The negotiations in progress for over seven months have been marked by the classic Vietnamese syndrome: optimism alternating with bewilderment; euphoria giving way to frustration. The halt to the bombing ushered in a new wave of high hope; yet a new deadlock is more likely than a rapid settlement. Nothing has been harder for Americans than to see the issue of Vietnam as a seamless web.

A civil war, that has torn a society for twenty years and has involved the great powers is unlikely to be settled in a single, dramatic stroke. Even if there were mutual trust -- a commodity not in excessive supply -- the complexity of the issues and the difficulty of grasping their interrelationship would make for complicated negotiations. Throughout the war, it has been difficult to define criteria by which to measure progress; it has been no easier with respect to the negotiations.

The dilemma of understanding the war in Vietnam is that almost any statement about it is likely to be true; the difficulty has been that in Vietnam, truth does not guarantee relevance.

- 2 -

# I. THE SITUATION WITHIN SOUTH VIETNAM

Any discussion of the negotiations in Paris must begin with a brief analysis of the situation in South Vietnam. For diplomacy can only reflect the situation on the ground.

The sequence of events that led to negotiations probably started with General Westmoreland's visit to Washington in November, 1967. On that occasion, General Westmoreland told a Joint Session of Congress that the war was being militarily won. He gave statistics defining our progress and indicated that a limited withdrawal of United States' combat forces might be undertaken starting late in 1968. On January 17, 1968, President Johnson, in his State of the Union address, emphasized that the pacification program -- extension of the control of Saigon into the countryside -- was progressing satisfactorily. Sixty-seven percent of the population of Vietnam was under government control and the figure was expected to rise. A week later, the Tet offensive

- 3 -

overthrew the assumptions of American strategy.

What had gone wrong? The basic problem has been con-
ceptual: the tendency to apply traditional maxims of both
strategy and "nation building" to a situation which they did
not fit.

American military strategy followed the classic doctrine
that victory depended on a combination of control of territory
and attrition of the opponent. Therefore the majority of the
American forces were deployed along the frontiers to prevent
enemy infiltration and in the Central Highlands where most of
the North Vietnamese main force units -- those units organized
along traditional military lines -- were concentrated. The
theory was that defeat of the main forces would cause the
guerrillas to wither on the vine. Victory would depend on
inflicting casualties substantially greater than what we
suffered until the losses became "unacceptable."

This strategy suffered from two disabilities: (a) the
nature of guerrilla warfare, (b) the asymmetry in the definition
of what constituted unacceptable losses. A guerrilla war differs

- 4 -

from traditional military operation because its key prize is
not control of territory but control of the population. At
issue is, above all, the expectations of the population. A
sense of security is vital. No positive program can succeed
unless the population feels secure from terror or reprisal.
For this reason, guerrillas rarely seek to hold real estate;
their tactic is to make cooperation with constituted authority
too dangerous through terror and intimidation. This problem
has been particularly acute in Vietnam. The population is
concentrated in the coastal plain and the Mekong Delta; over
ninety percent of the population live there. The Central
Highlands, on the other hand, are essentially unpopulated. The
locale of the main forces, was thus geographically removed
from that of the guerrilla conflict. Eighty percent of American
forces came to be concentrated in areas containing less than
four percent of the population. As North Vietnamese theoretical
writings never tired of pointing out, the United States could
not hold territory and protect the population simultaneously.

- 5 -

By opting for the first course, the United States' strategy produced what came to be the characteristic feature of the Vietnamese war: military victories that could not be translated into permanent political advantage.

Another result was that our conception of security did not coincide with that of the Vietnamese villagers. American maps tended to show three kinds of control: government, contested and Viet Cong. The formal criteria were complicated, but in essence, the first category included all villages which contained some governmental authority; "contested" referred to areas slated to be entered by governmental cadres. This representation was based on the notion that control was exclusive, that a given village was either under government or under Viet Cong control.

But the security map of the Vietnamese villages was quite different. The fact has been that the government controlled eighty percent of the country in the daytime, in the sense that government troops could move anywhere if they went in sufficient

- 6 -

force. The Viet Cong dominated an overlapping percentage --
in the nature of things hard to estimate -- at night. For
the villages, the dominant reality was not the presence of
government during the day but its absence after dark when
governmental cadres invariably withdrew from the villages into
the district or provincial towns. If armed teams of administrators
considered the villages unsafe at night, the villagers could
hardly be expected to resist the guerrillas. Thus, the
typical pattern in Vietnam has been dual-control with the
villagers complying with whatever force was dominant at a
particular part of the day.

This relationship was far from symmetrical, however,
The government to be effective had to be able to achieve a
degree of security comparable to that of an American city;
villagers had to be able to count on a high probability of
protection. The guerrillas' aim was largely negative: to
prevent the consolidation of governmental authority. They
did not need to destroy all governmental programs -- indeed

- 7 -

in some areas, they made no effort to interfere with them.

They did have to demonstrate a capability of punishing those who threw in their lot with Saigon. This would be accomplished by an occasional assassination or raid which would serve to sike confidence for months afterwards.

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, in short, faced a far
simpler problem than that of the United States. The United States
had to conduct its operations to lay the basis for an eventual
withdrawal. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong needed merely
to keep in being forces sufficiently strong to dominate the
population after the United States' forces tired of the war.
We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one.
We sought victory; our opponent aimed for our psychological
exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the
cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins, if he
does not lose. The conventional army loses, if it does not win.
The North Vietnamese used their main forces the way a bull-
fighter uses his cape -- to keep us lunging in areas of marginal

- 8 -

political importance.

Thus the strategy of attrition was in difficulty even with respect to the North Vietnamese main forces. Since Hanoi made no attempt to hold any territory, it proved difficult to make the North Vietnamese fight except at places which they chose, especially since the terrain in the Central Highlands cloaked their movements. In the event a considerable majority of engagements came to be initiated by our opponent which enabled him to regulate his casualties at least within certain limits. This made the so-called "kill-ratios" highly unreliable indicators of progress. They were falsified further by another asymmetry: the level of what was "unacceptable" to Americans fighting thousands of miles from home turned out to be much lower than that of Hanoi fighting in what it considered its own country.

All this caused our military operations to have little relationship to our declared political objectives. President Johnson had announced repeatedly that we would be ready to

- 9 -

negotiate, unconditionally, at any moment, anywhere. This,
in effect, left the timing of negotiations to the other side.
But our military deployment to be politically effective,
required total victory; it was not well designed to support
a negotiation short of surrender by the opponent. For purposes
of negotiations, we would have been better off with 100 percent
control over sixty percent of the country (to give us an
unambiguous bargaining counter), than with sixty percent
control of 100 percent of the country.

In these circumstances, our non-military program could
have little impact. And it suffered from conceptual diffi-
culties of its own. The so-called pacification program was
based on two propositions: (a) that governmental stability
depended on popular support and (b) that popular support could
be won by raising the level of economic activity in the country-
side. These assumptions were dubious on several grounds: In
Vietnam, governments tend to be popular because they are strong,

- 10 -

1

not the other way around. The weak popular base of the government reflected in large part its own internal divisions, which in turn were relatively independent of economic conditions in the countryside. Secondly, the root causes of governmental instability in Vietnam are not economic. They have to do with the transition from a mandarin to a modern society; they reflect the tensions which arise when a polity based on personal loyalties seeks to develop a sense of institutional legitimacy. Economic programs produced stability in Europe because existing institutions were threatened above all by the gap between expectations and reality. In Vietnam -- as in most developing countries -- the overwhelming issue is not to buttress but to develop a political framework. Indeed, economic progress is likely to undermine whatever political structure exists. (This is no argument against economic programs, only against postulating an automatic relationship

1. For a splendid discussion of this problem, see Frances Fitzgerald, "The Struggle and the War: The Maze of Vietnamese Politics" *Atlantic Monthly*, August 1967

- 11 -

between economic progress and political stability).

Indeed, the political power of the Viet Cong where it does not derive from terror, is due to the ability to develop a notion of political legitimacy. One ironic aspect of the war in Vietnam is that while we profess an idealistic philosophy, our failures have been due to an excessive reliance on material factors; the Communists, by contrast, holding to a materialistic interpretation of the world, owe many of their successes to their ability to supply an answer to the question of the nature and foundation of political authority.

The Tet offensive brought the compounded weaknesses of the American position to a head. To be sure, from a strictly military point of view, the offensive was an American victory. Viet Cong casualties were very large; in many provinces, the Viet Cong infrastructure of guerrillas and shadow administrators surfaced and could be severely hurt by American forces. At the same time, the war has always turned at least as much on psychological as on military factors. On the psychological

- 12 -

level, the issue has been between two sets of expectations.

The United States and Saigon had promised that they would be able to protect those who threw in their lot. The Viet Cong had never claimed that they were able to provide permanent protection; they had threatened permanent retribution to those who had collaborated with Saigon or the United States.

From this aspect, the Tet offensive represented a major setback for the United States. Some twenty provincial capitals were occupied by the Viet Cong. Though none were held for more than a few days (except Hue), the Viet Cong were there long enough to penalize those they had labelled collaborators. Hundreds of Vietnamese were executed on the basis of lists the invading forces brought with them. While the words "secure area" never had the same significance for Vietnamese civilians as for Americans, it applied most meaningfully to the provincial and district capitals. This was precisely where the Tet offensive took its most severe toll. The Viet Cong had made a point which does not have to

- 13 -

be repeated to be politically effective: there are no secure
areas for Vietnamese civilians. This has compounded the
already great tendency of the Vietnamese population to
await developments and not to commit itself irrevocably to
the Saigon government. The withdrawal of government troops
from the countryside to the protection of cities and the con-
sequent increase in Viet Cong activity in the countryside even
in the daytime, served to strengthen this trend.

For all these reasons, the Tet offensive marked the
watershed of the American effort; it meant that existing
programs had run out of time. No matter how effective our
actions henceforth, the prevalent strategy could no longer
achieve its objectives in a period acceptable to the American
political process. This realization caused Washington, for the
first time, to put a ceiling on the number of troops for
Vietnam. Denied the very large additional forces requested,
the military command in Vietnam felt obliged to begin a
gradual change of its peripheral strategy to one concentrated-

- 14 -

on the protection of the populated areas. This made inevitable
an eventual commitment to a political solution and marked the
beginning of the quest for a negotiated settlement. This set
the stage for President Johnson's speech of March 31, which
ushered in the current negotiations.

- 15 -

## II. THE ENVIRONMENT OF NEGOTIATIONS

Of course, the popular picture that negotiations began in May is only partially correct. Ever since the American commitment in Vietnam began to escalate, the United States and Hanoi have rarely been out of touch. Not all these contacts have been face to face. Some have been by means of public pronouncements. Between 1965 and 1968, the various parties publically stated their positions in a variety of forums: Hanoi announced Four Points, the NLF put forth Five Points, Saigon advanced Seven Points and the United States -- perhaps due to its larger bureaucracy -- promulgated Fourteen.

These public pronouncements produced a fairly wide area of agreement on some general principles. These include that the Geneva accords could form the basis of a settlement, that the United States' forces will ultimately be withdrawn, that the reunification of Vietnam should come about through direct negotiation between the Vietnamese, that (after a

- 16 -

settlement) Vietnam not contain foreign bases. The United
States has indicated that three of Hanoi's Four Points are
1
acceptable.

There is disagreement about the status of Hanoi's
forces in the South; indeed Hanoi has yet to admit that it
has forces in the South -- though it has prepared a "fall-back
position" to the effect that North Vietnamese forces in the
South cannot be considered "external." The role of the NLF
is equally in dispute. Saigon rejects a separate political
role for the NLF; the NLF considers Saigon a puppet regime.
There is no agreement about the real meaning of those
propositions which sound alike or how they are to be enforced.

In addition to negotiations by public pronouncements,
there have been secret contacts which have been described in

1. These are: withdrawal of United States' forces, acceptance of the Geneva agreements including neutrality for North and South Vietnam, and reunification on the basis of popular wishes. The United States has rejected the third point which implies that the internal arrangements for South Vietnam should be settled on the basis of the NLF program -- though it has agreed to consider the NLF program among others.

- 17 -

1. many books and articles. It has been alleged that these contacts have failed because of a lack of imagination or a failure of coordination within our government. (There have also been charges of deliberate sabotage). A fair assessment of these criticisms will not be possible for many years. It is clear that many critics vastly oversimplify the problem. Good will may not always have been present; but even were it to motivate all sides, rapid, dramatic results would be unlikely. For all parties face enormous difficulties. Indeed, the tendency of each side to overestimate the freedom of maneuver of the other has almost certainly compounded distrust. It has caused Hanoi to appear to Washington perversely obstinate and Washington to seem to Hanoi ostentatiously devious.

Both Hanoi and the United States are limited in their freedom of action by their assessment of the state of mind of their supporters in the South. They realize that the state of mind of the population of South Vietnam will determine the

1. The fullest account is to be found in Kraslow and Loory, *The Secret Search for Peace in Vietnam*, Random House, 1968.

- 18 -

outcome of the conflict. The Vietnamese people has lived
under foreign rule through the greater part of its history.
It has maintained a remarkable cultural and social cohesion
by being finely attuned to the realities of power. The
national symbol is not by accident the bamboo shoot which
bends but rarely breaks and which rights itself after each
holocaust. Survival for the Vietnamese has meant to calculate --
almost instinctively -- the real balance of forces. If
negotiations leave the impression that they are really a
camouflaged surrender, there will be nothing left to negotiate.
Support for the side which seems to be losing will collapse.
Thus, all the parties are aware -- Hanoi explicitly, for it
does not view war and negotiations as separate processes;
we in a more complicated, bureaucratic way -- that *the way*
things are done is almost as important as *what is done*. The
choreography of how one enters negotiations, what is settled
first and in what manner is inseparable from the substance
of the issues.

- 19 -

Wariness is thus imposed on the negotiators; a series
of deadlocks is difficult to avoid. There are no "easy"
issues for each issue is symbolic. On its merits, the debate
about the site of the conference -- extending over a period
of six weeks -- was trivial. Judged intellectually, the six
weeks were "wasted." But they did serve a useful function:
they enabled the United States to let Saigon get used to the
idea that there would be negotiations. It would not be sur-
prising if Hanoi had a similar problem with the NLF.

The same problem was illustrated by the way the decision
to stop the bombing was presented. Within twenty-four hours,
both Hanoi and Saigon made statements of extraordinary belli-
cosity which taken literally would have doomed the substantive
talks about to begin. But their real purpose was to reassure
each side's supporters in the South.

The situation confronted by Washington and Hanoi inter-
nationally, is scarcely less complex. Much of the bitter
debate in the United States about the war in Vietnam has been

- 20 -

conducted in terms of the categories of 1961 or 1962. The
failure to analyze adequately the geopolitical importance
of Vietnam then, indeed contributed to the current dilemma.
But the commitment of five hundred thousand Americans has
settled the issue of the importance of Vietnam. For what
is involved now is the degree to which other nations believe
they can rely on American promises. Other nations can gear
their actions to ours only on the basis of our performance.
However fashionable it is to ridicule them, "credibility"
or "prestige" are not empty phrases; they are a nation's
principal coin in relating itself to others. No doubt the
Vietnamese war is highly unpopular in many countries --
though the intensity of the criticism seems to increase
with distance from the scene. It does not follow that we
can remove the charge of bad judgment by a demonstration of
incompetence. Even critics are unlikely to be reassured by
a complete collapse of the American effort in Vietnam. Those

- 21 -

whose safety or positive goals depend on American promises
could only be dismayed. In many parts of the world -- the
Middle East, Europe, Latin America, even Japan -- stability
depends on confidence in American promises. Unilateral with-
drawal or a settlement which amounts to it even unintentionally,
could therefore only lead to international chaos ultimately.

Hanoi's position is equally complicated. Its concerns
are not global; they are, if anything, xenophobically
Vietnamese. But Hanoi is extraordinarily dependent on the inter-
national environment. It could not continue the war without
foreign material assistance. It counts almost as heavily on
the pressures of world public opinion. Any event that detracts
from preoccupation with the war in Vietnam thus diminishes
Hanoi's bargaining position. From this point of view, the
Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia was an unalloyed disaster
for Hanoi. In other words, for North Vietnam, survival depends
on a fine calculation of international factors -- especially

- 22 -

within the Communist world. Hanoi's margin of survival is
so narrow that precise calculation has become a way of life;
caution is almost an obsession. In order to retain its
autonomy, Hanoi must maneuver skillfully between Peking,
Moscow and the NLF. Hanoi has no desire to become completely
dependent on one of the Communist giants, and since they
disagree violently, they tend to cancel each other out.

There have been many reasons for Hanoi's careful maneuvering
prior to the beginning of negotiations. But surely a principal
reason was Hanoi's reluctance to risk its ties to Peking and
its control over the NLF simply -- at least in its eyes -- to
find out our negotiating program. Cultural traits and
Communist ideology compound this wariness. In short, Hanoi's
freedom of maneuver is severely limited.

The same is true of the Soviet Union whose large aid
to Hanoi makes it a semi-participant in the war. Moscow must
be torn by contradictory emotions. A complete victory for
Hanoi would tend to benefit Peking in the struggle for influence

- 23 -

in the world communist parties: it would tend to support the
Chinese argument that intransigence toward the United States
is, if not relatively without risk, at least manageable.
But a defeat of Hanoi would weaken a potential barrier to
Chinese influence in South East Asia, and enable Peking to
turn its full fury on Moscow. It would demonstrate Soviet
inability to protect "fraternal" Communist countries against
the United States. For a long time, Moscow has seemed paralyzed
by conflicting considerations and bureaucratic inertia.

Events in Czechoslovakia have reduced Moscow's use-
fulness even further. Any attempt by Moscow to settle the
war -- and of Washington to encourage Soviet mediation -- would
add fuel to the already widespread charge that the superpowers
are sacrificing their allies to maintain spheres of influence.
We would compound the already heavy costs of our pallid reaction to
events in Czechoslovakia if it could be blamed by our allies on a
quid pro quo for Soviet assistance in extricating us from South
East Asia.

- 24 -

This state of affairs would be enough to explain pro-
longed negotiations progressing through a series of stale-
mates. But the negotiating process is not eased by a vast
gulf in cultural and bureaucratic style between Hanoi and
Washington. It would be difficult to imagine two societies
less meant to understand each other than the Vietnamese and
the Americans. History and culture combine to produce almost
morbid suspiciousness on the part of the Vietnamese -- a problem
not unfamiliar even in dealings with Saigon. Survival for the
Vietnamese people has depended on the subtle skill in manipulating
physically stronger foreigners. The Vietnamese style of
communication is indirect and, by American standards, devious.
The fear of being made to look foolish seems to transcend most
other considerations. Thus even an American acceptance of
Hanoi's maximum program might well produce months of haggling
while Hanoi looks for our "angle," and makes sure that no
other concessions are likely. These tendencies are compounded
by Communist ideology which defines the United States as

- 25 -

structurally hostile and by Hanoi's experience in previous negotiations with the United States, it may well feel that the Geneva Conferences of 1954 and 1962 (over Laos) deprived it of part of its achievements on the battlefield.

All this produces the particular negotiating style of Hanoi: the careful planning, the subtle indirect methods; the preference for opaque communications which keep open as many options as possible toward both foe and friend (the latter may be equally important from Hanoi's point of view. These reconnaissance and methods cause Hanoi's diplomacy to operate in phases of/with-drawal and to assess the opponent's reaction. This is then followed by another diplomatic sortie to consolidate the achievements of the previous phase. In this sense, many "abortive" contacts with Hanoi probably served the function from Hanoi's point of view of defining the terrain. Thus, the methods of Hanoi's diplomacy are not very different from Viet Cong military strategy.

- 26 -

If this analysis is correct, few moves by Hanoi are accidental; even the most obtuse communication is likely to serve a purpose. On the other hand, it is not a style easily amenable to the sort of analysis at which we excel: the pragmatic, legal dissection of individual cases. Where Hanoi makes a fetish of planning, Washington is allergic to it. It prefers to deal with cases as they arise, "on their merits." Pronouncements that the United States is ready to negotiate do not guarantee that a negotiating position exists or that the United States' government has articulated its objectives. Until a conference can be scheduled, two groups in the bureaucracy usually combine to thwart the elaboration of a negotiating position: those who oppose negotiations and those who favor them. The opponents generally equate negotiations with surrender; if they agree to discuss settlement terms at all it is to define the conditions of the enemy's capitulation. Aware of this tendency and of the

- 27 -

reluctance of the highest levels to settle bureaucratic
disputes when they involve no immediate consequences, the
advocates of negotiations go along with avoiding the issue.
Since they generally have great confidence in their
negotiating skill, moreover, such a delay serves their own
bureaucratic purposes: it enables them to reserve freedom
of action for the conference room. Pragmatism and
bureaucracy thus combine to deprive American diplomacy of
criteria to determine progress especially during preliminary
soundings that precede formal negotiations. The legal bias
of our policymakers adds additional problems. We tend to
identify commitments with legally enforceable obligations.
This effort reduces sensitivity to intangibles of psychology
or measures of interpretation.

These traits of American diplomacy produced, for a
long time, a massive breakdown of communication with Hanoi --
especially in the preliminary phases of negotiations. This,
much more than deliberate ill will accounts for the many

- 28 -

false starts. While Hanoi was feeling its way toward negotiations, it bent all its ingenuity to avoid clear-cut, formal commitments -- less because it did not want to be committed than because of the complexity of its position. Washington insisted on legal formulae. Hanoi communicated with us through subtle changes of tense. Washington was unequipped for this mode of communication. In a press conference in February, 1968, President Johnson said: "As near as I am able to detect, Hanoi has not changed its course of conduct since the very first response it made. Sometimes they will change 'will' to 'would' or 'shall' to 'should,' or something of the kind. But the answer is all the same."¹

It may have meant nothing legally. But a different kind of analysis might have inquired why Hanoi would open up a channel for a meaningless communication. It would have been useful to assess the purposes of a government whose record of careful planning made it extremely unlikely that a change of tense would be inadvertent.

1. New York Times, February 17, 1968

- 29 -

Whatever the might-have-beens, Hanoi appeared to Washington as devious, deceitful and tricky. To Hanoi, Washington must have seemed, if not obtuse, then cannily purposeful. In any event, the real deadlock produced by the difference in negotiating style concerned the nature of "commitment" or the meaning of "trickery." This impasse lay at the heart of the recently broken impasse over the bombing halt.

- 30 -

[y]

### III. COMMITMENT AND RISK IN VIETNAM DIPLOMACY:
THE PROBLEM OF THE BOMBING HALT

The problem of the bombing halt occupied the first six months of the Paris talks. Part of the deadlock was no doubt caused by the difficulty of encompassing intangibles of style, concern and purpose into formal negotiating positions.

The formal positions were relatively straightforward.
The American view was encompassed in the so-called San Antonio formula which was put forth by President Johnson in October, 1967:
> "The United States is willing to stop all aerial and naval bombardment of North Vietnam when this will lead to productive discussions. We, of course, assume that while discussions proceed, North Vietnam would not take advantage of the bombing cessation or limitation." In its main outlines, the American position remained unchanged throughout the negotiations.

Hanoi's reaction was equally simple and stark. It scored the obvious debating point, that it could guarantee useful but

- 31 -

not "productive" talks since that depended also on the
United States. But in the main, Hanoi adamantly insisted that
the bombing half had to be "unconditional." It rejected all
American proposals for reciprocity as put forward for example by
Secretary Rusk: respect for the DMZ, no attack on South
Vietnamese cities, reduction in the level of military
operations.

This deadlock had many causes, but the difficulty of
each side to articulate its real concern surely was central.
Washington feared "trickery;" it believed that once stopped,
the bombing would be difficult, if not impossible, to start
up again even in the face of considerable provocation. It
needed, too, some assurance as to how the negotiations would
proceed *after* a bombing halt. Washington was aware that a
bombing halt which did not lead rapidly to substantive talks
could not be sustained domestically though it tended to phrases

1. See Secretary Rusk on Issues & Answers, Oct. 6, 1968.

- 32 -

its concerns more legalistically.

Hanoi in turn, had a special reason for insisting on an unconditional end of the bombing. On the face of it, it is subtle enough to know that there are no "unconditional" acts in the relation of sovereign states; if only because sovereignty implies the right to reassess changing conditions. But Hanoi has always placed great reliance on the pressures of world opinion; the "illegality" of the United States' bombing was therefore a potent political weapon. Reciprocity would jeopardize this claim; it suggested that United States' bombing might be justified in some circumstances. Hanoi did not want to give the United States a pretext under which by charging violations of the understanding, bombing could be resumed "legally."

As a result, six months were devoted on defining a quid pro quo which could be represented as unconditional. This tricky problem was further complicated by the United States insistence on some formal, binding assurance. This raised the

- 33 -

question of the nature of an international commitment. What is
the sanction for violation of an understanding? No court of
appeal exists. Obviously, the principal United States'
sanction is what the United States can do unilaterally should
Hanoi "take advantage" of the bombing pause. The protection
against a trick is less a formal commitment than Hanoi's fear
of the consequences of such an act. Communicating what we under-
stood by taking advantage, turned out to be more important than
eliciting a formal North Vietnamese response.

The final settlement of the problem seems to have been
arrived at by this procedure. We appear to have satisfied our-
selves that Hanoi is clear about our definition of "take
advantage" repeated by President Johnson in his address
1
announcing the bombing halt. Hanoi has not formally
acknowledged these terms; it has in fact insisted that the
bombing halt was unconditional. But Hanoi can have little
doubt that the bombing halt would not survive an escalation

1. *New York Times* November 1, 1968

- 34 -

of the war.

If the negotiations about the bombing halt demonstrate that tacit bargaining may play a crucial role in an ultimate settlement, they also show the extraordinary danger of neglecting the political framework. Washington insisted that the substantive negotiations which were always to follow the bombing halt, would include Saigon. President Johnson, in the speech announcing the bombing halt went, so far as to claim that Saigon's participation satisfied our definition of "productive." But he seems to have failed to obtain Saigon's agreement to the formula by which this was to be accomplished: that Saigon participate as part of the United States delegation and the NLF as part of Hanoi's. The wisdom of this formula is not at issue here though -- as will be discussed below. Saigon would be better off in some other forum. What gives cause for concern is the failure to bring Saigon along on a problem which we made the test case and which must have been under negotiation for months. A public rift between Saigon and Washington can

- 35 -

only complicate negotiations; it tempts Hanoi to use the Paris talks as an instrument of political warfare rather than for serious bargaining. Clearly, Saigon cannot be given an absolute veto, though it unavoidably will have a major voice in decisions affecting its own country. But this is not the choice before us. The imbroglio over the bombing halt makes clear that to handle negotiating primarily from the point of view of bargaining technique is too risky; needed above all is an agreed concept of ultimate goals and how to achieve them.

- 36 -

## IV. CEASEFIRE AND COALITION GOVERNMENT

Now that the bombing halt has been arranged, the United States faces a major conceptual problem: whether to proceed step by step, discussing each item "on its merits," or whether to begin by attempting to get agreement about some ultimate goals.

The difference is not trivial. If the negotiations proceed step by step through a formal agenda, the danger is great that the bombing halt will turn out to be an admission ticket to another deadlock. The issues are so interrelated that a partial settlement in most areas fore-shadows the ultimate outcome and therefore contains all of its complexities. Mutual distrust and the absence of clarity as to final goals, combine to produce an extraordinary incentive to submit all proposals to the most searching scrutiny and to erect hedges for failure or bad faith.

This is well illustrated by two schemes which public debate has identified as suitable topics for the next stage

- 37 -

of negotiations: ceasefire and coalition government.

It has become axiomatic that a bombing halt would lead -- almost automatically -- to a ceasefire. However, negotiating a ceasefire may well be tantamount to establishing the preconditions of a political settlement.

If there existed a front line with unchallenged control on either side as in Korea, the solution would be traditional and relatively simple. But there are no front lines in Vietnam; control is not territorial, it depends on the time of day. If a cease fire permits the government to move without challenge, day or night, it would define a Saigon victory. If Saigon is prevented from entering certain areas, it would mean in effect the partition of the country.

This would involve the following additional problems:

(1) it would lead to an intense scramble to establish predominant control before the ceasefire goes into effect;

(2) it would make next to impossible the verification of any

- 38 -

withdrawal of North Vietnamese forces that might be
negotiated; the local authorities in areas of preponderant
Communist control would doubtless certify that no external
forces were present and impede any effort at international
inspection; (3) it would raise the problem of the
applicability of a ceasefire to guerrilla activity in the
non-Communist part of the country; in other words, how to
deal with the asymmetry between the actions of regular and
of guerrilla forces. Regular forces operate on a scale
which makes possible a relatively precise definition of
what is permitted and what is proscribed; guerrilla forces,
by contrast, can be effective through isolated acts of terror
difficult to distinguish from normal criminal activity.

There are many other problems in the typical cases of
dual control: who collects taxes and how, who enforces the
ceasefire and by what means. In other words, a tacit de
facto ceasefire may prove more attainable than a negotiated
one. By the same token, formal negotiations for a ceasefire
would, in effect, predetermine the ultimate settlement. They

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are a form of global arrangement.

Where ceasefire negotiations would be a formula for approaching a final settlement without prejudicing it, the very introduction of the subject of coalition government would change the political landscape of South Vietnam. There can be no American objection, of course, to a coalition government freely negotiated between Saigon and the NLF.

The issue is whether the United States should be party to an attempt to impose such a solution. We must be clear that such an effort may well destroy the existing political structure of South Vietnam. It is likely therefore, to lead to a Communist takeover. Some urge negotiations on a coalition government for precisely this reason: as a face-saving formula for arranging the Communist political victory which they consider inevitable. But those who believe that the political evolution of South Vietnam should not be foreclosed by an American decision must realize that the subject of a coalition government is the most thankless and tricky area for negotiation by outsiders.

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The notion that a coalition government represents a
"compromise" which will permit a new political evolution
hardly does justice to Vietnamese conditions.

Theoretically, of course, it is possible to conceive
of a coalition government in which each party can protect
its own interests but is unable to impose its will on its
opponent. But such a solution is extraordinarily improbable.
Indeed, to "solve" the problems of Vietnam by means of a
coalition government makes as much sense as to attempt to
overcome the problems of Mississippi through a coalition
between the SDS and Ku Klux Klan. It is beyond imagination that
parties that have been murdering and betraying each other for
twenty-five years could work together as a team giving joint
instructions to the entire country. The image of a line of
command extending from Saigon into the countryside is hardly
true of the non-Communist government in Saigon. It would be
absurd in the case of a coalition government. Such a government

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would possess no authority other than that of each minister
over the forces he controls either through personal or
party loyalty.

To take just one example of the difficulties:

Communist ministers would be foolhardy in the extreme if they
entered Saigon without bringing along sufficient military
force for their protection. But the introduction of Communist
military forces would change the entire political complexion of
Vietnam; it would deprive the government of the one secure base
which it now has.

In short, negotiations seeking to impose a coalition
from the outside are likely to change/totally
the political landscape.
Since a coalition government is inconceivable with the present
Saigon government, any attempt to impose it is likely to be
successful only by eliminating the army and thus to remove the
chief counterweight to Viet Cong takeover. We would, in effect,
be settling the war over an issue least amenable to outside
influence, with respect to which we have least grasps of
conditions and the long-term implications of which are most

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problematical.

This is not to say that the United States should resist a coalition government if it came about through negotiations between the Vietnamese -- in that case, in fact, the United States would be in no position to resist. It does suggest that any negotiation about it by the United States is likely to lead either to an impasse or to the collapse of Saigon.

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V. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Paradoxically, where distrust is so deep and the issues so interrelated, the best way to make progress may be to agree first on an ultimate goal and to work back from this to the details to implement it.

This requires an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of both sides. Hanoi's strength is that it is fighting among its own people in its own country; while the United States is fighting far away. As long as Hanoi can preserve some political assets in the South, it retains the prospect of an ultimately favorable political outcome. Not surprisingly, Hanoi has shown a superior grasp of the local situation and a greater capacity to design military operations for political ends. Hanoi relies too on world opinion; it believes that the unpopularity of the war in Vietnam in many parts of the world will ultimately force an American withdrawal.

Hanoi's weaknesses are that superior planning can

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substitute for material resources only up to a certain
point; beyond it differences of scale are bound to become
significant. A point will inevitably be reached where
further escalation will require foreign assistance
of a magnitude which may threaten Hanoi's autonomy. This
Hanoi has carefully resisted. It has accepted foreign
equipment, but it has rigidly insisted on operating even
very advanced equipment with its own men. Yet

a prolonged, even if ultimately
victorious war might leave the country so exhausted as to
destroy the purpose of decades of struggles.

Finally, a country so sensitive to international currents
as North Vietnam cannot be reassured by recent developments.
From the point of view of Hanoi, the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia was a disaster. It removed Vietnam from the
front pages and thus reduced the concerns of world opinion.
Countries suddenly thinking themselves in need of United States'

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assistance were less prepared to jeopardize it for South
East Asian issues. The vision of a Titoist Vietnam suddenly
was less appealing -- all the more so as Hanoi's support of
Moscow -- explicable by Hanoi's dependence -- laid the
theoretical basis for an ultimate Chinese move against North
Vietnam. Finally, the new Soviet doctrine of the right to
intervene to protect Socialist domestic structures made a
Sino-Soviet war at least conceivable. For Moscow's accusations
against Peking have been, if anything, even sharper than
those against Prague. But in case of a sino-Soviet conflict,
Hanoi would be left high and dry. Thus, Hanoi may, for the
first time, feel that time is not necessarily on its side.

American assets and liabilities are the reverse of this.
No matter how irrelevant some of our political conceptions or
how insensitive our strategy, we are so powerful that Hanoi
is simply unable to defeat us. By its own efforts, Hanoi
cannot force the withdrawal of American forces from South
Vietnam. Indeed, all indicators point to a substantial

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improvement in the American military position. As a result, we have achieved our minimum objective: Hanoi is unable to achieve a military victory. Since it cannot force our withdrawal, it must negotiate about it. Unfortunately, our military strength has no political corollary; we have been unable so far to create any viable political structure that could survive after our withdrawal in the face of military opposition from Hanoi.

The structure of the negotiation is thus quite different from Korea. There are no front lines with secure areas; negotiations do not ratify a military status quo but create a new political reality. The political situation for both sides is precarious within Vietnam for the United States; internationally for Hanoi. Thus neither side can probably risk a negotiation so prolonged as that of Panmunjom a decade and a half ago. In such a situation, a favorable outcome depends on a clear appreciation of possibilities and a definition of objectives. The limits of the American commitment can be expressed in two

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propositions: (1) the United States cannot accept a military
defeat, or a change in the political structure of South
Vietnam brought about largely by external military force;
(2) once external forces and pressures are removed, the
United States cannot commit itself to keeping a particular
government in power in Saigon by force.

It follows that the American objective in negotiations
should be to bring about a staged withdrawal of external
forces, North Vietnamese and American. The internal structure
of South Vietnam should be left to indigenous processes. The
details of such a phased, mutual withdrawal are not decisive
for our present purposes and in any case would have to be left
to negotiations. It is possible, however, to list some
principles: (1) the withdrawal should be over a sufficiently
long period so that a genuine indigenous political process has
a chance to become established; mutual withdrawal cannot be

1. Governor Rockefeller proposed a plan based on four stages beginning with a withdrawal of external forces into regroupment areas through the introduction of international peacekeeping forces, the withdrawal of external forces and finally the negotiation of a final settlement by the two Vietnams. *New York Times*, July 1, 1968.

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treated as a camouflage for a Communist takeover; (2) the contending sides in South Vietnam should commit themselves not to pursue their objectives by force while the withdrawal of external forces is going on; (3) insofar as possible, the definition of what constitutes a political process should be left to the South Vietnamese.

If this analysis is correct, the course for American negotiators is clear: they should avoid negotiating about the internal structure of South Vietnam and concentrate on the subject of the mutual withdrawal of external forces. The internal structure of South Vietnam should be left to direct negotiations among the South Vietnamese. If we involve ourselves deeply in such an issue, we will find ourselves in a morass of complexities subject to two major disadvantages: (1) we would be the party in the negotiation least attuned to the subtleties of Vietnamese politics; (2) our pressure may wind up being directed against Saigon as the seeming obstacle to an

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accommodation. The end result may be the complete demoralization
of Saigon, a prolonged stalemate or a resumption of the war.

In such an approach, the negotiating procedure becomes
vital; indeed, it may well determine the nature of the outcome
and the speed with which it is achieved.

As part of the bombing halt, it was agreed that Saigon
join the conference as part of the delegation of Washington and
the NLF participate as members of the Hanoi delegation. This
would enable each to maintain that it did not recognize the
other side. This face-saving formula is an example of an
insistance by Washington on a solution which is neither in
our interest nor that of Saigon. It is not in our interest
because it makes talks about the internal structure of South
Vietnam unavoidable. It is not in the interest of Saigon
because the practical consequence of the formula is to place
it on the same level with the NLF. A belated recognition of this
fact has caused President Thieu to refuse to participate in the
conference after we had made Hanoi's agreement to Saigon's
membership a test case.

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Whether or not President Thieu reconsiders, the best way out would be a three-tiered approach. If the South Vietnamese finally appear in Paris, the big conference should be primarily a plenary legitimizing session for two subconferences: (a) between Hanoi and the United States, and (b) between Saigon and the NLF. If Saigon should continue obdurate, there should be an international conference on the style of the Geneva conference confined to working out guarantees for the other two agreements. Hanoi and Washington would discuss mutual troop withdrawal and related subjects such as guarantees for the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia. Saigon and the NLF would discuss the internal structure of South Vietnam. An international conference would work out guarantees and safeguards for the agreements arrived at in the other forums, including international peacekeeping machinery.

To be sure, Saigon, for understandable reasons, has consistently refused to deal with the NLF as an equal, international entity. But if Saigon understands its own interests, it will see that the procedure outlined here involves

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a minimum and necessary concession. The three-tiered approach gives Saigon a maximum of control over the issues that affect its own fate; direct negotiations between the United States and the NLF would be obviated. A sovereign government is free to talk to any group that represents an important power base domestically without thereby conferring sovereignty on it; it happens domestically all the time in union negotiations. Even if Saigon should refuse such an approach on the national level, it may well be attempted on the local level.

But why should Hanoi accept such an approach? The answer is that partly, it has no choice; it cannot bring about a withdrawal of American forces by its own efforts -- particularly if the United States adopts a less impatient strategy, geared to the protection of the population and minimum casualties.

Hanoi may also believe that being better organized and more determined, the NLF can win a political contest. (Of course, the prerequisite of a settlement is that both sides think they have a chance to win but neither side is assured of it.) Above all, Hanoi may not wish to give the United States a permanent

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voice in internal South Vietnamese affairs. It may be rein-
forced in this attitude by the belief that a prolonged
negotiation about coalition government may end no more satis-
factorily from Hanoi's point of view than the Geneva negotiations
over Vietnam in 1954 and Laos in 1962. As for the United States,
if it brings about a removal of external forces and pressure,
and if it gains a reasonable time for political consolidation,
it will have done the maximum possible for an ally -- short of
permanent occupation.

To be sure, Hanoi cannot be asked to leave the NLF to
the mercy of Saigon. While a coalition government is undesirable,
a mixed commission to develop and supervise a political process to
reintegrate the country -- including free elections -- would be
useful. And there must be an international presence to enforce
good faith.

To be sure, a negotiating procedure and a definition of
objectives cannot guarantee a settlement. If the other side
insists on total victory, the war must continue. Any other posture
would destroy the chances of a settlement. In that case, we

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should seek to realize unilaterally as many of the objectives
of the negotiations as possible. We should adopt a strategy
which is plausible because it reduces casualties. It should
concentrate on the protection of the population thereby under-
mining Communist political assets. We should strengthen the
Vietnamese army to permit a gradual withdrawal of some
American forces. Saigon should broaden its base so that it is
stronger for the political contest with the Communists which
sooner or later it must undertake.

It should seek to negotiate local arrangements to remove
the internal affairs of South Vietnam from international forums
insofar as this is possible. No war in a century has aroused
the passions of the conflict in Vietnam. By turning Vietnam
into a symbol of deeper resentments, many groups have defeated
the objective they profess to seek. However we got into Vietnam,
whatever the judgment of our actions, ending the war honorable
is essential for the peace of the world. It can be in nobody's
interest to unloosen forces that would ruin all prospects of
international order. The people of Vietnam have suffered enough

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not to have to prolong their agony by being made the test case
for frustrations far away and little connected with local
issues. A new Administration must be given the benefit of
the doubt and a chance to move toward an objective which is
finally in everybody's interest: a peace of reconciliation
which grants the people of Vietnam what they have struggled so
bravely to achieve: an opportunity to work out their own
destiny in their own way.