Disarming Candor

THE BITTER HERITAGE: VIET NAM AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. 126 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $3.95.

When it comes to Viet Nam, Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. roosts neither with the hawks nor the all-out doves. Admittedly, he is unhappy that the U.S. ever got involved there, but he argues in this slender book, drawn chiefly from three recent magazine articles, that "our precipitate withdrawal now would have ominous reverberations throughout Asia." He thinks the U.S. must "stop widening and Americanizing the war," but he has no illusions about the cutthroat, terrorist tactics of the Viet Cong, and he does not want them to take over South Viet Nam. What, then, is the U.S. to do? Says Schlesinger: "We must oppose further widening of the war" by "holding the line in South Viet Nam."

No Sign. That looks like an attractive idea to many; to others, it seems an impossible test of American patience. At any rate, Lyndon Johnson's policy has been to build up U.S. forces to the point where they could, as Schlesinger urges, hold the line in terms of manpower and firepower. But what would happen if the U.S. held its line while the Communists put in more troops? Schlesinger believes that the U.S. already has "enough" strength on the scene to convince Hanoi "that a Communist government will not be imposed on South Viet Nam by force." Yet Hanoi has shown no sign that it is convinced.

Schlesinger also argues that the U.S. should devote its resources more to "clear-and-hold" operations aimed at creating secure areas, than to "search-and-destroy missions, which drive the Viet Cong out of villages one day and permit them to slip back the next." But he fails to note that no clear-and-hold strategy can succeed as long as guerrillas are permitted to terrorize the countryside--and it is the search-and-destroy sweeps that keep them on the run.

Schlesinger also urges a suspension of U.S. bombing of the North, because the raids might well "heighten Hanoi's resolve to fight on." He is not alone in that argument. But he gives insufficient weight to an equal probability: an end to the bombing might lead Hanoi to the mistaken conclusion that if it holds off negotiations just a little longer, the U.S. will finally tire of the whole mess.

Tricky Tool. "Why we are in Viet Nam," says Schlesinger, "is today a question of mainly historical interest. We are there, for better or for worse, and we must deal with the situation that exists." Fortunately, he goes on anyway to trace the history of that involvement, and that part of the book makes most compelling reading.

Though today's pundits often dismiss Viet Nam as a little country of little strategic consequence, it was Viet Nam --then Indo-China--that played a major role in getting the U.S. into World War II. When Japan moved into the region in 1941, thereby gaining a commanding geographical position in South-east Asia--to say nothing of a wealth of rubber resources--the U.S. considered the situation threatening enough to freeze all Japanese assets. Japan's countermove came just four months later--at Pearl Harbor.

Looking toward the postwar period, Franklin Roosevelt was deeply concerned about IndoChina's fate under the French. "France has had the country," he told Secretary of State Cordell

Hull, "for nearly 100 years, and the people are worse off than they were at the beginning." He proposed that an international trusteeship be set up with a polyglot membership including French, Chinese, Russian, Philippine, U.S. and Indo-Chinese representatives, to prepare the country for independence. But the idea died with F.D.R. The French moved back into Indo-China, and with monumental lack of foresight, immediately reimposed the same old colonial order. Thus was the stage set for Dien-bienphu, partition and the present war. Historian Schlesinger concedes with disarming candor that history is a terribly "tricky" tool for predicting the future. In the long run, he writes, history "can answer questions, after a fashion"--but as the late economist John Maynard Keynes once said, "in the long run, we are all dead." As for the short run, "the salient fact about the historical process," says Schlesinger, "is its inscrutability." Of all the ideas explored in this lucidly written book, that is the one guaranteed to offer the least comfort to today's policymakers, whose daily task is to try to make the inscrutable a little less so.

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