Five Minutes to Midnight

The major new Vietnam peace offensive launched by President Johnson in his retirement speech of March 31 represents what is very probably the decisive victory for the school of thought which argues that either a) the present military stalemate lends itself to a satisfactory and “honorable” termination of the war through a negotiated settlement, or b) even if it does not, the U.S. national interest does not require the successful defense of South Vietnam or any other Southeast Asian nation from Communist attack. Unless the President is sand-bagging his opposition, the first proposition is now to be accepted and the second will perforce then be tested.

It may therefore be no more than an exercise in academic futility to suggest at this late date that objective realism might still be applied to a situation where the die has already been cast for disengagement at any price. But one man has at least tried, and his analysis of the Vietnam conundrum comes closer to clearing away most of the platitudes, wishful thinking and plain verbal underbrush that surround this subject than any other this reviewer has yet encountered. In The Discipline of Power former Under Secretary of State George Ball covers the whole spectrum of U.S. foreign policy, but for purposes of this discussion the germane portions concern Vietnam. Long regarded as the State Department’s resident dove on the Vietnam issue, Ball writes as one who was opposed, on pragmatic grounds, to the extent of the original U.S. commitment and particularly to the decision to bomb the North in February 1965. Fortified with these credentials he nevertheless demolishes, point by point, virtually the entire dovish catalogue of possible exits from the war.

FJ

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Frank J. Johnson

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The major new Vietnam peace offensive launched by President Johnson in his retirement speech of March 31 represents what is very probably the decisive victory for the school of thought which argues that either a) the present military stalemate lends itself to a satisfactory and “honorable” termination of the war through a negotiated settlement, or b) even if it does not, the U.S. national interest does not require the successful defense of South Vietnam or any other Southeast Asian nation from Communist attack. Unless the President is sand-bagging his opposition, the first proposition is now to be accepted and the second will perforce then be tested.

It may therefore be no more than an exercise in academic futility to suggest at this late date that objective realism might still be applied to a situation where the die has already been cast for disengagement at any price. But one man has at least tried, and his analysis of the Vietnam conundrum comes closer to clearing away most of the platitudes, wishful thinking and plain verbal underbrush that surround this subject than any other this reviewer has yet encountered. In The Discipline of Power former Under Secretary of State George Ball covers the whole spectrum of U.S. foreign policy, but for purposes of this discussion the germane portions concern Vietnam. Long regarded as the State Department’s resident dove on the Vietnam issue, Ball writes as one who was opposed, on pragmatic grounds, to the extent of the original U.S. commitment and particularly to the decision to bomb the North in February 1965. Fortified with these credentials he nevertheless demolishes, point by point, virtually the entire dovish catalogue of possible exits from the war.