Corruption & Defeatism

Whether it is an official's boozy binge or a black-market expose, every scandal in South Viet Nam is aired for all the world to see. North of the 17th parallel, however, Hanoi seldom publishes a bad word about how things are going in the land of Ho. When a shortcoming is publicized it is generally done in the way sins are cited in a revival meeting: to urge the faithful on to ever-greater exertions. Judging from some recent Red sermonizing, Saigon has no monopoly on errant human nature.

Take the recent blast from Politburo Member Le Due Tho, writing in the party paper Nhan Dan. "Bad habits such as bureaucracy, commandism and violation of mass rights still exist to a somewhat serious degree," he complained. Among the bad habits were "cases of dubious financial situations, corruption, abuses, incorrect borrowing and unrestricted eating and drinking." By commandism, Le Due Tho meant orders heedless of local needs and wishes, and simple snobbery: "A number of leaders in factories and at construction sites do not associate with workers and labor cells."

Satisfying as it is to Saigon to know that Ho has problems remarkably akin to South Viet Nam's own, Western analysts are more intrigued by a spate of recent Red articles and broadcasts dealing with the progress of the war. The conflict has gone progressively worse for the Communists ever since the U.S. arrived in force last year. Only now does Hanoi seem to be groping for a new theology to sustain the Viet Cong in the face of continued reverses.

Nine Dragons & Three Phases. The new doctrine is needed because the Viet Cong had long been brain-fed on Mao Tse-tung's legendary Three Phases to Communist triumph: 1) political activity, 2) guerrilla warfare, and 3) the final mop-up of the reeling enemy by large-scale fighting in conventional military formations. The U.S. intervened just as the Viet Cong were about to leave behind the rigors and hardships of Phase Two, and march out in strength to claim South Viet Nam. Since then they have tried periodic Phase Three attacks--and been badly mauled by American troops and planes every time.

The latest Hanoi war commentaries are tentatively coming to terms with that reality. One speaks of "a kind of flexible, kaleidoscopic battleground," another of eventual triumph "through the accumulation of many small victories." A Politburo member writing under the pen name of Cuu Long, meaning "nine dragons," has gone so far as to redefine Mao's Phase Three as "the phase of guerrilla warfare coupled with concentrated combat." To some well-placed Western experts, that could be translated as preparation for a retreat to the hit-and-hide tactics of the Communist guerrilla--without loss of face or too obvious a break with Mao-faith.

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