On the Front Lines of the Cold War

by Seymour Topping

  THE WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL SECURITY

  RELUCTANCE TO TALK TO ADVERSARIES

  For ideological and domestic political reasons, President Harry Truman balked at direct talks with his foreign adversaries. Scorning Ho Chi Minh as simply a Communist rather than a nationalist revolutionary, he ignored eight bids by Ho in late 1945 and early 1946 for friendship and cooperation if only the United States would help in freeing Vietnam of French colonialism. If Ho’s offer had been accepted, America’s Vietnam War might have been averted. Truman also failed to take advantage of proffered opportunities to open direct exploratory contacts with Mao Zedong. Rebuffed, Mao intervened militarily in the Korean War and provided the border sanctuary in South China and the arms which enabled the Indochinese Communists to triumph. Mao was motivated in these policies by a conviction that the United States intended to undermine his regime. If there had been high-level talks, Mao might have been dissuaded from his obsessive fear. When President Nixon eventually engaged in conciliatory talks with Mao and Zhou Enlai during his 1972 visit to China, the United States was already committed to withdrawal of its troops from war in Vietnam. China thus gained what Mao had sought for more than two decades of strife: recognition and elimination of what he perceived to be the threat to the security of his regime from American bases in Southeast Asia.

  Acting for the Eisenhower administration, the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, refused during the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indochina and Korea to talk or otherwise engage directly with the Chinese delegation, headed by Premier Zhou Enlai. At a crucial turning point in the conference negotiations on Indochina, as I have detailed earlier, the Chinese out of frustration turned to me as a channel for conveying a pivotal message to the American delegation. After the collapse at the Geneva Conference of talks on Korea, Dulles rejected a proposal by Premier Zhou Enlai that there be a continuation of discussions in another forum in search of a settlement of the strife on the peninsula. Thereafter, the stalemate in Korea hardened, compelling the indefinite stationing of some twenty-nine thousand American troops, comprising ground, air, and naval divisions, in South Korea behind the Demilitarized Zone as a trip-wire defense force against any incursion by the powerful North Korean army.

  Comparable to the reluctance of the White House to enter into exploratory talks with the Maoist regime was the hesitancy of the George W. Bush administration to enter into high-level talks with the governments of Iran and Syria during the war in Iraq. Both of those governments, branded terrorist regimes by the Bush administration, provided the Iraqi insurgents with indispensable sanctuaries and cross-border supply of arms. As in Indochina, bombing and covert ground actions were not effective in sealing Iraq’s porous borders with Syria and Iran. It was left to the incoming Barack Obama administration to explore the alternative of high-level talks. In Afghanistan, the Obama administration reached out to less radical tribal factions of the Taliban seeking peace settlements.

  DEPENDABLE ALLIES

  The most vital lesson to be derived by Barack Obama from President John F. Kennedy’s experience was the finding that no American counter-insurgency program could fully succeed unless the United States was allied with a native government, highly efficient, incorruptible, and capable of attracting popular homegrown support. Kennedy went to the extent of approving the violent coup unseating President Ngo Dinh Diem because he believed that a suitable replacement had to be found for the flawed Diem regime. In the final phase of the Vietnam War, Congress held to that standard in denying further military aid to the Thieu government.

  The horrors that befell individuals allied with the United States in Indochina after the withdrawal of American troops speaks to the obligation to include in any exit strategy for Iraq or Afghanistan contingency plans to safeguard those supporters left behind. Such plans could range from their evacuation or, alternatively, the protective presence of a residual American force during the extended transition, to arrangements with successor or adversary powers, or ultimately if necessary, reintervention with international sanction.

  RELIANCE ON BOMBING

  From the administration of President Lyndon Johnson to that of Richard Nixon, the United States relied heavily in Indochina on bombing as a means of gaining decisive military advantages that would bend the Communist foes to Washington’s political will. These massive bombing campaigns failed to achieve their goals. Worse, they often were counterproductive in that by inflicting civilian casualties and other collateral damage they incited powerful native anti-American sentiment and resistance. In Cambodia, many thousands of peasants threw their support to the Communist Khmer Rouge out of resentment of the devastating American bombing. This was a major contributing factor to the military victory of the Khmer Rouge, headed by the genocidal maniac Pol Pot, over the American-supported Lon Nol government.

  As late as 2008, American military strategists were still failing to take account of the lessons of Indochina in the use of air power. In the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, civilian casualties resulting from American air strikes evoked repeated protests by the allied Afghan government. Finally, concerned about losing the support of the Afghan people, the secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, visited Afghanistan late in the year and promised “we will do everything in our power to find new and better ways” to take aim at the “common enemies.” But the bombing by drones and manned combat aircraft continued into 2009, inflicting civilian casualties and evoking even more vehement protests by the Afghan allies.

  STRATEGIC MISCONCEPTIONS

  The United States’ interventions in Indochina beg comparison with its invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both episodes the United States intervened militarily not on the express invitation of a majority of the native peoples but for what was perceived to be American strategic interests. In the deployment of troops in both Indochina and Iraq little account was taken of the historical nationalist resistance common to the populations of those countries to any foreign intervention. In Indochina this nationalist resistance was a major factor in the defeat of both France and the United States. In Iraq, the American invasion, ostensibly launched to defeat the unpopular Saddam Hussein regime, encountered insurgent attacks rather than the cheering crowds as forecast by the Central Intelligence Agency. Foreign invaders whatever their purpose were anathema.

  In both Vietnam and Iraq the original rationale for intervention was discarded and another substituted.

  In 1950 the Truman administration made its initial commitment to the French in their war against Ho Chi Minh as a trade-off for President Charles de Gaulle’s cooperation in the confrontation with Stalin in Europe. Subsequently, as the United States became deeply mired in Vietnam, the so-called domino theory—which held that the fall of Indochina would lead to Communist domination of all Southeast Asia and diminish U.S. influence in the world—was put forward as the rationale for intervention. The domino theory was dismissed as invalid in 1967 by Richard Helms, director of the CIA, in a secret assessment submitted to President Johnson. Robert McNamara in his memoir, In Retrospect, published in 1995, recalling the Helms assessment, stated that he too had belatedly concluded that the domino theory, initially enunciated by President Eisenhower and subscribed to by his three successors, was wrong and that the United States “could have withdrawn from South Vietnam without any permanent damage to U.S. or Western security.” No dominos fell in Southeast Asia following the Communist conquest of Indochina. If anything, the triumphant Vietnamese became more isolated.

  In Iraq there was a comparable flip by the Bush administration in justifying intervention. Spreading democracy throughout the Middle East became the rationale for pursuing the war in Iraq after it was shown that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein’s armory. What transpired in Southeast Asia also put into question President George W. Bush’s theory that establishing an effective democratic government in Iraq would lead to regime change in other Middle East countries ruled by authoritarian regimes. The Indochina experience demons
trated that independent nations tend to evolve in terms of their own culture, history, and internal problems rather than from the ideological influence of neighboring states.

  THE NEWS MEDIA AND NATIONAL SECURITY

  Observing the evolution of American foreign policy over the past half century, as a reporter and editor, I hold that the press has no more vital obligation to public service than providing penetrating and comprehensive coverage of national security issues. It is the responsibility of the press to lay out for citizen voters what are the policies of the government in coping with commitments abroad and any threats to national security such as terrorism. No less critical is the concomitant responsibility of the press to report on whether officials are telling the truth about the character and viability of their policies. The performance of the news media since the end of World War II in fulfilling those obligations in the coverage of national security policy making has been most uneven.

  In 1950, the American people lacked the information that would have enabled them to grasp what might be the consequences of President Truman’s decision to become involved on the side of the French in Indochina. I must make the point once again that were no American correspondents stationed in Saigon covering the French Indochina War before my arrival in February 1950. Truman established diplomatic relations with the Bao Dai satellite government and made his commitment to support the French military campaign against Ho Chi Minh’s forces, announced only a few days after I reached Saigon, without the American people being aware of what their nation was getting into. It is reasonable to speculate that if there had been comprehensive reporting by American correspondents prior to 1950 on the nature of the nationalist revolution in Indochina, an informed American public might have resisted being led step by step into the Indochina morass.

  During the Lyndon Johnson administration, in the first six months of 1964, the American military mounted clandestine attacks on North Vietnam. None were reported in the press. If the news media had investigated and revealed these actions taken without the sanction of Congress, the subsequent turn in American policy toward engaging in a widening war might have been forestalled. During the period of the clandestine raids, the administration was preparing a congressional resolution tantamount to a declaration of war. On August 4, the Pentagon announced that North Vietnamese PT boats had made the second of two torpedo attacks on U.S. Navy destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. That evening President Lyndon Johnson went on national television to announce that in retaliation he had ordered air strikes against North Vietnam. Like the news media generally, the New York Times accepted without question the Pentagon report of an attack and commented editorially that Johnson had presented the “somber facts” to the American people. On August 7, Congress, responding to the urging of the Johnson administration, approved a Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing military action against North Vietnam. Not long after Congress acted, the public learned through leaked statements by navy officers that the North Vietnamese “torpedo attack” exploited by the administration to spur Congress into passing the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution never happened. American destroyers had been shooting in the dark at what one navy pilot on reconnaissance described as phantom targets, not at North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Congress and the public had been misled. Attacks on North Vietnam continued.

  The New York Times served the country well in 1971 by publishing the Pentagon Papers. The Papers disclosed covert military operations by secret presidential fiat and other executive actions taken without the approval of Congress. If the breaches of executive license documented in the Papers had been published by the press in “real time,” Congress and the public might have been sufficiently aroused to demand rethinking of the commitments which led the United States into the Indochina quagmire.

  The belated disclosure by the press of the Gulf of Tonkin deception can be compared to the lapses of the press in 2002 when the Bush administration was putting forward its case for regime change in Iraq preparatory to the invasion. On August 26, Vice President Dick Cheney stated that there was no doubt that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was preparing to use them against the United States. As proof, President Bush told the United Nations General Assembly on September 12 that Iraq had made several attempts to buy aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for use in building nuclear weapons. The tubes story, given prominent play in the New York Times and other media, became a key factor in the administration’s case for war. Few news organizations seriously questioned the tubes story or other prewar intelligence reports put forward by the Bush administration as justification for war. The Knight Ridder newspapers were a notable exception due to the investigative work carried out by their reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. Not until late 2003 and early 2004, after the Iraq war was in full progress, did the press generally begin to challenge convincingly the questionable prewar intelligence paraded by the White House, particularly that from such Iraqi defectors as the notorious Ahmed Chalabi. Headlines blossomed then, such as the one in the Washington Post, “Iraq’s Arsenal Was Only on Paper,” or in the Wall Street Journal, “Pressure Rises for Probe of Pre-War Intelligence.” The tubes story collapsed as research revealed that the aluminum tubes cited were not designed for use in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Also discounted but belatedly were reports circulated by the White House holding that Saddam Hussein was closely allied with the Al-Qaeda terrorists.

  There was valuable work done by national security reporters. Growingly distrustful of the Bush administration, having been misled, they began to examine government policies more closely. In 2004, Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine revealed the harsh interrogations of Iraqi inmates by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison, and an exposé by Dana Priest of the Washington Post uncovered the CIA’s operation of an overseas network of prisons in which terrorist suspects were subjected to torture. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times revealed in 2005 that in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks the National Security Agency had instituted without court warrant secret eavesdropping of domestic-to-international communications.

  Reporters covering national security affairs were handicapped during the Bush administration by a blitz of subpoenas served by federal prosecutors who were investigating government leaks and also by the imposition of measures restricting Freedom of Information access to official records such as those at the presidential libraries. The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press in a study conducted in 2007 found a fivefold increase since 2001 in subpoenas issued by prosecutors seeking the identity of confidential sources.

  At a time of great need, press coverage of national security affairs began to shrink perceptibly, beginning in about 2002. Suffering from a precipitous decline in income resulting from the migration of advertising and consumers to the Internet, newspapers, television networks, and newsmagazines were compelled to cut newsroom budgets. The ax fell heavily on their Washington and foreign bureaus, many of which were cut back in size, consolidated with other news outlets, or eliminated entirely. Cutbacks of staff coverage accelerated with the onset of the economic recession of 2008–9. Newspapers, which provided the core of critical investigative and national security coverage, suffered severely. Only a few news organizations, notably the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press, although also hard hit, managed to sustain to any substantial degree their Washington and foreign bureau operations. Rebuilding of the Washington and foreign staffs waited on economic recovery, which in turn related to how the media would adjust to the evolving digital world.

  As late as the year 2009, newspapers had not yet found a means of earning income from presentation of their news coverage and advertising on the Web sufficient to compensate for the loss of advertising from their print editions. The New York Times was no exception, although its Web site in 2009 had 20 million unique users, as compared with about a million subscribers to print editions. Because of their economic straits and changes in con
sumer habits, all newspapers felt compelled to move from emphasis on print to diverse presentations on their Web sites of news content, such as blog commentaries. In 2009, there were two benchmark changes in American journal-ism—which in prior years I would have found it hard to contemplate—that reflected this intensifying trend. The hallowed American Society of Newspaper Editors, which I headed as president in 1992–93, changed its name to the American Society of News Editors, thus opening admission to editors who had forsaken print entirely for Web sites. The other event: the Pulitzer Prize Board, on which I served as administrator of the prizes from 1993 to 2002, opened up its fourteen news categories to entries made up entirely of online content.

  Looking to the future, I believe that newspapers will adjust to their digital-era challenges if they retain the courage and quality of journalism that made such news organizations as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press worldwide the most respected and quoted of news outlets. These standards must be adhered to whether the industry continues to go digital with limited output of print editions or goes solely digital on the Web. The rising generations must be persuaded that the integrity and viability of their society, particularly as they relate to national security and safeguarding of constitutional democracy, require a “Fourth Estate,” to borrow Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth-century writ, able to monitor and report with competence and independence on the performance of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of government. From the Harry Truman to the George W. Bush administrations, the record of flawed government handling of national security issues testifies to the absolute need for a press capable of fulfilling its “Fourth Estate” functions.