an adversary who has enormous political
force but only modest military power."[23]
Similarly, the most striking outcome of both the Honolulu conference
in February and the Manila conference in October was the frank admission
by high officials of the Saigon government that "they could not
survive a 'peaceful settlement' that left the Vietcong political
structure in place even if the Vietcong guerilla units were disbanded,"
that "they are not able to compete politically with the Vietnamese
Communists" (Charles Mohr, New York Times, February 11, 1966,
italics mine). Thus, Mohr continues, the Vietnamese demand a "pacification
program" which will have as "its core…the destruction of the clandestine
Vietcong political structure and the creation of an iron-like system
of government political control over the population." And from Manila,
the same correspondent, on October 23, quotes a high South Vietnamese
official as saying that:
Frankly, we are not strong enough now to compete with the Communists
on a purely political basis. They are organized and disciplined.
The non-Communist nationalists are not—we do not have any large,
well-organized political parties and we do not yet have unity.
We cannot leave the Vietcong in existence.
Officials in Washington understand the situation very well. Thus
Secretary Rusk has pointed out that "if the Vietcong come to the
conference table as full partners they will, in a sense, have been
victorious in the very aims that South Vietnam and the United States
are pledged to prevent" (January 28, 1966). Max Frankel reported
from Washington in the Times on February 18, 1966, that
Compromise has had no appeal here because the Administration
concluded long ago that the non-Communist forces of South Vietnam
could not long survive in a Saigon coalition with Communists.
It is for that reason—and not because of an excessively rigid
sense of protocol—that Washington has steadfastly refused to deal
with the Vietcong or recognize them as an independent political
force.
In short, we will—magnanimously—permit Vietcong representatives
to attend negotiations only if they will agree to identify themselves
as agents of a foreign power and thus forfeit the right to participate
in a coalition government, a right which they have now been demanding
for a half-dozen years. We well know that in any representative
coalition, our chosen delegates could not last a day without the
support of American arms. Therefore, we must increase American force
and resist meaningful negotiations, until the day when a client
government can exert both military and political control over its
own population—a day which may never dawn, for as William Bundy
has pointed out, we could never be sure of the security of a Southeast
Asia "from which the Western presence was effectively withdrawn."
Thus if we were to "negotiate in the direction of solutions that
are put under the label of neutralization," this would amount to
capitulation to the Communists.[24]
According to this reasoning, then, South Vietnam must remain, permanently,
an American military base.
All of this is, of course, reasonable, so long as we accept the
fundamental political axiom that the United States, with its traditional
concern for the rights of the weak and downtrodden, and with its
unique insight into the proper mode of development for backward
countries, must have the courage and the persistence to impose its
will by force until such time as other nations are prepared to accept
these truths—or simply, to abandon hope.
IF IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of the intellectual to insist upon
the truth, it is also his duty to see events in their historical
perspective. Thus one must applaud the insistence of the Secretary
of State on the importance of historical analogies, the Munich analogy,
for example. As Munich showed, a powerful and aggressive nation
with a fanatic belief in its manifest destiny will regard each victory,
each extension of its power and authority, as a prelude to the next
step. The matter was very well put by Adlai Stevenson, when he spoke
of "the old, old route whereby expansive powers push at more and
more doors, believing they will open until, at the ultimate door,
resistance is unavoidable and major war breaks out." Herein lies
the danger of appeasement, as the Chinese tirelessly point out to
the Soviet Union—which, they claim, is playing Chamberlain to our
Hitler in Vietnam. Of course, the aggressiveness of liberal imperialism
is not that of Nazi Germany, though the distinction may seem academic
to a Vietnamese peasant who is being gassed or incinerated. We do
not want to occupy Asia; we merely wish, to return to Mr. Wolf,
"to help the Asian countries progress toward economic modernization,
as relatively 'open' and stable societies, to which our access,
as a country and as individual citizens, is free and comfortable."
The formulation is appropriate. Recent history shows that it makes
little difference to us what form of government a country has so
long as it remains an "open society," in our peculiar sense of this
term—that is, a society that remains open to American economic penetration
or political control. If it is necessary to approach genocide in
Vietnam to achieve this objective, than this is the price we must
pay in defense of freedom and the rights of man.
In pursuing the aim of helping other countries to progress toward
open societies, with no thought of territorial aggrandizement, we
are breaking no new ground. In the Congressional Hearings that I
cited earlier, Hans Morgenthau aptly describes our traditional policy
towards China as one which favors "what you might call freedom of
competition with regard to the exploitation of China" (op. cit.,
p. 128). In fact, few imperialist powers have had explicit territorial
ambitions. Thus in 1784, the British Parliament announced: "To pursue
schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are measures
repugnant to the wish, honor, and policy of this nation." Shortly
after this, the conquest of India was in full swing. A century later,
Britain announced its intentions in Egypt under the slogan "intervention,
reform, withdrawal." It is obvious which parts of this promise were
fulfilled within the next half-century. In 1936, on the eve of hostilities
in North China, the Japanese stated their Basic Principles of National
Policy. These included the use of moderate and peaceful means to
extend her strength, to promote social and economic development,
to eradicate the menace of Communism, to correct the aggressive
policies of the great powers, and to secure her position as the
stabilizing power in East Asia. Even in 1937, the Japanese government
had "no territorial designs upon China." In short, we follow a well-trodden
path.
It is useful to remember, incidentally, that the US was apparently
quite willing, as late as 1939, to negotiate a commercial treaty
with Japan and arrive at a modus vivendi if Japan would "change
her attitude and practice towards our rights and interests in China,"
as Secretary Hull put it. The bombing of Chungking and the rape
of Nanking were unpleasant, it is true, but what was really important
was our rights and interests in China, as the responsible, unhysterical
men of the day saw quite clearly. It was the closing of the open
door by Japan that led inevitably to the Pacific war, just as it
is the closing of the open door by "Communist" China itself that
may very well lead to the next, and no doubt last, Pacific war.
QUITE OFTEN, THE STATEMENTS of sincere and devoted technical experts
give surprising insight into the intellectual attitudes that lie
in the background of the latest savagery. Consider, for example,
the following comment by the economist Richard Lindholm, in 1959,
expressing his frustration over the failure of economic development
in "free Vietnam":
…the use of American aid is determined by how the Vietnamese
use their incomes and their savings. The fact that a large portion
of the Vietnamese imports financed with American aid are either
consumer goods or raw materials used rather directly to meet consumer
demands is an indication that the Vietnamese people desire these
goods. for they have shown their desire by their willingness to
use their piasters to purchase them.[25]
In short, the Vietnamese people desire Buicks and air-conditioners,
rather than sugar refining equipment or road-building machinery,
as they have shown by their behavior in a free market. And however
much we may deplore their free choice, we must allow the people
to have their way. Of course, there are also those two-legged beasts
of burden that one stumbles on in the countryside, but as any graduate
student of political science can explain, they are not part of a
responsible modernizing elite, and therefore have only a superficial
biological resemblance to the human race.
In no small measure, it is attitudes like this that lie behind
the butchery in Vietnam, and we had better face up to them with
candor, or we will find our government leading us towards a "final
solution" in Vietnam, and in the many Vietnams that inevitably lie
ahead.
Let me finally return to Dwight Macdonald and the responsibility
of intellectuals. Macdonald quotes an interview with a death-camp
paymaster who burst into tears when told that the Russians would
hang him. "Why should they? What have I done?" he asked. Macdonald
concludes: "Only those who are willing to resist authority themselves
when it conflicts too intolerably with their personal moral code,
only they have the right to condemn the death-camp paymaster." The
question, "What have I done?" is one that we may well ask ourselves,
as we read each day of fresh atrocities in Vietnam—as we create,
or mouth, or tolerate the deceptions that will be used to justify
the next defense of freedom.
Notes
[1] Such a research project has
now been undertaken and published as a "Citizens' White Paper":
F. Schurmann, P. D. Scott, R. Zelnik, The Politics of Escalation
in Vietnam, Fawcett World Library, and Beacon Press, 1966. For
further evidence of American rejection of UN initiatives for diplomatic
settlement, just prior to the major escalation of February, 1965,
see Mario Rossi, "The US Rebuff to U Thant," NYR, November
17, 1966. There is further documentary evidence of NLF attempts
to establish a coalition government and to neutralize the area,
all rejected by the United States and its Saigon ally, in Douglas
Pike, Viet Cong, M.I.T. Press, 1966. In reading material
of this latter sort one must be especially careful to distinguish
between the evidence presented and the "conclusions" that are asserted,
for reasons noted briefly below (see note 22).
It is interesting to see the first, somewhat oblique, published
reactions to The Politics of Escalation, by those who defend
our right to conquer South Vietnam and institute a government
of our choice. For example, Robert Scalapino (New York Times
Magazine, December 11, 1966) argues that the thesis of the
book implies that our leaders are "diabolical." Since no right-thinking
person can believe this, the thesis is refuted. To assume otherwise
would betray "irresponsibility," in a unique sense of this term—a
sense that gives an ironic twist to the title of this essay. He
goes on to point out the alleged central weakness in the argument
of the book, namely, the failure to perceive that a serious attempt
on our part to pursue the possibilities for a diplomatic settlement
would have been interpreted by our adversaries as a sign of weakness.
[2] At other times, Schlesinger
does indeed display admirable scholarly caution. For example, in
his Introduction to The Politics of Escalation he admits
that there may have been "flickers of interest in negotiations"
on the part of Hanoi. As to the Administration's lies about negotiations
and its repeated actions undercutting tentative initiatives towards
negotiations, he comments only that the authors may have underestimated
military necessity and that future historians may prove them wrong.
This caution and detachment must be compared with Schlesinger's
attitude toward renewed study of the origins of the cold war: in
a letter to the New York Review of Books, October 20, 1966,
he remarks that it is time to "blow the whistle" on revisionist
attempts to show that the cold war may have been the consequence
of something more than mere Communist belligerence. We are to believe,
then, that the relatively straight-forward matter of the origins
of the cold war is settled beyond discussion, whereas the much more
complex issue of why the United States shies away from a negotiated
settlement in Vietnam must be left to future historians to ponder.
It is useful to bear in mind that the United States Government
itself is on occasion much less diffident in explaining why it
refuses to contemplate a meaningful negotiated settlement. As
is freely admitted, this solution would leave it without power
to control the situation. See, for example note 26.
[3] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days; John F. Kennedy in the White House, 1965,
p. 421.
[4] The View from the Seventh
Floor, Harper and Row, 1964, p. 149. See also his United
States in the World Arena, Harper and Row, 1960, p. 244: "Stalin,
exploiting the disruption and weakness of the postwar world, pressed
out from the expanded base he had won during the second World War
in an effort to gain the balance of power in Eurasia…turning to
the East, to back Mao and to enflame the North Korean and Indochinese
Communists…"
[5] For example, the article by
cia analyst George Carver placed in Foreign Affairs, April,
1966. See also note 22.
[6] Cf. Jean Lacouture, Vietnam
between Two Truces, Random House, 1966, p. 21. Diem's analysis
of the situation was shared by Western observers at the time. See,
for example, the comments of William Henderson, Far Eastern specialist
and executive, Council on Foreign Relations, in R. W. Lindholm,
ed., Vietnam: The First Five Years, Michigan State, 1959.
He notes "the growing alienation of the intelligentsia," "the renewal
of armed dissidence in the South," the fact that "security has noticeably
deteriorated in the last two years," all as a result of Diem's "grim
dictatorship," and predicts "a steady worsening of the political
climate in free Vietnam, culminating in unforeseen disasters."
[7] See Bernard Fall, "Vietnam in
the Balance," Foreign Affairs, October, 1966.
[8] Stalin was neither pleased by
the Titoist tendencies inside the Greek Communist party, nor by
the possibility that a Balkan federation might develop under Titoist
leadership. It is, nevertheless, conceivable that Stalin supported
the Greek guerrillas at some stage of the rebellion, in spite of
the difficulty of obtaining firm documentary evidence. Needless
to say, no elaborate study is necessary to document the British
or American role in this civil conflict, from late 1944. See D.
G. Kousoulas, The Price of Freedom, Syracuse, 1953; Revolution
and Defeat, Oxford, 1965, for serious study of these events
from a strongly anti-Communist point of view.
[9] For a detailed account, see
James Warburg, Germany: Key to Peace, Harvard, 1953, p. 189f.
Warburg concludes that apparently "the Kremlin was now prepared
to accept the creation of an All-German democracy in the Western
sense of that word," whereas the Western powers, in their response,
"frankly admitted their plan 'to secure the participation of Germany
in a purely defensive European community' " (i.e., nato).
[10] United States and the World
Arena, pp. 344-45. Incidentally, those who quite rightly deplore
the brutal suppression of the East German and Hungarian revolutions
would do well to remember that these scandalous events might have
been avoided had the United States been willing to consider proposals
for neutralization of Central Europe. Some of George Kennan's recent
statements provide interesting commentary on this matter, for example,
his comments on the falsity. from the outset, of the assumption
that the USSR intended to attack or intimidate by force the Western
half of the continent and that it was deterred by American force,
and his remarks on the sterility and general absurdity of the demand
for unilateral Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Germany together with
"the inclusion of a united Germany as as a major component in a
Western defense system based primarily on nuclear weaponry" (Pacem
in Terris, E. Reed, ed., Pocket Books, 1965).
It is worth noting that historical fantasy of the sort illustrated
in Rostow's remarks has become a regular State Department specially.
Thus we have Thomas Mann justifying our Dominican intervention
as a response to actions of the "Sino-Soviet military bloc." Or,
to take a more considered statement, we have William Bundy's analysis
of stages of development of Communist ideology in his Pomona College
address, February 12, 1966, in which he characterizes the Soviet
Union in the 1920s and early 1930s as "in a highly militant and
aggressive phase." What is frightening about fantasy, as distinct
from outright falsification, is the possibility that it may be
sincere and may actually serve as the basis for formation of policy.
[11] United States Policy Toward
Asia, Hearings before the subcommittee on the Far East and the
Pacific of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives,
US Government Printing Office, 1966.
[12] New York Times Book Review,
November 20, 1966. Such comments call to mind the remarkable spectacle
of President Kennedy counseling Cheddi Jagan on the dangers of entering
into a trading relationship "which brought a country into a condition
of economic dependence." The reference, of course, is to the dangers
in commercial relations with the Soviet Union. See Schlesinger,
A Thousand Days, p. 776.
[13] A Thousand Days, p.
252.
[14] Though this too is imprecise.
One must recall the real character of the Trujillo regime to appreciate
the full cynicism of Kennedy's "realistic" analysis.
[15] W. W. Rostow and R. W. Hatch,
An American Policy in Asia, Technology Press and John Wiley,
1955.
[16] American private enterprise,
of course, has its own ideas as to how India's problems are to be
met. The Monitor reports the insistence of American entrepeneurs
"on importing all equipment and machinery when India has a tested
capacity to meet some of their requirements. They have insisted
on importing liquid ammonia, a basic raw material, rather than using
indigenous naptha which is abundantly available. They have laid
down restrictions about pricing, distribution, profits, and management
control."
A major post-war scandal is developing in India, as the United
States, cynically capitalizing on India's current torture, applies
its economic power to implement what The New York Times
calls India's "drift from socialism towards pragmatism" (April
28, 1965).
[17] Although, to maintain perspective,
we should recall that in his wildest moments, Alfred Rosenberg spoke
of the elimination of thirty million Slavs, not the imposition of
mass starvation on a quarter of the human race. Incidentally, the
analogy drawn here is highly "irresponsible," in the technical sense
of this neologism discussed earlier. That is, it is based on the
assumption that statements and actions of Americans are subject
to the same standards and open to the same interpretations as those
of anyone else.
[18] The New York Times,
February 6, 1966. Goldberg continues, the United States is not certain
that all of these are voluntary adherents. This is not the first
such demonstration of Communist duplicity. Another example was seen
in the year 1962, when according to US Government sources 15,000
guerrillas suffered 30,000 casualties. See Arthur Schlesinger, A
Thousand Days, p. 982.
[19] Reprinted in a collection
of essays, The End of Ideology: on the Exhaustion of Political
Ideas in the Fifties, Free Press, 1960. I have no intention
here of entering into the full range of issues that have been raised
in the discussion of "end of ideology" for the past dozen years.
It is difficult to see how a rational person could quarrel with
many of the theses that have been put forth, e.g., that at a certain
historical moment the "politics of civility" is appropriate and,
perhaps, efficacious; that one who advocates action (or inaction)
has a responsibility to assess its social cost; that dogmatic fanaticism
and "secular religions" should be combated (or if possible, ignored);
that technical solutions to problems should be implemented, where
possible; that "le dogmatisme idÉologique devait disparaître
pour que les idÉes reprissent vie" (Aron), and so on. Since
this is sometimes taken to be an expression of an "anti-Marxist"
position, it is worth keeping in mind that such sentiments as these
have no bearing on non-Bolshevik Marxism, as represented, for example,
by such figures as Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Korsch, Arthur Rosenberg,
and others.
[20] The extent to which this "technology"
is value-free is hardly very important, given the clear commitments
of those who apply it. The problems with which research is concerned
are those posed by the Pentagon or the great corporations, not,
say, by the revolutionaries of Northeast Brazil or by SNCC. Nor
am I aware of a research project devoted to the problem of how poorly
armed guerrillas might more effectively resist a brutal and devastating
military technology—surely the kind of problem that would have interested
the free-floating intellectual who is now hopelessly out of date.
[21] In view of the unremitting
propaganda barrage on "Chinese expansion," perhaps a word of comment
is in order. Typical of American propaganda on this subject is Adlai
Stevenson's assessment, shortly before his death (cf. The New
York Times Magazine, March 13, 1966): "So far, the new Communist
'dynasty' has been very aggressive. Tibet was swallowed, India attacked,
the Malays had to fight 12 years to resist a 'national liberation'
they could receive from the British by a more peaceful route. Today,
the apparatus of infiltration and aggression is already at work
in North Thailand."
As to Malaya, Stevenson is probably confusing ethnic Chinese
with the government of China. Those concerned with the actual
events would agree with Harry Miller (in Communist Menace in
Malaya, Praeger, 1954) that "Communist China continues to
show little interest in the Malayan affair beyond its usual fulminations
via Peking Radio…" There are various harsh things that one might
say about Chinese behavior in what the Sino-Indian Treaty of 1954
refers to as "the Tibet region of China," but it is no more proof
of a tendency towards expansionism than is the behavior of the
Indian Government with regard to the Naga and Mizo tribesmen.
As to North Thailand, "the apparatus of infiltration" may well
be at work, though there is little reason to suppose it to be
Chinese—and it is surely not unrelated to the American use of
Thailand as a base of its attack on Vietnam. This reference is
the sheerest hypocrisy.
The "attack on India" grew out of a border dispute that began
several years after the Chinese had completed a road from Tibet
to Sinkiang in an area so remote from Indian control that the
Indians learned about this operation only from the Chinese Press.
According to American Air Force maps, the disputed area is in
Chinese territory. Cf. Alastair Lamb, China Quarterly,
July-September, 1965. To this distinguished authority, "it seems
unlikely that the Chinese have been working out some master plan…to
take over the Indian sub-continent lock, stock and overpopulated
barrel." Rather, he thinks it likely that the Chinese were probably
unaware that India even claimed the territory through which the
road passed. After the Chinese military victory, Chinese troops
were, in most areas, withdrawn beyond the McMahon line, a border
which the British had attempted to impose on China in 1914 but
which has never been recognized by China (Nationalist or Communist),
the United States, or any other government. It is remarkable that
a person in a responsible position could describe all of this
as Chinese expansionism. In fact, it is absurd to debate the hypothetical
aggressiveness of a China surrounded by American missiles and
a still expanding network of military bases backed by an enormous
American expeditionary force in Southeast Asia. It is conceivable
that at some future time a powerful China may be expansionist.
We may speculate about such possibilities if we wish, but it is
American aggressiveness that is the central fact of current politics.
[22] Douglas Pike, op. cit.,
p. 110. This book, written by a foreign service officer working
at the Center for International Studies, M.I.T., poses a contrast
between our side, which sympathizes with "the usual revolutionary
stirrings…around the world because they reflect inadequate living
standards or oppressive and corrupt governments," and the backers
of "revolutionary guerrilla warfare," which "opposes the aspirations
of people while apparently furthering them, manipulates the individual
by persuading him to manipulate himself." Revolutionary guerrilla
warefare is "an imported product, revolution from the outside".
(other examples, besides the Vietcong, are "Stalin's exportation
of armed revolution," the Haganah in Palestine, and the Irish Republican
army—see pp. 32-33). The Vietcong could not be an indigenous movement
since it had "a social construction program of such scope and ambition
that of necessity it must have been created in Hanoi" (p. 76—but
on pp. 77-79 we read that "organizational activity had gone on intensively
and systematically for several years" before the Lao Dong party
in Hanoi had made its decision "to begin building an organization").
On page 80 we find "such an effort had to be the child of the North,"
even though elsewhere we read of the prominent role of the Cao Dai
(p. 74), "the first major social group to begin actively opposing
the Diem government" (p. 222), and of the Hoa Hao sect, "another
early and major participant in the NLF" (p. 69). He takes it as
proof of Communist duplicity that in the South, the party insisted
it was "Marxist-Leninist," thus "indicating philosophic but not
political allegiance," whereas in the North it described itself
as a "Marxist-Leninist organization," thus "indicating that it was
int he mainstream of the world-wide Communist movement" (p. 150).
And so on. Also revealing is the contempt for "Cinderella and all
the other fools [who] could still believe there was magic in the
mature world if one mumbled the secret incantation: solidarity,
union, concord"; for the "gullible, misled people" who were "turning
the countryside into a bedlam toppling one Saigon government after
another, confounding the Americans"; for the "mighty force of people"
who in their mindless innocence thought that "the meek, at last,
were to inherit the earth," that "riches would be theirs and all
in the name of justice and virtue." One can appreciate the chagrin
with which a sophisticated Western political scientist must view
this "sad and awesome spectacle."
[23] Lacouture, op. cit.,
p. 188. The same military spokesman goes on, ominously, to say that
this is the problem confronting us throughout Asia, Africa, and
Latin America, and that we must find the "proper response" to it.
[24] William Bundy, in A. Buchan,
ed., China and the Peace of Asia, Praeger, 1965.
[25] Lindholm, op, cit.
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