Long before the collapse of the US-backed regimes in Saigon and Pnom Penh, Mr. Alastair Buchan, former director of the Institute of Strategic Studies, London, wrote in his book appropriately titled The End Of The Postwar Era*, “There might, for instance, be virtually no American military presence….. west of Pearl Harbour…. probably air units only in South Korea, one or two bases in the Ryukus, and three air and naval bases in the Philippines plus one or two ports or airfields in the Micronesia. In the Pacific the United States seems likely by the second half of the decade to be broadly in the same strategic position as it was earlier in the twentieth century, that of one great power among several, and no longer in the same position to act as the guardian of peace in the Pacific in the sense that she has conceived her role for over 20 years after the McArthur occupation of Japan.”
Concern
Mr. Buchan did not base his assessment primarily on America’s failure to win the war in Indochina or even on the unpopularity of US bases in Asia. He based it on more important factors like the decline in the relative economic strength of the United States as reflected in large trade deficits year after year and the pressure on the dollar, the change in the strategic nuclear balance as a result of the steady increase in the Soviet power, the shift from partly conscript armed forces to wholly volunteer ones, the disenchantment with external commitments at home and the increasing concern with domestic problems like the minorities, pollution, the crime rate and so on.
He argued that while the Soviet Union faced no insurmountable problem in maintaining large conventional forces, the United States would not be able to do so partly because of the increased cost of weapons and partly because of the change-over to wholly volunteer services. By the summer of 1973, he noted, there was considerable doubt whether the United States could reach the target of 2,230,000 volunteers set by Mr. Nixon or sustain it in the second half of the decade, specially as the number of 18-year-old American males begins to decline after 1977. He quoted Pentagon experts as saying that “a figure of two million may be the best attainable after 1975” and Dr. Morris Janowitz as suggesting that 1,750,000 (about half the Soviet number) would be the more realistic estimate.
This is not being recalled in order to suggest that the American failure in Indochina is by itself the result of the decline in the country’s power. The United States could have failed to win the war in Viet Nam even if the Soviet Union had not achieved nuclear parity with it or even if it had not run into massive trade deficits. For, from the very beginning, the nature of the conflict there has been such as to place America at a grave disadvantage. But as it happens, first the direct involvement in Viet Nam and then the failure and the withdrawal, have coincided with the decline in America’s relative power. And this is the reason why men like Mr Kissinger are obsessed with the question of the credibility of US power.
In the entire post-war period there has always existed a gap between the US ambition to establish a world order under its auspices and its power. Stalin defied it at a time when it had a monopoly of atomic weapons and when it effortlessly dominated the world economic scene. Chairman Mao Tse-tung and his colleagues carried their revolution to a successful conclusion in the teeth of opposition by the US. And perhaps even more disturbing from its point of view, Mr. Nehru and other Asian leaders like Mr. Sukarno and U Nu refused to fall in line despite all its blandishments and threats. But never before in the past 30 years have US policy makers faced the kind of dilemma they do today. They have had to make hard choices in the past as over the Berlin airlift in 1948, Korea in 1950, and Cuba in 1962. But the challenge facing them now is of a different order. For the first time since Pearl Harbour, they are called upon to retrench their commitments and with those their country’s influence and do it not only amidst charges of unreliability but also amidst the breakdown of the national consensus and considerable self-doubt.
Decline
The otherwise justly maligned Mr. Nixon grasped the implications of the decline in America’s relative power and initiated the process of adjustment with the new realities as soon as he moved into the White House in January 1969. That very year he propounded the Guam Doctrine whereby the United States announced its decision not to commit its soldiers in Asian wars ever again in future. More important, he began sending signals to China that he was ready to come to terms with it and he proclaimed his interest in détente with the Soviet Union.
Mr. Nixon, of course, committed unforgivable crimes like the invasion of Cambodia, the mining of Haiphong and the bombing of the Haiphong-Hanoi area in the wholly erroneous belief that he could thereby strengthen his negotiating position and compel Hanoi to accept the status quo. But the broad drift of his approach, particularly regarding US relations with Russia and China, was realistic. His successor’s problem is that he has to continue the process in the absence of the myth that the United States could still do whatever it liked.
An objective assessment of the importance of this myth in America’s relations with the Soviet Union and China on the one hand and its allies on the other is virtually impossible. But US policy makers have attached considerable importance to it. Therefore its collapse in Indochina cannot but give them the feeling of being naked.
The problem is not unmanageable. But it is not wholly imaginary either. While America’s West European allies have, for instance, talked a great deal about the threat of what they call Finlandisation – in plain terms it means reduction of their countries to the status of Finland vis-a-vis the mighty Soviet Union – they have done precious little to strengthen their conventional forces to bring them on a par with those of the Soviet Union in Eastern and Central Europe. Indeed, the task seems to be beyond them in view of the unwillingness of their peoples to make sacrifices which military parity with the other side requires. Similarly, the USA’s Asian allies are vulnerable to internal subversion and external pressure. Apart from Australia and New Zealand, Japan is one major exception by virtue of its homogeneity and its strong economy. But American policy makers are uncertain which way it will move if its feeling of vulnerability increases as it almost certainly would if tension builds up in South Korea.
Status
There is a corollary to all this. Since America’s status vis-a-vis its allies had depended on the protection it has assured them – it is immaterial whether the threats as perceived by them have been real or imaginary – its relations with them must undergo significant changes. It would take one form in the case of the EEC and Japan, which have been clamouring for a status appropriate to their economic strength, and another in those of allies like Thailand and the Philippines whose rulers believe that they must reduce, if not altogether eliminate, US military presence in order to win acceptance by their neighbours. In neither case can the process of adjustment be painless.
An assessment of this kind inevitably runs the risk of making it appear that the other side, which means the Soviet Union, does not face equally intractable problems. In reality, Moscow is not free to take advantage of the American debacle. Any such attempt on its part can consolidate the Atlantic alliance and, even more important, persuade the United States to draw closer to China and encourage it in its effort to forge an anti-Soviet front. America is still the strongest power in the world, both militarily and economically, and the Soviet leadership is too shrewd to ignore this fact. In fact Moscow does not appear sure that the decline in US power is entirely to its advantage. Its fears find expression in its talk of the threat of fascism. Incidentally this is also a signal by the Kremlin to Washington that the former has no desire to push the latter in this difficult period.
But whatever the Soviet response to the dramatic demonstration of the American failure, it can no longer believe that it can establish a world order under its auspices. The dream lies shattered in the battlefields of Viet Nam and Cambodia. Indeed, Hanoi had exposed the hollowness of its concept of five power centres as well. In a sense Mrs. Gandhi did the same in 1971 and President Sadat in 1973. Small and weaker countries, too, matter. This means that the world has entered an era of great complexity and the habits formed during the cold war will ill-serve those who make policies for their countries.
The Times of India 7 May 1975
*Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, £4.25