VORLD OUTLOOK.
(PERSPE CTIVE ‘MON DIALE
Vol. 5, No. 12 March 24, 1967
THE MEANING OF THE GUAM CONFERENCE
From the evidence to be gathered in the press, Johnson has apparently decided to take the advice of the worst war hawks in the Pentagon and try for a military "victory" in Vietnam. Apparently he has been sold on the idea that a relatively early victory is possible, provided sufficient firepower is concentrated on the Vietnamese people, and that he will then be able to retrieve his steadily worsening political position inside the United States, appearing before the electorate in the 1968 election as the man who "saved" Vietnam from "the Communists" and achieved "peace" -- if at the cost of some blood and sacrifices.
The conference at Guam, if the same sources are to be trusted, is concerned with implementing this decision. On the one hand, the expansion of the war to new, previously barred levels will be detailed. The escalation will involve broadening the scope of the war geographically, including a series of new targets for the most fiendish and destructive weapons, and further stepping up the quantity of bombs poured on a hapless people lacking the necessary defensive weapons and left in the lurch in this by their most powerful ally, the Soviet government.
On the other hand, to assure carrying out these objectives with the efficiency demanded by Johnson, the entire staff in Saigon is to be reorganized. A "relief" team is to be sent in, properly instructed in ruthlessness. Johnson wants action and he wants it damn quick! Among the new appointments is Robert Komer, graphically described by Max Frankel of the New York Times theo 17] as Johnson's "blowtorch" in Vietnam, a man who has been "pressing for ever greater and faster efforts in pacifying the hostile country-
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side, controlling the nation's distorted economy and steering it toward constitutional government." According to Frankel, "He has often grated on the nerves of many Americans in Saigon, and has been berated by them. But he has satisfied the President with apparent results and with his enthusiasm and optimism about the trend of events."
Another of the appointees is Ellsworth Bunker, who played a key role in putting down the uprising in the Dominican Republic, saving the Trujillo machine and setting up the pro-Johnson government of Joaquin Balaguer.
Johnson's calculations -- or the calculations coming out of the electronic computers in the Pentagon -- are based mainly on the Kremlin's betrayal of the Vietnamese struggle. Kosygin-Brezhnev are following a policy of deploring the U.S. aggression, of sending sufficient aid to Hanoi to make the record, but in no case of sending the kind of weapons that could give the American generals pause in escalating the war.
Besides this, it is perfectly clear that the Pentagon considers China to be incapable of intervening effectively at present due to the profound political crisis affecting the Mao regime. But the Pentagon is not certain how long this crisis will last ~~ therefore the impulse to "strike while the iron is hot."
Can Johnson gain a military victory? Already, as James Reston of the New York Times notes [March 16], "In Vietnam the United States is dropping more bombs than it did at the most severe and savage part of the European war..." According to Washington sources (apparently the Pentagon) cited in the March 17 New York Times, 68,000 tons of bombs were dropped on north and south Vietnam in February. In Europe at the peak period, according to the same source, 80,000 tons of bombs a month were dropped. In the South Pacific in World War II, the figure was 29,000 tons a month; in Korea 17,000 tons.
By increasing the bombing and employing more deadly types of bombs, Johnson may succeed in converting Vietnam into a vast graveyard. Would that be a victory? If so, it would be of the same kind achieved by Hitler with his gas ovens and would so be remembered by humanity for all time to come.
And if Johnson is striving for a military victory, how does he expect to hold his achievement without ground forces? As in all wars, the infantry will be called on to seize and to occupy. This would signify a bloody shambles with many an American home in mourning. The opposition to the war would mount by leaps and bounds inside the U.S.
A third possibility is that Johnson hopes that a few swift additional turns of the screw will cause the tortured Vietnamese people to collapse and sue for "peace" on his terms. Even if considerable "pacification," or mopping up were still required, the end of major fighting, he may expect, would cause the opposition at home to also collapse.
Johnson appears to rule out three possibilities: (1) failure to achieve his military objectives due to the capacity of the Vietnamese people to survive and continue fighting; (2) a turn by either the Soviet or Chinese governments in the direction of an effective countermove; (3) deepening political opposition at home no matter what he does from now on.
These are very real possibilities. If any of them, or any combination of them occurs, Johnson's schemes will in the end merely facilitate his political downfall.
Perhaps Johnson senses this. Despite the calculation of the war hawks that Johnson can get away with escalating the war to an entirely new level and that this may well prove sufficient to bring an early military "victory," it is clear that Johnson is engaging in an immense gamble in which the odds against him are steadily mounting.
A single miscalculation and the resulting defeat to U.S. imperialism will take on major historic proportions, particularly because of its psychological consequences on an international scale, and not least of all in America. Is this the source of the note of panic in Johnson's latest move?