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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 29, No. 2. 1966.

In conclusion

In conclusion

At the moment it is very early days, largely because the Vietcong are still under the impression that they are winning. The demands on both sides are still at the absurd stage, with each side demanding that the other shall give up the use of its armed strength as a prelude to negotiation.

Keep out of that, I suggest, as the most you can do by getting into it is to indicate which side you would prefer to see surrender to the other, and that isn't going to help anybody.

Nor is it yet possible to imagine what common ground they can find to negotiate about, or rather where the deadlock which will ultimately substitute for agreement will come.

It may well not come until some kind of confrontation, or deterrence dialogue, between American and Chinese power has come about; that after all is how cold wars are settled. But if, as I presume, the Americans have taken up a position from which they cannot be expelled at any price anyone is willing to pay, then negotiation has already begun and will end somewhere.