Volume 8, Number 5 · March 23, 1967
The Pause That Refreshes
By John McDermott
The lunar New Year truce in Vietnam last month seemed to offer an unusually good opportunity, not only to bring about an acceptable peace in Vietnam but to help accomplish four stated goals of US foreign policy. At last the Soviet Government, which long claimed no jurisdiction in Vietnam, was ready to join with the State Department in a limited partnership, to bring off some sort of compromise settlement. The significance of this development was heightened by the fact that Soviet-American cooperation would obviously take place at the expense of a convulsed and diplomatically inert China. Within Vietnam itself, in the opinion of many qualified observers, a military stalemate prevailed and this too seemed to lend itself to the limited ends of measured diplomacy rather than to the millenial hopes of unrestricted force. Finally, and perhaps of greatest importance, the Administration had recently been confronted with solid evidence, in the testimony of Harrison Salisbury of The New York Times, that the objectives of Hanoi and the National Liberation Front differed in important ways; in particular, Mr. Salisbury reported, the NLF seemed as publicly committed to an independent, non-socialist South Vietnam as Walter Lippman himself. Thus there appeared to be room for a settlement which would preserve not only Washington's 'face' but also the substance of the policy which, it is said, led to US intervention in Vietnam in the first place. In short, if events were ruled by 'pragmatism,' hard-nosed 'realism,' tough-minded 'moderation,' and all the other somewhat unattractive but obviously utilarian characteristics so cherished by our foreign policy establishment, the Tet cease-fire was but a prelude to better things. Or so it would seem.
Feature, 2088 words
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