North Vietnam's Strategy

...The Marines claimed an American "victory" at Khesanh, but like so many of the battles in Vietnam, the outcome was inconclusive...

...Since the French were not defeated at Dienbienphu until a couple of months after the Geneva talks had really begun, it is logical now to speculate that North Vietnam hopes for similar timing during the Paris conference...

...In fact, the attack was the opening blow in North Vietnam's strategy of "fighting while talking...

...The second wave, indeed, was not a wave but a trickle—maybe a thousand troops attempting to get into the city from several sides...

...Military sources here believe Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops will keep up intermittent pressure on Saigon...

...It is quite possible, with both the Americans and the North Vietnamese bent on victory in the midst of the talks, that the final results will once more prove costly and inconclusive, for the Communists are already returning to the area...

...Besides being in a good position to nip at points along the Demilitarized Zone, the North Vietnamese threaten Hue, the city they occupied for nearly four weeks in February...

...North Vietnamese and Vietcong propaganda organs have frequently mentioned the Alliance, whose purpose apparently is to induce other disillusioned doctors, lawyers, professors and the like to oppose the government and support the Communists' ambition of a Vietcong-dominated coalition government...

...Tarn Ha, the alias for a Vietcong lieutenant colonel who defected to the allies just before the Tet offensive, said at a sweltering press conference a few days ago that he believed Ho Chi Minh "sincerely wants the war to end as soon as possible...

...The North Vietnamese present an immediate threat to Special Forces camps in the region and might renew their assaults on Dakto and Kontum...

...If there was ever any doubt about the motives for the attack, a letter circulated between two Vietcong artillery cadres north of Saigon spelled them out...

...The Vietcong, therefore, recently formed an Alliance of Nationalist, Democratic and Peaceful Forces, made up of well-known non-Communist Saigon figures from bourgeois backgrounds...

...But it still had a disastrous psychological impact on thousands of Saigonese confined to the western and southern fringes of the city...

...They waged a bitter backstage struggle before Premier Nguyen Van Loc, an ineffectual "buffer" between Ky and President Nguyen Van Thieu, finally resigned along with the rest of the Cabinet...

...nevertheless, they seemed upset by the American air strikes, which killed hundreds of persons who did not leave their homes in time...

...The Communist strategists —it is safe to assume that General Giap is not the only man responsible for overall planning—will probably attempt to capitalize on American and South Vietnamese weaknesses in the northern tier by focusing on widely separated points, and abandon the attack only if their efforts become completely stymied...

...The days of the military coup d'etat may be over in Saigon, but factional splits without a coup could vitiate the government's position at the Paris talks...

...Second, they will attempt to deepen the sense of apathy and hopelessness that already afflicts the Vietnamese masses...

...Again, though, it must be stressed that their plans are far from being predictable...

...It is possible that Huong, his anti-Communism notwithstanding, might promote a conciliatory move such as direct talks with representatives of the National Liberation Front at a peace conference...

...In short, even if military victory continues to elude them, the strategists in Hanoi know they can count on the weakness of the Saigon government to bolster their cause at the negotiating table...

...Elements of the "Cav," air mobile though it is, cannot rush back to assist the Fourth Division, the main American bulwark in the area, since the North Vietnamese also appear to have increased their strength somewhat in the two northern provinces...

...Third, they will try to exploit divisions within the Vietnamese government in hopes, if not of toppling it, at least of rendering it powerless to oppose an unfavorable peace settlement...

...While the Communists may be willing to fight a "protracted war," as Ho Chi Minh has stated, most observers believe they are getting somewhat impatient...

...Thus despite the inevitable propaganda value of harassing the capital, it is in the northern part of the country that North Vietnamese troops are likely to seek their major victory...

...The Americans last year could rely on the First Cavalry Division to support them in the Highlands, but the "Cav" had to move north around the end of the year to counter the threat along the dmz...

...The attack began soon after Hanoi agreed to meet American representatives in Paris, and it ended right after Averell Harriman and Xuan Thuy completed their initial exchanges...

...The Communists will try first to obtain a bona fide military victory, however inconsequential (you can only go so long claiming your defeats are triumphs...

...One reason for the increased Communist strength, according to military officers opposed to any conciliatory American gestures, is the cessation of bombing in North Vietnam above the 20th parallel...

...Meanwhile, one of the more popular indoor sports here is comparing North Vietnam's military-political strategy today with its strategy at Geneva in 1954, or with the North Korean stance at Panmunjom in the preceding two or three years...

...The Alliance itself has little support at present, but its views could conceivably gain considerable credence among Saigon intellectuals convinced that the war must end even at the cost of conciliation and compromise...

...It would appear, though, that the outcome of the talks will rest not so much on what the delegates say in Paris as on what happens in Vietnam in the next few months...

...The First Air Cavalry's recent sortie into the Ashau Valley probably indicates the pattern for the summer...

...Wherever you go in Vietnam, you encounter this sense of bitterness and anger among peasants who hardly distinguish between the combatants except when their own lives and property are at stake...

...In the surrealistic context of the Vietnamese war, it is impossible to judge which is more important, the fighting or the talking, the reality of military failure or the unreality of newspaper headlines and diplomatic statements...

...INTENSIFYING THE PRESSURE North Vietnam's Strategy By Donald Kirk Saigon One minute you were sitting in a bar off Tudo in downtown Saigon and the next minute you were outside, standing among a crowd of Vietnamese, watching as American jet planes wheeled gracefully a mile or so away and then dived down to dispose of their bombs...

...Some 12,000 buildings were destroyed, 70,000 persons left homeDonald Kirk reports from Southeast Asia for the Washington Star...

...And the dirty, crowded, ugly refugee camps only heighten the peasants' sense of misery...

...AVERELL HARRIMAN less, and several hundred civilians killed...

...On the political side of the struggle, North Vietnamese planners can count on two other campaigns that are, if anything, more frustrating to the Americans than the strictly military aspects of the war...

...Although Huong, a popular Southerner who ran fourth in the Presidential election last September, is regarded as strongly anti-Communist, he apparently is not sufficiently so for Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky and other South Vietnamese generals...

...Tarn Ha claimed that Giap had become "more positive" after the extremists in Hanoi had criticized him...

...But it is also true that they still do not control a single district—much less provincial?capital, that they control no roads except those they have made themselves in the western fringes of the country for bringing in supplies from Laos, that they have no secure rear area within the country and are only relatively safe in their "sanctuaries" (another term adopted by the military) in Laos and Cambodia...

...I talked to refugees as they swarmed across the "Y" bridge into Cholon, the Chinese district, in the midst of the battle...

...The Communist leaders do not think they can actually defeat the American or government forces in Saigon, but they know any kind of assault on the city assures them page-one worldwide propaganda...

...The purpose is to create pressure over peace talks between our representatives and the American representatives at Paris...

...Nearly all of them conceded the Vietcong had provoked the fight...

...A victory in midsummer, while both the Americans and the North Vietnamese are repeating for the thousandth time their opening arguments, would be ideal...

...It was all part of the eerie unreality of the "second wave," the phrase that inaccurately describes the Vietcong's long-awaited second attempt to overrun the capital...

...This would be repugnant to Ky and would certainly exacerbate the friction that already exists between him and both Huong and Thieu...

...In the tradition of Che Guevera (who may have borrowed from them), the Vietnamese Communists clearly plan to exploit the general anti-war feeling among the populace by forcing the Americans to intensify their defense of populated areas...

...The main victims were the poor people whose homes were accidentally hit and burned, yet the stories of the capital "under attack" gave the impression that the Communists, not the allies, were the masters of the situation in and around the city...

...The controversy surrounding the long-expected appointment of Tran Van Huong as premier revealed the divisions that could flare into open conflict if the peace talks took an unfavorable turn...

...Hearing the blast a few moments after the explosions, you wandered back into the bar to finish your drink...

...In their pursuit of military victory the Communists, both Vietcong and North Vietnamese, have long suffered their major frustrations...

...Several months ago it was said the Americans might meet their Dien-bienphu at Contien, an outpost on a rise that commands a view for miles around, and then that Khesanh would be the scene of American disaster...

...What is North Vietnam doing to achieve this kind of victory...

...In the case of Khesanh, for instance, most of the Communist forces were already gone by the time the troopers from the First Air Cavalry division had arrived to rout them out...

...In the cause of intensifying the anti-war, anti-American sentiment among the masses, North Vietnamese and Vietcong strategists want to exploit these emotions among intellectuals and professional men in Saigon and other large cities...

...At the same time, American officers are talking in terms of an American offensive in the coming months, "hitting them first," "knocking out their base areas," and so forth...

...The task is not a difficult one, for the American TRAN VAN HUONG presence, on the ground and in the air, is always the most visible...

...As expected, it was only a pale imitation of the "first wave" during the Lunar New Year in February, and resulted in a military debacle for the Viet-cong...

...Our current mission is to carry on harassing fire," said the letter...

...The object, of course, was to emphasize North Vietnam's strength at a time when certain optimists were claiming that Hanoi's acceptance of Paris was a sign of weakness...

...In any event, the conclusion is inescapable that North Vietnam hopes to force a military showdown, or series of showdowns, as the talks drag on...

...The strategy of Communist leaders is to try to channel this anger against the Americans...

...It is quite true that they control patches of the countryside here and there, that they are capable of "interdicting" (as the military people put it) most of the roads and waterways, that they can even impose taxes on large numbers of Vietnamese exposed to both Communist and government control...

...It still might seem possible to knock out North Vietnamese convoys below the 20th, but senior officers claim many more slip through now than when American planes were hitting them at their points of origin in the Red River Delta...

...The Communists fired a few dozen mortar and artillery rounds into the city early on the morning of May 18, Ho Chi Minh's 78th birthday...

...As for General Vo Nguyen Giap, the master strategist to whom most of the Communists' grand military plans are attributed, he, according to Tarn Ha, was "not so positive" about the wisdom of the war as recently as four years ago...

...And now intelligence sources report that more North Vietnamese regiments have entered the country along the Communists' so-called "B-3" front in the western part of the Central Highlands...

...In the battle for Saigon, for example, it was easy for Americans to point out that the Vietcong had been defeated militarily at great cost of life, yet it was equally apparent that the American air strikes along the densely populated southern and western fringes of the city had alienated the population from their defenders...

...When American officers were anticipating an attack on Hue or Quangtri, the capital of the northernmost province, the Communists provoked some of the heaviest fighting of the war around the base at Dongha...

...The operation failed to corner the large North Vietnamese forces that occupied the valley?most of them had fled—but it turned up what some officers estimated was a quarter of the supplies the Communists had stashed away there...