1864 



The close relationship between the National Security Council and the 

 Department of Defense during these years meant that most of the 

 planning was undertaken by officials with a military orientation, and 

 it was natural for them to regard the diplomatic problems of Southeast 

 Asia as military problems requiring a military solution. Having once 

 embarked on this course, the United States became increasingly com- 

 mitted to a military solution, the ultimate failure of which cost heavily 

 in lives, diplomatic prestige, military credibiUty, domestic tranquility, 

 national resources, and dollars. 



As the study points out, "It is interesting to speculate on what 

 different course events in Southeast Asia might have followed had the 

 Johnson offer been made at the time of the Geneva Agreement of 1954 

 that partitioned Vietnam." Although offering economic advantages, 

 the regional approach was ideologically neutral and pragmatic. It had 

 no evident-pohtical bias. The study quoted WiUard Hanna to the 

 effect that: 



In a region in wliich discontinuity, or outright sabotage, of international 

 endeavor has heretofore prevailed, the Mekong Project may provide the long- 

 sought-for new formula for sustained, constructive development. Here, in the 

 past — at least in Laos and Vietnam — the familiar contemporary panacea of aid 

 had provided no answers. What seems absolutely basic is a massive, well-inte- 

 grated, areawide, peacetime program in which the riparian nations themselves can 

 swiftly build up experience and competence in modem development and adminis- 

 tration. Whether the Mekong Project is really appropriate or adequate to the need 

 remains to be proved, but it is certainly the most promising scheme which has yet 

 been proposed. The $10 billion project — to which two years ago President Johnson 

 pledged $1 billion, once peaceful regional development became possible — would 

 seem from almost any point of view a much better investment than $1 billion per 

 annum in an endless Vietnam War."' 



The study admits "it is sheer speculation" that a U.S.-encouraged 

 Mekong Project in 1954 "might nave provided a focus for peaceful 

 economic progress, served as an educational process, and estabUshed a 

 basis for wider cooperation" among the Riparian States, including 

 both North and South Vietnam. However, to admit the possibiUty is to 

 suggest that a more realistic and hard-headed long-range planning 

 effort by the United States might have been able to convert a possibil- 

 ity into a practicality. 



Moreover, the study goes on to suggest, a "slowly and deliberately 

 encouraged regional development" — ^i.e., the adoption of the Mekong 

 principles in other troubled regions of the world — "might serve U.S. 

 foreign policy objectives in the long run." The advantages of dealing 

 with multinational regions, for example, might take account of the 

 following considerations: 



Emphasis is on local participation in development and planning; 



Subregions in greatest need and offering greatest opportunity for advancement 

 tend to receive priority by local consent; 



Nationalistic preoccupations appear to be moderated ; 



Self-help is encouraged and stimulated by being made more effective in combined 

 actions with mutual support; 



National sensitivities that bilateral aid would exacerbate are less abraded by 

 multinational arrangements; 



Regional cohesiveness — the tendency for people of different countries working 

 together on a shared problem to lay aside their national differences — can result 

 from attention to geographic regional goals rather than formal national boundaries; 



Burdens of foreign aid tend to be more widely distributed; and 



"« Wlllard A. Hanna. "The Mekong Prolect," Part I, "The River and the Region, Ameri- 

 can Universities Field Staff Reports (July 1968), p. 10. However, Hanna made these observa- 

 tions at times when the Johnson proposal was already a dead Issue. The opportunity had 

 been lost. The question Is whether, had It been made earlier, It might have had the result 

 Hanna hoped for It. 



