Vietnam After the Cease-Fire
KIRK, DONALD
BUYING TIME Vietnam After the Cease-Fire BY DONALD KIRK Saigon It's all over. The documents may or may not have been signed, but it's through. Not the war, just the American "involvement." Most...
...general once described it—the North Vietnamese may choose the central highlands for the focal point of their first major lunge after a cease-fire...
...Until then, the war will piddle on in relatively small-scale fashion while the South Vietnamese elite continue to enrich themselves...
...By the time of the next U.S...
...At least we've given them the chance to make it on their own," said an American adviser, echoing the Nixon doctrine...
...And even within their own milieu the members of this elite remain divided against each other, in the face of seemingly common adversity...
...The Americans used to send out patrols to protect the firebases every night," the U.S...
...And within the next two or three years it may well degenerate into: "We gave them all they needed, but they failed...
...In this "protracted war"—the process of "cuttin' up the snake one inch at a time," as a U.S...
...Pro-American regimes have survived in Pnompenh and Vientiane, and one may go on in Saigon for years...
...The time remaining within which the RVNAF [Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces] can be assisted toward self-sufficiency is short...
...Now time has run out...
...air power, to accomplish this...
...Presidential election, it is conceivable that Hanoi will again be bargaining for major concessions...
...After all, that would only invite renewed U.S...
...It does not seem likely that the Communists—that is, the North Vietnamese and the National Liberation Front (NLF)—will attempt to expand their influence much further in government centers, at least for the next year or two...
...The real problem with Thieu, as it was with Diem, is that he persists in ruling through an urban elite quite cut off from the country at large...
...This is perhaps the most patronizing of rationales, yet it is all we have left after a decade of erratic dreaming and bungling...
...The official tally kept by cords (Civil Operations Revolutionary Development Support) shows that Hanoi holds only 10 district towns...
...Of course, the American failure does not mean that South Vietnam will immediately "lose" or that the North Vietnamese will suddenly install a sympathetic "coalition," for the Indochinese conflict has never lent itself to such easy predictions...
...It will be the same old war, fought by the same techniques, within the context of a new cease-fire arrangement...
...The North Vietnamese nearly overran it last spring before finally falling back under American air strikes...
...NLF political cadres can easily play upon these divisions while North Vietnamese troops, operating in small units, keep nibbling away at the government's military defenses...
...Not since the dictator Ngo Dinh Diem has South Vietnam seen such wholesale arrests, crackdowns on the press and other repressive measures...
...Then we give them new ones and the NVA fires on the bases with the old ones...
...Similarly, if America's best combat divisions, supported by thousands of helicopters, F-4s, B-52s, and the rest, could not stop the supplies from getting in through Cambodia and Laos, it is unrealistic to expect the South Vietnamese Army, without benefit of U.S...
...Vietnam's future, however, hangs in the balance precisely because Saigon does not control everything that counts, and often seems to have a curious sense of priorities to boot...
...Its loss would be quite similar to that of important but distant centers in Cambodia and Laos—making headlines for weeks yet scarcely affecting the tempo of life in the capital...
...Today military tribunals have the power to convict suspects on the basis of only one piece of evidence, as opposed to three required before the Spring Offensive...
...Such ironies abound...
...What else could we have done...
...Once barely more than a village, with a population of perhaps 4,000, Pleiku grew to 10 times that size during the French colonial struggle against the Viet Minh...
...But since there is no way to force them to go home, one might as well sign and be done with it...
...American and Saigon officials tend to dismiss this figure as relatively inconsequential, yet it is 10 more than the North Vietnamese held at the beginning of the Spring Offensive...
...It just doesn't mean that much to them...
...Indeed, government generals and politicians may rule most of the major cities of the South, as well as the Mekong Delta, for the remainder of Nixon's tenure in office—thus sparing him the embarrassment of having "lost" Vietnam...
...The crucial factor is the degree of loyalty that Thieu can summon among the mass of the populace still under Saigon's control...
...Steady patroling deep in the mountains by South Vietnamese forces appears out of the question, loo...
...As the American advisers and contractors play out their roles here, it is quite probable that the North Vietnamese will increase theirs...
...Every time we give them new artillery, they let the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] overrun their bases and capture all the guns...
...Thieu has been less successful at the art of friendly persuasion...
...Any agreement that fails to guarantee the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops will not work, at least as far as the survival of his government is concerned...
...Thieu's special emergency powers, rammed through the National Assembly at the end of June and still in effect, grant him the power to do virtually anything he pleases, militarily, politically, economically, and diplomatically...
...The figures are facetious...
...Or worse, a genuinely pro-Communist rather than neutralist regime may have been installed in Saigon altogether...
...The "special branch" of the national police, absorbing the power of the old Phuong Hoang or Phoenix program, has arrested untold thousands—and executed perhaps scores—in roundups from Hue to the Delta...
...Now that Pleiku seems relatively secure, most of them are back again, continuing to earn their petty fortunes from the military establishment around them...
...The North Vietnamese show their contempt by impressing the Montagnards into duty as porters, road-builders, farmers, etc...
...colonel in Danang noted...
...If they can't hack it now, there's nothin' else we can do for them...
...That seems to be the reasoning of President Nixon, if not of his Saigon "counterpart...
...But now we can't be sure of routine defense of any of our perimeters...
...Christ, I hope we don't give them any more of our eight-inch-ers," said an American colonel in Danang, as he and his fellow advisers contemplated the prospects of peace...
...Absolute dedication to the job assigned is required...
...They grow crops there, control every road and trail, tax the people—it's theirs...
...Certainly the South Vietnamese would not concern themselves much with Kontum once the initial shock of the loss wore off, given that most of its inhabitants are Montagnards, mountain people looked on with the deepest contempt by the Vietnamese...
...unless the scenario holds some surprises now impossible to see, North Vietnam really will win it all...
...Nobody wants the jungle," a member of the foreign ministry told me...
...His program for winning grass-roots support, by sending teams of military cadets and students from the National Institute of Administration into villages and hamlets, has only limited appeal in and around the main population centers...
...Their only reservation about renewing the offensive after a ceasefire would be the threat of resumed air attacks, but they may gamble that President Nixon would not order action that drastic in such a remote, secondary region...
...Also, 100 million C-ration cans, 200 million M-16 shells, 20 million 105 and 155 artillery shells, 1 billion tons of shrapnel...
...First Air Cavalry Division dug such strong bunkers at Quan Loi, a rubber plantation town 50 miles north of Saigon, that American planes could not bomb out a North Vietnamese regiment entrenched there since April...
...Remember the McDonald Kirk, a frequent NL contributor, is the Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune...
...Namara line—the concept of electronic detectors and fences stretching across the entire Demilitarized Zone...
...In the end...
...Also, the journalists, the diplomats, the aid people...
...It's not worth anything to anyone...
...The official attitude here apparently is that America, the "mother" country, having provided its offspring the wherewithal, can gracefully withdraw while the child attempts to "make it...
...The prospect of ultimate failure for the United States is implicit in the nature of the peace...
...Another of the war's little fiascos, it was the brainchild of Robert McNamara in late 1967, a time when we were still bent on "fighting to win" and all that sort of thing...
...perhaps a Pentagon computer will spew forth the correct numbers in an after-action report...
...The town would vanish with hardly a trace, though, if the North Vietnamese mounted a new series of attacks...
...Left over are thousands of contractors, many fulfilling the functions of military advisers and technicians...
...A sense of urgency must predominate in all tasks that are undertaken," said an American advisory handbook published last August...
...Saigon officials offer an easy rationalization for their inability to drive the North Vietnamese from the hinterlands...
...The next major target would be Pleiku, the central headquarters of the entire highlands region and a key American base throughout the war...
...We control everything that counts...
...His new Democratic party, like the one he formed after the Tet offensive of 1968, functions mainly for the benefit of Army officers and government officials...
...For more than a year now he has been trying to coerce and cajole his countrymen to grant him their complete allegiance in the climactic moments of the war...
...Most of our troops have already gone home, and most of those still here are packing...
...To be sure, eventually the Communists will have to take on the Saigon regime...
...President Nguyen Van Thieu was right...
...The provincial capital of Kontum would be the most tempting target since it is almost all that remains under Saigon's "control" in the province...
...While Saigon maintains the superficial appearance of authority in the countryside, the North Vietnamese can focus on villages, hamlets and small outposts, beyond the areas of real concern to South Vietnamese commanders...
...All those hills belong to the North Vietnamese," an American helicopter pilot observed...
...The families of soldiers, as well as small merchants, bargirls and the like, streamed into town in the early 1950s and did not leave until the North Vietnamese offensive this year...
...The U.S...
...If we could not blockade the flow of North Vietnamese men and materiel with a McNamara line, we are hardly likely to do so with a few thousand "observers...
...Though the South Vietnamese would fight much harder for it than for Kontum, it would probably not be missed for long...
...In some regions, moreover, North Vietnamese authority extends considerably beyond the hills...
...air strikes before they could complete their build-up for the next offensive...
...Just as the North Vietnamese overran large swaths of Cambodia and Laos, even in periods of supposed "peace" and "cease-fire," today they move easily over still larger regions of South Vietnam...
...In short, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger may have bought time—and even a way out for the United States—but little else...
Vol. 55 • December 1972 • No. 25
