The Third World War

By now, just about everyone—hawk and dove, liberal and conservative, New Left and Old Right—supports the slogan, “No More Vietnams!” Such universal agreement on a complicated issue is. impossible, really. What is being expressed can be no more than a contagious mood that will tun its course without affecting the fundamental differences of opinion about America’s role in the world. The mood is isolationist, as becomes daily more obvious. It’s not only that we’re going to pull out of Vietnam as fast as we can scurry, with a “Never. again!” hangover sigh. We’re going to pull back all along the line. We’re going to cut down those garrisons stashed all over the globe. Who needs all those antisubmarine carriers and _ missile cruisers, anyway? Put them in mothballs, or sink them. And what are those huge new Galaxy air monsters good for except to tempt us to ferry troops to new. Vietnams? Slash that contract. Shut down those bases in Spain—it’s a nasty dictatorship anyway—and isn’t it about time to begin bringing the boys home from Germany? So Czechoslovakia gets pushed around, and Tanzania gets the Chinese to build their railroad and Moscow arms the Arabs and Peru and Chile and Zambia seize the property of our citizens and Soviet warships move out into all oceans?—no trouble for us if we stick to our: cabbage patch.

Don’t start talking about a new Indian Ocean fleet, when the real problem is to stop our existing fleets from Messing around in the Mediterranean and the far side of the Pacific. And what sort of madness is it to begin building new missile and antimissile weapons? Do we want to provoke the Russians into a war or something? And now that we’ve got that moon race foolishness out of our system, we can cut the space budget down to size. What we’ve got to do is get our priorities. straight: feed our hungry, clean up our ‘cities; put our slum dwellers into new housing, eliminate poverty, straighten out the racial mess . in short, crawl into our warm, . cozy shell. It’s curious, this talk about “priorities.” How can there be any doubt that priority A-1 for any nation must be its own security? Unless it has security a nation cannot even exist. If a choice really has to be made between guns and butter, then guns have got to come first—unless we are ready for suicide. We are so busy repeating resolutions about No More Vietnams that we almost forget we’ve still got a Vietnam on our hands, and it shows no signs of fading away. The contrary, rather. In the face of our pleas for a gentlemanly draw, the opponent not only keeps right: on playing but raises the stakes. “Getting out. of Vietnam” sounds clear enough. “Vietnam” means (one assumes) a specific, delimited piece of real estate. “Getting out” means the U.S. troops go home. Nothing much toit; it might be a little hard on the locals, but otherwise no sweat. But the “Vietnam” we’ve got ourselves into is not just a specific piece of real estate, not even in the geographical sense. The successor states – of. French Indochina have never been consolidated, nor does Ho Chi Minh intend that they shall be. The only organized political force present when the French quit was the Communist apparatus, thrusting out from the primary Communist fortress to its north. – _I have several times discussed Ho’s conception of “the revolution on the Mekong,” of which his war in South Vietnam is one front. This wider revolution is not a mere possibility. of the future. It is already in active course also on the Laotian, Cambodian and northeast Thailand fronts. The revolutionary forces have a net of bases in Cambodia. In the past few months of – “Jull,” during. which American with- — drawals began, the revolution has made substantial advances in Laos, drawing — on Chinese as’ well: as North Vietnamese cadres. In Thailand the combat has. so. far been on a guerrilla scale, but it has been severe enough to have a halted building of the key dam in the _ Western-backed Mekong. development — plan. North Burma has for some time ~ been under revolutionary control. The — domino theory is outmoded. It is not a — question of whether other nations will topple in succession if Vietnam falls. — The other nations are not separated dominoes. but integrally attached to . the Vietnam counter. Our present — “Vietnam,” from which we want out, ~ is already the entire Mekong hinterland; in effect, all Southeast Asia.

JB

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James Burnham

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By now, just about everyone—hawk and dove, liberal and conservative, New Left and Old Right—supports the slogan, “No More Vietnams!” Such universal agreement on a complicated issue is. impossible, really. What is being expressed can be no more than a contagious mood that will tun its course without affecting the fundamental differences of opinion about America’s role in the world. The mood is isolationist, as becomes daily more obvious. It’s not only that we’re going to pull out of Vietnam as fast as we can scurry, with a “Never. again!” hangover sigh. We’re going to pull back all along the line. We’re going to cut down those garrisons stashed all over the globe. Who needs all those antisubmarine carriers and _ missile cruisers, anyway? Put them in mothballs, or sink them. And what are those huge new Galaxy air monsters good for except to tempt us to ferry troops to new. Vietnams? Slash that contract. Shut down those bases in Spain—it’s a nasty dictatorship anyway—and isn’t it about time to begin bringing the boys home from Germany? So Czechoslovakia gets pushed around, and Tanzania gets the Chinese to build their railroad and Moscow arms the Arabs and Peru and Chile and Zambia seize the property of our citizens and Soviet warships move out into all oceans?—no trouble for us if we stick to our: cabbage patch.

Don’t start talking about a new Indian Ocean fleet, when the real problem is to stop our existing fleets from Messing around in the Mediterranean and the far side of the Pacific. And what sort of madness is it to begin building new missile and antimissile weapons? Do we want to provoke the Russians into a war or something? And now that we’ve got that moon race foolishness out of our system, we can cut the space budget down to size. What we’ve got to do is get our priorities. straight: feed our hungry, clean up our ‘cities; put our slum dwellers into new housing, eliminate poverty, straighten out the racial mess . in short, crawl into our warm, . cozy shell. It’s curious, this talk about “priorities.” How can there be any doubt that priority A-1 for any nation must be its own security? Unless it has security a nation cannot even exist. If a choice really has to be made between guns and butter, then guns have got to come first—unless we are ready for suicide. We are so busy repeating resolutions about No More Vietnams that we almost forget we’ve still got a Vietnam on our hands, and it shows no signs of fading away. The contrary, rather. In the face of our pleas for a gentlemanly draw, the opponent not only keeps right: on playing but raises the stakes. “Getting out. of Vietnam” sounds clear enough. “Vietnam” means (one assumes) a specific, delimited piece of real estate. “Getting out” means the U.S. troops go home. Nothing much toit; it might be a little hard on the locals, but otherwise no sweat. But the “Vietnam” we’ve got ourselves into is not just a specific piece of real estate, not even in the geographical sense. The successor states – of. French Indochina have never been consolidated, nor does Ho Chi Minh intend that they shall be. The only organized political force present when the French quit was the Communist apparatus, thrusting out from the primary Communist fortress to its north. – _I have several times discussed Ho’s conception of “the revolution on the Mekong,” of which his war in South Vietnam is one front. This wider revolution is not a mere possibility. of the future. It is already in active course also on the Laotian, Cambodian and northeast Thailand fronts. The revolutionary forces have a net of bases in Cambodia. In the past few months of – “Jull,” during. which American with- — drawals began, the revolution has made substantial advances in Laos, drawing — on Chinese as’ well: as North Vietnamese cadres. In Thailand the combat has. so. far been on a guerrilla scale, but it has been severe enough to have a halted building of the key dam in the _ Western-backed Mekong. development — plan. North Burma has for some time ~ been under revolutionary control. The — domino theory is outmoded. It is not a — question of whether other nations will topple in succession if Vietnam falls. — The other nations are not separated dominoes. but integrally attached to . the Vietnam counter. Our present — “Vietnam,” from which we want out, ~ is already the entire Mekong hinterland; in effect, all Southeast Asia.