Post Ngo Policies

Satisfaction with the fall of the Ngo family cabal in South Vietnam must not distract the United States government from the full policy reappraisal which the coup both permits and requires.

The most immediate issue is this country's attitude and relationship toward the new South Vietnamese government. Although the full extent of American participation in the coup may never be known, Washington is certainly responsible in part through the indications it issued in recent weeks that an efficient, effective military revolt in Saigon would not be deplored. For this reason, the U.S. can hardly complain about last week's activities, and it would not want to anyway, since the new government could hardly be worse than the Ngos' for either South Vietnam or the United States. All early evidence shows that the Ngos' Buddhist replacements will be much more popular domestically and are more interested in prosecuting the war against the Vietcong guerrillas rather than aggrandizing themselves. Nevertheless, the United States should do whatever it can to encourage the elimination of any residual repression and to promote free elections.

The people of South Vietnam, who have known little peace since the Japanese attacked them in the Second World War, would benefit and so would the United States. The mere removal of President Diem and his family has rasped some of the tarnish from the American image, but genuine reforms would wipe off even more. A shiny image is exceedingly important in a largely ideological world-wide contest that presents the U.S. as the champion of a system claiming democratic advantages over the more authoritarian alternatives.

Guerrilla warfare may make free elections impossible of course, but if it does not, the elections should be held, even in the unlikely event that the factions favored by the U.S. do not seem assured of victory. If the candidates advocating a determined campaign against the Vietcong cannot win a free election, then they almost certainly cannot win a war which depends as much at this one does upon the support of the populace. To win a military victory would require, in effect, that America wage war on South Vietnam and whoever might come to her assistance. If this is the requirement for military success in South Vietnam, a free election would perform the very valuable service of informing America of this sobering fact.

Whether a freely elected or self-installed government is established in Saigon, the new conditions there require the United States to reconsider also its long-range policy in the area. If alterations are necessary they can probably be accomplished less painfully at the beginning of relations with a new regime rather than later, when both sides will have settled again into the old molds. A prompt re-evaluation is all the more imperative, since the U.S. will now be collaborating with a more respectable regime, which would be much more difficult to abandon honorably than the Ngos. As long as Diem and his friends lorded over the country, the White House could always have asserted, if a military withdrawal became necessary, that America had not capitulated to the Communists but rather that the Ngos had not cooperated very well in keeping the wolves from the door.

Without this relatively easy exit, the U.S. must define and publicize more clearly its military and other interests in the area. This requires that the government, press, and professors scrutinize the present policies. The domino theory, which says that South Vietnam is the first piece in a tightly ranked line extending thousands of miles across the Pacific, may not have been obsolete when John Foster Dulles propounded it. But its validity is suspect if some pieces are unwilling to topple dutifully at a push transmitted from China through their neighbors. The assertion that a Vietcong victory in South Vietnam would eventually "outflank" India needs further explanation, and American economic interests in the area ought to be more fully appraised. The consequences for American versus Chinese prestige of a Vietcong victory or even of a protracted stalemate must be weighed against the advantages of withdrawing American troops before the issue can become the U.S. versus China.

If such a rethinking indicates that defeat of the South Vietnamese government would be tantamount to victory for the Chinese and mortally injurious to essential American interests in Asia or elsewhere, the United States should commit itself to whatever effort is necessary to overcome the Vietcong soon. If the reappraisal indicates anything less than Chinese hegemony following a Vietcong victory, the test of whether U.S. troops continue fighting for Saigon should be whether they can be withdrawn by the end of 1965, beginning on a regular schedule at the end of this year. This might open the field to the Vietcong; in that case the war could not have been won without the full commitment justifiable only when American defeat would be a major Chinese triumph.

This proposal might appear too rigid, except that it holds less prospect for disaster than the present policy. Until the last few weeks, support for the Diem government remained dangerously open-ended. United States personnel in South Vietnam could always plead for just a little more time to corral the Vietcong. The more often this plea was granted, American involvement increased, and the more difficult it became for Washington not to grant the plea the next time. The danger lay in the possibility of having finally to withdraw in great ignominy, to hang on embarrassingly and expensively, or to expand the fighting into an unwanted major war.

The attractions and advantages of the proposed policy of withdrawing by the end of 1965 are three: The Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have estimated that by this time the American mission in South Vietnam will be able to train the huge South Vietnamese army sufficiently to conduct the war successfully itself. If it was accurate then, it should now allow for a margin of safety, since virtually all observers agree that the war will fare better under the new government.

If the estimate was badly inaccurate or is upset at any time by unpredictable developments, a pre-announced timetable for withdrawal will leave the U.S. a broader option than it otherwise would have enjoyed for revising its policy or continuing the withdrawal.

Planned withdrawals could save the United States from stranding itself in the South Vietnamese swamps because of policy inertia. When the approved American line was to support Diem regardless of his liabilities because Washington was concerned with defeating the Vietcong, this support was justified by two main points in favor of Diem: (1) Any attempt to overthrow him would disrupt the war effort and (2) no suitable substitutes existed.

Unless the new government develops much differently from what most observers, governmental and private, expect, both these predictions will be rendered false. That the two were ever believed with the conviction they once were indicates that the U.S. government sometimes deludes itself to avoid embarrassing and difficult policy changes. It may have learned from the Ngo family episode, but if it has not, scheduled withdrawals can prevent a repeat performance.