Current developments in Viet Nam, however dramatic and unexpected, should be viewed in the context of the steady shift in the centre of US military power from Europe to the Pacific and South-East Asia. By far the most important international development since the Sino-Soviet split, it is also a measure of the radical transformation that has taken place in the world scene since the Russo-American confrontation over Cuba in October 1962.
The growth of American involvement in Viet Nam under President Johnson has undoubtedly compelled a change in the Pentagon’s order of priorities. The deployment of over 500,000 troops and the need to keep them supplied with weapons that can be effective in that kind of war have inevitably led to drastic changes in the American military thinking, planning and allotment of resources. As a result of the Viet Nam war the United States has developed a whole series of small weapons. No one had ever thought earlier that the helicopter could be put to combat use on so massive a scale as has been done in Viet Nam. The training of US defence forces is also now largely adapted to guerilla warfare.
Doubtful
But the Viet Nam war is not solely responsible for what can be called the triumph of the ‘Asia first’ school in the United States. In fact it is highly doubtful if President Johnson would have assumed the burden of fighting a war on the Asian mainland for the second time in just over a decade against the advice of many of America’s veteran generals and leading strategists if he was not assured that there was no longer any threat to the security of Western Europe. America’s active military involvement in Viet Nam can directly be traced to the thaw in the cold war in Europe.
Outsiders can only speculate whether the top men in the Johnson Administration recognise this link between their policies towards Europe and Asia to be so intimate. But in terms of chronology it is not difficult to establish that America’s policy has moved further and further towards a detente with the Soviet Union in Europe as its commitments have grown in Viet Nam and consequently in Thailand. The abandonment by President Johnson of the proposal to set up a multilateral nuclear force with West Germany as America’s principal partner as a gesture of goodwill to the Soviet Union and the subsequent decision to step up pressure on Bonn to make it fall in line with Washington on the question of the non-proliferation treaty are the most important consequences of the policy of a detente with the Soviet Union.
The American policy in Europe was in flux under President Kennedy. Though he had moved away from the Dullesian policy of total distrust of the Soviet Union and was genuinely interested in detente with it he thought in terms of perpetuating America’s leadership of Western Europe without realising that the success of this effort would tend to prolong the division of the continent along ideological lines and thus defeat his principal policy objective of better relations with Moscow. The admission of Britain into the European Economic Community, the strengthening of economic ties between America and the expanded Common Market through across-the- board tariff cuts and the formation of the MLF under the auspices of NATO were the chosen instruments for the realisation of his grand design.
Non-Starter
The strategy did not get off the ground. President de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s application for admission to the EEC on January 14, 1963, and blocked progress towards the political unification of Western Europe. The “chicken war” the same year showed that the struggle for tariff cuts would be tough and prolonged. Mr. Wilson dragged his feet on the MLF [Multilateral force – ed} issue and produced a much watered down British variant which was not acceptable to West Germany. But President Kennedy could not bring himself to face the fact that his grand design was a non-starter. It was left to President Johnson to draw the necessary conclusion and plan America’s Europe policy afresh. He began by putting the proposed MLF on the shelf and thus opening the door for serious negotiations with the Russians on the question of nuclear non-proliferation and other vital issues. There has been no turning back on that policy on the part of the United States.
This evolution in America’s Europe policy can in a sense be traced back to the Cuban crisis which established that the Soviet Union could not match its military power and that in spite of his bluff manners Mr. Khrushchev was more interested in the preservation of peace than in the promotion of revolution. That he did not provoke a crisis in Berlin in an effort to avenge his defeat on Cuba was the final proof that the Soviet Government accorded high priority to the improvement of relations with the United States. But in a deeper sense the evolution of American policy has been linked with the changes in the Soviet Union and other bloc countries. As Washington sees it the economic and political reforms in most of these countries on the one hand and the reassertion of nationalism in Eastern Europe on the other have by and large removed the threat of communist expansionism in that continent.
It can be argued that the Soviet threat to Western Europe was never serious and. indeed, that the Soviet posture was always essentially defensive. In 1963 the US Central Intelligence Agency itself revised its earlier estimates of Russia’s conventional strength to make the point that its deployment in Europe was defensive and not offensive. But the more relevant point is that under President Johnson the American policy has been adjusted accordingly.
The Soviet Government recognises that the American policy accords with its own interests though for various reasons, primarily with the solidarity of the bloc, it maintains the old propaganda stance. Moscow has consequently not made any move which would strengthen the Europe first advocates in Washington and threaten the superpower detente. That is why all predictions of the Viet Nam war fouling Russo-American relations completely have proved utterly false. Neither the American bombing of North Viet Nam nor its support to Israel have deflected the Kremlin from its policy of co-operation with Washington on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation and of not stirring up trouble over Berlin.
Being at once an Atlantic and a Pacific power the United States has faced both ways for decades. The Pearl Harbour disaster drove home the point that America has vital stakes in Asian developments. The speed with which President Truman intervened in Korea and took a sense of other measures in the early ‘fifties showed that the lesson had been learnt. Since then America has deployed formidable power in the Pacific. But it can be said that up to the time of the Cuban crisis in 1962 US policymakers saw the real danger in Europe and were preoccupied with it. It is a different story now. They are convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the principal threat to peace and America’s interests lies in Asia. It is China and not Russia which now occupies the first place in America’s demonology. The British decision to withdraw from Singapore and Malaysia by 1971 would reinforce the already dominant Asia first trend in the US policy.
Accident
It is an accident that the shift in US policy should have taken under the auspices of two Democratic Administrations. The Democratic Party has traditionally been Europe-oriented and remains so to a large extent. At least partly the opposition of men like Senator Fulbright, Senator Kennedy and Prof Galbraith to the US involvement in Viet Nam is the result of this orientation. The appalling cost of the war, the failure of the Administration to prove that China has instigated either Hanoi or the National Liberation Front in the South, the lack of progress and the destruction of the fabric of the South Vietnamese society also confirm them in their view that this is a wrong war, against a wrong enemy and at a wrong time. These critics of President Johnson do not wish to revive the cold war against the Soviet Union but it is Europe that draws them and it is with Europe that they wish to forge intimate links.
This assessment of the evolution of the US policy does not mean that Washington had to involve itself in the Viet Nam war or that this involvement cannot be terminated through negotiations. But whatever the outcome of the war in Viet Nam the shift in the centre of American military power from Europe to Asia is unlikely to be reversed in the foreseeable future. However wrong-headed the Chinese charge of collusion between the Soviet Union and the United States, they are right in their assessment that Washington has shifted from a Russia-facing and NATO-centred strategy to a China-facing and Hawai-centred one.
The Times of India, 7 February 1968