PROFESSOR ARGUES AGAINST 'VICTORY' GOAL IN VIET NAM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73-00475R000302430002-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 23, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2014
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: August 4, 1964
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

3TAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/31 : CIA-RDP73-00475R000302430002-4
DAILY NEWS
AUG 4 1964
NORMAN ROSS.
Professor
Crc, 9
iet07
-nes
Nearly 8,000 American col-.
lege and university educators
have now signed a petition urg-
:ing President Johnson "not to
enlarge the scope of the war,
;. hut instead to work for a ben-.
tralized North and South Viet
Nant, as separate, federated or
reunited states, protected by.
international guarantees and
; peacekeeping forces against all
outside interference."
The brainchild of the Nation-
al Committee for a Sane Nu-.
; clear Policy, the petition has
-%% on the signatures' of an im-
-.pressive array of teachers, none
more surprising or more wor?
thy of consideration than that
of the University of Chicago's
brilliant professor of Political
.science, Hans 'Morgenthau.
For Morgenthau, far from
being a "softliner," is a hard-
headed. realist whose wide
knowledge of the past has
helped him, over ? the years,
come up with an impressive
".? list of accurate, if not .alwaYs
r welcome, predictions of .the,
? future.
.'?
He believes that however
;?quickly and strongly we react
4 to an attack on one .Of Our
destroyers in what we regard ri":.
as international waters off,
N or t h Viet Nam, however !
.many extra "advisers" we add !
.to the 21,000 already in South I
.Viet Nam or slated to go, we':
? cannot win the war there.
: Further, he contends that a
'policy of peripheral contain- .!
ment of Red China, of setting ?
'up military , strong points ?
around her empire, may slow,
but will not stop; her expand
? sion.
Alkout war might stop her,
and we should realistically con-
sider that as one of our alter-
natives, remembering Winston o?
Churchill's strictures against
* becoming bogged down on the
? mainland 'of Mkt, and the fate
of Japan when her armies (!id
so,
- It would be unrealistic ,and
.foolish to overestimate Chjna's
current military Streng,th(even
...should she, as ? once' again
, rumored, detonate her own
nuclear deviee, 'before the end
. of the, year. ?
But if we did colinnit our
full strength, to peripheral con-
. tainmenti . and risked war with
? 'her, how could We defeat 700,-
000,000," people spread over
a great land mass? 'Even the
late .Gen. Douglas MacAr-
thur, ?when he pressed for us
:to carry the Korean War be-' ,
.yond the Yalu did not suggest'
that We' try to do so.
If we were to bomb. all ,
;? Chinese cities of over 100,000
population, we might kill 100,-
000,000 people, but. even then ?
would only cripple but not
destroy her. .1
SAYS. Morgenth au: "The
point is that for the past 50 l
years of our relationship with ,
China, we have set an
ob-
'jective we ,couldn't achieve I
with the means we were. will-
-' ingto emPloy.".,,?:,
This is. of course, exactly the
argument .01 President .Chartes-
de Gaulle. When he saw, in:..
the Cuban missile. crisis,, that
we really meant business, that.,.
we were ? willing to "go for',:
broke," he backed us ttnequiv-?
ocally. and
'immediately, 'some-
thing even. our . close British.::,
allies certainly did not do. He
does not, believe we would bes,',
willing to, go all out ,against.;
Red China, which in one
rca-
on he presses for an attempt
to persurufe thej? Chinese to -1
agree to a neutralized
cast Asia.
what of the nearly $3
e poured into our effort:
'there at the Tate of $1,500,000 !:
a' day? And the -more tIvan?:.
i(') American lives we've al- '
ready evended? And our in-
crease by a third in the nun'-"'
her of our advisers? And this'
past weekend's strong response.
to the: firing on our destroyer?
All fine, because as:Church-
ill told us, we must "arm ?
to parley," and if we. itego-._
date. will salvage most if a
strong policy of "clear and
hold" gives us a maximum
.,amount of .pro-Western terri-
tory. But it takes 10 regular
troops to stand off one guer-
rilla, and our current ratio is
only about half that, not near-
ly enough.
DR. MORGENTHAL1 be-
lieves that the South Vietnam-
ese arc fighting with such. in- ,
difference because we have a
conception of what we .?%;ant
in the area but they do not.
He recalls an incident in which
an American . correspondent,
was with a 'small Sonth Viet-!
naniesc unit whose connnanki-;
ing officer, on learning that;
there was a North' Vietnamese;
road block ahead, .ordOred?
retreat. . ? ? .1
' . don t you blow it up?''.
.?as1+1 the American. Replied
the ; Officer: "You go. It's
:your war, ,not ours."
I Pe:does not believe
ithere is much' chance that,
lwar vedry as they are, "they ;
will ever regard this as their ;
war, hut does ,feel that North
Viet Nant's Ho Chi Minh might
become 'Southeast Asia's Tito,.
and' that i\ lad tze-tung's sue- :
eessors might he presstired
into accepting a neutralized
Southeast Asia.. if we forge a
coalition policy which our al-.
lies:. ? France and Britain in,
particular, can hack with en -
I hosiasin as they certainly don't
back our current one.
If de Gaulle was more hard-
headed than ? the colonists in
insisting that France cut 'her
losses by getting out of Algerla.
argues Morgenthau. our most
hard-headed policy might well
be . not' to insist on "i'ictoiy"
n . what was indo-china. but -
In, ress for neutral' i
p zat on
?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2014/01/31 : CIA-RDP73-00475R000302430002-4