Taking History Case by Case

FOR STANLEY A Karnow '47, the old George Santayana quote, "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it," rings only partly true Arthur Schlesinger Jr. '38's line is equally true he says that "Those who remember history are condemned to repeat it."

This is a curious position to take for a man who has written what many call the best and most comprehensive history of the Vietnam War, and has received critical acclaim and high ratings for his 13-part IV documentary on the war for PBS being shown for the second time this summer.

Yet Karnow's approach to a subject that has stirred up so much interest among college-age students and among others for whom the late '60s are already history is important for those who cry "Vietnam" whenever there is potential Commie trouble in a Third World hot-spot.

Karnow is no apologist for Administration adventurism in Central America, but, from a purely historical perspective, he argues convincingly that Vietnam is as weak a historical precedent for non-interventionism as the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis were for the opposite.

"Vietnam has become a metaphor: the Vietnam analogy is being tossed around for every situation the United States may get involved in whether it's the Middle East--at the moment it happens to be Central America--so the question is being raised. Are we getting involved in another Vietnam?"' Karnow said recently over coffee and Gitanes in Boston.

The gruff-voiced Karnow, who began reporting from Southeast Asia in 1959 for Time and Life, makes a point of not capitalizing on isolationist sentiment aroused by Vietnam, though he understands that much of the interest among college-age students stems from just such a concern.

The so-called Vietnam legacy is a potent political tool these days, and Karnow, who makes strong claims to historical objectivity in his book and documentary, must realize that his current educational mission can only work to raise fears about any military involvement abroad.

At the least, Karnow finds the public and Congress much more conscious of foreign policy matters today than they were in 1964, when 16,000 military advisors were stationed in Vietnam and the U.S. government was spending half a billion dollars a year on operations there.

"A public opinion survey [in 1964] asked the question 'What should we do next in Vietnam?' and 70 percent of the answers were. 'We're not paying attention to it'." Karnow recalled. "Today the opinion polls show far greater interest on the part of the public and much greater caution about involvement, not only in Vietnam, but in other places."

IN THE CASE of Central America, Karnow argues that Vietnam has not made the U.S. public gun shy, but rather more inclined to protect the national interest through non-violent means. It seems, however, that Karnow is underestmating the sway Vietnam holds over the thinking of the 18-25 crowd, which forms a large part of Karnow's lecture-circuit audience.

One recent manifestation of the "no-more-Vietnams" sentiment among youth was the surge of support for Sen. Gary W. Hart (D-Colo.) in the recent primaries after Hart, without the sublety or the shadings of a Karnow or even a Walter F. Mondale, advocated an unequivocal non-interventionist line vis-a-vis the Middle East and Central America.

Though the appeal of the Hart pitch is understandable, it is exactly the type of misguided response Karnow says he is trying to avoid.

Karnow probably realizes that the increased awareness about Vietnam--which he obviously finds beneficial for the country--could be channeled into a more explicitly isolationist foreign policy and a butt-headed unwillingness among youth to involve itself in any military enterprise to defend the national interest.

To counter this, Karnow seems to come off as more conservative--or at least moderate--than he would otherwise. He notes that most criticism of his PBS series has come from the left end of the political spectrum. But his pitch is basically non-ideological. He demands that we know more than a superficial history of Vietnam--his book traces Western involvement in the region back five centuries--but also that we know when and when not to use that knowledge.

Karnow cites Dean Rusk, secretary of state to John F. Kennedy '40 and Lyndon B. Johnson and a man involved in Far East policy for three decades, as a prime example of someone who failed to use history properly. "I went down to Athens. Georgia to interview Dean Rusk, and said what was your mindset, what was your thinking, and he said. 'I was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in 1933, and I was there at the Oxford Union that night when they voted not to fight for King and country. I could remember that the Berlin Radio used that the next day or the next week as a sign of how soft the British were and the British were ready to appease the Nazis, and I vowed then and there that we had to stop aggression whenever it took place.'"

Karnow added, "He carried that same memory into the fifties and the sixties, and Nazi aggression and Nazi expansionism in Europe in the thirties had nothing to do with the Vietnam War. It was a totally different situation."

If history really does "cut both ways," as Karnow says, then we must find a foreign policy that winds a middle road between those who are continuously refighting the second World War and those who are forever refighting Vietnam. It has been exactly our reliance on historical precedents--be they proper or improper--that makes us see what is not there or become blind to the real threats.

Says Karnow, "What is important in dealing with any area, whether you're dealing with Vietnam, or Central America, or the Middle East, or Western Europe, is take it all case-by-case. Try to understand the realities of each area you are going to get involved in, and don't come out of it with cockeyed analogies."

In these days of wild adventurism and stubborn isolationism, this is good advice indeed.