TOPICS: Anti-communism and Munich

THERE IS a good deal of argument these days over the relevance and validity of the Munich analogy. Dean Rusk argues that the loss of South Vietnam might mean the first step toward global, nuclear war just as surely as the Franco-British capitulation to Hitler in 1938 hastened the outbreak of World War II.

Several days ago in Washington, the President said, "The stand we are making in that country now is just as important to you as the stand that we made in your parents' and grand-parents' homelands in years past."

This, of course, is a rather interesting intellectual maneuver on the part of the Administration. For it is performing the common but dangerous trick of projecting what is certainly historical hindsight into the future.

In any case, it is doubtful whether the Administration really believes that Ho Chi Minh is another Hitler and South Vietnam anything like Czechoslovakia. They probably know quite well that it is one thing to back our industrialized allies--and quite another to intervene militarily in the affairs of unfamiliar states just free of Western dominion.

Actually, it is quite possible that the Munich analogy, in the eyes of Washington officials, is merely a rhetorical device to vivify their policy of combating Communism in non-Communist countries.

This, by itself, is not a represensible exercise in official propaganda. Governments never have distinguished themselvse as merchants of intellectual honesty. But what makes the frequent invocation of "never another Munich" a particularly dangerous ploy is the absence of any detalied discussion by the government of the decidedly non-monolithic character of international Communism.

For it is a simple fact that many Americans in 1967 view Communist-backed popular insurrecitons in underdeveloped nations in almost the same manner they viewed Premier Khrushchev's promise to "bury" us in the late 1950s. This is not to say that most Americans attach the same importance to a jungle outpost 10,000 miles away they do to the holding of the holding of the garrison in West Berlin.

Quite to the contrary, they have increasing difficulty in understanding why the government has committed so many troops and dollars to the defense of a nation with little apparent strategic or financial value to America.

At the same time, however, most Americans are unable to disabuse themselves of the notion that countering Communist thrusts around the globe is one of the most important jobs of their government.

In this era, the expansion of Communism is a far more complicated affair than it was in the late 1940s. To take the two most notable examples of late, both Ho Chi Minh and Fidel Castro gained their power as effective opponents of oppressive, reactionary regimes before they set up popular Communist dictatorships. There is little doubt, of course, that they are far less resented by their subjects than were French General Henri Navarre and Fulgencio Batista.

The failure of the Administration's domestic propaganda activities comes down to this. Its rhetoric is designed for an age when Communist subversion and penetration were directed in large part from outside the target nation.

In the late 1940s and 1950s, there was good deal of evidence--much of which has since been discredited--that the Soviet Union had designs on a wide variety of nations around the globe and was actively engaged in subverting them.

Things have changed. And a large part of the American mind has changed. It isn't really difficult to see that Soviet expansionism has been contained--by whatever means--and that Communism is only an incidental factor in third-world upheavals nowadays.

YET THE United States is in Vietnam, talking about Hitler and Ho, Communism and Nazism, and apparently forgetting that governments that do not abuse and exploit their peoples are usually pretty resilient. Effective government in a pre-industrial society is really at issue in Vietnam, not the chimera of Hitler-like expansionism.

There may, however, be more disturbing implications in the government's use of mythology during the present war. For by raising the spectre of another Munich, the Administration is trying to divert attention to a foreign problem--Communism--that has really lost much of its relevance to the welfare of this nation in 1967. Unfortunately, most citizens, however shaken by the summer's spate of race riots, are far more emotional over international problems than the United States' domestic tranquility.

That is why their Congressmen are enthusiastic about funding new military gadgets and somewhat glum about backing programs to elevate living standards in America's numerous poverty pockets. In fact, the greatest effect of the government's foreign policy mythology may not be to counter dissent, but to divert attention from more explosive problems at home.

As important perhaps, the incessant din of government propaganda in the past few years may put the President in serious political trouble should he decide to disengage quickly from the Vietnam conflict, if he obtains a "sell-out" peace.

For what bothers most citizens in opposition to the current war policy is not the entire tenor of U.S. political-military activities abroad. In the case of Vietnam, they are most bugged by a sense of pique that the war has gone on so long, without any beneficial result, without any current prospect of conclusion.

Yet any sudden and complete reversal of the current pattern of escalation would probably meet far more vociferous opposition than the present policy. And the President could even fall victim to voters who take his Munich propaganda too seriously.

In any case, the President and his successors will be far more wary in any future foreign adventures. They should realize that intervention abroad should not be so lightly undertaken as Munich scare propaganda is currently dispensed at home.