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

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Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 
CIA-RDP80-01601R000300360021-0
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RIPPUB
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K
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2
Document Creation Date: 
December 9, 2016
Document Release Date: 
November 17, 2000
Sequence Number: 
21
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Publication Date: 
June 1, 1972
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MAGAZINE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP80-01601R000300360021-0.pdf181.34 KB
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.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 Approved For a ease 2000 04L: CW1 R?1 O1 ,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 Approved For l,ea ee20O01i03- 1074 rQA DP8O5Q4601ROm&OO360021-0 what our executive leadership knew and what it led the nation