The Quiet War

...The Laotian settlement of that year united the nation under a Neutralist premier, Prince Souvanna Phouma, whose government still purports to represent the entire country...

...At most, the air strikes can only encourage and facilitate the Vientiane government's attacks on the Pathet Lao and their abler North Vietnamese allies...

...It is always possible that Souvanna Phouma, who has proved unpredictable in the past, may request a halt in the operations...

...All that can be expected here, though, is to delay the infiltrators by making them seek cover and move at night...

...ESCALATION IN LAOS The Quiet War By Eric Pace The American public was understandably jolted when it learned last month that a squadron of American jet fighter-bombers had raided a key supply route in the part of Laos held by the pro-Communist Pathet Lao...

...Indeed, the greatest cost of the limited air offensive has been in time lost to the Communists...

...In Vientiane, the raids have a dual impact...

...Or a coup d'etat may produce a new leader who wants the raids ended...

...The mood there depends on developments on the home front...

...The belated announcement of the U.S...

...The raids had been kept secret initially to avoid embarrassing Souvanna Phouma...

...In providing the planes the United States adhered to the Geneva Accords...

...The outlook is more promising for the second objective, which is to destroy the routes used principally for supplying Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese detachments within Laos...

...The first, and more urgent from the American point of view, is to disrupt the traffic of Viet Cong reinforcements down the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos into South Vietnam...

...would have done better to strike Communist installations harder and earlier, before these defensive preparations were made, even at the risk of provoking sterner counter-measures...

...Accordingly, American jets began flying assault, as distinct from escort, missions over Communist territory, bombing and strafing Pathet Lao supply routes in the north and Viet Cong access routes to the south...

...In recent months about a score of T-28s at the disposal of the Laotian air force have been flying continual bombing, strafing and even leaflet-dropping missions over Pathet Lao areas...

...But Souvanna Phouma himself set the stage for the eventual announcement of the strikes by saying, in a carefully worded answer to a reporter's question, "United States forces, if they are committed, would only be defending liberty against Communist subversion in Southeast Asia...

...Some American observers complain that the U.S...

...Alarmed by the Communist advances, the United States hastily furnished T-28 fighter bombers to the Royal Laotian Air Force...

...In any event, the U.S...

...Officially the jet flights were to provide "adequate information" about Pathet Lao activity to the International Control Commission, whose task is to work for stability in Laos...

...As President Johnson was: careful to point out at his January 16 press conference, the aid was "at the request of the government of Laos...

...stands to make no spectacular military gains from the present raids, which have two distinct aims...

...But the Pathet Lao leaders have long since withdrawn from Vientiane and their North Vietnamese allies constantly violate the terms of the settlement, particularly those provisions of the 1962 Geneva Accords which forbid military activity by foreigners inside Laos and require that military aid be given only at the request of the Vientiane government...

...These have borne the brunt of the American jet attacks, and since the Pathet Lao rely heavily on supplies and reinforcements trucked in from North Vietnam, air attacks are particularly effective...

...In some ways, the new U.S...

...Should his authority be irrevocably undermined, the United States will probably have to choose eventually between a new conference to devise a fresh "solution" for Laos, or full partition of the country into Communist and anti-Communist zones...

...Armed American jets were sent to accompany the reconnaissance flights, with orders to strafe Communist anti-aircraft installations which opened fire...

...Before long, too, air operations will be impeded by smog from burning rice chaff and the rains which begin in April...

...American officials explained that the "operational logic" of the reconnaissance flights made the armed jets necessary...

...And it is doubtful that military events in Laos will have any significant impact on war in South Vietnam...

...namese military activities in Laos were theoretically ruled out, of course, when the country was neutralized in 1962...

...Both the King of Laos and Souvanna Phouma, at the urging of Right-wing generals, agreed privately to the stepping up of raids in Pathet Lao territory if the military situation warranted such a move...

...The air raids may also help explain why the Pathet Lao have yet to launch a major offensive in the current dry season...

...Observers in Laos agree that the Communists could conquer much of the remaining Laotian territory if the North Vietnamese chose to step up their operations...

...strikes will have little effect on public opinion in Asian Communist countries, because the Pathet Lao have been claiming for months that they were taking place...

...Both American and North Viet ERIC PACE has been a Southeast Asian correspondent for the Time-Life News Service for two years...

...Government commanders have been cheered by evidence of active American support...

...China has made use of the months since the Tonkin Gulf incidents to send new antiaircraft artillery to North Vietnam and, indirectly, to Laos...

...Strikes by T-28s and jets have shaken the morale of the Pathet Lao rank and file, causing hundreds to desert...

...They cost Laos nothing and are relatively cheap for the United States, compared to the enormous daily commitment of men and materiel in South Vietnam...

...After Communist anti-aircraft fire downed an American reconnaissance plane in June, Washington took another step...

...While American air strikes on North Vietnamese installations would improve morale in the South, they would not necessarily alter the immediate course of the war...

...At least once, the jet pilots went further and made a "punitive" strike...

...It was against this background that the first important phase of U S air intervention came last May, after the Pathet Lao had launched a successful attack against Kong Le's Neutralist positions at the Plain of Jars...

...Following the decision to furnish Laos with T-28s, on May 21, the State Department announced that unarmed American reconnaissance jets had begun overflying Pathet Lao territory...

...The January 13 attack was the largest carried out by American fighter-bombers...

...Aerial photographs taken during the flights were also made available to Laos, however, and used for the T-28 strikes...

...involvement parallels earlier experiences in Vietnam...

...In their present scope, American efforts cannot guarantee a stalemate, much less a Communist defeat, and they may be undercut at any time by instability within the Vientiane government...

...Its range is ample to strike any Pathet Lao territory from government airfields...

...At the same time, confirmation that the United States, like the Communists, is operating outside the Geneva Accords saps the already weakened legal basis of Souvanna Phouma's "government of national union...

...The next step required careful groundwork...

...If not for a delay in rescuing the pilot of one of the two jets shot down during the operation, it might never have been made public...

...As the year progressed, government forces won two major victories against the Pathet Lao, but the general outlook in Southeast Asia was growing bleaker as the Viet Cong capitalized on continuing turmoil in Saigon...

...So far, however, no Vientiane official has spoken up to halt the raids...

...Now that the raids have been belatedly revealed, there is no indication of when they will come to an end...

...since they were in violation of the Accords from which his government derived its authority...

...Communist gunners have brought down an announced total of six jets since the first reconnaissance missions began, and only one American pilot has been reported killed...

...Military observersin Vientiane have credited the T-28s with doing much to keep the Communists from gaining further territory, although a good portion of the laurels may in fact be due the unannounced American air strikes...

...Yet the January 13 attack, following lesser raids on other Pathet Lao and Viet Cong routes, was only the latest step in the gradual escalation of American aerial involvement in the Laotian civil war...

...The movement of some materiel may be curtailed, but the raids have no effect on shipments of heavy weapons which come to South Vietnam over water from Cambodia...

...The T-28 is an obsolete, single-propeller plane which can carry machine guns, rockets, or 500 pounds of bombs...

...If and when South Vietnam is neutralized, such a partition line might well be the next East-West battle front in Southeast Asia...

...But the Accords were secretly violated when Thai-born pilots flew some of the T-28s while Laotian pilots were in training...

...At least some of the missions were flown from the South Vietnamese port of Danang, where supplementary, Okinawa-based jet fighter bombers were assigned after the Tonkin Gulf incidents...

...It stemmed from a series of Executive decisions which may later come under Congressional fire...