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Editorials

April 2, 1968

Domino theory

However much United States and New Zealand policy in Vietnam is inspired by misguided self-interest and executed with bumbling atrocity, the real tragedy is not that the policy is maliciously inspired or evilly executed, for it is neither of these things. The real tragedy is just that the policy has failed.

Had the United States been able to win the war quickly and set up a stable right wing regime—be it democratic, pseudo-democratic or dictatorial—a few of the Vietnamese people would have been most satisfied and the vast apolitical majority acquiescent. The real business of living would have gone on. The basic problems of Vietnam (which concern the ownership of land) might even have been solved. But the war has dragged on. The moral, cultural and economic lifeblood of Vietnam has been sucked dry for fear of a mythical domino-player.

If China Is playing dominoes (and is not so incompetent as to make her a most unformidable opponent) why has she not taken Burma? If China IS playing dominoes why is hers only the third largest army in the world? If China Is playing dominoes why is she pouring all her military resources into hydrogen and atomic missiles?

To achieve and validity the domino theory must be modified to exclude a military plot in Peking. It must be simply the theory that any Communist country is potentially a base for supporting guerilla activities in any non-Communist country. Until New Zealand is both rent by internal guerrilla war and bordering a Communist country she need not fear being linked in the chain of dominoes.

Any attempted justification of New Zealand's participation in the war in terms of the domino theory—and this is the only justification offered—cannot possibly be based on the possibility that New Zealand would fail. It must be based on the more limited danger in the possibility that all or a substantial part of South-east Asia becomes Communist.

It seems somewhat doubtful that such a possibility is sufficiently strong, and sufficiently contrary to New Zealand's interests, to justify any war.

Views like these are common among people who have thought of the issues, and as more people think, they become more common.

Over the last days more people in Wellington have done more thinking than perhaps in any similar period. It becomes necessary to communicate the conclusions reached to the government, the news media, and the people who have yet to hink.

The method of communication which allows a large number of individuals to state their positions simply is to demonstrate. But there is a danger that demonstrations are both distasteful and monotonous to those they are aimed at. An effective demonstration must be both novel and respectable.