424 



cited the toll of more than 45,000 Americans killed in the war, with 

 another 10,051 deaths from "non-hostile" causes. 91 



The Nixon offer had come after more than six years of conflict, with 

 large investment of manpower, hardware, and war-related foreign 

 assistance poured into South Vietnam. The intervening years had 

 demonstrated once again what had been shown in the Korean War — 

 that it was politically and technically difficult for the United States 

 to wage a limited war for limited objectives remote from its territory. 



It is clear from the record that in regard to Southeast Asia, both 

 President Johnson and President Nixon used "regionalism" alterna- 

 tively as a vehicle of anticommunism through alliance and as a ve- 

 hicle of economic and technological development. Both Presidents 

 appear to have approached the second form of regionalism ambiva- 

 lently : as worthwhile to advance the regional economy, and as a pos- 

 sible* means of accelerating a favorable end of the war. Moreover, 

 both Presidents cited the essential role of multilateral aid programs 

 in developmental regionalism, while concentrating actual aid 

 bilaterally. 



The response of the Hanoi authorities to the two offers, by the two 

 Presidents, for a program of regionalism supported by U.S. resources, 

 appears to have demonstrated also that "dollar diplomacy" does not 

 convince an adversary as long as there is any reasonable prospect that 

 he can outlast the United States without some form of capitulation. 

 The underlying meaning of that tenet of communist ideology which 

 Nikita Khrushchev expressed as "AVe will bury you" is that com- 

 munism as a form of political-social state will surpass and 

 hence outlast capitalistic-democratic forms in the Ioiuj: run. Accord- 

 ingly, it seems reasonable to infer that the kind of offer represented 

 by the Johns Hopkins speech, under the circumstances prevailing 

 at that time, was unlikely to be an effective tactical move toward end- 

 ing the war. The question remains, however, as to whether there could 

 be circumstances under which the concept of regionalism — that is to 

 say, developmental regionalism— with U.S. support for it on some in- 

 ternational basis, might serve a broader strategic purpose looking 

 toward the achievement of U.S. foreign policy objectives. 



91 Garnett D. Horner and George Sherman, "U.S. Aid Offer is $7.5 Billion," Washington 

 Star (January 28, 1972), p. Al ; and Murrey Marder, "U.S. Reconstruction Proposal Offers 

 $2.5 Billion to Hanoi," Washington Post (January 28, 1972), p. Al. 



