Commitment In Vietnam Research Articles

The Whitlam Approach to Asia

I T'S TIME, Australian Labor Party slogans proclaimed a year ago. And indeed it was. The Liberal-Country Party coalition that had ruled Australia without interruption since 1949 had become old, uninspiring, and inactive. Split into warring factions and lacking leaders of stature, it committed political suicide when it cast aside the colorful but unpredictable John Gorton and chose in his place as Prime Minister the bumbling and ineffective William McMahon. To many electors, it seemed that the flamboyant personality of Edward Gough Whitlam offered the fresh, new wind of political change that the country needed so badly. Without regret, and with cheerful anticipation, they voted him and the Australian Labor Party into office. The election campaign was notable for the little attention devoted to defense and foreign affairs. It is true that Whitlam promised to transfer the Australian Embassy from Taipei to Peking without delay and to end all involvement in Vietnam. But these promises were scarcely revolutionary. The Liberal-Country Party government had been flirting for months with the notion of recognizing Peking (though it wanted to eat its cake and have it, too, by maintaining full diplomatic relations with Taipei); and its Vietnam commitment had been reduced to a corporal's guard looking after the Embassy and helping to train some regional forces and Cambodians in Phuoc Tuy Province. The American alliance was an article of faith to which both parties claimed to subscribe. To be sure, there were some twilight areas where Labor positions appeared to conflict with official policy; but there seemed no likelihood that Whitlam, if he won, would take a leaf out of Sukarno's old book and slam the wheel around, or even proclaim a year of living dangerously.

Vietnam: The Shifting Contours

The carefully graduated increases in manpower and in the intensity of bombing attacks and the wellpublicized U.S. diplomatic efforts for negotiations, make it appear—at least as I write this—that the United States is conducting in Vietnam a well-controlled and limited military operation.This impression of limitation and control, implying as it does the discriminating application of military power in the service of political ends, is morally soothing. It is nevertheless an illusory impression which cannot avoid being exposed as the war progresses. For the underlying fact of the U.S. commitment in Vietnam is that its objective is no longer the politics of South Vietnam.