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    Vol.62/No.4           February 2, 1998 
 
 
25 And 50 Years Ago  
 February 2, 1973
The agreement by the U.S. to halt the bombing and to withdraw its remaining troops from South Vietnam is a long- sought-for victory for the Vietnamese people. It is also a victory for the antiwar movement here and throughout the world. But imperialist intervention in Vietnam is far from ended.

The accords do nothing to solve the social, economic, and political root of the Vietnam war. The imperialists recognize the fact of two armies and two governmental forces in South Vietnam, each representing opposed class forces.

On the one side is the Saigon regime of the landlords and capitalists, backed by U.S. imperialism. On the other side are the revolutionary forces based on the workers and peasants. This is an inherently unstable situation. One side or the other will eventually have to predominate, and that can only be determined in struggle.

The cease-fire accords announced Jan. 24 will not bring peace to Indochina. They signal a new stage of the civil war, and of Washington's intervention.

The U.S. will continue to pump massive economic aid to the Saigon clique. Washington will be permitted to maintain Thieu's forces, including the world's third largest air force, at their present bloated level. Many U.S. bases and much U.S. war materiel in South Vietnam have already been turned over to the Saigon dictator.

February 2, 1948
Leading imperialist spokesmen in Washington and London have bluntly proposed that the Marshall Plan be used to power an economic and military bloc of Western European capitalist countries against the Soviet Union. They are speedily discarding any pretense that the Marshall Plan is simply a humanitarian program of relief and rehabilitation.

At Senate hearings last week, Bernard Baruch and John Foster Dulles, chief Wall Street advisers to the Democratic and Republican parties respectively, demanded in effect that an economic and military alliance of anti-Soviet governments in Europe be made an integral part of the Marshall Plan.

British imperialist spokesmen promptly responded. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin blasted unrestrainedly at "communism" and called for a "western union" of England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. This would be the "nucleus' for an eventual bloc of all capitalist regimes in Western Europe, including their "dominions and colonies."  
 
 
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