On the Other Hand No Alliance

(The following represents the opinion of a minority of the CRIMSON editorial board, and was written by M. Dwin LANDAE.)

IT IS CLEAR by now that President Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia has angered many of those who would otherwise have been more tolerant of the Administration's "Vietnamization" policy, and has brought them to a more vehement stand against American military presence in Southeast Asia. Under these circumstances, a university-wide strike would not be without merit in consolidating opposition to the war and forcing Nixon to re-assess his flagrant ill-explored action.

It is unwise, however. to suppose that a university-wide strike will be effective in stopping the war or in reshaping the foreign policy which brought the war about. To believe it would assume that Harvard's governing boards share the same anti-war attitudes as students and faculty. Yet the extent to which the University engages in war and "defense" related research belies any notion that an effective alliance can be forged between the administration and those who are seriously interested in terminating American involvement in Southeast Asia.

The roots of American action in Vietnam and Cambodia are not to be found in any desire for military conquest, but rather in the government's determination to extend and perpetuate America's economic and social presence in those areas. The decisions to send troops and to escalate the conflict during the 1960's were prompted by the failure of other less drastic measures to insure continued American influence in Vietnam. Nixon's policy of phased withdrawal is in line with this one basic goal: a strategy involving negotiation and continued acts of military aggression is supposed to institute a regime in South Vietnam that will act in America's interests.

As the invasion of Cambodia has amply demonstrated. any anti-war movement that sanctions "Vietnamization" will not succeed in discrediting the rationale for American intervention nor prevent an extension of the conflict. Such an anti-war posture directly contradicts support for the National Liberation Front, which is fighting to eliminate American influence in Indochina. A winning antiwar strategy must be based on the conviction that the attempt to create an American sphere of influence in Vietnam has proven gravely injurious, not only to the Vietnamese, but also to the majority of Americans who have paid for or died in a war imposed on them by their government.

This is not the approach that those who run Harvard have adopted in opposing the war. Rather, their opposition has sprung largely from the proven ineffectiveness of military intervention in achieving America's basic strategy and the excessive material and political difficulties for the American government generated by the conflict. At a time when it appeared that armed escalation would he successful. Harvard's ROTC units provided a supply of junior officers with which to conduct the war: when escalation demonstrated itself insufficient to stem popular insurgency in Indochina, such agencies as the East Asian Research Center and the Center for International Affairs explored various social-scientific techniques to implement "Vietnamization."

As one might expect. Harvard's administrators have not shown themselves to be in basic sympathy with those who militantly challenge the American war effort and the University's active involvement in it. Harvard's treatment of its own student dissidents is exceptional proof of the University's willingness to impose repression on those who have fought for an end to ROTC and the CFIA. And Harvard's perpetuation of such sham disciplinary tribunals as the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities is a clear indication of how the administration intends to deal with further meaningful anti-war protest.

In view of these factors, it would be a mistake for those opposed to America's Southeast Asian policy to strike alongside the Harvard administration. To forge an effective protest against the war in Vietnam and Cambodia among students here and at other universities, it will be necessary to fight militantly against university administrators to induce them to eliminate their ties with the political and military apparatus which generated the war. Such militancy has thus far been futile because it has been confined to a few universities. But if students all over the country simultaneously launched a determined protest against on-campus military training and war related research, a critical blow would be struck against American presence in Southeast Asia.

It has been argued that students will detach themselves from the bulk of the war machine if they confine their anti-war activity to the relative isolation of college campuses. Since World War II, however, the government has become increasingly dependent on the intellectual resources of the American university to fuel that machine. The billions of dollars which federal authorities dole out each year to the nation's most eminent scholars to perform war-related research-not to mention the talent they avail themselves of in return-constitute an irreplaceable item on the government's yearly budget.

It is clear that students can wield their greatest influence and power within their own communities. It is unlikely in fact that students will be able to sustain long-term organizing against the war anywhere but on their own campuses. This has to do more than anything else with the seriousness of the organizing required to eliminate an evil that reaches to the root of the American power structure. Students were able to canvass with some success around anti-war referenda and moratoria, but those movements were innocuous and patently unsuccessful in stopping the Vietnam conflict. In their opposition to the war in Indochina, students must intensify the antigovernment, anti-administration drives on their own campuses to end war recruitment and research-and if necessary, close their campuses down until these abuses end.