CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000800170020-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 30, 1999
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: February 16, 1966
• Content Type: OPEN

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
oved For ReIyaag'IA`DP75-00149R000800170020-7
STATINTL
CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA
Mr. YOUNG of Ohio. Mr. President,
President Johnson has stated repeated-
:y his desire is to negotiate for an armis-
tice and cease-fire in Vietnam. He has
submitted the Vietnam question to the
United Nations Security Council. This
action at long last is what he declined
to do months ago. He has stated that
there are no conditions attached to our
efforts to sit down at a conference table
to try to accomplish peace in Vietnam.
He said he would go anywhere in the
search for peace. Then he proposed that
the Geneva Conference of 1954 could be
reconvened and we would participate in
this without conditions.
Unfortunately, these peace gestures
were made by our President directly fol-
lowing the time he ordered a resumption
of bombing of North Vietnam. This was
poor timing, it seemed to me.
Furthermore, it is doubtful if the limit-
ed amount of destruction perpetfated in
bombing targets in North Vietnam is
justified by the loss of,precious lives in
planes shot down and by the destruction
of more than $600 million cost value of
our bombers and helicopters.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk is nei-
ther frank nor honest in dealing with
the American people. In his speeches he
repeatedly says that if the Communists
from the north would leave their neigh-
bors to the south alone, we Americans
would withdraw our forces. He was
asked, at a meeting of the Foreign Rela-
tions Committee of the Senate whether
he would agree to the Vietcong being
represented at peace talks. He refused
to answer this question. He said he
would have to consider it. Secretary
Rusk's position is at valiance with the
recent public representations of Presi-
dent Johnson.
Of course the Vietcong or National
Liberation Front, so called, must be rep-
resented by delegates at any conference
seeking to end this conflict. The mem-
bers of the National Liberation Front, so-
called, or Vietcong are in control of near-
ly 75 percent of the land area of South
Vietnam, whereas the Saigon government
of Prime Minister Ky, controls only 25
percent of the land area of South Viet-
nam. We are involved with more than
200,000 men of our Armed Forces in a
civil war in Vietnam.
The leader of the National Liberation
Front in South Vietnam, Nguyen Huu
Tho, is a Saigon lawyer. He is not a
Communist. He was born and reared
in South Vietnam. Prime Minister Ky,
who was installed as dictator by 10 gen-,
erals who revolted and maneuvered a
coup overthrowing the civilian govern-
ment of Prime Minister Quat, was born
and reared in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The
time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. YOUNG of Ohio. Mr. President, I
ask unanimous consent for 2 additional
minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. With-
out objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. YOUNG of Ohio. Prime Minister
Ky talks about his democratic govern-
ment of South Vietnam. It is evident
that he could not remain as Prime Minis-
ter of the Saigon Government for 1 week
without the support of the CIA and of the
Armed Forces of the United States.
Let us hope that the Vietnam question
will be considered very soon in the United
Nations or by reconvening the Geneva
Conference of 1954. Vietnam is of no
strategic importance to the defense of
the United States.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently
published an editorial, "The U.N.'s Hard
Task in Vietnam." I ask unanimous con-
sent that this editorial be printed in the
RECORD at this point as a part of my
remarks.
Also, Mr. President, in the Washing-
ton Post of Tuesday, February 15, there
appeared a very convincing column by
Walter Lippmann entitled, "Confronta-
tion With China." I commend this to
my colleagues and ask that it also, be
printed in the RECORD At this point.
There being no objection, the editorl'al
and article were ordered to be printed in
the RECORD, as follows;
[From the St. Louis (Mo.) Posc-Dispatch.
Jan. 31-Feb. 6, 19GG1
THE U.N: S HARD ?rASK IN V.:f:TNA. i
In submitting the Vletnari cucstion to
the United Nations Security Council. Presi-
dent Johnson has done what for many
months he declined to do. The reversal of
policy is welcome, and all who want peace in
southeast Asia will hope that the Security
Council can find a way out of the morass.
If it is to do so with American help, an-
other policy reversal will be required: we
shall have to stop in-,isting thas the Viet-
cona, who control two-thirds of south Viet-
nam, be excluded from peace tacks and from
the political future of the country.
Unfortunately the President has mace the
U.N.'s task extremely difficult b resuming
the bombing of North Vietnam. That he re-
Jected the counsel of Pope Pattl, U Thant,
and many others for extension of the bomb-
Ing pause, at least for a period long enough
to permit U.N. consideration of hi: request in
a relatively calm atrno;phere, can only be re-
garded as tragic.
Mr. Johnson says that resumed bombing is
necessary to save the lives of Aniuric ut and
South Vietnamese troops. The conic ration
is difficult to accept in the absent:: of a show-
ing that any lives wert lost as a r-.sult of the
37-day suspension that ended Monday.
On the contrary, this was a period of u.-
usually light operations by the Vietcong. It
vies a period when the United 3tatcs con-
tinued its own troop buildup with impunity:
4,000 more marines, ila addition to the 1,000
landed 2 weeks ago, went ashore only last
Friday. It was a period when American air
attacks throughout =north Vietnam con-
tinued with unabated cury.
The President also hinges his decision on
President Ho Chi MInli's letter of last Friday,
which he interprets as total and unqunlilled
rejection of his peace talks propc_..l. Yet es
Marquis Childs reported in th' Pcst:-Dls-
patch, Ambassador Harriman was tcll:ng the
dissident Senators on Thursd, y. before He's
reply was broadcast, that the dccisioi, o re-
f sume bombing had already been in:_ue
Ho's position, it seems to us, 1:. subject to
two Interpretations. While he lain down un-
acceptable conditions; for peat-. sue n r
American recognition of the Natio,-:a.l Lib-
eration Front as the sole repretentatve of
the South Vietnamese people, is dui not
make these demands a corditio:i :or ttegu-
tiations, and seemed to be op:t,ing a dia-
log on the President's 14 poin_:. as com-
pared with his own 4 pelnts. Mr. John-
son claims to base his 1-1: p:l it?s on the
Geneva agreements of 1954. F_o claims to
base his 4 points on the E:,1110 nrccments.
Clearly, the way to a political ref lemeut lies
in a reconciliation of the two pr xgratns cal-
culated to apply the Geneva accords to the
situation that now exists. In ot.r view, Ho's
letter did no necessarily rule out in ultimate
settlement along thos.! lines.
He did, however, seem to rule cut the pos-
sibility of any political settlement so long as
North Vietnam Is under bombing attack.
The resumption of bombing ther:fore '.vouid
appear to make negoti.,aiuna :,tore difficult
than ever to obtain. One must hope that
the Security Council pan overcome the dif-
ficulties, whether through Pope Paul's sug-
gested arbitration procedure or otherwise.
The essentials of t;ti prolilciit r 'main what
they were. Ho Chi M:nil interprets Amer-
ican policy as deternalard to irnp,>se an anti-
Communist puppet lovernini?itt on -,outh
Vietnam as a whole: The Unitec. States in-
terprets Hanoi policy as determined to im-
pose Communist rule upon Sou:.h Vietnam
as a whole. At the taino time. the United
States claims it want, no bases in Vietnam
will accept neutrality, and favors free elec-
tions to give the South Vietnamese a gov-
ernment of their own choice. Ho Chi Minh,
for his part, claims to want only "inde-
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pendencc, and neutrality"
for South Vietnam.
In general, the stated objectives of both
sides are within negotiable limits if each can
be convinced that the other means what it
says in terms of specifics. Somehow the
United States must demonstrate that it is
ready to accept Vietcong participation in
the political future of South Vietnam, and
Hanoi must demonstrate that It does not de-
mand a Vietcong monopoly of that future.
An agreement based on these principles,
and on the essentials of the Geneva accords,
would correctly reflect the military realities,
and pave the way for an end of intervention
on boot sides. It is earnestly to be hoped
that the Security Council, despite the Windt-
caps under which it now must labor, will be
able to move both sides 111 this direction.
FEB 16 1966
CONFRONTATION WITH CHINA
(By Walter Lippmann)
The televised hearings, at which General
Gavin and Ambassador Kennan appeared be-
fore the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
have done an inestimable service to our peo-
ple. 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 po-
sition that there Is not much difference be-
tween the Gavin-Kennan thesis and the
Rusk-McNamara policy.
There is in fact a radical difference, the
difference between a limited and an unlim-
ited war. The President may not want to
fight an unlimited war. I have no doubt my-
self that he does not wan: to do so. But the
promises he made in Honolulu which the
Vice President is now broadcasting so lav-
ishly in Saigon and Bangkok. are-if they are
to be taken seriously-an unlimited commit-
ment 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 con-
fronting China in a land war on the main-
land 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 seri-
ousness 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 inter-
vention 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 Title 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?"
60,000 troops would make it. Our infantry
could easily contain them. I expect thr-.
actual fighting in North Korea to end by
Thanksgiving. We should have our met.
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 tlic
Yalu. By mill-November at least 300,00+?
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 Com-
munist armies in Korea would reach a peak .
strength of more than a million men.
On the question of the need to contai--1
the military expansion of Red China, there
is virtually universal agreement in this coun-
try. 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 dii"-
ferences are very striking.
The cardinal difference is that our Chine,-;e
containment policy is a unilateral Americaa
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 doin:;,
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 miscalcu-
lations and blundering of the Vietnamer,e
war, we have alienated and indeed neutral-
ized all the great powers of the Asian maih-
land.
Thd difference between the two contait,-
ment policies in Europe and In the Far Es t
Is the difference between realism and ver-
balism, between professionalism and aln: -
teurism. Our present policy is as if we bed
set out to contain Stalinist Russia by ignor-
ing the British, the French, the Italians, and
the Germans, and had decided to make our
stand against communism by the defen..e
of-let us say-Bucharest.
Mr. MORSE. Mr. President, I colri-
mend the Senator froth Ohio for the
statement which he has just made and
for his fearless leadership in the Senate
on this foreign policy issue.
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 fgrce.
If they tried to cross the river our Air Force
would slaughter them. At the most perhaps
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