Word: nlf
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Lacouture professed to have no easy solutions in Vietnam, but elaborated upon two suggestions that he has advocated in the current New York Review of Books: First the U.S. should deal directly with the National Liberation Front. "I don't speak of formal recognition," Lacouture insisted, "but the NLF should be one of the partners of the South Vietnamese government in any talks...
...defense of our wealth, and to satisfy our psyches, we see every social upheaval as a conspiracy: the National Liberation Front is controlled by Hanoi, and Hanoi by Peking. Oglesby suggests, more than half seriously, that we are fighting to show China that it must control Hanoi and the NLF, in order to create a rational Asian Communist coalition. We are practicing, Oglesby says, a politics of nostalgia, in which we try to recreate the post-war European encounters in Asia in order to reach a similar Cold War peace...
...fulfill this specific commitment, negotiations which would realign South Vietnamese politics with military facts must be achieved. For the moment, however, Hanoi's apparent insistence that the NLF should be "the sole representative of the South Vietnamese people" poses a block to such negotiations. The problem of American policy, then, is one of convincing Hanoi to negotiate while avoiding tactics which involve unthinkable costs and unreachable goals...
...very nature the hopes of Hanoi that we will withdraw from Vietnam before ensuring a stable political solution. They may not decide to negotiate for several years, but the stability and de-escalation which the strategy would afford could provide both the Americans and Hanoi, both the NLF and Saigon, a chance to re-evaluate the realistic prospects for a coalition government in the South...
...when negotiations finally do occur, the more sharply defined military division of the country will force both sides to make reasonable assessments of their bargaining strengths. To facilitate that assessment, the United States should state now that it would be willing to accept the NLF as an equal party in negotiations and as a participant in any elections to determine the final political solution. We must realize, as Walter Lippmann points out, that "An absurd and impossible commitment is not a true commitment in law or morals, and a commitment to make General Ky the accepted ruler of South Vietnam...