Draft I - 10/31

As these lines are being written, the negotiations in Paris have ended their sixth month. Their course has been marked by the typical Vietnam syndrome; optimism alternating with bewilderment and frustration. Sudden bursts of activity have punctuated stretches of stagnation. As with every other aspect of the war in Vietnam, the problem has been of understanding the situation both on the ground and at the conference table. In its absence, criteria for progress have been hard to come by.

# I. THE SITUATION WITHIN VIETNAM

It is truism that negotiations are not autonomous; they can reflect an objective situation, not create it. But the American tragedy in Vietnam has been above all conceptual. Our preconceptions of war, of diplomacy, of political stability have fitted Vietnamese realities with the greatest difficulty, if at all. Any discussion of the prospects for negotiations must inevitably start with an analysis of the situation within Vietnam.

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Perhaps the best way to begin is with General Westmorland's visit to Washington in November, 1967. On that occasion, General Westmorland told a Joint Session of Congress that the war was being militarily won. He gave figures marking 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 -- the 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 overthrew the assumptions of American strategy. What had gone wrong, of the expectations of those who emphasized military means as well as those who stressed political and economic programs?

Perhaps the key problem has been the tendency to apply traditional maxims of both strategy and "nation building" to a situation which they did not fit. The American military

American strategy not only failed to answer the problem of the guerrillas -- which in turn were the military force of which the Vietnamese civilians were most aware -- it supplied no frame-work for negotiations. It could succeed, if at all, only through the complete defeat of North Vietnam which in turn was prevented by the restrictions imposed by the overall international situation. 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 problem for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, in short, was simpler 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 in being merely to keep/forces sufficiently strong to dominate the population after the United States' forces tired of the war.

to supply an answer to the question of political
legitimacy.

The TET offensive brought to a head the accumulated
weaknesses of the American position. As with every aspect
of the war, almost any assertion made about it is likely
To be true.

It is true that from a strictly military point
of view, the offensive was an American victory. Viet Cong
casualties were very great; 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 issue of the war has never been
purely, or perhaps even primarily, military. On the
psychological level, two sets of expectations have been in
conflict. The United States and Saigon have promised that
they would be able to protect those who had been
in
lot. The Viet Cong had never claimed that they were able
to provide permanent protection; they had threatened