AMERICA'S VIETNAM POLICY: THE STRATEGY OF DECEPTION.

By Edward S. Herman and Richard B. Du Boff'55. Washington, D. C.: Public AffairsPress, 1966. 123 pp. $3.75 (paperbound$2.00).

Why have repeated efforts to start negotiations in Vietnam failed? Edward Herman and Richard Du Boff argue that the cause is not the intransigence of Hanoi, but the aims of Washington. In their view, the American government is not interested in peace unless it results in a non-communist regime in South Vietnam which is amenable to our influence.

Given present political and military factors, most particularly the continued strength of the National Liberation Front among the South Vietnamese, the goal of American policy can only be achieved by what the authors term a policy of genocide - systematic destruction and forced evacuation of Vietcong areas. Only such a policy goal, in the authors' opinion, can explain the failure of the United States to take advantage of repeated opportunities for peace talks, as well as its deliberate undermining of such possibilities through escalation. In short, Herman and Du Boff contend that the only negotiations the Administration is interested in would consist of a negotiated surrender of the other side.

Not only do the authors dismiss Washington's peaceable words as public relations, they hold that we are not engaged in a defensive struggle for freedom and self-deter-mination, but in a brutal war of aggression in which we are determined to impose our will upon the South Vietnamese. Many people will find such charges shocking and dismiss them out of hand. But the very fact that they are being made signifies a deep distrust of the veracity and good faith of the American government, and a profound alienation from its actions, at least among dissenting elements of the intellectual community.

And if Herman and Du Boff are right, the chief victim of the war may be the confidence of citizens in democratic political institutions, which are supposed to check governmental actions that are egregiously mistaken or deeply opposed to American ideals.

Assistant Professor of Government