George Ball, Vietnam, And The Rethinking Of Containment
George Ball has long been recognized as the one high official in the Johnson administration who consistently argued against the American military commitment to Vietnam. This careful study, based on Ball's private papers and other archival sources, explores both his ideas and his decision to try to effect change from within and not by spectacular public resignation and outburst.
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Americans tend to think there is a solution to every problem. In a corollary-equally misleading though not unnatural, given the unrivaled material strength of the United States-they imagine that when the problem is international the solution to it will be American. Most international problems, however, do not have final solutions. Only a Carthaginian peace is final; and short of that, as even unconditional enemy surrenders have demonstrated, the distribution of rewards and punishments soon turns out to have results very different from those the victors foresaw or desired. Applying these truths to the situation in Viet Nam, we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that there is not a final solution to the war there; that neither a preliminary nor a lasting solution will be determined by the amount of force which we are able or willing to use; and that in neither case will it correspond to our idea of "victory."
One of the great problems in arms control is that advances in technology, and their application to military programs, tend to invalidate or render meaningless even the soundest arms-control proposals. Twice in the last decade this has occurred, once when the diffusion of nuclear technology and the production of large numbers of nuclear weapons rendered futile any hope of complete nuclear disarmament, and again when the advent of intercontinental missiles made necessary a rethinking of all the proposals for limiting or abolishing strategic strike forces. It may well be that we are about to witness a similar overtaking of current arms-control proposals because of the possibility of deploying highly effective ballistic missile defenses.
IT would be an exaggeration to describe the current discussion of our relations with the Soviet Union and with Western Europe as another Great Debate. Perhaps in the language of the times it might be called a Mini- Debate, distracted as it is and emotionally charged by events elsewhere which, however, may prove to be less fateful in the long run.

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