L.B.J.'s inheritance of J.F.K.'s Vietnam

VIETNAM T885
SOUND 2611 PIX ROLL 621
4/28/81
DEAN RUSK SIDE 1
Tone.

Interviewer:

What was the legacy of Vietnam that the Johnson Administration inherited from the Kennedy Administration?

Rusk:

When President Johnson assumed office in the tragic circumstances of November 1963, the Vietnam situation was not unfamiliar to him because as Vice President he had been a part of the discussions that had occurred during the Kennedy years and was familiar with the decisions that had been made. But at that point we had a considerable number of advisers in Vietnam, we had a public commitment under the SEATO Treaty. There was political turmoil in South Vietnam itself. President Diem had been pursuing some policies that were alienating the Buddhists and the students and the armed forces so that there was disarray before President Diem was overthrown as there was after he was overthrown.

So, uhm, President Johnson in effect inherited a continuum in which he himself had been a participant. But he was very much interested in continuity both in policy and in people from the Kennedy years to the Johnson years, and he tried for quite a long time to do enough on the American side to help the South Vietnamese themselves to get the job done in South Vietnam.

Rusk and McNamara's 1964 visits to Saigon

Interviewer:

What was the purpose of McNamara's mission to Saigon in March of 1964 and how did it deepen the American commitment?

Rusk:

Well, President Johnson told McNamara that he was the president's right arm, to do everything that he could to achieve a military success in South Vietnam. And then he called me his left arm to try to find a way to bring this conflict to an end by peaceful means through negotiations, through the United Nations, or the Geneva Conferences or whatever else.

Um. Now McNamara made quite a few trips out there. As Secretary of Defense, he wanted to talk to the people on the ground, see for himself what the situation was, and get same feel of how it was out there as distinct from simply the reports that came in on paper to Washington. But I think his visit out there in March '64 was nothing spectacular, or all that unusual, because he had gone out there frequently.

Interviewer:

Well that was the visit where he went around the countryside with the... with Nguyen Khanh.

Rusk:

That's right.

Interviewer:

Did you feel... there'd been a feeling that in a sense, in a way he kind of undermined Khanh's nationalistic credentials by associating himself so closely. How do you feel about that?

Rusk:

Well that was not Khanh's view. Khanh welcomed this and McNamara was hoping that he would draw the leadership of South Vietnam into in effect uh politicking in the American style, getting out among the people, trying to broaden their base of support in the country, establishing a common touch which had not been the usual practice out there during the French period or during the early post war period. I doubt that that eroded the national spirit out there. There were many other things that had that effect, but I doubt that McNamara's visit did that.

Interviewer:

You went out to Saigon in April of 1964 and you said while you were there, "On to Victory." What did you mean by that?

Rusk:

Well, victory meant achieving the...

Interviewer:

Could you?...

No, that's...

Okay.

Rusk:

Victory meant achieving the purpose for which we were there. And that was to prevent the overrunning of South Vietnam by the North Vietnamese. Victory did not mean unconditional surrender by Hanoi, or by anybody else. In this post war period, we've had to use force on a number of occasions in order to defend against somebody's aggression. And the purpose of the defense is to fend off, throw back uh whatever it was that was trying to move in on areas that we thought were important to us. So victory meant a stabilization of the situation in South Vietnam.

Challenges of Vietnam to the Johnson Administration in 1964

Interviewer:

1964 was, was a year of hesitation on LBJ's part, as far as Vietnam was concerned. He seemed to be getting in and sort of vacillating one way or another. What was the effect, in your opinion, of the election campaign this is the '64 election on his move and his drift towards Vietnam?

Rusk:

When he became president, I think Lyndon Johnson hoped that we would be able to help the South Vietnamese to achieve their own defense, largely by their own effort. This was the theory on which President Kennedy had put a substantial number of advisers out there. And Kennedy had authorized I think up to about 18,000 advisers before he died. But um for several months President Johnson played along with that thinking that if possible, that's the way we ought to do it.

But the important change came at the end of '64 and the beginning of '65 when the North Vietnamese began to send the divisions and regiments of their regular forces into South Vietnam. And they threatened to cut South Vietnam in two through the highland area. That presented President Johnson with a new situation which President Kennedy had not had to face. And so it was that build up of forces from the North that required a decision on whether or not we would put in additional forces of our own. Now, um, that was the major change in the situation that Johnson had to face.

Interviewer:

Uh, but to go back to this question. How did he factor in the fact that he, himself, was running for election in '64, and what kind of pressures did the domestic political campaign have on him?

Rusk:

Well if you look at everything that he said during the election, you will see that on the one side he said, We do not want a larger war in Southeast Asia. And we didn't. We didn't even want the scale of war that we already had. But he also said that we're not going to let down the South Vietnamese or the other people of Southeast Asia and run out on our commitments.

If you put them all together you would see that Lyndon Johnson felt that we had a commitment there in Southeast Asia. That the reputation of the United States for fidelity to its security treaties was a very important matter in terms of the general peace in the world and that we would like to get the thing settled as soon as possible. It was only after the campaign, well after the campaign, that the North Vietnamese began to make major moves into South Vietnam with their regular forces. But I don't, do not believe that the election campaign itself had any direct bearing on President Johnson's sense of tactics or strategy or anything of that sort.

The Tonkin Gulf Incidents

Interviewer:

I want to go into the Tonkin Gulf Incident...

Rusk:

Right.

Interviewer:

...the resolution...

...that way a bit. The other way, I'm sorry. Just...and then over a bit, if you can. Thank you.

Could you recollect what happened in the Tonkin Gulf?

Rusk:

Well, when the first incident occurred, we thought that this might well have been a trigger happy local commander who simply did something on his own. And so we decided in effect to ignore it. But when we got word of the second incident, that raised a more serious question in our minds because that suggested that the North Vietnamese were trying to drive us out of the South China Sea.

Now they were using the South China Sea for infiltration, of men and arms by water, just as they were pushing them down the Ho Chi Minh Trail by land. And so we felt that we could not let our ships be driven out of the South China Sea and would have to make it clear to them that we were not going to allow that to happen and leave those waters open to them for their infiltration, and so we retaliated on the basis of the second strike. The first strike could have been used if we were waiting for some pretext for something, but we weren't. We passed up the first one, and only responded when we thought there was a second one.

Interviewer:

Were the, were those American ships in the Tonkin Gulf there in relation to these operations that the South Vietnamese were conducting?

Rusk:

The actual mission of the destroyers in the South China Sea was intelligence, like the Pueblo. They were up there to see what they could see, hear, find out about, what was going on on land in connection with the movement of North Vietnamese forces. I can easily see why the North Vietnamese might have supposed that these vessels were also linked to the sort of hit and run kind of naval operations that were going on a little further south, that were aimed directly at the North Vietnamese infiltration by sea. But in fact the two missions were quite distinct although in timing and geography it was easy for them to be confused.

Interviewer:

Could I just ask you if you could do that again because when you say, "the naval operations" you're not precisely referring to South Vietnamese naval operations, and one might...

Switch to Camera Roll 622
Take 2

Rusk:

The North Vietnamese had been infiltrating men and arms by sea along the coast. And the South Vietnamese, with American help, had put on some operations called 34A Operations trying to intercept that infiltration by sea. And in the process raided some of the small ports along the southern coast of North Vietnam. But when the destroyers went into the South China Sea along the coast of North Vietnam they were there primarily for intelligence missions, trying to find out what was happening both at sea and with communications on land. It was sort of a Pueblo type operation.

That was separate in terms of planning and execution from the 34A Operations being conducted by the South Vietnamese. But in terms of timing and geography it was relatively easy, I think, for the North Vietnamese to assume that these were all part of the same, same activity. In fact, they were, they had two different missions.

Interviewer:

Going back to the incident itself, you believe there was one incident, but there was not a second incident? Or vice versa?

Rusk:

No, there was no question about the first incident. Now on the second incident um, I myself was not there on board one of those destroyers in the middle of the night in the South China Sea, so we had to rely on the information that was available to us. My clear impression at the time was that the North Vietnamese thought that a second incident was underway because they I thought we were listening to their chatter on the subject.

Um. But when this matter was investigated a little later by some staff, I believe of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I don't recall that they called the two captains of the two destroyers or the executive officers who were available to them. They didn't call me and ask me what was in my mind. But in any event, at the time I had no doubt that there was a second incident and in a suggestion that I thought one thing and said another, when I talked about this say with Congressional committees, is just nonsense. But, in a war situation, who can be absolutely certain?

North Vietnam's insurgency preceding American reprisal bombing

Interviewer:

How did you feel about the plans to bomb the North? I want to ask you progressively uh when those plans were beginning to gel in the spring of June in 1964, how did you feel at that stage, and then there was that other trip-wire incidents like the communist attack at Bien Hoa and the Brinks BOQ. What was the evolution of your own feeling about that?

Rusk:

The staff, both in the Pentagon and in the State Department, have a duty to look at all contingencies on a continuing basis because um those people upstairs like the president and the secretary may want to look at additional steps or other plans. And so I have no doubt that there was a good deal of discussion about what action could be taken against North Vietnam and there should have been that kind of study.

But up until the end of '64 we were hoping that with the kind of limited assistance that we were then giving to South Vietnam that the South Vietnamese themselves would be able to carry off their own purpose. After all, in the case of the Greek guerrillas, we gave assistance to the Greeks and they were able to handle the thing inside Greece despite sanctuaries in Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. So we did not in the summer of '64 at the presidential or cabinet level seriously take up the question of bombing North Vietnam.

Interviewer:

What, what were your own feelings about it at that stage?

Rusk:

Well, we were still hoping, and I was still hoping, that the South Vietnamese would be able to pull themselves together and make it clear to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese that this attempt to take over South Vietnam could not prevail. Now we weren't sure, because our friends in South Vietnam did not give us all that much strength to support.

There were a number of changes of government, for example, during the Greek guerrilla operation. These changes of government were very unsettling because when one new regime took over then that disqualified those who had served in a earlier regime and there was a continual shrinkage of people with any experience in managing the affairs of a country.

I think uh also that we, ourselves, were inclined to overload the capacities of the South Vietnamese government and its administrative capability. I think once we counted about forty-four different programs that we were pressing the South Vietnamese to put into effect in South Vietnam in order to strengthen the fiber of the country and mobilize the countryside. That was simply beyond their governing capacities to handle and it was indigestible. But during ‘64 we still were hoping that the South Vietnamese basically could take care of their own problem.

Interviewer:

Now when the first... or the reprisal bombing started was provoked by the Pleiku incident. Did you feel yourself that this was justified, it was necessary?

Rusk:

Well that was a very brief retaliatory strike, but the Pleiku incident indicated that the North Vietnamese were coming in there in larger numbers, that this was a very serious attack by much more organized forces than had been typically seen in the types of guerrilla action that we were more familiar with, and we also had increasing reports of larger numbers of people coning down the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Uh President Johnson's first reaction was to deliver a retaliatory strike as a kind of warning as far as Pleiku was concerned. But then about a month later he began the systematic bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Interviewer:

Incidentally the Pleiku incident took, took place at the time that Kosygin was in Hanoi. Do you know why he was there or what his purpose was?

Rusk:

No. I don't know whether he was um trying to strengthen the ties of Moscow with Hanoi. There was considerable competition there between Moscow and Peking. But they were bombing in Saigon at that time. I was out there on a visit and they tried to blow up the main bridge in Saigon while I was there. Um.

I don't believe myself that the presence of Kosygin should have been a shield for operations like Pleiku. And indeed we did not bomb Hanoi where Kosygin was.

Rusk's commitment to South Vietnam

Interviewer:

At this time, in early '65, there was kind, there was a debate going on inside the administration, if we can personalize it from what we read, there was one side represented by George Ball, who was opposed to the US ground commitment and the other seemed to be argued by Mac Bundy who was in favor of it. Where did you stand in this debate?

Rusk:

George Ball earned the, both the respect and the affection of his two Presidents and of his Secretary of State by his uh clarity and by the vigor of his presentation of another point of view. And he rendered a great service to all of us by doing that inside the, inside the government. I myself felt that what happened in South Vietnam was of great importance to the very structure of collective security in the world at large.

We had been through Azerbaidzhan, the demand for the two eastern provinces of Turkey, the Greek guerrilla situation, the coup in Czechoslovakia, the Blockade of Berlin, the attack on Korea, things of that sort; repeated crises over Berlin, the Cuban Missile Crisis. And um I felt that collective security was the key to prevention of World War Three.

Uh. My generation of students was led down the chute-to-chute in the catastrophe of a WWII which could have been prevented. Nevertheless we did our duty, my generation. Now um to those of us who had lived through those decades, how we dealt with our obligation under SEATO was very important to what people would think in other capitals about NATO or the the Rio Pact in this hemisphere, or other such arrangements, and to the understanding of other countries as to the United States' policy on these matters.

I have no doubt that there have been times when peace has been maintained because people in certain other capitals would say to themselves, now look comrades, we'd better be a little careful here because those damn fool Americans just might do something about it. If that question in their minds got to be a sense of certainty that we would not do something about it, then I think we'd be exposed to very great dangers. So I was in favor of making an additional effort rather than pulling out when the North Vietnamese stepped up their forces in South Vietnam.

Interviewer:

It's been said that there was a danger, and this is retrospectively sensed, that...

Uh, we have six feet left, so...

L.B.J.'s intentions in Vietnam and troop escalation

VIETNAM T885
DEAN RUSK:
SIDE 2
SOUND ROLL 2612
4/28/81
Tone.

Interviewer:

Could we go back over these incidents, the Bien Hoa incident on election eve and the Brinks BOQ attack on Christmas Eve. Why did Lyndon Johnson start the bombing after those incidents?

Rusk:

It's important to understand that we were not sitting around in Washington waiting for trip wires. We didn't need a trip wire because North Vietnam was attacking South Vietnam. That was all we needed to do whatever seemed to be necessary to fend off that attack. But it was genuinely true that President Johnson did not want a larger war, if we could avoid it. And he... that was his dominant idea until the North Vietnamese built up their forces in a major way at the end of ‘64 and the beginning of '65.

We still were hoping through this period that the... that with the kind of help that we were then giving the South Vietnamese that they themselves would be able to pull themselves together and do the job themselves. So when these different incidents occurred we didn't use uh those as pretexts for turning this into a kind of war that we preferred not to have. It was not until we were presented with a larger war that the decision then had to be made as to whether we would let them um get what they were after or whether we would make a greater effort ourselves.

Interviewer:

Now à propos of hoping that the South Vietnamese would strengthen themselves, that takes us on to the questions of whether a direct US combat intervention which began in the spring of '65 doesn't indirectly weaken, inadvertently weaken the South Vietnamese, who then say, well let the Americans fight it. What's your feeling about that?

Rusk:

That's a possibility. We had not had that experience in Korea where the American presence did not reduce the Korean effort. Um. And in Greece, the Greeks themselves carried the battle even though we had made some significant commitments to Greece during the Truman Administration. But um, I suppose that it's inevitable that there would be some who would think that since we were there and had made the commitment and we had, we were putting in substantial forces that therefore they had to do less. And um, I can't deny that might have been a factor. How large a factor it was, it's hard to say.

Interviewer:

During that year, even now in '65, LBJ is sort of tiptoeing if you want into Vietnam, could you describe how the larger commitment began to evolve? Was he tiptoeing in in a way because he was still hoping to leave himself a way out, or how do you explain that hesitation waltz that he went through?

Rusk:

Well this gets us into a large question that needs a good deal of thought for the future if, God forbid, something of this sort ever happens a— somewhere else. By the gradualness of our own response, it is just possible that we left it up to Hanoi to conclude that if they were to do more we might not. One could uh consider the question, for example, that when President Kennedy first decided to intrude American forces into South Vietnam, it might not have been better for him to put in a 100,000 men, straight away, so there could not be any question that we would take this matter very seriously.

But in this entire post war period we have tried to use the amount of force which seemed to be sufficient to the particular job without letting things get out of hand and go down that escalator into a nuclear war. You see, the nature of warfare has changed beyond recognition with the advent of nuclear weapons. And anyone who tries to think of these combat situations in old fashioned terms is just not engaged with the real problems of the real world. So, of course, President Johnson was reluctant to commit more and more forces.

Uh. As a matter of fact, except for the men who carried the battle and their families, I don't know anyone who agonized over Vietnam more than Lyndon Johnson. It was a burden that he felt very heavy on his back and so he was not gung ho to have the biggest war possible and maybe drive this situation into conflict with China or with some kind of direct reaction by the Russians or anybody else.

The China threat to the Vietnam conflict

Interviewer:

Why was, since you mention China, why was China perceived as the enemy at that period, in those days?

Rusk:

Primarily because China was a major source of supply and support for the North Vietnamese but also because they were so harsh in their attitude toward any kind of peaceful settlement. They declared publicly and strongly that this was not a matter for the United Nations. Hanoi made the same kind of statement. And so the then Secretary General of the United Nations, U Thant, and a good many members of the UN felt that under those circumstances felt that under those circumstances the United Nations should not take this matter up even though the charter lays upon the United Nations a primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, indeed there were times when we wanted to have this matter brought to the Security Council and a nose count behind the scenes ahead of time indicated that we did not even have the nine votes on the Security Council that would be required to put the matter on the agenda.

So then the idea was that we should use the Geneva Conferences technique or instrumentality. But the Chinese were just as bitterly opposed to the reconvening of the Geneva Conferences. So on the one side they were egging on the North Vietnamese, supplying and supporting them, and doing all that they could apparently to frustrate the possibility of a peaceful settlement. So naturally they, we did not look upon Peking as friends, during that period.

Interviewer:

Could you describe the kind of debate that was going on in the administration at the time over the danger of Chinese intervention, and the way it might have limited the American input?

Rusk:

Last August 9th we had put behind us thirty-five years since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger; a very important thing to be able to say, given all the crises we've had since 1945.

Interviewer:

Excuse me, could you say in August of 1980.

Rusk:

Okay. On August 9th, 1980, we had put behind us thirty-five years since a nuclear weapon had been fired in anger a very important thing to be able to say given all the crises we've had since 1945. Now there were times when fighting could have been moved to a larger scale. In the Berlin Blockade, for example Korea, when General MacArthur proposed a general war against China; where we would have skidded into that kind of war which must never happen.

So an effort has been made in all of these situations since WWII to try to handle the situation short of the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought us pretty close to that brink, but fortunately we were able to avoid it. We did not, we had no way of knowing at what point the Chinese might intervene, because the Chinese had not made any such decision, or come to any such conclusion. That's one of those pieces of information that simply isn't present in the real world and so anyone is free to guess.

But we did know that if China did come in and we were to continue to oppose the North Vietnamese-Chinese effort that that almost certainly would mean nuclear weapons. And the consequence of that could not be foretold. So we were wary. One of the reasons for this gradualness in our build up of resistance in South Vietnam was due to the fact that we did not want to present Moscow and Hanoi with a major new situation during any given week which would require them to go through an orgasm of decision-making based upon worldwide strategic considerations. And so each week was not all that different than the week before. But that's one of the questions that need to be studied very carefully and reflected upon because it has some problems with it.

Domestic mobilization and morale regarding Vietnam

Interviewer:

By the summer of 1965 we were really moving into a larger war situation, but the president had not put the country on a wartime footing. For example, he refused to raise taxes and so forth. It seems as if the public wasn't being prepared for what was going on, what was to come, possibly to come. Could you explain why?

Tape 4 coming up Camera Roll 624
Tone.

Rusk:

Each year the cost of Vietnam was something less than the increase of the Gross National Product in that year. The costs were not that much of a push in the total economy of the country and it did not appear to be necessarily desirable to mobilize economically as had been done say during WWII. But President Johnson not wanting a larger war did not feel it necessary to mobilize the entire country. As far as the reserves and National Guard were concerned, he felt that um we ought to keep those in strategic reserve because there might have been problems elsewhere, say in NATO, because we had been through two very severe crises involving the Soviet Union and...

Um. We did draw down particularly in the non-commissioned officer ranks from our regular forces in Europe and elsewhere pretty severely during the Vietnam affair. There is a question I think that we have to think about in the future whether it was wise to rely in the latter stages in Vietnam on new draftees as heavily as we did. Um. Particularly, on the basis of a one year rotation. Because you could see a uh decline in the capability and the morale of our forces from about the mid '60s down through the rest of the decade.

But we were thinking of a limited effort. That limited effort seemed to be within our capabilities without these great measures of mobilization that might have been conceivable. I think that's basically why we didn't put the... we did make a deliberate decision not to create war fever in this country. You didn't see members of the armed forces, or units of the armed forces parading through American cities. You didn't see pretty movie stars out selling bonds in factories and things like that all the things we did during WWII because we felt that in this nuclear world where thousands of megatons are lying around in the hands of frail human beings it's just too dangerous for entire people to become too angry.

Now we have to think about that. Because we were trying to do in effect in cold blood what we were asking the fellows out there to do in hot blood, and that's very difficult. It's difficult for those who are carrying the battle, it's difficult on the home front. And it just means that life is getting to be more complicated if we're going to avoid that utter catastrophe some day.

Interviewer:

Jump ahead to 1968 into the Tet Offensive. What was the reaction in the administration to the Tet Offensive when it broke, and what was your own reaction? And how did it change American policy towards Vietnam?

Rusk:

To begin with we were somewhat surprised that they had launched such a major offensive in different parts of the country during their traditional holidays. Because uh in the past both sides had sort of taken it easy during the Tet period. But um as the battle proceeded, it became clear that this was a major military set back for the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese forces. Although they had gotten to the American Embassy in Saigon and they held on some other places for a while, this led to a major destruction of their cadres and many of their personnel; somewhat like the lunge of Hitler in the Battle of the Bulge in World II.

But even though it was a considerable military setback for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong out there on the ground, it was in effect a brilliant political victory for them here in the United States. I'm not sure I fully understand the reasons why that should have occurred, but it became very clear after the Tet Offensive that many people at the grass roots, such as my cousins in Cherokee County, finally came to the conclusion that if we could not tell them when this war was going to end, and we couldn't in any good faith, that we might as well chuck it.

Now this had very little to do with students demonstrating on campuses and things of that sort. This was the gut reaction of people at the grass roots and, we had a good many evidences of that all across the country. So I think the impact of the Tet Offensive in this country was very great indeed.

Interviewer:

Now at that time, who was the president sensitive to, who was he listening to? On the one hand you had the wise men, you had the, his advisers, you had Walter Cronkite with his helmet on, reporting from Vietnam. Uh, what was for example the effect of Cronkite in particular out there turning sour on things?

Rusk:

Uhm. Regret. Because if Cronkite turns sour then that made some difference, not all that much. But a president has a greater variety of information than anybody I know. He not only has the full panoply of intelligence reports, things of that sort. But he has an analysis of his mail, he has regular contacts with senators and congressmen who are back hone in their districts and states frequently. He talks to political leaders in different parts of the country about how they sense the mood of the country where they happen to live.

Um he gets a daily report on evidences of public opinion. And this would reflect editorials in different parts of the country and important speeches made in different parts of the country, so that President Johnson had a very uh comprehensive look at what seemed to be the attitudes and reflections of the American people. And I think he became aware in the spring of '68 that there had been a change in the attitude of the American people where it counted. That is, at the grass roots, and that was very important to him.

Interviewer:

Now at that stage...

Um...the battery...

The priority of diplomacy towards the end of the Vietnam War

Take 5
Tone.

Interviewer:

Okay, just pick it up from there.

Rusk:

I seem to remember that President Johnson invited General Westmoreland to tell him just what additional troops he might need to clean the thing up, but when a military commander is uh, receives such an invitation, he responds to it. And on a contingency basis he came back with a figure of something like another 200,000 troops. But um...and there was a task force established under Clark Clifford, the Secretary of Defense, to take a look at that.

But um, I was not myself in favor of an additional 200,000 troops because we already had in Vietnam a military position which the North Vietnamese could not possibly have overrun regardless of what they tried to do. And I did not think that an additional 200,000 troops would make that difference, and that we ought to get on with the effort to build up additional South Vietnamese forces. But um in any event, President Johnson decided not to commit those additional 200,000 troops.

Interviewer:

How did we move then towards the decision to go for a partial bombing halt and what later became the Paris Peace Talks in negotiations? Was that, did that represent a change in strategy and how did that come about?

Rusk:

Well, a fairly early stage after he became president, President Johnson gave me the task of trying to find some way to bring this matter to a conclusion by a peaceful means. And there were all sorts of contacts with Hanoi, some through government, some through private individuals, um some through international organizations. Um. But in retrospect, I would suggest that the North Vietnamese never had any real incentive to negotiate. Because up until well into 1966 I think they really felt that they could accomplish what they were trying to do by military means. but by that time they had to face the fact that they could not do it.

But by the end of '66 and beginning of ‘67, they began to get all sorts of messages out of this country and other countries as well which uh seemed to be saying to them, now just hang in there, and you will get by political means what you cannot get by military means. In any event, I think they made that judgment so that they were never in the kind of mood that the North Koreans and the Chinese were, the Russians, to bring the Korean affair to a halt, because they, I think, had the prospect of being able to get what they wanted. And in making that judgment, I think they were right.

Interviewer:

Well when we began those talks in Paris...

END OF SIDE 2

VIETNAM
T 885
SR #2613
Dean Rusk
This is Sound Roll 2613. Vietnam. T885.
Goes with Pic Roll 625. Today's the 28th of April, 1981. 60 cycles. 24 frames.
Tone.

Interviewer:

Okay?

Yeah.

Uh, how did you feel when the Paris talks started? Did you feel that this was the beginning of the end? Did you have an optimistic view of it?

Rusk:

I've long since learned ah not to indulge too much in personal feelings, but there's a more important point. Diplomacy must always act on an optimistic base, because you must always try in the hope that something positive can he accomplished. Whether you would predict that it could have a successful or not, you've got to try. Otherwise, we'd turn everything over to the soldiers and we'd all burn up.

So, ahm, I ah approached the Paris talks with ah the feeling that this was, this should he a serious effort. We hoped that the people from North Vietnam would be serious about. We hoped that we could come out of it with an ability on the part of the South Vietnamese to live at peace in their own country, ahm, but we also knew that negotiating with the North Vietnamese would be a very tedious and complicated matter, where even little details of face would make a difference.

But, ahm, it was an effort made in good faith in the hope that something ah positive could be accomplished. Now, I didn't consult Jimmy the Greek on what the odds might have been. I knew that it was going to be difficult. There was no way to guarantee a successful result, but I thought the effort had to be made.

The American public's urgency to end the war

Interviewer:

But, by the end of '68, did you, did you feel that the, could you describe your assessment of how, what the public mood was to repeat what you yourself said that ah that the American public at this stage assumed that that whole thing was over and that we would get out?

Rusk:

The American people, thank God, are very impatient about war. War is the principal obscenity on the face of the human race. And, I think I overestimated the patience of the American people to endure the continuing casualties without a clear end in sight. We did in WWII reach a point where we could see our forces moving toward a conclusive objective in Europe and in Asia, but, ahhh, this type of mixed war; guerrilla plus some formal actions in Vietnam was a, a different kind of situation, and you can't pinpoint the possibility of an end of it. Had we invaded North Vietnam, as some people wanted us to do, there still would have been guerrilla actions all over the place including South Vietnam. So, that itself would not necessarily have produced a result.

Ahm. So, ah, I think the American people ah had come to the conclusion in '68 that, if we couldn't really tell them that this thing was going to end fairly soon, that we better chuck it, because ahm, and after all, they were watching this war on television every day in their living rooms. I don't know what would have happened in WWII if Guadalcanal and the Anzio Beachhead and the Battle of the Bulge were on everybody's television every day. It could have made a profound difference to the course of WWII.

Interviewer:

Do you think we could have at the end of '68, what we got finally in '73?

Rusk:

I would think so. I think in 1968 ah had the North Vietnamese come to the conclusion that they were going to get it anyhow and had accepted almost anything that was put before them that the war might have ended then on the basis that it did end in '73; namely, that the North Vietnamese would get the long stated objectives of Ho Chi Minh, control of all of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

Ahm. No, I think that could have been accomplished earlier. I understand why Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger and others acted to leave something better behind ah but ah we were not able to pass along to President Nixon ah a um people who were united behind the effort even though we did pass along a military position in South Vietnam which the North Vietnamese could not have overrun.

Interviewer:

There's one, there was one (clears throat) particular incident at the end of '68. I wonder if you led comfortable talking about it. The fuss over the shape of the table which was not as funny a story, as it as it was recorded to...?

Rusk:

Oh, I don't remember the detail, well, when you get into negotiations um, um symbols become important. I remember one negotiation involving the Germans where we had to put the German table a foot behind the other tables because, otherwise, that would constitute some kind of recognition of a status which the Russians weren't willing to acknowledge. Ahm. We had the same problem with the shape of the table in Paris during those talks.

Ahm. The ahm, we finally worked it out, but it took a certain amount of doing. These things sound silly, and indeed, I suppose they are silly, but wrapped up in their symbolism are political attitudes and demands that ah are not all that easy and simple. So ah we went through a rather elaborate dance over the shape of the table, but it was finally worked out.

Constraints of extending the war into Cambodia

Interviewer:

Just one more point of this period. Ah. A lot of the generals have said that their hands were tied behind their backs because they couldn't go into Cambodia and ah there were requests by Westmoreland and others ah. Why, why was the restraint put on them about going into Cambodia and to go after the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos?

Rusk:

The sanctuaries in Cambodia were largely just across the border. Although Prince Sihanouk would deny this now, ah we had a kind of understanding with him that ah we could take action against the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in situations where it did not result in the killing of Cambodians. Prince Sihanouk was a rather strange and unpredictable sort of fellow, but he was a devoted Cambodian who did have a real concern about the Cambodian people.

So, up in the northeast part of Cambodia where there were almost no one living, we had a pretty free hand to take whatever action we wanted to up there in, in the north. But, further south where there were a good many Cambodians, he expected us to be very careful. So, we shelled and occasionally bombed the sanctuaries across the, across the border ah but ahm after all ah just expanding the area would not necessarily give our military a greater advantage because they had enough problem in the area that was freely open to them.

And, ahm, it may have been later that they built up those sanctuaries in Cambodia to a much greater extent and that prompted Mr. Nixon to, to go in there. But, ah, we ah did not want to broaden this war into Cambodia or into Thailand or into these other areas. So, we tried to keep it within the limits that were proscribed by ah the Vietnamese borders.

Importance of Laos to the Kennedy Administration

Interviewer:

Let me jump back a bit to the (clears throat again) Kennedy Administration. Now, we're going into more general questions. Ah. When you go back to the early days of the Kennedy Administration, Vietnam seemed to be really a kind of sm...small issue. I remember Bobby Kennedy saying ah we got twenty Vietnams a day to deal with here in the White House. Could you describe, describe that, I mean where, where did Vietnam stand on the agenda in ah '6l, '62?

Rusk:

On the day before President Kennedy's inauguration, President Eisenhower met with him to talk about the international situation at the time of the transfer of power. And, the only specific recommendation that President Eisenhower made to President elect Kennedy was to put troops in Laos. As he put it, ah, with others, if possible. Alone, if necessary. Because Laos was the scene of the principal action at that time. The North Vietnamese were in there. There, there was a Russian airlift ah that was where the principal fighting was going on. The situation in South Vietnam was relatively quiet.

So, when ah the Kennedy Administration took responsibility, we looked at Laos very quickly and very hard, and the more we looked at it, the less we thought of the idea of putting American troops in there. It was a landlocked country, communications to Laos and within Laos were very difficult. The Laotian people appeared to be a gentle, civilized people who had little interest in killing each other. When only Laotians were on the battlefield ah two or three artillery explosions made a big battle and there were very few casualties. It was only when the North Vietnamese came in that there was any real fighting.

I remember one report that two Laotian sides on the battlefield left and went off to a water festival together for ten days and then came back to the battlefield. So, we came to the conclusion that it would he a, a very good thing to get all foreigners out of Laos. The North Vietnamese, ourselves, the French, anyone else, and let the Laotians manage or mismanage their own affairs. That led to the Laotian conference.

Interviewer:

I'm sorry.

This is Take seven coming up.
Camera Roll 626.
Tone.

Interviewer:

You can pick it up where you let them decide [inaudible] the Laotians.

Rusk:

We thought that it would be a major contribution to peace in Southeast Asia if everyone would get out of Laos and let the Laotians manage or mismanage their own affairs. Well, that led to the Laos conference of '61 '62. The result was a good agreement but we never got any performance by The North Vietnamese on critical parts of the agreement, such as, stopping infiltration into Vietnam through Laos; such as, allowing the coalition government to ah operate in ah Communist held areas or let the international control commission come in there.

This Laotian experience had a very profound effect on President Kennedy because he had a sense that we were up against somebody who had an insatiable appetite and that was it. When he decided not to put troops in Laos, he did say at that time that if we had to make a fight for Southeast Asia, we should make it in Vietnam.

There the situation was very different. Lines of communication, access to the sea ahm a more determined people in South Vietnam. A million of them had fled from, from North Vietnam at the time of the division of the two parts of Vietnam. Ah, but ahm, in any event, ah, we failed to get performance on the Laos accord and that then projected the problem into Vietnam by both sides.

Interviewer:

But even then, during those days, ah in the early '60's, where did Vietnam stand in, as you, as you sat in that, in Washington? Was it a, where did it stand on the agenda?

Rusk:

It was ah an important matter, but not necessarily, the dominating matter. Ah. After all ahm, we had the tragic mistake of the Bay of Pigs very early in the Kennedy Administration. Then came the Berlin crisis of '61 '62, that was triggered by the Summit meeting between Kennedy and Khrushchev in Vienna in June of '61. Shortly alter that came the extraordinarily dangerous crisis over Cuban missiles.

So, the Kennedy years were years of crisis. I think he would have been the first to ah ah knock down any notion of Camelot as applied to those years. Those were tough years and he was a very pragmatic man and had his feet on the ground and was not sentimental about any of these things, but ahm Vietnam was a part of a larger context of crisis. And, we must bear in mind that when ahm Kennedy decided to resist or to help resist in South Vietnam that he had fresh in his mind the experiences of the Berlin crisis of '6l '62 and the Cuban missile crisis, and he was aware of the overriding importance of the credibility of a president of the United States at moments of crisis, if we were going to have any peace in the world.

Vietnam and the necessities of collective security

Interviewer:

Looking back, is there a point when you think we could have plausibly withdrawn from Vietnam ah maybe in '64, '65 or, or maybe after the Diem Coup? Was there any point where you thought we had reached the point of no return, where we were run down, we were going down that runway and we couldn't get out?

Rusk:

I think the... first important step to remember had to do with the conclusion of the Southeast Asia Treaty, 1955. When you look at the record on that, you see that there was very little public discussion of that treaty. Indeed, very thin discussion in the Senate of the United States when the treaty was given advice and consent. There was not, I think, a general public appreciation of the fact that when you go into a security treaty of that sort, you'd better mean it, and it was, it's a very serious step to enter such a treaty.

Now, that treaty required us to "take steps to meet the common danger" if ah those protected by the treaty were attacked. For the United States to be a party to such a treaty and not take steps to meet the common danger was considered to have the gravest consequences in other security situations NATO, Rio Pact and others. I mean there were those at that time already in Europe who were saying you can't depend upon the Americans. President de Gaulle was preaching that doctrine in Western Europe. So, ahm, we have here at issue the very structure of collective security in the world.

Now, let's admit that oh the idea of collective security has been rapidly eroding over the last few years. And, one can understand why that should be true among the American people. Because we've taken over 600,000 casualties in dead and wounded since the end of WWII in support of collective security, and it hasn't been very collective. We put up 90 percent of the non-Korean forces in Korea, 80 percent of the Non Vietnamese forces in Vietnam, and if my cousins here in Georgia want to say to me, look, if collective security requires 50,000 American dead every decade and is not even collective, maybe it's not a good idea. I have profound respect for that reaction, but what concerns me is, that we are not seriously discussing the question, if not collective security then how do we propose to prevent World War Three?

That is the principal question before the entire human race, because if all of these thousands of megatons were to go off in some half hour some day, there would he a serious question as to whether this planet could any longer sustain the human race. That situation would not only destroy all the answers, it would destroy all the questions. Now, this younger generation that's coming along, a great bunch of young people, will hays to find their own answer to the question, how do we prevent World War Three? Maybe their answer will be much more complicated than this simplistic notion of collective security. I don't know.

But, I have a feeling that we're not seriously searching for the answer to that question. If we simply drift back into the attitudes that were prevalent when I was a senior in college and the Japanese seized Manchuria, then the human race is not going to make it. Now, I think I should add that in 1981 one can say that the prospect of a nuclear war is more remote, in my judgment, than it has been for thirty years. So, I'm relatively optimistic about the long run, but it's going to take some doing and some thought.

Interviewer:

Looking back, do you think (clears throat) that we should have been more aggressive towards the North, that we shou—do you think we should have done some of the things that the Nixon Administration did, such, as mining the Hai Phong Harbor, bombing more of the North?

Rusk:

I think one must think serious about the question as to whether we should use more force more quickly in situations that seem to require the use of force. But, ah, in thinking about it, we should bear in mind that ah that suggests a lowering of the nuclear threshold. That that may develop situations rather quickly where the prospect of a nuclear exchange becomes more, more lively. So, it's not a simple question but ahm I do think that the gradualness of our response in Vietnam might have left it open for the people in Hanoi to say well, we can do more and maybe the Americans won't do more. So, it, it's a difficult question that needs to be studied.

L.B.J.'s deliberation over reprisal

Interviewer:

I just want to go on to some specific ah questions about your reactions or, and the reactions of President Johnson at particular times. When the Joint Chiefs were advocating bombing the north in mid '64, and the president was presented with these proposals, what, what was his reaction to it? Do you recall?

Rusk:

Well President Johnson, ahm kept his counsel about his own inner feelings about problems of that sort. Ahm. He was not ah as expansive in talking about himself or his attitude as he sometimes would be in more informal situations, but ahm he was a man who would listen to all points of view. There were times when if he didn't think that he was hearing all points of view that he would ask some of his staff to take opposing sides and talk it out in front of him so he would get ah divergent points of view. He ahm would take whatever time he wanted to make up his mind, but then when he made a decision, he expected prompt execution. There was very little time gap between a decision by President Johnson and steps to carry it into effect.

Interviewer:

Can we get (clears throat) be a little more specific. For example, what was his reaction when he got the, do you recall it, when he got the news of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, for instance?

Rusk:

The first incident ahm I think he was ah annoyed, but he was ahm ah hesitant to conclude what it might mean. Ah. There was the possibility that this was a local commander who had done something that he was not authorized to do. Ah. President Johnson had a great facility for putting himself in the other fellow's shoes. He'd be... when he started thinking about a problem, he very often would begin by thinking of it in terms of how it looked to the other fellow. That was why he was a very...

Interviewer:

Excuse me.

Rusk:

I'll just turn on the air...

End of SR #2613.

Vietnam in context of the Cold War

VIETNAM
T 885
SR #2614
Dean Rusk
This is Sound Roll #2614. Vietnam, T 885.
Pic Roll 627. April 28, 1981. 24 frames.
Speak.
Tone.

Interviewer:

Let's get into this issue of whether (clears throat) Vietnam was a civil war. Could you ah expound on that?

Rusk:

Vietnam was, in part, a civil war because there were Viet Cong in South Vietnam. In part, it was international aggression. At the end of World War Two we found ahm four divided countries: Germany, Korea, China, Vietnam. It was divided in '54. Now, we felt that each part of those divided countries had to be treated as ah political entities deserving the protections of international law and policy, and that if we stood by while one half attacked the other half, this could lead to very large hostilities.

For example, ahm, if the West Germans had sent 60 regiments of troops into East Germany, I can assure you that the Russians would not have treated that as a family affair among Germans. And, we had quite a scrap, you remember, when when the North Ko—Koreans moved into South Korea. Ahm.

So, when North Vietnam sent agents, arms and then divisions and regiments of their regular forces into South Vietnam, we felt that had to be treated as international aggression. Now, people say that ahm ah Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist. Yes, but what kind of nationalist? He announced that he wanted Laos and Laos was not Vietnamese. He announced he wanted Cambodia and Cambodia was not Vietnamese. So, that's the kind of nationalism that we remember in connection with a fellow named Adolf Hitler.

So, if there's to he any organized peace in the world, as contemplated by the United Nations Charter, we have to be careful about assuming that ahm ah cease fire lines, boundary lines ah are simply ah nonexistent and anyone is free to move back and forth. When people ah I wonder what those people would say who seem to talk about Vietnam solely as a civil war, what they would say if, if South Vietnam had invaded North Vietnam. My guess is they would have been strongly opposed.

Interviewer:

But, from our own point of view (clears throat) given the, the nature of that society, ou—our ignorance about it, ah (clears throat) the terrain and so forth, ah was that a place to draw the line from a practical point?

Rusk:

That was a, thhhh... the question as to whether to draw the line in South Vietnam, in Vietnam, was a question which should have been given the most serious attention in 1955 when we concluded the Southeast Asia Treaty. Once we had announced our commitment under that treaty, then the problem got to be, not just Vietnam or even Southeast Asia, but ah what happens to these security treaties (sneezes) (I'm sorry) where do I start? Once we concluded the treaty...

Interviewer:

Just start again.

Rusk:

Known as the Manila Pact, then the problem got to be ahm a problem of the general status of security treaties in all parts of the world. Ah. The consideration of whether to draw the line was one that should have been taken up very seriously during the Eisenhower Administration, 1955. You see, in the Truman Administration, we stayed offshore. We had ah security treaties with Japan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. It was not until the 1950's that we, in effect, went ashore with a formal security treaty with Korea, Taiwan and in Southeast Asia.

Interviewer:

Just to follow that up a moment. Are you saying that the real issue then in Vietnam became our credibility?

Rusk:

Credibility, not in any fanciful or theoretical sense...

Interviewer:

I’m sorry could you...repeat...

Rusk:

I'm sorry. Ah. A major part of the problem in Vietnam was the reputation of the United States for fidelity to its security treaties. Remember, we had just come through two extraordinarily dangerous crises. The Berlin crisis of '61-'62, the Cuban missile crisis, where the most important thing one can imagine was whether Chairman Khrushchev would believe President Kennedy.

Now, had he not believed President Kennedy in those two crises, the consequences could have been ah just unimaginable. Ahm. So, ahm, we cannot afford, in my judgment, to have other capitals speculate that they can attack our allies with whom we have security treaties with impunity, because in ah that kind of a world ah the United States would ah find much of the world organized against us.

The character of L.B.J. as politician

Interviewer:

Let's go into a little bit (clears throat) into LBJ as an individual without going into psycho history. What kind of a person was he ah if you could in the course of this describe the beagles in the cabinet for comparison, a (clears throat) little bit his personal style?

Rusk:

Lyndon Johnson was, I think, the most ah powerful personality, with the strongest drives of anybody I ever saw. He was a man in a great hurry. I think a part of that was that he never knew from one day to the next whether he would still be alive because he'd had that massive heart attack during the '50's when at one point he was almost given up for dead, and so, he wanted to accomplish ah his objectives now rather than tomorrow or the next day. Ahm. He was a hard taskmaster.

A reporter once asked me ah what I thought of Lyndon Johnson's holding up his dog by its ears, and I said that's nothing. You ought to see the way he pulls on the ears of his cabinet. The rest of us took this in good spirit because he was hardest of all upon himself. We could never break him of the habit of staying up til one o'clock on his nightly reading, the chores that we all sent over to him, and then getting up at four thirty and five every morning to go down to the operations room to check on the casualties from Vietnam. It sounds a little pretentious to say it, but every one of those casualties took a little piece out of Lyndon Johnson.

But, ahm, there was so much that he wanted to do. And, the burden of Vietnam was very heavy on his shoulders. It got in the way of so much that he wanted to accomplish as president of the United States. Now, he ahm in a, a group ah in the east room of the White House, 100, 200 people, he could he the most eloquent, persuasive, convincing person you ever heard in your life. But, somehow, when he came before a television camera, he froze up.

I don't know whether he was somewhat intimidated by having to succeed John F. Kennedy who was brilliant on television or whether he was unduly fearful of making a mistake that might in, in, in, in the choice of a word that might ah affect things, but he never felt at home before the television camera, and therefore, he didn't project the way he did in other circumstances.

I think the biggest surprise that the scholars will discover when they get into those 35 million items in the LBJ library is the sheer intelligence of this man. This was a very high intelligence that was capable of understanding the most complicated problems, but this was screened from a lot of people by the, his corn pone stories and his southern accent.

But ahm he ah understood our system of government very well, indeed. He was se... he understood each senator better than the senators understood themselves, because he had made a study of the senators when he was majority leader, and he understood that at the end of the day, this complicated government of ours has to come to conclusions and decisions. I've heard him time after time when people were briefing him about something, some problem, when the briefing was over he would lean back and say, And so? What do you want me to do about it? Where do we go from here? What are you talking about? Ahm. Well, he was very much the operational kind of man. I think that he was myself a very great man, but ahm, I think this ahm Vietnam burden ah held him back from a lot of things that he really wanted to do.

Interviewer:

Speaking of this personal manner (clears throat) of his, did he ever talk to you about (clearing of throat) did he ever say to you if I could only sit down with Ho Chi Minh we can work it all out?

Rusk:

Lyndon Johnson had a kind of political code that he felt applied among political leaders. He would begin by trying to put himself in their shoes to see how the problem looked like from their point of view. Ahm.

Interviewer:

Sorry.

Okay. We have Take nine coming up and ah Camera Roll
628.
Speed.
Oh that.
(many voices in background)

Rusk:

Why did he pick that beagle up by the ears? Oh, you should see the way he picked his cabinet up by the ears.

Interviewer:

You got something to say about why he showed his scar?

Rusk:

Ah. Can you hold that for a minute?

Interviewer:

Ya. Sure.

Okay.

Rusk:

Lyndon Johnson had a...

Interviewer:

Let's try it one more time. Go ahead.

Rusk:

Lyndon Johnson had a political code in his mind in terms of how political leaders ought to relate to each other. For example, he would never let any of us in his administration publicly criticize a foreign leader by name whether it was Ho Chi Minh or Charles de Gaulle or Khrushchev or whoever. And he wouldn't, he didn't want them criticizing him by name. If they did, I'd be on the phone to that ambassador in fifteen minutes saying that's not the way to do business.

Ahm. But he was also skeptical about this thing called summit diplomacy. Ah. He didn't have a hankering for it. I think he understood that there's an element of safety in not bringing the court of last resort into session. Now, when he did engage in it, as he did with Mr. Kosygin at Glassboro, he pressed Mr. Kosygin very hard ah beyond the limits of Mr. Kosygin's instructions to get started on the SALT talks, and he put, he gave him the same kind of Johnson treatment that we were all familiar with in Washington. But, ahm, he nev—he never felt that if he could just sit down with Ho Chi Minh that everything could be worked out.

The broad scope of the First Indochina War

Interviewer:

Let me get into a more historical question. Taking you back to the Truman administration, could you describe the decision to help the French and what were we trying to get out of the French, as far as their own position in Indochina ?

Rusk:

Before the outbreak of the Korean War, we were on the one side giving assistance to France knowing that some of that would be going to Indochina. But, at the same time, putting very considerable pressure on France to come to a political agreement with the then three states of Indochina, because we felt that the independence of the great colonial areas of Asia like India, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia was the necessary path of the future.

Now, we did not put intolerable pressure on the French because we were working with them very closely in the formulation of NATO and Marshall Plan and things of sort. But, also, we did not want ahm them to simply say to us, all right we're getting out, it's your baby, and leave Indochina on our doorstep. Well, when the Korean War broke out on that first weekend, we did not really know what ah what this meant in terms of the geographic scope of the war. We didn't know whether this might be a part of some general offensive in Asia.

So, we intruded the 7th fleet between Taiwan and the mainland and we stepped up our assistance to ah ah the French in Indochina just in case the Chinese were looking upon this as an opportunity for a more general offensive in Asia. As it turned out, we learned later that was, apparently, not what they had in mind.

But, ah, ah, we did give the French eh considerable addi... addi... additional assistance at the time of the outbreak of the Korean conflict. But, still hoping that they would come to a political settlement with the states of Indochina comparable to those that the British had reached with the Indians, the Burmese, the Dutch had been forced to reach with the Indonesians.

Interviewer:

But, eventually, we began, we were (coughs) in effect subsidizing the French War in Indochina ?

Rusk:

Yes, in one way or another.

Interviewer:

Could you elaborate on it? I mean, was this the beginning of our commitment?

Rusk:

Well, ahhh, in a, in a sense we were subsidizing the French presence at Indochina because of France and what was going on in Europe. But, we were also pressing France to ah leave that area in the hands of three independent ex-Indochina nations: Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. But, ahhh, events in time overtook that combination and came the ah decisions in '54 at the Geneva Conference and the Southeast Asia treaty.

Formation and role of the ideology of collective security

Interviewer:

Can you go back and (clears throat) and evoke a little bit of your own recollections ah. Could you tell the story again of the Oxford Union and the attitudes of the '30s that, that, in a way kind of left an imprint on your own?

Rusk:

I suppose all of us are to some extent ah a prisoner or at least termed by our experience. The year that I was a senior in college, the Japanese seized Manchuria and I have the picture still etched in my mind from Movietone News in those days of Wellington ss... Wellington Koo standing before the League of Nations pleading for help against the Japanese attack.

I was myself present in the Oxford Union on that night in 1933 when they passed the motion that this house will not fight for king and country. The motion was moved by the philosopher C. E. M. Joad. He was eloquent, witty, brilliant and his patriotic opposition were pretty ineffective. And, so, he carried the day and the vote.

But, a very years later, C. E. M. Joad and Bertrand Russell and Maude Royden, George Lansbury and in this country people like Norman Thomas, suddenly turned to that same generation of young people and said to them sorry, chaps, this fellow Hitler is different. Get out there and fight. Without the arms or the training or the acts of prevention which could have prevented World War Two.

So, ah, we were, we could remember a little after the Manchurian business the slight little figure of Haile Selassie standing there before the League of Nations also. Pleading for the help that never came. I, myself, when I was young picketed scrap iron going to Japan out of the Port of Oakland, California which was being used for weapons against China.

So, one cannot live through those years and not have some pretty strong feelings about the idea of collective security that was written so strongly into Article I of the United Nations Charter, because it was the failure of the governments of the world to prevent those aggressions which made the catastrophe of World War Two inevitable.

So, those who are thinking about the prevention of World War Three must give some thought as to how you do it. Just hoping for it won't, won't do the job because when the armed battalions begin to move, they will at least in the short run get what they want, unless somebody stands in their way. And, we haven't figured out that terrible problem confronting the entire human race.

Interviewer:

Let me just wind up with one (clears throat) sort of retrospective question. When you look at American society today, what has been the impact of Vietnam in your estimation on American society and our position in the world?

Rusk:

It's a little difficult to assess the lasting impact of Vietnam on the American people. We thought at the end of the Korean War that the American people's view was never again. But, ah, it didn't work out that way. Ahm. I think the principal ahm impact is the erosion of the idea of collective security. And that we'd better be talking seriously about how we really propose to organize a durable peace in the world and prevent World War Three. Now, there are those who ah would beat the drums and say you do it by simply building up your armed forces. That standing alone will not do it.

Uhm. A lot of other things have to be thought about. In our relations with the Soviet Union, there have been two main threads that are there at all times. The attempt to find points of agreement and the necessity for occasional confrontations when they go beyond the boundaries of permissible conduct and move into areas that threaten the peace of the world. Both elements are always there even though public opinion and many of our friends in the media tend to swing like a pendulum between something called détente and Cold War. Both elements are always present. It takes a good deal of sophistication in thinking to keep those two things in mind because sometimes the element of confrontation gets in the way of the possible search for points of agreement. (Clears throat.)

You can't abandon that search for, for possible agreement because we and the Russians share a major common interest — the prevention of World War Three. If we can find points of agreement that would help to broaden that base of common interest and reduce the range of issues on which violence can occur, we have to make the effort, because whatever anybody thinks of the Russians at the end of the day we and they must still find a way to inhabit this little speck of dust in the universe at the same time. Otherwise, forget it.

Interviewer:

And, do you think Vietnam has ah diluted, has diverted people's attention...?

Rusk:

I think it's diverted our attention from this central purpose. Vietnam, I think, has at least for a period diverted our attention from this central issue of how the world is to organize itself to prevent World War Three. Now, we'll come back to it, but I would like ah to see more public discussion.

Interviewer:

That's fine. I think that...

Room tone?

Room tone.

End of SR 42614