3. The Dangers:
RITVO, HERBERT
3. The Dangers By Herbert Ritvo The situation in Laos, as it has developed under Soviet guidance, has caused a striking shift in United States policy. Apparently believing that the best...
...For the United States, neutralism means the end of direct military assistance to Laos, including military training missions...
...Laos could be given a position of honor—along with Cuba and Indonesia—denied to those neutralist countries, such as Iraq and the United Arab Republic, that "imprison and torture" and otherwise harass home-grown Communists...
...However, the withdrawal of the United States from Laos under a broadened definition of neutralism would be a retreat to avoid involvement in a jungle war at a point of possible Soviet-U.S...
...intentions than on the subsequent SinoSoviet response to a neutral Laos unsupported by U.S...
...The threat to increase U.S...
...Moscow's relatively speedy—but still conditional—agreement to what are essentially its own schemes for reducing tension in the area should therefore occasion no surprise...
...policy, which for nearly three years has been aimed at keeping the Pathet Lao out of the Government...
...military aid...
...In effect, the strategy worked out by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy is a tacit admission of the failure of past U.S...
...Behind the efforts to arrange a cease-fire, reactivate the International Control Commission and convene a 14-nation conference that includes Communist China, lies the Kennedy Administration's new concept of neutralism—the complement to its new official stand on colonialism...
...Thus, as the United States starts to readjust its frame of reference for the uncommitted nations of the world, it may find that the Soviet Union is already operating under a new classification for nonbloc countries...
...But neither the identical SovietU.S...
...military confrontation, and it would halt a Soviet-inspired offensive short of its complete victory...
...Apparently believing that the best defense is a good offense, the new Administration, in a bold bid to make up the Royal Laotian regime's steady loss of military yardage, has sharply reversed its field on the issue of neutrality...
...advisory groups means a battle won without firing a shot...
...With Pathet Lao participation in its Government, a neutral Laos could soon be designated, in Soviet terminology, as a "national democratic state'3 which—in addition to meeting the prerequisites of non-alignment and anti-imperialism—grants Communists the opportunity for political action...
...votes on Portuguese Angola in the United Nations, nor the seemingly similar statements now emanating from Washington and Moscow in favor of a "genuinely independent and neutral Laos," can bridge the gap between Russian and American aspirations in Southeast Asia...
...With nearly two-thirds of the country's provinces now under its control, the Soviet-supported rebel group is certain to have a much greater role in the national Government than it enjoyed from 1954 until 1958 when its activities finally brought an end to Souyjanna Phouma's hopes for a stable coalition in a neutral Laos...
...To achieve its purpose, though, this withdrawal will depend less on present U.S...
...Herbert Ritvo is at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies...
...military aid to offset the airlift of Soviet supplies to the Pathet Lao rebels was accompanied by Washingtonsupported British proposals that accepted in full the previously rejected Soviet plans for a neutral Laos...
...for the Soviet Union the withdrawal of U.S...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 15
