Few people in the world are as courageous, pragmatic or polite as the North Vietnamese. Even so, it is remarkable that they have agreed to receive Mr. Henry Kissinger in Hanoi within less than a fortnight of the signing of the cease-fire agreement in Paris. Only the very brave can be so forgiving and practical.
Mr. Nixon is insulting them by talking of contributing to their country’s reconstruction as an “investment in peace” and thereby suggesting that Hanoi’s expectation of US assistance has influenced its decision to welcome his special foreign policy adviser so soon after suffering the most intensive bombing in history at American hands. Though no one expects him to appear in sackcloth and ashes, he ought to have the decency as well as the humility to see that all of America’s money cannot expiate for the crimes it has committed in Viet Nam – in the south it claimed to be defending against communism as much as in the north it vainly sought to bring to its knees.
The North Vietnamese could, if they chose, have insisted on war reparations from the United States and they could have counted on the support of most people, if not most states. If they have not made this demand in their prolonged talks with Mr. Kissinger and other US representatives, it cannot be because they have made the cold calculation that such an approach would be self-defeating. The real reason why they have not cared to raise this issue is that having brought the world’s most powerful military machine to a grinding halt they are sufficiently self-confident to open a new chapter in the history of their relations with Washington. That is also why they have agreed to receive Mr. Kissinger. They have no time for recrimination or self-adulation.
Reciprocate
As it happens, the United States, too, seems ready to reciprocate to a fairly large extent. Though its leaders, with the notable exception of Mr. Kissinger, continue to speak a language which suggests that they still hope to be able to blackmail and tempt the men in Hanoi into acquiescing into whatever plans they may have for Indochina, it is safe to presume that the US administration is anxious to bring the most disastrous episode in American history to an end.
This is not to suggest either that Mr. Nixon is about to abandon General Thieu to his fate or that he will not resume bombing if the North Vietnamese decide to take over the south in one massive assault. But his commitment to the General is not as firm as his rhetoric suggests and he is not likely to remain as averse as he has been in the past to the concept of a tripartite coalition government between the South Vietnamese army, the NLF and the neutralists under a different leader in Saigon once the cease-fire has been consolidated. In other words, the chances are that Mr Nixon may in course of time reconcile himself to the installation of a non-communist government in Saigon which is genuinely independent and neutral.
This may look like a rash assessment in the absence of sufficiently strong evidence to support it. But what evidence could one adduce in 1944 and 1945 to show that the United States could soon be making a large contribution to the economic rehabilitation of West Germany and Japan and enter into an alliance with them? As then, the likely course of American policy in the future should now be assessed not in terms of the past but in terms of the new international environment and domestic compulsions. The Americans have a good deal of resilience and it will be wrong to underestimate their capacity to change courses in response to international realities.
Objective
General Thieu apparently knows this better than most others and that is why he did all he could to frustrate the peace talks between Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Le Duc Tho. Though he finally failed to achieve his objective of keeping the war going with full US involvement, he is not reconciled either to sharing power with the NLF or to America’s attempt to loosen its ties with him. In a bid to keep the US tied to his regime, he can be depended on to do all in his power to wreck the fragile peace in South Viet Nam. But he will be fighting a losing battle if only Hanoi and the NLF show the necessary patience and moderation and do not fall into the trap he is bound to lay for them and Mr. Nixon.
The clue to America’s future actions not only in the two Viet Nams but in Indochina as a whole is to be found in its relations with China. Just as its obsession with China, first as part of an alleged communist monolith and then as the headquarters of so-called wars of national liberation, led it into the Viet Nam misadventure, its anxiety to forge close ties with Peking must now dissuade it from doing anything there that would frustrate its larger objective. Mr. Kissinger will be underscoring the link between America’s China and Indochina policies when he flies to Peking from Hanoi with a two-day rest in an undisclosed place in some other Asian country.
While America’s present desire to befriend Peking is in sharp contrast to its fear of China in the past, Chinese policy towards America, too, has undergone a sea change in recent years, and this has contributed as much to the cease-fire in Viet Nam as the transformation in the US view of China as a potential friend and bulwark against the Soviet Union.
China was opposed to the Paris peace talks when they opened in 1968 and it made no secret of its displeasure with Hanoi for having agreed to them. Clearly the dominant faction in Peking then wanted the United States to be defeated and humiliated, though it is highly doubtful whether Chairman Mao Tse-tung shared this view. There were some indications of a change in the Chinese attitude in the wake of the armed clashes with the Soviet Union on the Ussuri in March 1969. In early 1970 China agreed to resumption of Warsaw talks with the United States but called them off when Mr. Nixon suddenly ordered his forces into Cambodia.
All in all, the new Chinese policy, with its pronouncedly anti-Soviet and by implication pro-US bias, can be said to have crystallised only in early 1971 when Chairman Mao personally took the initiative to invite the American table tennis team to Peking. By then Marshal Lin Piao, who is said to have favoured better relations with Moscow and opposed the moves towards a detente with Washington, had incurred Chairman Mao’s wrath and had been isolated. He allegedly fled the country two months after Mr. Kissinger’s first visit to Peking in July 1971 and died in an air crash in outer Mongolia.
Once the present leadership in Peking had come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that the Soviet Union constituted the principal threat to China’s security both in the short and the long run, it could no longer be interested in the humiliation of the United States because that would inevitably benefit the common adversary, Moscow. In view of the continuing power struggle at home, it was not in a position till early 1971 to back openly the more moderate group in Hanoi. But the general drift of its policy has not been in doubt since then.
Beyond that lies the realm of speculation. It is, however, hard to believe that the community of interests between Washington and Peking ends with the cease-fire and America’s exit from the war in Viet Nam. Both Peking and Washington are concerned over the extension of Soviet influence and power in South-East Asia and both are realistic enough to see that only in co-operation with each other can they ensure peace and stability in the region. The United States has already failed to establish its hegemony in the area and China cannot hope to do so.
Speculation
There has been some speculation that the Chinese leaders in private favour two Viet Nams. Some evidence can certainly be produced to show that they are not averse to the perpetuation of the division of Viet Nam. But even if they favoured reunification in the past, the possibility that they might reconsider the issue in the light of their need for US co-operation cannot be entirely ruled out.
This and allied issues are bound to figure at the forthcoming discussions between Mr. Chou En-lai and Mr. Kissinger. This time they will find it difficult to maintain the pretence that they have discussed only bilateral problems. The meeting will deal almost exclusively with the future of Indochina. It may or may not lead to hard decisions. But it is reasonably certain that the United States and China will maintain close contacts in the months ahead and that something close to a common approach may emerge.
The Times of India, 7 February 1973