No Time for Decisions
MR JOHNSON'S JOURNEY
From DAVID WATT
It is a useful occasional exercise to think of Johnson's policy in these terms—as a constant, obsessive battle for flexibility regarded as an end in itself. This is not the whole story, of course, but it explains a good deal that is other- wise obscure and reconciles some of the more glaring contradictions of recent US actions.
Why, ask the hawks, does the President horse around making friendly noises to the Russians and offering to withdraw troops from Vietnam when he had apparently screwed up his courage to do the right things to win the war? Why, ask the doves, does he make all the pacific over- tures and then render them quite incredible to the other side by refusing to stop the bombing of North Vietnam, by sending Mr Robert McNamara to Vietnam at this precise moment to make plans for 1968, and by holding what is in effect a council of war in Manila next week?
The hawks reply that Mr Arthur Goldberg was talking with the real Johnson voice at the UN the other day and that the President is pre- paring to scuttle out of Vietnam under a con- venient camouflage. The doves assume that he is determined to escalate the war as soon as the American elections are over, and that his peace offensive is merely designed to place the responsibility for the subsequent horrors on the other side. But what if neither of the hypotheses is correct? What if the President really has not made up his mind and is engaged in a feverish effort to maintain the status quo as a base from which to spring in almost any direction?
Consider what it is that the President is being advised to do. The most enthusiastic military men, for instance, are pressing him to extend the war by invading the heart of Vietcong terri- tory in the Mekong delta in South Vietnam. The argument for doing so is that the Vietcong can hardly be beaten while they have effective control over the main rice-producing area of the country. The objection is that this operation would commit a huge body of American forces to the most densely populated part of the coun- try and would make a quick withdrawal and settlement far more difficult—in other words, it would seriously limit future flexibility. It looks as if Johnson has found this objection over- whelming; for Mr McNamara, on his return from Vietnam last week, specifically ruled out any immediate change in the present plans for the build-up of American troops (from 315,000 now to about 475,000 by the end of next year) and a delta campaign would probably require 600,000 men. However, the President has, by building at least one of the necessary bases, left it open to himself to invade the delta. Again, there is the question of bombing the North. The Air Force generals want him to ex- tend the target areas now. The peace party tells him to stop bombing altogether. There are good technical reasons for rejecting either alterna- tive: a radical extension of the bombing holds out the prospect of greatly diminished returns for a sharp increase in the already serious cost in pilots and machines; to cease bombing would facilitate the massing of North Vietnamese forces for the big offensive in the North which is now, it seems, being planned. But the main reason the President continues the bombing at its present level may well be that he regards any change from existing policy as a weapon in his armoury. To use either of these weapons now would make it more difficult to use the other if the -need ever arose.
On the diplomatic front it has been the same. Mr Dean Rusk and Mr Walt Rostow—with their apocalyptic visions of the Chinese menace —are constantly warning the President against making commitments which would let the Com- munist fox loose in the hen-coop of the South Vietnamese government. Not unnaturally, the South Vietnamese junta, the Thais, and the South Koreans say the same. On the other side, Senator Fulbright, Mr Gromyko and M Couve de Murville maintain that a genuine neutralisa- tion of South Vietnam can only take place if this risk is taken. President Johnson's typical response has been to get his ambassador to the UN to make a speech offering to withdraw if the other side will do the same, but carefully declining to spell out any details in advance.
It is worth noting here the American reactions to Mr George Brown's activities at the UN. They have been those of an elderly spinster watching a great dane entering her sitting-room. The old lady is an ardent dog-lover and great danes are nothing if not lovable animals, but one nuzzle of that vast, slobbery head, one wag of that over-enthusiastic tail, and all those little tables and treasured knick-knacks will crash to ruins. Mr Brown's proposals said almost nothing that was not implicit in Mr Goldberg's speech, but they overturned the precious Johnsonian principle; for where Mr Goldberg talked in general terms, the Foreign Secretary tried to be specific, and to President Johnson, being com- mitted to specifics before the horse-trade begins is anathema.
The President's second reaction on the diplo- matic side—the convening of the Manila con- ference—is equally illustrative. Of course, no one needed have the slightest qualms at ascribing the most blatant political motives to him as he set off for South-East Asia with the tearful blessing of his friends in Congress, three weeks before the congressional election. Johnson him- self hardly bothers to deny his ends and would no doubt justify them, if pressed, on the grounds that his ability to cope with the lunatic fringes of Congress and negotiate flexibly with Hanoi depends on his standing at home. Moreover, it will do no harm to the American image to go in for a lot of ballyhoo about 'the wondrous works of peace' and 'the newly-emerging sense of Asian solidarity.'
Nevertheless, behind all this public-relations activity there is a real political point which was missed, apparently, by Senator Fulbright when he dismissed the Manila meeting as a cosy get- together of 'our boys.' This point is that the hard- line brigade behind General Ky will be dis- cussing the future in the company of moderates from the Philippines, Australia and the US and will be obliged to put their signatures to a com- muniqu6 whose tone is likely to be a good deal less bellicose than they want.
At the end of the exercise the President evi- dently hopes to be in a position both at home and abroad in which he could make a risky peace or increase the military pressure more or less at will. It would be very rash to assume he will do either. Current American doctrine states that just as the North Vietnamese already realise they cannot win militarily, they will eventually realise they cannot win politically—and at this point they will sue for peace. The President has a deadline, of course, but it is the presidential election of November 1968—not the congres- sional elections of 1966, that lay it down. If there has been no move from Hanoi by -this time next year, choices will have to be made. Meanwhile, one suspects, he will continue to stand at his favourite parting of the ways, like some great gangling signpost, arms forever pointing in all directions at once.
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