Vietnam: The Costs and Lessons of Defeat

These remarks, unavoidably, are being written about a month before they will be read. In the interim, changes are likely to occur in the Vietnam crisis. But the fundamental facts, precipitated by years of political reaction and obtuseness, are not likely to change.

The truth is that the situation in South Vietnam is just about hopeless; that negotiations, if they are even possible, must be undertaken not in the delusion that they can magically transform the unhappy reality but that t...