Foreign Relations: The Ultimate Self-Interest

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Fulbright favors neutralization in the long run and hopes for an improvement in the political and military situation in Viet Nam chiefly as a way to get the U.S. to the conference table in a better bargaining position. Should present U.S. policy become untenable, leading to a choice between staying in through escalation or getting out through negotiation, Fulbright would get out—but he does not believe that the choice is imminent. He strongly opposes escalation and argues: "You can't selectively do a little bombing"—although the U.S., under the personal direction of Lyndon Johnson, is doing precisely that right now (see THE WORLD). Once the U.S. starts using force on North Viet Nam, says Fulbright, there is no telling where it might lead, because "you can't see down the road far enough."

In these views Fulbright expresses the feelings of many of his colleagues. A majority of Senators and Representatives wants to continue present U.S. policy, hoping that it can somehow be improved and that the U.S. can eventually escape what Howard University's Bernard Fall describes as the choice between "unattainable victory and unacceptable surrender." They are resigned to the prospect outlined last week by the Army Chief of Staff, General Harold Johnson, who foresees the possibility of a ten-year war in Southeast Asia.

The U.S. may be willing to carry on the war for another decade—its financial cost of $2,000,000 a day is tolerable and so are the U.S. casualties, including 358 deaths so far (compared with 20,685 French dead in Indo-China between 1945 and Dienbienphu). The question is whether the South Vietnamese in the long run will be willing or able to continue the war. The argument pushed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff-that the only way to retrieve the situation and bolster Saigon is to start punishing North Viet Nam—finds only a negligible echo in Congress or, for that matter, in the White House.

Says Senator Mansfield, in arguing against escalation: "In the end we might find ourselves in a full-scale war all over Asia." Most academic experts, blissfully without Government responsibility, also violently oppose escalation. The University of Denver's Dr. Josef Korbel, among others, fears that escalation would only drive the Russians and Chinese back together again.

There are dissenters. Occidental College's Dr. Edward W. Mill favors use of the Seventh Fleet to carry "selective air strikes" to North Viet Nam bases and supply lines. The University of Michigan's James K. Pollock contends that "complete military occupation of South Viet Nam would be preferable to withdrawal."

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