Abstract

How to Tell When the Rebels Have Won

U.S. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey expressed the national concern over guerrilla warfare recently when he spoke of this bold new form of aggression which could rank with the discovery of gunpowder as constituting the, major challenge to the U.S. security. It is viewed as the latest weapon in the Communist arsenal with Vietnam as its testing ground. If guerrilla techniques succeed in Vietnam, wrote writer James Reston in the newspaper "The New York Times," nobody in Washington dare assume that the same techniques will not be applied in all Communist rimlands from Korea to Iran. This view is based on two assumptions and at least one serious misconception. It assumes that the Vietnamese situation is typical, historically and politically, of other underdeveloped countries, and that American policy toward other nations would be comparable to the one pursued in Vietnam.