Foreign Affairs at 70

William G. Hyland

From Foreign Affairs, Fall 1992

William G. Hyland leaves the editorship of Foreign Affairs with this issue.

The domestic crisis worsened. In early 1968 the Tet offensive shocked the nation; it led to Lyndon Johnson?s decision to withdraw from the presidential contest in an effort to promote a peaceful resolution in Vietnam. Clark Clifford became secretary of defense in March. In the election campaign of 1968 Nixon suggested that he would find a way to end the war. His soon?to?be?named national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, wrote of the improbability of a military victory and the advisability of a negotiated settlement, with the United States discussing the military issue and the Vietnamese discussing the political problems. But Kissinger also argued for continuing military pressures while negotiating.

After he had left office Clifford wrote for Foreign Affairs, outlining a solution. He argued that predictions of progress and of military success had proved "illusory." His prescription boiled down to an initial withdrawal of 100,000 American troops in an effort to convince the Saigon government that South Vietnamese forces would have to bear the brunt of the fighting. Clifford concluded, "Let us start to bring our men home?and let us start now."

American forces indeed began to withdraw, but there was no settlement until January 1973. By then Vietnam had become more and more subordinate to the transformation of Great Power relations: between the United States and China, and between Moscow and Washington. Nevertheless, upon his retirement as editor after 44 years, Mr. Armstrong wrote with bitterness in his final article:

The war in Vietnam has been the longest and in some respects the most calamitous war in our history. It has rent the American people apart, spiritually and politically. It is a war which has not been and could not be won, a war which was pushed from small beginnings to an appalling multitude of horrors, many of which we have become conscious of only by degrees. The methods we have used in fighting the war have scandalized and disgusted public opinion in almost all foreign countries.

Not since we withdrew into comfortable isolation in 1920 has the prestige of the United States stood so low.

Mr. Armstrong?s frustration was understandable. His generation had witnessed the disaster of isolation and appeasement in the 1920s and 1930s as well as the heroic efforts of World War II and the severe tests of the Cold War. It must have seemed to him that the lessons of international responsibility that he had always pleaded for were being squandered in southeast Asia.

Yet there was a new trend that he, as editor, had sponsored. In 1967 Richard M. Nixon, not yet a candidate, had written of Asia after Vietnam, and had foreshadowed a more conciliatory policy toward China. Given Nixon?s reputation and political alignment this was a small sensation, much discussed after he entered the Oval Office.

V

The new editor of Foreign Affairs, William P. Bundy, was well equipped to follow the post?Vietnam trends. He had served in various capacities in the U.S. government, and in the Johnson administration as assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs. Working with him was Mr. Armstrong?s last managing editor, James Chace. In his final article for Foreign Affairs in 1984 Mr. Bundy detailed some of the important elements that he believed characterized the conduct of U.S. foreign policy during his tenure at the journal from mid?1972 to late 1984.

The Middle East, he wrote, was "the foremost area of concern and danger." During Bundy?s editorship Israel and its Arab adversaries fought the 1973 war and the United States worked to negotiate a peace settlement, and later the 1978 Camp David accords with Egypt and Israel. The Iranian Revolution overthrew the pro?American shah, and the anti?Western fundamentalist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini took power, seizing American hostages in a fatal crisis for the Carter administration. In 1982 Israel invaded Lebanon and a multinational peacekeeping force slowly withdrew after terrorist attacks on American and French forces.