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It is time to break out of that trap, to take a more detached and longer perspective. If he did so, Nixon could perhaps develop and articulate a policy for Southeast Asia that fits logically with his constructive overtures to China and the Soviet Union and his grand design for peace. At present, even the most sophisticated young anti-Communist in Asia must be totally confused at the thought of mighty air and naval armadas massed against an apparently independent little Communist nation while the President negotiates cordially with the two major Communist powers.
The abandonment of apocalyptic rhetoric might even lead to the realization that the practical negotiating positions of Washington and Hanoi are not hopelessly different. While Communist oratory cannot be taken at face value, Hanoi does regard its public pronouncements seriously. North Viet Nam's Le Duc Tho professes that Hanoi does not demand "a Communist takeover" in South Viet Nam as part of a settlement, will not attack withdrawing U.S. troops and will return the P.O.W.s. But he does demand the removal of South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu. For its part, the U.S. can hardly abandon Thieu in the present circumstances. If Hué should fall, his position could become academic. If Thieu's troops hold, then he probably would remain a strong national leader. Thus military events in Viet Nam, rather than any action by Washington, will probably determine Thieu's fate. This is part of the test of Vietnamization, although it is also a probable script for continued deadlock and a prolonged war.
There is in short a vast difference between humiliation and the reality that Nixon's oratory only beclouds. His own deeds in the realm of constructive negotiating offers in fact belie the narrow negativism of his public words.
It will inevitably be difficult for Americans to accept the proposition that so many of their young men died or were maimed without achieving the full goals for which three U.S. Presidents sent them to Viet Nam. But there is a sensible, minimum American goal in Viet Nam that can yet be achieved: the restoration of peace without imposing any Communist government on South Viet Nam. That would not be defeat. Practically, the U.S. can hope for little more.
By shedding his preoccupation with false fears of the psychological damage that an unhappy end to the Viet Nam War might wreak on America, Richard Nixon would be free to exercise the immense power that every President has to influence public reaction in his special preserve of foreign relations. And by putting Viet Nam into its proper perspective on the grand scale of global affairs, the U.S. might well gain rather than lose credibility as a world power —and grow in moral stature as well.