The Price of Rebuilding

The most recent debate over the Viet Nam War has centered on whether the U.S. was justified in bombing Hanoi in its attempt to achieve a truce. Now that the truce is here, and now that the budget and the dollar crisis have become urgent news (see THE ECONOMY), the debate on Viet Nam has shifted to a new question: should the U.S. spend billions of dollars to help its former enemies? No specific sum has yet been requested, although unofficial estimates have gone as high as $7.5 billion over the next five years for the reconstruction of all Indochina. Congress is already balking at the idea, so both President Nixon and Secretary of State Rogers have tried to sell the concept as an "investment in peace." Most Americans appear to be caught in the middle, somewhat baffled at the prospect of paying taxes to rebuild what they so recently paid taxes to destroy.

Yet in the final analysis there is hardly room for argument. Lyndon Johnson committed the U.S. to reconstruction back in 1965, and the truce accord makes that commitment binding. The real question is not whether the U.S. will provide aid, but how much will be provided, and in what spirit it will be given--and received.

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