University of Virginia Library

Nixon Critics

Mr. Nixon's more
short-minded critics ask what
he has gained in January that
his brilliant adviser, Henry
Kissinger, had not gained in
October. Others, with longer
memories, ask what was gained
in 1973 that could not have
been won on Mr. Nixon's
assumption of office in 1969.
Still others ask what has been
gained that would not have
come about had Lyndon B.
Johnson, John F. Kennedy and
Dwight D. Eisenhower not
interfered with the social
revolution in Indochina. What,
indeed, has been achieved that
would not have been achieved
had the enlightened views of
Franklin D. Roosevelt
prevailed over the imperialist
vision of Winston Churchill,
the illusions of grandeur of
Charles de Gaulle and the
simplistic global containment
program of Harry S. Truman?

The answer is little, if
anything, of relevance to the
vital interests of the United
States.

Ho Chi Minh, who was a
Vietnamese nationalist first
and a communist second,
established an incipient
Yugoslavia-type communist
government in Vietnam in
1945. He would have
re-established it after Geneva
had the United States not
intervened. His successor will
probably re-establish it before
the end of the decade if the
United States does not again
intervene.

President Nixon has told the
American people that they
sought nothing for themselves
in the war and that their
government's objective has
been "self-determination" for
the South Vietnamese.

But the United States
entered the Indochinese war
because its leaders believed
that any kind of communist
government in Indochina
would threaten its security, if
only indirectly. Roosevelt,
alone among the six presidents
involved, put the people of
Vietnam first. "By what logic
and by what custom and by
which historical rule [do the
Indochinese colonies) belong
to France?" he asked again and
again to Churchill's and De
Gaulle's dismay. "The native
Indo-Chinese have
been...flagrantly
downtrodden.....France has
milked [them] for one
hundred years." He refused,
accordingly, to support
France's plan to reconquer
Indochina when World War II
drew to a close.