Folha de S. Paulo, February 4, 1973
“Throwing the Pen on the Floor”
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Some episodes deserve comment, others do not. Still, others are impossible to comment on because their burden of contradiction makes the human vocabulary’s most stinging qualifiers insufficient.
This week, some events from this third category have made the international news. I will describe two of them in the dry language of someone who feels that any adjective would be powerless.
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Speaking to his country and the world, Nixon said that the Paris Agreement between the two Vietnams could be considered the beginning of an honorable peace. What’s accurate about that statement?
Let’s start with honor. There is no honor where there is no truth or justice. They said the Agreement had been made under the aegis of justice. That is not true.
Justice requires complete equality between parties in an agreement without winners or losers. In this case, the inequality could not have been greater.
It is understandable – at least from a certain point of view – that a referendum should be held to determine whether South Vietnam’s people want the current regime to continue. But why not also organize a referendum to find out whether the people of North Vietnam want the communist regime to continue?
If the US withdraws its troops from South Vietnam, why doesn’t the other belligerent party do the same? In other words, why don’t Americans have the right to be in South Vietnam, but countless groups of North Vietnamese guerrillas can remain there after the armistice?
No one can speak of honor facing an agreement that uninhibitedly displays such disparities – to mention just these two. To claim this beginning of peace is based on honor is simply untrue.
This agreement is not even genuine. When signed, everyone predicted it would not usher in peace but simply the American withdrawal. And there are the facts. As soon as the hostilities subsided in Vietnam (no one knows for how long), Beijing and Hanoi attacked Cambodia’s anticommunist government, demanding the restoration of Suvana Phuma’s pro-communist government and the withdrawal of American troops.
All those who celebrated this “agreement” worldwide with speeches and parties have plenty of elements to measure its precariousness. With the most contradictory joy, they celebrated the beginning of peace with honor that promised neither true peace nor was made according to honor.
I find the South Vietnamese representative’s attitude infinitely more logical: after signing the agreement under the brutal pressure of events, he threw his pen on the floor.
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This leads to the conclusion that, by withdrawing American troops, Nixon left South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese and Russian aggressors. I say Russians because of their apparent presence in their weaponry and military leadership and in espionage, techniques for undermining the adversary’s resistance, financing, etc.
However, the reality is more terrible. The Russians are there because of the gold, wheat and political impunity with which Nixon benefits the Soviets.
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No one can ignore that Russia, forced by the disorganization of its agriculture and a harsh winter, had to make spectacularly large wheat purchases from the USA. Russia, a major grain exporter under the Tzars!
Everything suggests that the mysterious payment conditions the US accepted for these purchases amount to one of the most generous deals that can only be conceived between father and son.
Nixon’s solicitude for Russia was so great that to supply the latter fully, the US ran out of wheat, and the Americans had to pay more for bread so the Russians could have plenty on their tables.
At the same time, the spectacular pouring of American gold into Russia continues.
According to the Review of the News of January 17, twenty-six loans totaling 1,226.3 million dollars were made to socialist countries in the last six months. Russia received 580 million dollars, or 47% of the total.
In reality, these supplies should be seen more as donations than loans. No one knows under what conditions they will be paid back or even if they will be paid back in full. However, this is only a first step. The economic catastrophe brought by the communist regime has created conditions in Russia such that, according to the president of the New York Stock Exchange, the Moscow government needs 100 billion dollars. Who will give it to them – at least for the most part – if not the Yankee partner?
All that said, is there anything more imperative, indispensable and irresistible than for the US to pressure Russia to withdraw from Vietnam and leave the communists there to their own devices?
Nixon did not apply this pressure. American troops retreated in the face of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies, maintained by Russia, which in turn is maintained by the USA!
Nixon has backed down in the face of an enemy he feeds and would sink into chaos and shame without him.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam Nguyen Duy Trinh signs the Paris Peace Accords on January 27, 1973. (File photo)