Noting that the project received a relatively small budget and short time schedule, Judd said. "This thing is primarily a mental exercise. Certain facts are known and readily available. Beyond that it's a question of brainpower, how ingenious you are."
"By asking people to work on specific projects where we define exactly what it is we're looking for, we can contribute to our thinking." Judd said a few minutes later. "We try to make all our stuff policy-oriented. It doesn't amount to churning out great amounts of fresh thinking."
The contract provides for at least two and possibly three consultations between the Columbia researchers and State Department officials, presumably to "define exactly what it is we're looking for."
The report will not be classified, but it will not necessarily be published. Russell pointed out the economic difficulty in finding a university press that would publish the work, and added that she could not yet be sure whether the finished product would merit publication. The Department of State could publish it, but Judd said so far there are no such plans. The extent to which the report is circulated will depend on how "useful" it is, Judd said.
Columbia won the contract after competing with the Fletcher School at Tufts and five other universities. "Most schools wouldn't go near it," Russell said. Judd concurred.
"You people so intimidated academic institutions out there that they don't want to touch these things with a ten-foot pole," he complained. "They act like a bunch of chickens. They think they'll be pecked by you hawks out there. They skirted around this one till they were sure it wasn't booby-trapped."
Universities are wary about government contracts because their institutional memories recall the 1968 Columbia student disorders, in which demonstrators focused much of their protest on the IDA. At that time the IDA was controlled by a group of universities, including Columbia. After the violence at Columbia the universities bowed out of the IDA, and it became an independent corporation.
Now the State Department is funding a project at Columbia with a staff including Arthur Smithies, an IDA consultant.
Probably the Administration hopes to restore broken bonds with the universities: maybe it thinks it can convert some of its critics and please its supporters by allowing them a token role in policy formation. Some of these reports are undoubtedly bureaucratic waste destined to line file cabinets. The Columbia study in particular, though, may be used to help gain Congressional funds for a multilateral agency to prop up a Thieu-ish regime. Like the Smithies and Benoit reports, it is a minor scenario for the tragicomedy of Vietnamization.
Vietnamization is tragic because it is the final stage of a devastating attack on a people and a culture. It is bitterly comic because the people who protested so vehemently two years ago have now forgotten.
At Harvard, enrollment in History 182c, "Modern Vietnam," has plummeted from 195 last Spring to half that number this Fall. A dozen people showed up at the first meeting of Sam Popkin's graduate seminar on "Revolution and Politics in Vietnam." Four people are enrolled in "Elementary Vietnamese." China courses are packed. Nixon's ploy appears to be working.
Bombs are still falling, people are still dying, but already nobody cares. Visitors to Vietnam this summer repot that Thieu seems to have the country under control. When American troops and even planes are no longer needed, when only American money is required to back up a corrupt and unpopular government, when no American blood is demanded to dominate a small, oppressed nation--when the American war has ended and only American repression remains, who will remember?
Already it is easy to forget simple truths. What role should the U.S play in the economic rehabilitation of Vietnam? "Before you can do anything, there are two things that have to be done," Alexander Woodside said. "First, a terminal date for withdrawal of all U.S. troops has to be set. Second, a broad invitation from all groups, including Communists, must request assistance. Until that happens it's just more of the same. And more of the same deserve to be resisted."
The Smithies report is more of the same.