DEADLOCK IN SOUTH VIETNAM

...Diem's narrow-minded authoritarianism and his rigidity of thought have forced some cabinet ministers to resign...

...In a real sense it is just that under the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, except Diem's crusade is his own—a crusade he and his family have conceived against Communism...

...Who would take over...

...There are some painful and basic reasons why...

...In a recent article in Commentary, Morgenthau wrote: "By equating all opposition with Communism he [Diem] would force the popular aspiration for change into Communist channels...

...The Viet Cong appeals seemed to catch on...

...But they are believed to have organized their forces on the village and regional level and have an estimated minimum of 75,000 local and regional forces, men who tend the fields during the day and fight at night...

...This group in the South wants to stop the war, but not until they can negotiate peace from a position of strength...

...The philosophy of Personalism was developed by the Diem regime's leading intellectual, the president's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu...

...But while Diem was consolidating his power, he was doing it in terms of a narrow base...

...Vietnam's independent survival is less rather than more secure than it was five or six years ago...

...State Department and the American Embassy in Saigon, many of his old original backers are now expressing doubts about his ability to persevere...

...Its aim is to make each of Vietnam's 75,000 hamlets a functioning, self-sustaining unit that can protect itself against the Viet Cong and be provided with enough government services so that it will have the motivation to do so...

...Yet, the United States publicly seems relatively unconcerned with Diem's lack of leadership...

...Although Diem is resisting the change-over, he no longer personally approves helicopter or air strikes...

...He is a stubborn, self-assured man, and capable of viciously attacking the United States through the press...

...There is a timelessness about the Vietnam war that belies the helicopters, the napalm, and the rockets...

...There is still the absence of a popular political base and this is the basic nutrient for subversive political activity...

...He then went to Belgium as a lay-member of the Benedictine Monastery of St...

...As one American in Saigon with long experience put it, "I'd say Diem does not understand the issues at stake and his brother Nhu is not willing to understand them...

...Andrew in Bruges...

...presence and peace observation corps in Vietnam to guard against external aggression and externally aided subversion and confine our foreign aid to assistance that will enable the government of Vietnam to maintain with its own forces its own independence...

...For the Viet Cong exist in the villages only because they have public support there and the government does not...

...The philosophy has no relation to the prevailing religious beliefs—flexible combinations of^ Buddhism and Taoism—of eighty per cent of South Vietnam's 13.5 million people...

...To win, Diem must broaden the base of his government, not by religious conversion, but by allowing and encouraging more individual decisionmaking and ministerial responsibility...

...While U.S...

...It was trained to fight from fixed positions, and it had no mobility in terms of helicopters, river transport, or communications...

...Their indecision stems from a complexity of circumstances...

...The essentials have still not been tackled...

...In those days young Nhu was influenced by the Catholic existentialism of Jacques Maritain, and Emmanuel Mounier and his Revue Espirit group...

...Unlike the November, 1960, palace coup, an attempt the Viet Cong were unprepared for, the enemy would now be ready to take the reins of power through the South Vietnam People's Liberation Front and a hard-core Communist policy-making unit...

...presence to prevent and retard external aggression...

...The slogan of the campaign is "Clean and Hold...

...Mostly it is the Vietnamese who die, but the Americans are joining them, twelve since last December...

...He came out wholeheartedly for Diem and "his constructive program which consists of the elimination of some of the most brazen aspects of corruption and social inequity...

...Personalism's economic philosophy is also fuzzy, but it envisages a system of government-controlled cooperatives which would avoid the abuses of capitalism...

...Diem's regular army was largely tied up in static defense duties, and Diem refused to delegate authority to his officers...

...The problem is for the regular army not to take the place of the regional forces, but to help them maintain security...

...Talk of a shadow government in provincial towns and news reports of Viet Cong terrorism were played down by the Diem government as late as 1960...

...In 1955, with the exception of the areas controlled by the sects, French intelligence reports estimated that sixty to ninety per cent of the villages in the South were subject to Communist-dominated Vietminh influence and control...

...Presence' The delay in appealing to the United Nations to assist in restoring peace in South Vietnam is neither in the interest of the United States nor in the interest of world peace...

...Ambassador Frederick Nolting argues that Diem is changing, few see signs of this, and the American mission in Vietnam is far from unanimous in its backing for Diem...

...But they are realists, and they know that a premature attempt to negotiate a political solution will result in the Viet Cong retaining the initiative and political control of the countryside...

...The religious sects, the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen, had their own areas of influence and control...

...Although nobody dares speculate on this publicly, the American buildup of the army has circumvented Diem's power...

...University of California scholar John C. Donnell, one of the few Westerners who has seriously studied Personalism, says that "The Vietnamese are understandably reluctant to refer to it as an 'ideology.' President Ngo Dinh Diem has, however, referred to it as a new national 'formula.' " The Diem regime has failed to project Personalism into an actionable political or economic program...

...In 1955, Joseph Alsop, now a staunch defender of Diem, wrote: "This descendant of a great Mandarin family is narrow, obstinate, and petty...

...American advisers were concerned primarily with conventional army organization, and there was no genuine understanding or acceptance of the political program of the Viet Cong and its relation to guerrilla warfare...

...or the Geneva treaty and without informing in any adequate way the Congress and the American people of the nature of the controversy, we have come dangerously near to committing unilaterally the military power and prestige of the United States to sustain the government of South Vietnam against the resistance of at least a substantial part of their own people...

...They seek to surprise the Viet Cong, the Communist-directed guerrilla fighters, to seize them and kill them...

...From all indications Diem is not likely to change...

...President Ngo Dinh Diem, who is sixty-one, is basically a Mandarin's son made good...

...Benjamin V. Cohen Former Counsellor of the State Department In a recent address at George Washington University that it will supply their basic needs for medical care, education, agricultural aid, and a better life...

...They deny that Personalism has a mystical base, yet the underlying assumption is that the president and his family are the chosen ones to administer the land...

...Against Nhu there would be an equally powerful group of generals...

...But the bitter war which claimed 7,000 casualties in the first six months of 1962 is slowed only a little...

...Although successful surprise helicopter attacks causing heavy casualties have doubtless weakened Viet Cong morale, there does not appear to be any noticeable shift towards the Diem government in rural areas...

...Even Senator Mansfield, whose influence in 1955 had considerable effect on Washington's acceptance of Diem, has called for a new look at America's Asian policy In a recent speech at Michigan State University, Mansfield, while avoiding a direct personal criticism of Diem, pointed out, "There is no longer any escaping the fact that after years of enormous expenditures of aid in South Vietnam, that country is more, rather than less, dependent on aid from the United States...

...When he first returned to Saigon in 1954, Diem was hardly known...

...He came to the United States in 1950 and attended Maryknoll Seminary in Lakewood, New Jersey...

...Diem is a stern, self-denying man with a messianic sense...

...We must convince our people that they are fighting for their own land...

...In 1946 he declined Ho Chi Minh's offer of a portfolio in the resistance government...

...The Vietnam war is cruel...

...But there are no signs of significant reform...

...The Vietnam war could be a religious war of the Middle Ages, a Crusade...

...The Viet Cong has been hurt badly by the new mobility of the Vietnamese army provided by American helicopters, but areas the Diem government controls have not basically changed...

...Essentially its tenets spring from Roman Catholicism, but it is flavored with Confucianism and oriental despotism...

...There have been attempts to get Diem to include the political opposition in his government, but when an opposition member of the National Assembly was legitimately elected he was arrested and still remains in jail...

...The Vietnamese G.I...

...Peasants plow the fields while machine guns fire, and old women sit silently as the wounded are dragged by...

...Personalism contains three national priorities: security, economic development, then democracy...

...Many doubted that he could last long, but he has, with the help of his powerful family (one brother is Archbishop of Hue and another controls the central area around Hue), the army, and American aid...

...But the closed-minded U.S...

...Mansfield argued that if there were to be a change in Diem's government, "the United States should consider an immediate suspension of all aid to Vietnam and French Union Forces there, except that of a humanitarian nature, preliminary to a complete reappraisal of our present policies in Free Vietnam...

...In these early days the now militant, Communist-led Viet Cong, despite their foothold in the villages, were quiescent...

...Like its propagators, Personalism remains aloof and uninstructive in meeting the country's needs...

...A day will come when the army will no longer stand by waiting for Diem to catch up with it...

...They view, the war as not only a struggle against Communism but as a civil war in which they see Vietnam being used by the Americans in their policy of containing Communism...

...Diem quickly radioed for loyal troops and the rebellion was crushed...

...Pay is still low, there is no provision for family medical care, no civil guard death benefits, and no allotments...

...The wounded are often bayoneted or left to die...

...buildup in Vietnam is taking a technological, systematic military approach to solve what is essentially a political problem...

...The Viet Cong organization is extremely effective...

...Now the line has been revamped to differentiate between the Diem "feudalists" and the "American imperialists...

...The effect has been that a number of army officers and government officials have converted to Catholicism in hopes of winning presidential favor...

...Although Joseph Alsop has reversed his position on Diem, and the president no longer personally passes on all passport applications (he still does in the case of senior officials), Alsop's earlier judgment that Diem "is effectively rootless" remains valid...

...He says the Saigon government of Diem is "no more than ah association of feudal Mandarins decked out in the trappings of democracy and republicianism...

...He warns that the Communists can be beaten only if the United States supports an alternative South Vietnamese government, one which has the support of the people...

...The peasants went along because there was no alternative, and because the Viet Cong, once accepted, not only did not harass the villagers, but often helped them in the fields...

...Similarly, Diem refused to cooperate with the French, who offered him the post of prime minister of the central provisional government in May, 1948...

...There was no development of a civil service, and the police forces and local militia were still weak and ineffective...

...From 1955 to 1957 South Vietnam seemed to be prospering...

...commitment to Diem personally, recommendations for bolstering the economy and propping up its currency, and the building of a large-scale American military force, ranging from destroyers to radar-directed fighting and bombing planes...

...Until the beginnings of a more representative government, with tolerance of a vocal but loyal opposition, elections in Vietnam are a farce...

...It was only in 1959 and 1960 that the Viet Cong openly began its campaign of armed terrorism against Diem and what it called the "dictatorship" and "feudalism" of his regime...

...Viet Cong units have complete lists, with name and rank, of American advisers, and the "American imperialists" are being compared with "French imperialists...

...The dead are mutilated, and prisoners are tortured with the water treatment—water is poured down a man's throat until he is bloated and experiences the sensation of drowning...

...At the end of the Indo-China war in 1954, he traveled to Paris and waited...

...Thus far Personalism's only accomplishments have been to legislate morality in South Vietnam and alienate the people...

...The commitment is to Diem and the United States says it is trying to reform him...

...Without reference to U.N...

...Massive amounts of American aid were poured into the country and terrorism in the countryside abated...

...Diem and his family insisted all was going well...

...In June he took over as prime minister with U.S...

...is still (according to Western foreign correspondents in Saigon) afraid that if he is killed his family will not be provided for, and he is therefore not eager to take the initiative against the enemy...

...Certainly, armed terrorism accounts for much of the Viet Cong's staying strength, but their basic appeal is political...

...The strategic hamlet program was officially launched in April, 1962, with the much-heralded Operation Sunrise near Saigon...

...Foreign correspondents like Associated Press' Rene George Inagaki, who tried to get the story out with full details, were expelled...

...Meanwhile, nothing is being done to destroy the underlying causes of Viet Cong strength: dissatisfaction with Diem's government in Saigon, and poor, often non-existent government in the countryside...

...The strategic hamlet program is under the direction of brother Nhu, who has proceeded to set them up at such a pace that the government agencies have not been able to provide the necessary cadres to carry on social services, such as education, medical care, and agricultural credit...

...Diem is anti-Communist, but his underlying philosophy of Personalism is not only not communicable, it has no basis for realism in action...

...But under the present pattern of hit-and-run raids against the Viet Cong, after nightfall the villages return to enemy hands...

...Allowing legitimate status for the Viet Cong's political front, the South Vietnamese People's Liberation Front, before the Viet Cong fighting forces are crushed, means capitulation and the gradual takeover from within by the Communists...

...Vietnamese Personalism draws somewhat from existentialism in that it stresses the importance of the individual...

...Diem entered the Man-darinate and was serving as a provincial governor when he was appointed Interior Minister by Emperor Bao Dai in 1933...

...He is tenacious, wily but narrow-minded, and obsessed with the machinations of maintaining power, perhaps with good reason: He has escaped assassination, overcome an attempted coup d'etat by dissident paratroopers (November, 1960) and a bombing and strafing of his palace (March, 1962...

...He alone promoted or demoted officers...

...Saigon The monsoon rain falls in heavy sheets, glazing the surface of the South Vietnam rice paddies...

...Although Diem has found a new score of supporters in the U.S...

...For a wide range of emotional reasons—memories of university days in Hanoi, torn families, a nationalism based on cultural and economic unity of North and South—they long to see Vietnam a single nation governed by Vietnamese without foreign intrusion...

...Defeating the Viet Cong is a military problem, it is true, and providing security for peasants in the countryside, tis well as for the capital, Saigon, is vital...

...In the spring of 1961 a high ranking U.S...

...Personalism is obscure and abstract in its principles...

...This is essentially a political war...

...Is Diem changing...

...The basic problem of village defense has yet to be solved, and the inability of the Americans to understand the nature of the Viet Cong threat has delayed a solution...

...In October, 1955, Senator Mike Mansfield presented the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a report on his two-month study tour of Indo-China...

...But Diem had strong backing from the United States both in the form of advisers such as Colonel Edward Lansdale and U.S...

...Many of these potential replacements for Diem still have ties with relatives in Communist North Vietnam and with former comrades-in-arms against the French...

...The economic aid program has undergone a radical change in approach from long term economic development planning for the past five years to plans for decentralization from Saigon with Americans in the field...

...But such an operation requires coordination between military and civilian units, and here the chain breaks...

...First of all, when Diem took power in 1954 upon the termination of French administration, he was left without an adequately trained bureaucracy...

...He is so unwilling to delegate authority that in Indo-China's death agony he deals personally with the issuance of passport visas...

...official talking with foreign correspondents in Vietnam said, "Don't tell me about Diem...

...Whenever the dark sky breaks, American Army and Marine helicopters loaded with Vietnamese troops ' skim over palm and banana trees and the rugged green jungle, as low as six feet above the tops...

...Right now none is apparent...

...The extent to which that resistance is inspired and aided by external aggression from North Vietnam is in dispute, and we have not sought, as we did in the case of Greece, a U.N...

...When they see Americans and the regular army they are reminded of the French and a colonial war...

...Prior to the buildup of American forces, the Viet Cong propaganda line was "down with the Diem feudalists...

...All troop movements had to be cleared from the presidential palace, and Diem personally had to approve the use of Air Force helicopters...

...As applied in Vietnam, Personalism with its humanist and spiritual emphases is supposed to provide a philosophical antidote to Communism...

...The concept of a conventional army has long persisted, and only recently have U.S...

...Although he lacks a common touch, he is possessed by a sense of his own righteousness and mission...

...The hard core of the Viet Cong reg ulars are numbered at only 25,000...

...Diem brought the religious sects under control and appeared to grow in stature...

...approach in dealing with Diem still leaves many alternatives wide open...

...economic and military aid...

...Diem was gradually increasing the size of his army, but it was a conventional force, untrained in jungle warfare and counter-guerrilla tactics...

...The "shadow government" still rules...

...military advisers shifted emphasis to village-based, counter-guerrilla self-defense forces...

...The crucial question of who has the initiative in the war is difficult to answer...

...Replacement of Diem's regime by a more effective military group would not be considered a calamity even by Washington, but active support for this group is another matter...

...Vietnam's independent survival requires either new leadership, or an essential change in Diem's approach far beyond the paper reforms he has presented in the last six months...

...That about sums up Washington's attitude to Diem...

...He's the best we've got...

...He was first attracted to the doctrine while studying in France in the 1930's...

...Thus far the Diem administration has not been able to provide this...

...to develop a national cultural system which will turn Asians away from their identification with nature and towards a new, positive exploitation of nature...

...A joint American and Vietnamese effort, the strategic hamlet is essentially patterned after the British experience in Malaya...

...backing...

...Few in Saigon understand just what Personalism means, yet the president's sister-in-law, Madame Nhu, and her husband refer to the doctrine as the regime's answer to Communism and capitalism, neither of which they approve...

...until Diem can broaden the base of support for his government, he can only go on with an indecisive daily counting of dead, pacing the palace floor until he is defeated either by the enemy or the inevitable upheaval from within his own ranks...

...There is a genuine fear on the part of many high-ranking Vietnamese officers that the presence of Americans in Vietnamese villages will be taken by peasants as a sign that the Americans have merely replaced the French...

...He relied on his family and his own personal power...

...This is in fact what happened...

...Others who visited Vietnam in 1955, like Hans J. Morgenthau, saw the growing establishment of a totalitarian regime...

...Instead of building a civil service Diem turned to his own experience, his Mandarin background...

...It was a natural move to solidify control, but it has resulted in an often corrupt rural administration with no leadership and no practical ability...

...The government had built a fat foreign trade balance, largely by using American aid funds to buy needed imports...

...The benefits of the aid program were not reaching the peasants, nor was there security in the villages against Viet Cong terrorism...

...In modern Indo-China, except for his connection with the small Catholic minority, Diem is effectively rootless...

...A series of political, economic, and military missions to Vietnam resulted in a broadening and deepening of the U.S...

...It has mistakenly been equated with the Communist cult of personality, but has no connection...

...By law the vice president would become president, but it is generally agreed that Diem's brother Nhu would not accept this solution and would make a bid for power, taking with him those military men loyal to him...

...The problem of security is tied to civil administration and the government's ability to convince the people 'A U.N...

...It has been going on since 1945, and the Vietnamese people are inured to it— as much as any people can be inured to war...

...The country was a shambles...

...What are the alternatives to Diem...

...While Diem has moved to improve regular army morale by making new provisions for death benefits, increasing family allotments, and offering a combat allowance, little has been done for the civil guard and self-defense forces...

...Suppose, as is often discussed, Diem were to be assassinated...

...He won a reputation for principle and integrity when he refused to serve in any official capacity during the Japanese occupation...

...Yet, another palace coup, originating in the army, is on the lips of Saigon leadership and is considered only a matter of time...

...In South Vietnam there are men of power in the army and the government who are dissatisfied with Diem but who are not ready to take action against him...

...Mansfield and others who now express doubts about Diem were pleased with his initial performance...

...In November, 1960, the army rebelled, and a group of basically pro-Diem paratroopers attacked the palace...

...Local villagers with no knowledge of Marxist ideology became the Viet Cong organization, and the hard core cadres who had returned to the South after training in Hanoi moved on to recruit new members...

...They and others close to Diem argue that if the war against the Viet Cong is to be won, it is the Vietnamese people who must win through a strong civil guard and self-defense force that want to fight off the Viet Cong because it is convinced that the government in Saigon will provide them with a better life...

...It is against this uncertain timetable that his days in power must be measured...

...It is called "Personalism...

...Underlying the shift in aid and the new propaganda approaches is the concept of the strategic hamlet...

...The matter of time is to organize the tools of takeover, to test the winds of personal power within the army, and to perceive before the act which way American support can be rallied—in defense of Diem or for a new regime...

...The concluding article in this series, by Helen Mears, will appear in the October issue of The Progressive.—The Editors...

...The regime in the North was wracked with internal difficulties and abortive attempts at collectivization of agriculrure...

...There were two commands, one originating from the palace, where Diem and brother Nhu often moved troops at whim, and the second within the general staff...

...But the seeds were slow in sprouting...

...Though Madame Nhu talks of the "Personalist democracy" of South Vietnam, it is the bankruptcy of propaganda ideas and the regime's inability to project a program that are largely responsible for the Viet Cong's success...

...One Vietnamese province chief sizes up the war against the Viet Cong this way: "For this kind of terrain and this kind of fighting we must use local troops from the same province who know the people and the land...

...The thirty-two-year-old leader of the paratroopers, Lieutenant Colonel Vuong Van Dong, former director of the Vietnamese staff college and a confidante of Diem, now lives in exile in Cambodia...

...We are virtually engaged in war which may provoke rather than deter the intervention of Red China and impose a dangerous burden on the American people and an endless drain on their resources which may irreparably affect the future of American power and leadership in the free world...

...Brother Nhu insists that "spirit," not "technique," has given the West supremacy over Asia, and he hopes through Personalism...

...Studies of captured diaries indicate that the Viet Cong are deeply motivated...

...The U.S...

...But self-defense force units are still defecting to the Viet Cong...

...They did not try to kill Diem, but simply asked for reforms...

...But the dry rot of inefficient administration could not be halted outside the capital...

...There was some economic development around the Saigon area and the stores were stocked, the French restaurants better than ever...

...Above all, he is completely out of contact with the broad masses of his people and the political realities of his country . . . The roots of Diem, moreover, are in the dead and gone court of Hue...

...They are still convinced the Saigon government does not represent their interests and cannot provide them security...

...James Alexander is the pseudonym for an American traveler who has had unusual opportunities to observe the government and the war at first hand...

...The sheer momentum of the American military surge is forcing Diem to relinquish power to his generals...

...The war is being fought now by military men from the field and not from the palace, and they will be the new men of power...

...We should, in my view, at once seek a U.N...