1. Chances for Success:

...But a neutral nation requires various ingredients: skillful, sophisticated leadership...

...Furthermore, the psychological implications of another Communist victory in Southeast Asia may have serious repercussions throughout the area from Manila to Calcutta...

...Diem managed to put a strongly anti-Communist plug in the hole...

...A Neutral Laos-Three Articles 1. Chances for Success By Sol Sanders Tokyo Whatever the outcome of the present crisis in Laos, the problem posed by that tiny kingdom is likely to remain a bleeding sore for the free world for the indefinite future...

...Sol Sanders is head of the Tokyo Bureau of Business Week magazine...

...Yet, Souvanna Phouma himself has repeatedly had evidence to disprove this...

...Yet, the theory has been so generally expounded that whether true or not, the impact of a Western defeat in Laos would be overwhelming in Southeast Asia...

...But, after all, the small educated minority in Laos—even more than in other Afro-Asian countries because it is disporportionately so much more powerful—has been unable to discipline itself, to halt the corruption and apply the kind of dedication to the job of modernizing the country that is required if such a program is to be even moderately successful...

...Again, as in the 1958 crisis over the Chinese offshore islands, the U.S...

...But just as in 1953 we failed to follow up our defense of the offshore islands with a dynamic program for putting our "moral" house in order in Formosa, so Kennedy's press conference announcement of our Laos policy failed to fill the non-military gaps in that policy...

...There is no Gamal Abdel Nasser, no Kwame Nkrumah—nor for that matter, even a Sukarno...

...For after the 1954 armistice, despite the pessimism in Paris...

...Ambassador in Laos—a man with the prestige, autonomy and savvy to knock heads together...

...He believes it will be possible to whip together an all-Lao grouping and to exclude foreign intervention...

...In reality, the West faces some bitter choices in Laos: 1. To abandon the area to Communist domination by refusing to accept the challenge of Communist arms...

...Laos is, rightly or wrongly, now the barometer for American policy in Southeast Asia...

...Perhaps as disastrous as any other aspect of the Laos situation is the role which the other free-world powers—particularly the French— have played...

...In full measure, Laos represents a microcosm of all the problems with which the United States must deal in Afro-Asia...

...President Kennedy will at least have to come up with one of his unorthodox but effective appointments for the post of U.S...

...Then, as now, Souvanna Vong and his Communist-inclined friends —currently lumped into the Pathet Lao—demanded that any Laos settlement be based on a government which would be a satellite of the Communist movement in Indochina and directed from the Vietminh...

...Together with the forces of Kong Le and the Pathet Lao they could put up a formidable resistance against any American force bolstered with Thai and perhaps South Vietnamese units...

...London and Washington that South Vietnam would quickly "go under...

...is in a virtually untenable position...

...Souvanna Phouma, the Prince who has been a focal point in the conflict, is a naive politician who has always said—and apparently still believes—that Lao Communists "are Lao before anything else...

...3. Partition along the same lines as Vietnam, with an anti-Communist government in southern Laos...

...Only in this way could Washington rally a part of the "peace" following which the Russians and even the Chinese seem so adept at mobilizing in Asia...

...Thailand has long nursed the problem of its northeast provinces —a particularly poverty-stricken area which has always had separatist tendencies and faces the Mekong river and the Lao frontier...

...2) a modus vivendi which permits the Communists to operate inside the society without opposition from the constituted authorities...

...4. Direct military intervention...

...South Vietnam, faced with the double threat of guerrilla activity supplied through Laos and Cambodia and a political impasse brought on by Ngo Dinh Diem's intransigence in working with "soft-headed" but nevertheless innocent intellectual elements in his own country, already is in danger...

...It is a society in which the vast majority is unconcerned with politics and, indeed, with the whole process of government and economic development...

...It is a generally accepted thesis in the Orient that Captain Kong Le's insurrection, which returned Souvanna Phouma to power, was engineered with at least the acquiescence of the French military mission in Laos...

...In neighboring Cambodia, the French Embassy goes out of its way to give aid and comfort to the enemies of Ngo Dinh Diem, the beseiged antiCommunist ruler of South Vietnam...

...French counselors are still very close to Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk, who has played the Chinese Communist game all through the current crisis by constantly supporting Peking's proposals for settling it...

...It must defend an area that is strategically indispensable to the free world for tactical reasons...

...policy...

...If the Russians and Chinese refuse to allow Kennedy to take his gamble, direct intervention of American armed forces in the Lao conflict certainly will not be endorsed by France, and the British may at the last moment back out on the unity announced during the Florida Kennedy-Macmillan meeting...

...Moreover, can the Russians convince the Chinese Communists that this is not the time for an all-out onslaught in Southeast Asia...

...2. To attempt a coalition including the near-Communist-line elements with the hope of swinging them back toward real neutrality...

...That is not to say that Washington has not made mistakes in Laos...

...The North Vietnamese probably have at least a division of Thai tribesmen from just across the border to the east trained in guerrilla warfare...

...The most the U.S...

...In order to secure the truly neutral Laos the President wants, the U.S...

...Either in some sort of Machiavellian attempt to balance his bargaining powers in Southeast Asia against Algeria, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, etc., or in complete disregard of the whole problem, President de Gaulle has permitted French officials in the former Indochina to intrigue against American policy...

...The immediate effects of a further deterioration of anti-Communist strength there are catastrophic to contemplate...

...To abandon Laos now would be to invite further Communist aggression and to demoralize our friends and their allies in Southeast Asia...

...The second alternative is the one Washington seems to have chosen...

...A neutral Laos—as distinct from a "neutralist" Laos—would, obviously, benefit both the Lao people and the free world...

...Will the Russians accept the American gamble that somehow or other while bidding for time, the U.S...

...As in so many areas, too, the scapegoat is the American aid program and U.S...

...As early as 1949, when he and other "moderate" Lao leaders were willing to accept internal autonomy "within the French Union" and return from their exile in Bangkok, Thailand, to Vientiane, he was opposed by his half-brother, Souvanna Vong...

...must immediately put forward a program of multi-lateral economic aid, press for an all-Asian guarantee of Laotian neutrality and match the Communist propaganda campaign in the area with a comprehensive information drive of its own...

...Ambassador Averell Harriman, according to press dispatches appearing here, has suggested that Prince Souvanna Phouma, although only recognized in the Communist bloc as the "legal" Prime Minister of Laos, is someone the West may be able to deal with...

...the concept of a nationstate and a community of interest among its peoples...

...as well as foreign acquiescence to that neutrality...

...could expect out of such a conflict is a division of the country, with the northern half bordering Communist China and North Vietnam turned into a Communist satellite...

...One cannot be optimistic about the success of such an operation...

...Through all the tortuous discussione since 1949—and especially since the 1954 armistice which ended the war between the French and the Vietnamese Communists and their allies—the Pathet Lao have asked for two concessions which no government can ever make to the Communists and survive: 1) participation in the Government and especially control of the security apparatus of the state...

...Certainly, unless it has Washington's full-fledged attention for six months or a year after some sort of patchwork solution is made in Laos, it will not be successful...

...No ready solution is available...

...In the end, too, such a military intervention— even if it does not bring on a more general war with North Vietnamese and Chinese "volunteers"—may end in a stalemate...

...The first choice is impossible...

...They are frustrated by the lack of progress...

...might be able to put together the beginnings of a stable, neutral fand therefore pro-Western) regime...

...Unfortunately, Laos does not possess these essentials...

...The latter is dominated by his fanatical Vietnamese Communist wife who, incidentally, comes from the same county in Central Vietnam where Ho Chi Minh was born...

...The domino theory" of John Foster Dulles—that if the Indochina states went Communist, the rest of Southeast Asia would follow—has never been tested...

...If there is a "revolution of rising expectations," it is among the disoriented "intellectuals...