Vietnam After the Bomb Halt

...Then Kinh, who began his diplomatic career six years ago with the nlf mission in Cuba, extended his logic a vital step further...

...The ultimate consequence could be an American-supported coup d'etat, with a real puppet government emerging as a bridge to coalition and U.S...

...But Communist officials here saw the predicament of President Nguyen Van Thieu as only a matter of face and did not think there was any chance he could avoid coming to terms in the end...

...Communist Vietnamese diplomats here say they have "no idea how long the talks will last," but that is about the only point on which they seem somewhat uncertain...

...a Tass correspondent here asked me...

...withdrawal...

...It is true, and it is what all America's opponents?whether Vietnamese, Cambodian, Russian, or Chinese—appear to count on in the end...

...Underlying their confidence is the realization that the United States has lost much of the will to fight...

...It is not facts, however, but propaganda that will determine the immediate future of South Vietnam...

...The modus operandi for this tactical setback was the formula by which each of the four parties to the conference would have equal talking time—the nlf would follow Hanoi, while Saigon alternated with the United States...

...For this reason he could Donald Kirk reports from Southeast Asia for the Washington Star...

...His point was that the United States, largely for nonmilitary reasons, had capitulated, and the Vietnamese Communist leaders were exultant...

...The fundamental deception by American officials after the bombing halt was that the United States had not abandoned its aims and would support the Saigon government as strongly as before...

...Even if a temporary face-saving agreement were to be reached, with or without the approval of the Saigon regime, the war seems certain to drag on...

...In all the debate over recognizing or not recognizing the Front, the question of "face" for the Saigon government was paramount...

...The main error of American officials was to try to convince the world—as well as themselves?that Hanoi had lived up to its side of a tacit agreement by withdrawing some troops from the country...

...It is almost inconceivable that the factions would not engage in small, but equally bloody, battles after a paper accord in Paris...

...It was because he knew the talks could not help, and would probably hurt, that Thieu opposed them as much as he could without ruining his relations with the United States...

...The Americans have accepted that the problem should be solved with the nlf," he said, sipping tea in the mission foyer against a background of small sketches of Vietcong soldiers and an nlf banner and pins...

...Now that the Front has obtained its seat at the talks, they believe recognition in one form or another is inevitable...

...The guarantees the U.S...

...His words were much the same as the Communist broadcasts, but they made more sense in a face-to-face interview...

...The air war, in short, would be much tougher and the results of considerably weaker value than before...

...Despite the soothing assurances of American officials, the only side that can exult is Hanoi and the nlf, who foresee a pattern of tactical victories leading to the coalition they have always wanted...

...If the talks do not go as expected, North Vietnamese commanders should be ready to mount a new offensive...

...What is sad about the entire affair is that American diplomats and information officials, supported by certain columnists and other writers, claimed in the end that Thieu had gone back on his word by refusing at first to cooperate with Johnson's politically motivated decision...

...It made no difference that America had not been defeated militarily or that Kinh, who had not returned to his home in the Mekong Delta region for years, probably knew little about the fighting...

...The Alliance is "completely separate from the Front," Kinh assured me...

...Thieu himself angrily rebuffed members of his government, notably the always suspicious Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, as well as Senators and Deputies in the National Assembly who persisted in doubting the word of the Americans...

...The Americans are tired of fighting, isn't that true...

...What is more, it is certain that the enemy soldiers did not go far...

...The Americans are beaten in the North and in the South, and on November 1 they decided to settle the problem...

...THE VIEW FROM CAMBODIA Vietnam After the Bomb Halt Phnom Penh Avisit to this old French-colonial-style Cambodian capital, 60-odd miles across the border from South Vietnam, offers fresh perspectives on the struggle for Indochina...

...The attitude of the Prince might have seemed unreasonable at some stages of the war, but it never made more sense than after President Johnson's decision to stop bombing all of North Vietnam and enter into negotiations that included the nlf...

...Indeed, Thieu had little choice, since his harshest critics demanded toughness rather than softness against Communists and Americans...

...The real point, however, is that the Americans—or at least the White House—had underestimated Thieu's opposition to the bombing halt and failed to realize how deeply he had committed himself to his government's often-stated policy of refusing to deal with the nlf...

...The central committee of the Alliance," said the statement, "reaffirms that the nlf constitutes the principal force of resistance in the united front against American aggression...

...While the United States might still stave off a North Vietnamese military build-up, it is questionable whether it can deny the Vietcong a place in a compromise solution to the war...

...Sources here estimate as many as five divisions withdrew to Cambodia, and greater numbers went across the borders to Laos and North Vietnam...

...Saigon officials still hope against hope to avoid this kind of denouement...

...What difference, after all, does it make how many soldiers are killed or rockets fired when the Prince has already said the final result is almost predestined...

...One diplomat told me Thieu was delighted by the assurances President Johnson had offered at their Honolulu conference...

...It is true the nlf may have held some valid elections, but it is probably closer to the truth that only a small percentage of villagers, most of them under some form of duress, participated in the voting...

...Even though President-elect Nixon has appeared hawkishly aggressive in the past, it seems unlikely that he could break the chain of events set in motion by Johnson's decision...

...At the nlf mission, the second secretary, Nguyen Hoang Kinh, smilingly explained the logic of the American debacle...

...From the long-range point of view, the most significant aspect of Johnson's decision is not the cessation of bombing but the agreement to let the nlf in on the peace talks...

...offered Thieu in return for his agreement to enter the talks were almost as thin as the so-called implicit "agreement" that American diplomats kept on insisting they had reached with the Communists to bring them to the bargaining table...

...Ironically, the United States several weeks before November 1 almost had Thieu and some of the others in his government believing the promises of no bombing halt without a return guarantee...

...The leaders of the Saigon regime are far more sensitive to this prospect than the Americans, who apparently still believe they can bring the Communists to compromise...

...Vietnamese Communists and their Soviet allies no longer had any doubt the United States would eventually force Thieu either to give in or jeopardize his own position and that of his government...

...In the next round of fighting, the Communists will have the advantage of knowing the United States has already buckled and so may buckle still more in order to end the war...

...The news of the war itself is scanty...

...For besides weakening the government the United States is bound to support, it has given the enemy diplomatic and military advantages...

...As Thieu was acutely aware, though, the United States would slowly, subtly and deliberately erode his position if he failed to knuckle under...

...Thus the effect of President Johnson's decision may have been only to worsen the Vietnam dilemma...

...The irony of this is that the Saigon regime, whatever else might be said for or against it, controls a far higher percentage of South Vietnam's population than the nlf...

...First, he pointed to the elections held this summer and fall, in which villagers were more or less compelled to cast their ballots for committee members...

...Sihanouk, while espousing a policy of "neutralism," has sensed for years that the United States would withdraw from South Vietnam...

...If the Americans were not beaten, then they would not be willing to sit at the conferences," he said, talking only in French even though he speaks good English...

...Although the United States proclaimed it would never recognize the Front as a separate governing unit, American officials soon made it clear that they would let the Front bargain on equal terms with South Vietnam...

...All along Sihanouk has grasped the fundamental truth that the figures and facts turned out by the American command in Saigon could not match the diplomacy and propaganda of the Vietnamese Communists...

...Yet it is safe to assume the nlf will attempt to convince observers that its elections were as complete as the 1967 national elections, in which more than 80 per cent of the electorate voted for President, Vice President and Assemblyman amid the inevitable charges of fraud and pressure...

...Just as Hanoi gave birth to the nlf several years ago to create the impression of Southern control over the Communist struggle for South Vietnam, so Hanoi and the nlf formed the Alliance to close the gap between Southern Communists and non-Communists...

...But as he was talking the Phnom Penh bureau of the nlf's Liberation Press Agency put out a statement purportedly issued by the Alliance...

...Even if the Americans spent precious months claiming Saigon was the rightful government, there is no doubt that Hanoi and the nlf would have just kept talking until negotiators, politicians, journalists, and other observers had accepted the idea that the nlf and Saigon were at least equals...

...By Donald Kirk not afford to offend the North Vietnamese and Vietcong, who might then swallow up Cambodia and form a new, Hanoi-dominated In-dochinese nation...

...If the details of the battles across the border seem irrelevant to Cambodian officials, some of the underlying truths are far more visible here than in Saigon...

...The question became almost meaningless once the United States put increasing pressure on its ally to join the talks while ignoring rocket attacks and repeated forays into the Demilitarized Zone by North Vietnamese troops...

...American diplomats kept on saying the Saigon rumor-mongers simply did not understand U.S...

...leaders if they thought Johnson would stop the bombing prematurely...

...Diplomat Kinh in his conversation with me cited two of the main nlf propaganda devices...

...The Communist success was all the more remarkable in that it came after months of heavy battles that cost the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops greater losses than they had suffered in any other period of the war...

...And the United States gave in just as Saigon was probably exercising more genuine control than at any time since the era of Ngo Dinh Diem...

...When the Paris talks finally get around to the issue of coalition, it is certain the Communists will insist that all non-Communist members represent the Affiance and not the South Vietnam government, which they are pledged to overthrow...

...The second vehicle for nlf propaganda is the Alliance of National, Democratic and Peace Forces of Vietnam, a group the nlf and Hanoi have been attempting to promote as an independent organization formed by non-Communist opponents of the Saigon regime...

...Here you can talk to Russian correspondents just arrived from Hanoi or Moscow, obtain a formal interview with a diplomat from North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front (nlf), chat with aging Frenchmen still nestled in little corners of Prince Sihanouk's government, or simply relax in streetside cafes and wonder whether Saigon was also this easygoing and quiet in the era before rockets and black markets, grating trucks, soldiers and bargirls...

...And the Front, in the areas where it admittedly exercises some authority, governs on an even more haphazard, intermittent basis than Saigon...

...The Vietcong are just launching a new political drive in the South, and Thieu's government has drawn up a program for its own campaign after a cease-fire...

...It is even less likely that Nixon would consider the process of fresh escalation—certainly not the ground invasion of North Vietnam that many observers believe would be necessary for victory...

...If he had bowed to the Americans, he would have incurred as much displeasure from within his own government as he did from the American mission by refusing to go along...

...Kinh and other Communist diplomats here view as only a technicality the American refusal to recognize the Front or deal with it as a separate entity...

...If he were to resume the air war, it would be with the knowledge that North Vietnam had had time both to repair the damage and to set up better defenses for bridges and storage areas...

...He even made a speech to the Assembly criticizing the doubters and promising that neither his government nor the United States would back down on their demand for reciprocity from Hanoi...

...Long before Johnson amassed more than half a million troops in Vietnam, Sihanouk realized the United States could not endure a long-term, semipermanent commitment—the only kind of commitment that could really blunt the thrust from the North...

...Kinh showed photographs of women and soldiers putting ballots into a box placed beneath an nlf flag...

...If the Americans retain their bases for some set period, a coalition regime could nevertheless assume power and await total American withdrawal before turning South Vietnam into a "socialist" country...

...The American Armed Forces Radio comes in loud and clear from Saigon, but the government-controlled press carries only a few paragraphs a day on Vietnam...

...No doubt North Vietnam had pulled back a "substantial" portion of forces, as Ambassador Averell Harriman recently remarked in Washington, but the North Vietnamese were already in dire need of refitting and regrouping...

...One has only to visit the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, in a vast villa on the Monivong, one of Phnom Penh's main avenues, or the permanent mission of the nlf, in another villa on a nearby sidestreet, for insights into the Communist strategy for victory...

...For the first time the nlf has obtained the legitimacy it craved beyond merely Communist and neutralist countries...

...The Alliance holds itself side by side with the Front and firmly supports all the policies of the nlf on the battlefield as well as at the conference table...