I have tried to sum up here why I think there is this seemingly uncompromising attitude on the part of our enemies, who I assume are people capable of reason, and why there are also doubts in this committee.

I wish to insert in the record at this point three articles: One by Mr. Frankel of the New York Times in today's paper; one by Mr. Lippmann on the 15th of February; and an article on Vietnam by a Frenchman, Jean Lacouture, which I think bears on these points. One relates to the history of this engagement and the other one particularly to the immediate problem discussed here today. (The articles referred to follow :)

[From the New York Times, Feb. 18, 1966]

NEW LIGHT ON U.S. POLICY-GENERAL TAYLOR SAYS AIM IS TO COMPEL ACCEPTANCE OF A FREE SOUTH VIETNAM

(By Max Frankel)

WASHINGTON, February 17.-Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor brought out in public today what other high officials here have made increasingly plain in privatenamely that the U.S. terms for peace in Vietnam are much stiffer than the offer of unconditional negotiations has implied. Though caught up in a debate with some members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about whether the administration's goals were limited or unlimited, General Taylor left little doubt about what those goals are. He said the United States could, should, and would achieve military and political successes of sufficient magnitude to force the Communists to accept an independent and non-Communist South Vietnam.

The Johnson administration has never wavered in the pursuit of that objective. Nor has it said anything to contradict the retired general's assertion that his personal testimony was wholly consistent with official policy.

Many observers and diplomats here and abroad, however, have misinterpreted the administration's offer to negotiate as an offer to compromise with the Vietcong in South Vietnam. General Taylor's testimony should have made it clear that such a compromise is not anticipated here.

That clarification was explicitly recognized at the end of the long hearing today by Senator J. M. Fulbright, the committee chairman. The Arkansas Democrat said it seemed to him, in the language of the Ozarks, that the United States intended to apply the pressure until the Communists "holler enough."

THE BASIC QUESTION

He said he wished instead that the administration was ready to deal with its principal adversary, the Vietcong, to seek a compromise to stop the slaughter and to give up the policy of waging a war that can end only if all the Vietcong would go home and go north.

General Taylor did not dispute this summation of the essence of the argument between the administration and its critics. If the Vietcong would in fact go home and stop trying to take over South Vietnam, he said, they could at least obtain "compensation"-presumably in economic aid to North Vietnam. But his basic reply was a question: "How do you compromise the freedom of 15 million South Vietnamese people?"

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 to recognize them as an independent political force.

It has offered to consider the Vietcong's views in negotiations and even to let the Vietcong sit in the delegation of North Vietnam, whose agents it says they are. Washington's purpose at such negotiations would be to ratify the end of the Communist threat to South Vietnam and not to compromise on the basis of the existing military balance.

As General Taylor reiterated, the administration believes the Communists have not been hurt sufficiently on the battlefield to enter into the kind of negotiations that have been offered. Privately, officials here agree with this presumed Communist assessment. They believe the Communists would now negotiate or give up only if they were prepared to honor the potential force that the United States can bring to bear.

As General Taylor also made clear, even the potential American military might is not enough to assure success. Force on the ground must be used to put the Communists into a highly unfavorable situation in South Vietnam, he said, while force in the air is used to inflict increasing loss and pain in North Vietnam.

NEED FOR VIABLE REGIME

In addition, he emphasized, the United States must construct a reasonably viable and stable government in South Vietnam and demonstrate a determination at home to see the struggle through.

The general said he was convinced that when all four conditions were met. North Vietnam would have been brought to the point where it was willing to talk. The purpose of the talks, he stressed, would be to "free South Vietnam from the Vietcong," and the essential ingredient is to "have them so beaten they'd be glad to come in and accept an amnesty."

These goals are not only limited but realistic, the general contended, although he would not be pinned down on the number of American troops that might have to become involved. The present 205,000 are not enough, he said, and 800,000 would be fantastic and unnecessary.

It is the realism of this assessment that troubled most of the administration's critics on the committee. They fear that no limits to the American involvement are in sight and that it could lead to an even more costly war with Communist China. Some seek more precise estimates of the ultimate cost, while others would prefer a reduction of the objectives-in other words, a compromise on the basis of present military and political strength.

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 15, 1966]

TODAY AND TOMORROW-CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA

(By Walter Lippmann)

The televised hearings, at which General Gavin and Ambassador Kennan appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have done an inestimable service to our people. For they broke through the official screen and made visible the nature of the war and where our present policy is leading us. On the rule that if you cannot beat them, join them, which in its modern form is that if you cannot debate with them, say you agree with them, the President takes the position that there is not much difference between the Gavin-Kennan thesis and the Rusk-McNamara policy.

There is in fact a radical difference, the difference between a limited and an unlimited war. The President may not want to fight an unlimited war. I have no doubt myself that he does not want to do so. But the promises he made in Honolulu which the Vice President is now broadcasting so lavishly in Saigon and Bangkok, are-if they are to be taken seriously-an unlimited commitment of American soldiers and American money. It is this unlimited commitment which those of us who belong to the Gavin-Kennan school oppose. For we see that as the numbers of our troops and the range of our bombing are escalated, and as the theater of the war becomes widened, it is highly probable, indeed it is well nigh inevitable that the United States will find itself confronting China in a land war on the mainland of Asia.

Last week's hearings made visible that this is where the course we are taking leads. Congress and the people would be frivolous if they did not examine with the utmost seriousness how real, how valid, how significant is the hypothesis that the kind of war the Johnson administration is conducting is leading to a confrontation with China.

Gen. Maxwell Taylor, who since 1961 has played a leading part in our military intervention in South Vietnam, has recognized that the prospect of a land war with China is today our greatest worry. In an interview published in the current issue of U.S. News & World Report, General Taylor is asked about the danger

of "a military confrontation with Communist China." He replies that "one can never rule out the possibility. But I would list the probability quite low in terms of percentage."

This has an ominous resemblance to the colloquy in 1950 between President Truman and General MacArthur. (Cf. Lawson, "The United States in the Korean War," p. 79.)

"In your opinion," President Truman asked General MacArthur, "is there any chance that the Chinese might enter the war on the side of North Korea?" MacArthur shook his head. "I'd say there's very little chance of that happening. They have several hundred thousand men north of the Yalu, but they haven't any air force. If they tried to cross the river our Air Force would slaughter them. At the most perhaps 60,000 troops would make it. Our infantry could easily contain them. I expect the actual fighting in North Korea to end by Thanksgiving. We should have our men home, or at least in Japan, by

Christmas."

At the very moment that President Truman and General MacArthur were talking there were already more than a hundred thousand Chinese Communist troops in North Korea, and another 200,000 were ready to cross the Yalu. By mid-November at least 300,000 Chinese would be poised to strike-and the ROK, the American and other U.N. forces would not even be aware of their presence. Before the war was over the Chinese Communist armies in Korea would reach a peak strength of more than a million men.

On the question of the need to contain the military expansion of Red China. there is virtually universal agreement in this country. The containment of Red China today, like the containment of Stalinist Russia after the World War, is necessary to the peace of the world and is a vital interest of the United States. What is debatable is the diplomatic policy we are pursuing in order to contain Red China. If we compare what Mr. Rusk and Mr. William Bundy are doing with the diplomatic policy by which some 15 years ago Stalin was contained, the differences are very striking.

The cardinal difference is that our Chinese containment policy is a unilateral American policy whereas our Stalinist containment policy was shared with and participated in by all the Western Allies. It is often said officially that in the Far East today we are repeating what was done so successfully in Europe. If this were what we are doing, there would be an alliance to contain China in which Japan, Russia, India, Pakistan, the United States, Great Britain, and France were alined in a Far Eastern Marshall plan and NATO. Instead, owing to the miscalculations and blundering of the Vientamese war, we have alienated and indeed neutralized all the great powers of the Asian mainland.

The difference between the two containment policies in Europe and in the Far East is the difference between realism and verbalism, between professionalism and amateurism. Our present policy is as if we had set out to contain Stalinist Russia by ignoring the British, the French, the Italians, and the Germans, and had decided to make our stand against communism by the defense of-let us say-Bucharest.

[From the New York Review, Mar. 3, 1966]

VIETNAM: THE LESSONS OF WAR

(By Jean Lacouture)

"On the long thin coast of Vietnam," wrote John K. Fairbank in the last issue of this paper, "we are sleeping in the same bed the French slept in even though we dream different dreams."

The dreams of course are very different but so are the beds and the dreamers themselves. Let us compare them and see when the end of the night may come.

Nothing could be more valuable for American leaders at the moment than a close examination of the disastrous errors made by the French in Indochina from 1945 to 1956. To know the faults of a friend may not cure one's own, but from France's experience American might well learn something of what has gone so dreadfully wrong in Vietnam today.

The French had three great dreams for Indochina and each led them into a different and more ugly phase of the war. At first, in 1946, they clung briefly to the dream of reestablishing their prewar empire in Indochina. Indeed, for

one hopeful moment they seemed to be on the verge of a promising new colonial policy: General Leclerc, sent out to "reconquer" the territory, decided instead to negotiate with the Vietnam revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh. Leclere recognized Ho's Vietnam as a "free state," connected with France, but controlling its own diplomacy, army, and finances. This was the first agreement made be tween a European colonial power and the Asian revolution-and one of the shortest lived and saddest in retrospect. For within weeks the intrigues of colonialists in Saigon and Paris and extremists among the Vietminh and its nationalist allies succeeded in scrapping it. The way was now open for France to plunge into full-scale colonial war. But it soon became clear to everybody that this would have been a hopeless venture, doomed from the start by the half-ruined state of France, the lack of an air force and navy, and the disapproval of the Russians and Americans.

At this point the French conceived their second Indochina dream which led them into a second war, lasting from 1948 to 1951. Now they would transform their colonial struggle into a civil war. Against Ho's Vietminh they would set in opposition the "independent" Emperor Bao Dai, encouraging him to cultivate his own anti-Communist but nationalist leadership-a policy described by the distinguished scholar Paul Mus as "nationalist counterfire."

Perhaps it might have succeeded if the nationalists had been given a chance to make it work. But their power and prestige and autonomy were always limited. While Vietnamese and French troops died courageously, Bao Dai preoccupied himself with tiger hunting, his ministers with profiteering. The Vietminh methodically liquidated Bao Dai's officials, dominated the countryside, and organized its soldiers into divisions soon after the Chinese Communists arrived on the northern frontier in 1950.

After this decisive event and the outbreak of the Korean war, France dreamed once again of tranforming the nature of the war in Vietnam, this time into an international conflict with communism. In September 1951 General de Lattre arrived in Washington to argue that France, faced with Vietminh subversion supported by Communist China, now needed and deserved to have its risks shared. He was given both credits and weapons. But later, in 1954, on the eve of Dienbienphu, the French Governement demanded far more: It requested that several hundred American bombers be ordered to attack the enemy from Manila. To these requests Washington finally responded that "Indochina does not fall within the perimeter of the area vital to the defense of the United States."

We can now admire the wisdom which led President Eisenhower to reject both the agitated appeals of the French and the advice of Admiral Radford and Vice President Nixon, both of whom recommended intervention. But we may well ask why a country not considered of "vital importance" to American interests in 1594 became so in 1965. The Communist camp, after all, is no longer a monolithic force able to exert unified global pressures as had been the case in 1954. In Korea, moreover, Chinese had recently been fighting American soldiers, something they have since refrained from doing; and missile strategy has meanwhile diminished the importance of local airforce bases. One can only conclude that the diplomatic views of American leaders have hardened during these years. In the light of Mr. Rusk's performance the diplomacy of John Foster Dulles must be reconsidered and credited with an admirable flexibility.

Thus France launched three wars in Indochina and lost them all. Its allies having refused to provoke a brutal extension of the war in order to avoid a local defeat, France's dream of an international anti-Communist "crusade" collapsed at Dienbienphu in the spring of 1954. General Giap destroyed France's main combat force; the Vietminh controlled two-thirds of Vietnam; and neither Hanoi nor Saigon were protected from attack.

Ho Chi Minh had offered negotiations 6 months before this debacle and had been ignored. Now Moscow and Peiping were agreeable to an international detente and Washington seemed prepared to accept the consequences of its failure to intervene. Thus at the Geneva conference table in 1954 the Western powers benefited from a certain complicity on the part of Molotov and Chou Enlai: The West succeeded in wresting from the victors half of the territory and the larger part of the material wealth of Vietnam. Ho agreed to fall back to the north in exchange for a promise that elections preparing the way for unification would be held in 1956-elections that he had no doubt of winning.

A great deal of confusion surrounds this Geneva settlement. It must be emphasized that the only texts signed at Geneva were the armistice agreements between the French and the Vietminh. No one at all signed the "final declaration"

of the conference-both the United States and South Vietnam had reservations about it-and it carried only the force of suggestion. But apart from the North Vietnamese, the French were the only nation that formally guaranteed to carry out the Geneva accords that provided both for parition at the 17th parallel and for elections.

And now France committed a new error (its last?), dreaming this time that it might finally leave Vietnam and forget it altogether. Diem, now installed a dictator in the south, wanted the French to quit his country as soon as possible. This was not only because certain French interests were intriguing against him— something that helped strengthen his position as a nationalist leader-but also because the French Army was the only force that could compel him to hold elections in 1956. In the event, the French quickly yielded and the last of their Army departed in April 1956.

The consequences of this final French error were, and remain, enormous. Diem was now free to declare himself free of the Geneva obligations and soon did so with American encouragement. The south could now be reorganized as an anti-Communist bastion, from which a reconquest of the North could eventually be launched. The Diem government in fact soon created a Committee for the Liberation of North Vietnam, which beginning in 1958, parachuted agents into the north, notably into areas such as Vinh, where Ho's agrarian reform had provoked violent peasant uprisings. But meanwhile the north, considering itself cheated by Saigon and Washington (with France's cooperation), began preparation to exploit the political and social discontent in the south to establish a base for subversive operations. And Hanoi was to show itself far more adept at this political game than Saigon.

Could the French have resolved this Vietnam problem? In fact, they were confronted by two immensely volatile forces whose demands would have shaken any Western government, as they are shaking the United States today. First, the demands of a people thirsting to overthrow colonialism and to recover their national identity, their freedom of maneuver, and their unity. But also the demands of a revolutionary group, supported by one of the great power blocs, which claims the right to impose its authority on the entire nation in the name of a Communist doctrine highly suspect to the majority: a group, nonetheless, whose heroism, discipline, and ruthlessly effective methods seem to assure its success.

It is the deep and constant intermingling of these two forces which have made the Vietnam problem seem so hopeless and defeating to the West. How can a Western government successfully sponsor an independent "nationalist counterfire" when the strongest feelings of many Vietnamese have been invested for many years in the local civil war; and when one finds among those who have rallied to the Vietminh, and then the Lao Dong and the NLF, a great many patroits, drawn to the organization because they believe it to be the hope of Vietnamese nationalism, capable of defeating colonialism and Western domination.

Perhaps it might have been possible for the French to disassociate the nationalist inspiration in Vietnam from the Communist organization. But to do this would have been very difficult. For to gain the confidence of the nationalists I believe that French aid to Vietnam would have had to meet three extremely demanding conditions: that the donor of the aid would have no right to intervene directly in the Government; and the aid would be given to the most worthy leaders; and that it would not lead to the creation of oligarchies of profiteers and a climate of corruption.

By all these standards the French failed. If they ever had a chance to survive the Asian revolution, they lost it, basically, because they were unwilling to alter their patronizing colonialist attitudes and deal with Asians with some sense of mutual respect or cooperation. For the most part they preferred instead to appoint and then control the manageable, the incompetent, and the operators, many of whom made fortunes out of the corrupt French aid program.

Opposed in Vietnam, then, were a coherent, principled, and implacable revolutionary movement of militants organized in the villages-the country's fundamental social and economic unit-inspired by an evident nationalism and posing defenders of stern justice and equality; on the other hand, a regime obviously supported and controlled by foreign powers, partly composed of former colonial officials, disdainful of peasant claims, tolerant of a social order where the influential and successful were frantically engaged in profiteering-preparing for the arrival of the inevitable catastrophe. The only possible result was a catastrophe on the scale of Dienbienphu.