NIXON'S WAR GAMBLE AND WHY IT WON'T WORK

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-01601R000300360021-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 9, 2016
• Document Release Date: November 17, 2000
• Sequence Number: 21
• Publication Date: June 1, 1972
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

.STATINTL
Ag?"p f or Release 2001 /0U-"T'C k` O dT %1 R00
E Stone Reports:
Ji
mine
8 %J'%7 slid u, iw~
The Washington dispatch which fol-; that could ignite. World War, III. A
lows had to be written and put into gamble. of such magnitude, taken by
type before Nixon's speech the night. one man without any real consulta-
of May 8, announcing his decision to' tion with other branches of govern-
t
North Vietnam's harbors and to, .ment, can only be described as an ac
smash its rail and road connections
with China. But the disclosures to
which the article calls attention pro-
vide the explanation of Nixon's long-
range strategy, its weakness and its
risks.
It is characteristic of Nixon's
secretiveness that National Security
Study Memorandum No. 1-which is
discussed and partly reprinted be-6
low-though intended in 1969 to lay
the' groundwork for his policies on
Vietnam, nowhere asked the advice
of intelligence agencies and the
bureaucracy, military and civilian, on
`the very policy of "Vietnamization"
he adopted.. But at two points in
their responses, there were warnings
against US- troop withdrawal and
doubts expressed about ARVN's ability
over the next few years without
jeopardizing this."
to stand alone. Four military agencies
(VS MACV, CINCPAC, JCS, and the
Office of the Secretary of' Defense)
warned against "a too hasty with-
drawal of US -forces." The CIA went
further and said progress "has been
slow, ' fragile and evolutionary,"
adding quietly, "It is difficult to.see
how, the US can largely disengage
I JUN 1972
STATINTL
t:,r .:: 4.~J~-+Sss:.~. tiasJ~a:w~'tia1J.:~sa~ 4srs:~
of dictatorship and war. Nixon-one
must assume-is as ready for the
domestic--as for--the world conse-
quences. The martial law imposed in
Saigon may be a foretaste of the
repression to be 'expected at home if
the situation deteriorates.
In the literally terrible calculus of
events, as I write a few hours after
the deadline passed in Haiphong
harbor, the question is whether Mos-
cow 'and Peking will act with the
same primitive irrationality that
Nixon has, putting prestige, face, and
machismo ahead of civilization's sur-
vival, or whether their leadership will
take the blow at whatever. cost to
their own political future, hoping
that Hahoi's armies will shortly have
achieved their aim, which clearly is
not territory 'but the destruction of
Saigon's will to resist and an end of
the Thieu regime. But even if the
crisis is thereby resolved "peacefully"
at the expense of the Vietnamese
people North and South, it is dif-
ficult to seea successful summit, a
SALT agreement as a sequel.' It is
easier to see a new' era of heightened
suspicion, tension, cold war, and
escalating arms race.
Was this cheerful idiocy merely
marking time while waiting for the
Kremlin to make up its collective
mind or would we see an opera
bouffe cave-in instead of an apoca-
lypse? If .brinkmanship paid off, what
new hair-raisers lie ahead? Just after
dawn this morning at the Capitol vigil
under a cloudless blue sky as the
mines were activated 9,000 miles
away, one listened to the cliches with
which men comfort themselves in
crisis and could only hope that by
some miracle the American people
might assert themselves and force a.
change of course.
Catch the Falling Flag
by Richard J. Whalen.
Houghton Mifflin, 308 pp., $6.95
National Security. Study
Memorandum Nod- 1:- = =
The Situation in Vietnam
Anonymous Xerox Pubrication,
548 pp. ,
Four years ago Richard Nixon was just
where he is now on Vietnam, Le., on
the brink of a wider conflict. He didn't.
think the war could be won, but didn't
want to lose "leverage" by saying so in
public. His one hope, his "secret plan"
for "an honorable peace,". Le., for
snatching political victory from mili-
tary defeat, was to shut off Haiphong
and bring about a confrontation with
the Soviet Union. This is exactly where
he-and we-are today. After all the
:years of costly losses, all he offers is a
biggei gamble.
Catch the Falling Flag, Richard J.
Whalen's memoir of his service as a
speech writer for Nixon in the 1968
campaign, could not have appeared at.
a better' moment. It provides the full
text of the speech Nixon was about to
give . on his own plan to end the war
when Johnson announced on March 31.
that he would not run again. Two days
before, conferring with his speech
writers, Nixon startled them by an
extraordinarily-and uncharacteristi-
cally-candid remark. ."I've come to
the conclusion," Whalen quotes him as
saying, "that there's no way to win the
war. But we can't say that, of course.
It is now clear that Nixon took the
gamble on Vietnamization in the in the tense moments at the White
hope that if this failed, a bigger House just before press time Nixon
gamble would succeed. The bigger was doing his best to pantomime a
gamble, as the reader will see, was victory, calling in the pTiotographers
either to buy off Moscow and Peking and giving them sixty feet of film
or, if that- didn't work, to use the instead of the usual forty to record a
threat of a nuclear confrontation to- visit with Soviet Ambassador Dobryn-
make them stand by while we de- in and Soviet Trade Minister Patoli-
stroyed North Vietnam from the air. chev. "The atmosphere of the ses-
In other words, if. his gamble on- sion," said the pool report in the
South Vietnam's future failed, he was press room, "was extremely amiable,,
and is prepared to gamble America's cordial, and pleasant. There were lots
future and the world's. This is the of smiles all around and the President
reality behind Nixon's proclaimed seemed particularly ' buoyant." Do-
search for "a generation of peace." brynin looked a bit uneasy, . but
The mining of North Vietnam's Patolichev, when asked later whether
ports a*b ~' Cl Site ~ st on. ~rP8.o d1
by sea anti hir is potentially the gravest theca e3er u1St -
decision ever taken, by an American '
n .i .. ? 0...- .? ....... ,..c -. .,1..,., f, ..,
1fM03( &0001'1ao say the
opposite, just to keep some degree of
bargaining leverage."
 STgTI IT4
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,Tune 1972
The Pe111agold Plajje3:s--
A DISCUSSloI1
The publication of "confidential" materials has inevitably given rise
to a debate concerning a number of different but related problems:
To what extent do the revelations contained in the documents throw
light on events or policy decisions with which they deal? To what ex-
tent, if at all, does the publication of the information contained in the
documents jeopardize the processes of executive decisionmaking?
How can the conflict between the public's right to know and the ex-
ecutive's need for confidentiality be reconciled? The editors of the Po-
litical Science Quarterly have in ti : past published a number of arti-
cles dealing v;iih the issue of access to governmental information and
the terms on which that access is made available, notably, Adolf A.
13erle's and Malcolm Moos's reviews of Emmet John Ilughes, The
Ordeal of Posner (PSQ, LXXIX, June 196.) and ITheodore Draper's
review of Jero:i-e Slater, Intervention and NeSafintion: The United
States and the lloirrinicnn Revolution' (PSQ, LXX.XV1, March 7977).
The recent publication of the Pentagon Papers has given the contro-
versy ncv urgency. U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota,
candidate for the Democratic party nomination for president, and
Professor John P. Roche, from 1966-68 special consultant to President
Lyndon Johnson, were asked by the editors of the Political Science.
Quarterly to-review the Pentagon Papers and to debate in print the
political and legal issues to which their publication has given rise.
STATINTL
Publication of the Pentagon Papers has raised a storm concerning
the right of the press to publish classified government documents.
But the contents of the papers are so sweeping in their disclosure,
of official suppression of the realities in Vietnam, so revealing
of the disastrous, secretly conceived policies and practices which
led us into this tragic war, that it is impossible--in fact it misses
their true significance-to discuss them in such abstract terms.
The integrity of our democracy is profoundly itlvolved, not.
only in the constitutio:ra.l sense with respect to the Nvarnlalarlg
power, but in the basic sense of the reality of government by pop-
ular rule. It is axiomatic with us that a free people can remain
free only if it is enlightened and informed. It is axiomatic with
us, as well, that a free press is essential to the creation and inairi-
tenance. of an enlightened and informed people. A press which
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what our executive leadership knew and what it led the nation