The Nixon Doctrine's Test in Indochina

FOR as long as the U.S. has been fighting in Southeast Asia, spasmodic crises in the war zone and frequent peaks of protest at home have drawn a wildly fluctuating fever chart. The Nixon Administration now faces a period of high temperature and uncertain remedy.

As the President grappled with a decision about further withdrawal of U.S. troops, the Communists last week launched a new offensive in South Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese and the Pathet Lao continued a threatening drive in Laos. Simultaneously, the North Vietnamese managed to scare the precarious new government of Cambodia. In the U.S., there are signs of reawakening dissent over the war. They have appeared in the U.S. Senate and at the Viet Nam Moratorium Committee and in such unexpected places as the Massachusetts legislature and Governor's office.

For Richard Nixon, Cambodia posed the most difficult problem of prognosis (see THE WORLD). Since the overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk three weeks ago, the capital of Phnom-Penh has lived in fear that 40,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in Cambodia might exploit confusion in the countryside to march on the capital and upset Premier General Lon Nol's government. From his exile in Peking, Sihanouk has promised to return at the head of an army of liberation. For Washington, the dilemma is: what to do if the situation gets so bad that Lon Nol--who up to now has said that he wants no assistance from outside forces --becomes so desperate that he asks for U.S. troops? To refuse might topple a potential ally and leave the field to Hanoi, which already has a forceful presence along the Cambodian border with South Viet Nam. But to comply would violate the Nixon Doctrine, enunciated by the President on Guam last July, that the U.S. from then on would avoid military commitments that might lead to ground-combat interventions similar to Viet Nam.

If that cruel choice becomes a reality, says a White House planner, "we have no answer." He adds: "There is no disposition to go bounding in there with big flat feet." Still, there have been new violations of the Cambodian border by both American and South Vietnamese troops. Colonel Ernest Terrell, senior U.S. adviser in South Viet Nam's Kien Tuong province, exchanged caps and pleasantries with the chief of a border station just inside Cambodia. The colonel explained that he was under orders "to encourage meetings between Vietnamese and Cambodians." The White House insists that these ventures represent no change in U.S. policy. In fact, some at the State Department are delighted at the Cambodian government's protests about border violations. "That's just great," said a high official at State. "We goddam well mean neutrality, just as they themselves do."

In any case, the North Vietnamese have come to rely increasingly on their sanctuaries in Cambodia as a staging area for troops near Saigon and in the Mekong Delta. The chance to forbid them that safe haven tempts Washington. Yet attractive tactical opportunities can boomerang, as has happened in Laos. Anti-Communist forces there swept the enemy from the Plain of Jars last year, only to see them come back stronger than ever.

50,000 from Where? Cambodia remains a puzzlement not only to Americans but to all concerned; one Soviet diplomat complained last week: "Who in hell knows what's really going on in Cambodia?" In neighboring Laos, the hard-pressed government forces regained some lost ground, providing themselves with a temporary psychological lift, but the strong Communist offensive showed no signs of collapse. Across the border in South Viet Nam, the fresh wave of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacks sent U.S. battle deaths sharply up, probably to the worst level in eight months.

This combination of events in Indochina posed a problem for the President as he worked over a decision on stage four of troop reductions in South Viet Nam. The last of the 50,000 troops of stage three are due out by April 15. That withdrawal will bring to 110,000 the total reduction of U.S. troops. So far, the pullbacks have not seriously , hurt U.S. combat effectiveness. But if Nixon goes ahead with stage four, some at the Pentagon argue, vital muscle may be cut too soon.

For that reason, the U.S. commander in Viet Nam, General Creighton Abrams, has asked that the stage-four reduction be postponed a month or two. Failing that, Abrams wants a cut that will total fewer than 50,000 men. Besides having to cope with the Cambodian uncertainties, Abrams is thin on the ground in the northernmost sector of South Viet Nam and disturbed by the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong infiltration from across the border in Cambodia. Even if the President sets the figure at 50,000 or more, he can ease the blow by announcing that number but delaying actual reduction until the situation becomes clearer. He did just that with stage three.

Strong Pressures. A few men in the White House contend that there is a sizable element of public opinion that would like to see the U.S. go all out in Cambodia as it has not in Viet Nam. In support of this view, an estimated 50,000 demonstrators, led by Fundamentalist Preacher Carl Mclntire, last week held a "March for Victory" along Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue. Stronger political forces at home, however, are pressuring Nixon to continue the troop withdrawals and avoid entanglements in Laos and Cambodia. Maine's Democratic Senator Edmund Muskie, who has begun a weekly series of speeches attacking Administration policy in Viet Nam, last week accused Nixon of reluctance to respond to a French proposal for a new international conference on Indochina similar to the Geneva meetings of 1954. While the U.S. announced that it would pursue the matter privately with Paris, the first indications were that most of the interested parties would sedulously avoid taking part.

Secretary of State William Rogers testified for 3 1/2 hours on the Indochina situation before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chairman J. William Fulbright then took the Senate floor to warn that Vietnamization could lead to "a major military disaster in Indochina." He also argued that North Viet Nam has proved itself to be "the paramount power in Indochina." Said Fulbright: "We ought to welcome North Viet Nam's preeminence, because while North Viet Nam has shown itself strong enough to dominate Indochina if left alone by outside powers, it has also shown itself willing and able to resist Chinese domination."

Rallies and Fasts. There were other stirrings on the antiwar front. In Boston, Governor Francis Sargent signed a bizarre bill that had passed the Massachusetts legislature by respectable majorities. The law provides that no Massachusetts serviceman can be compelled to go to a foreign combat zone in the absence of a congressional declaration of war. Three servicemen promptly volunteered to test the new law, which is certain to make an odd footnote to American constitutional history.

In Washington, the Viet Nam Moratorium Committee polished plans for nationwide antiwar demonstrations next week, its first major effort since the march on Washington in November. Pickets will show up in front of Internal Revenue Service offices across the nation. Explains Co-Coordinator David Hawk: "We're trying to get people to think and talk about the war in economic terms, to relate high defense spending to high taxes." "Boston tea parties" will be staged at Manhattan's Battery Park and along St. Louis' Mississippi riverfront. Fasts, rallies, parades and other demonstrations are planned for more than 30 U.S. cities, from Boston to Los Angeles, from Madison, Wis., to Dallas.

No one, including the organizers of next week's demonstrations, expects the turnout to match the massive outpouring for the first Moratorium Day last October. Still, the renewed attacks at home on his handling of the war in Asia will be yet another factor for Richard Nixon to consider as he compounds a prescription for U.S. tactics in Indochina. In declaring the Nixon Doctrine, on Guam, he pledged that the U.S. would honor existing guarantees to Asian countries, but made it clear that the nation had no heart for another Viet Nam. The Administration is also committed to press on with Vietnamization of the present conflict. Now Nixon confronts the first real test of both that doctrine and that commitment.

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