Raising the Stakes in Indochina

VIET Nam has been called a war without fronts. Yet for five long years, U.S. combat troops were halted time and again by one seemingly impenetrable enemy line: South Viet Nam's twisting 600-mile border with Cambodia. Although it shielded no fewer than five large North Vietnamese and Viet Cong sanctuaries, the U.S. refused to violate Cambodia's neutrality by crossing the border to destroy them. Frustrated American military men, peering across valleys at one or another of the inviolable areas, often wished aloud: "If only they'd let us lose the map." Last week their Commander in Chief, Richard Nixon, ordered them to do exactly that. Pointing to the Communist sanctuaries on his own White House map, the President announced that he had ordered thousands of U.S. combat troops onto Cambodian soil to knock them out.

Even as he spoke, U.S. air cavalrymen thrust into Cambodia's Kompong Cham province, located inside a Communist-infested zone called "the Fishhook." Their mission: a strike at the Communist high command hidden in groups of heavy concrete bunkers at several points beyond the border. Farther south, troops of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN), aided by U.S. advisers, helicopters and medical teams, swept into another Communist stronghold known as "the Parrot's Beak," located only 35 miles from Saigon. U.S. planes, meanwhile, began bombing the three other sanctuaries. By week's end the two ground forces reported a combined enemy death toll of 398; they suffered at least eight killed, 'including five Americans.

Nixon and his aides carefully argued that this was not an invasion of Cambodia, partly because the areas involved had long been held by the Communists, not the Cambodians. The President insisted that the U.S. move was merely a tactical extension of the Viet Nam conflict. He promised to keep U.S. combat forces to a minimum and indicated that the entire operation would be concluded in six to eight weeks. Said Nixon: "Once enemy forces are driven out of these sanctuaries and once their military supplies are destroyed, we will withdraw."

Despite such assurances, Nixon had --temporarily at least--turned the long and tortured conflict in Southeast Asia into a new war.

Even though the President emphasized the sanctuaries, some parts of his speech--two references to the need to protect all of Cambodia's 7,000,000 people, the description of the whole country as a potential staging area for the Communists--raised the question of whether the U.S. really would or could confine itself to the border areas. There seemed to be a suggestion, not heard in Washington for some time, of what one Administration critic called "open-endedness" about the conflict. The U.S. "foray" presents the North Vietnamese with a significant military challenge. They must either take it lying down (not likely, in view of their past record) or retaliate somewhere, some time. Such retaliation, the Administration made clear, would lead to further escalation.

There was another suggestion of "open-endedness" in the President's argument that if he did not take this action in Cambodia, the U.S. position not only in South Viet Nam, but in the Pacific and, indeed, the world would be endangered. The move was tactically sound and represented an acceptable military risk. The disturbing element was the rhetoric suggesting that it was also much more than that: a short-cut to peace and so crucial that if it failed, the U.S. alternatives were either "defeat" or continued, wider war.

The Divide

To emphasize the point, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird said at week's end that he would recommend a renewal of the bombing of North Viet Nam should Hanoi respond to the attacks on the Cambodian sanctuaries by sending large numbers of troops across the Demilitarized Zone into South Viet Nam. The North Vietnamese claimed that the U.S. had in fact already resumed the bombing; more than 100 American planes, they said, struck north of the DMZ and killed "many civilians, including 20 children." The U.S. replied that the planes were flying "protective reaction" missions, which have been carried out on a limited scale since the bombing halt in 1968 to protect unarmed reconnaissance planes, by striking antiaircraft installations. Apparently the raid was authorized by Nixon immediately after he delivered last week's speech. Moreover, the U.S. reportedly stationed three aircraft carriers off the coast of North Viet Nam for the first time in some months.

Said a presidential aide of Nixon's decision: "This is the Continental Divide as far as the Nixon presidency is concerned." TIME White House Correspondent Simmons Fentress reported: "This was a President who had run out of patience on Viet Nam. This was a President who had stopped on his way out of the place, whirled about, and thrown his power at a frustrating, adamant, determined and resourceful enemy. Nixon knows the political risks. He accepts them as part of the great gamble, for this was a 'damn the torpedoes' speech if it was anything. I asked a White House staffer four hours before the speech if there would be anything in it that the doves might like. 'Well,' came the answer, 'the word peace is in there a couple of times. They might like that.' "

Much of the Senate's and the nation's worry was rooted in a feeling that something had suddenly gone wrong with the President's slow, careful program of withdrawal. Only the week before, he announced that he would bring home 150,000 more U.S. troops over the next year. What happened in the interval to change Nixon's tone from cool confidence to outright alarm?

Exposed Flank

The answer goes back to a shift in Southeast Asia's balance of power in March: the unexpected overthrow of Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia's ruler for nearly 30 years. Sihanouk tolerated the presence of some 40,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in border provinces--but he managed to keep them in check by adroit political maneuvering. The new regime, headed by General Lon Nol, was determined to end Sihanouk's policy of playing along with the Communists. But Lon Nol's army, long used largely for roadbuilding and ceremonial functions, was, as one foreign diplomat observed, "more like a peace corps than a military force."

Within a few weeks, seasoned North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops had gained an upper hand in most of Cambodia east of the Mekong River. Moreover, there were signs that they hoped to link their five major sanctuaries into a continuous fortified buffer, leaving South Viet Nam's entire western flank exposed. The threat of wide Communist gains began worrying Nixon. After his April 20 speech, the President flew back from San Clemente to Washington to be greeted with the news that Communist troops had attacked two key Cambodian towns. In the next four days, they attacked and occupied four more, including the seaport of Kep. The capture of a port city was particularly alarming, since it gave the Communists a shipping terminal to replace Sihanoukville (now known by its old name, Kampong Som), which the Lon Nol government had closed to Communist traffic. "A border base is one thing," says the adviser. "A contiguous area supplied by sea, and interlocking, is quite another."

The Lon Nol government put out an SOS for massive arms assistance, which South Viet Nam, with U.S. approval, answered in part by shipping in some 5,000 captured, Soviet-designed AK-47 rifles. The chances of equipping and training Cambodia's largely volunteer army in time for it to beat off a coordinated Communist attack, however, were next to nil. Meanwhile the South Vietnamese, in a number of exploratory probes, had proved that the Communists were vulnerable to attack on their sanctuaries from the west.

On April 22, two days after delivering his speech, the President called the National Security Council into session, but no decisions were made. The next day, convinced that he must take some action, Nixon ordered the convening of an elite task force of National Security Council members called the Washington Special Action Group (WASAG). The five-man group, established after North Korea shot down an unarmed U.S. EC-121 reconnaissance plane early in the Nixon Administration, is responsible for drawing up contingency plans whenever foreign crisis threatens. Headed by White House Foreign Affairs Adviser Henry Kissinger, it includes CIA Chief Richard Helms and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Earle Wheeler. On April 23, the group drafted a set of four options for the President: 1) massive military aid to Cambodia; 2) a U.S. call for a reconvening of the 14-member Geneva Conference on Cambodia, similar to Washington's request earlier this year in the case of Laos; 3) a massive bombing operation inside Cambodia; and 4) a military campaign against the border base areas.

Convincing Summit

The pressure to act increased measurably with word of the Indochinese summit of Communist leaders convened April 24 somewhere near the juncture of Laos, Viet Nam and South China. The meeting was attended by no less a figure than China's Premier, Chou Enlai. Other participants included Prince Souphanouvong, leader of the Communist Pathet Lao; North Viet Nam's Premier Pham Van Dong; and in his first appearance in nearly six weeks, Prince Sihanouk. On May Day Sihanouk was seen with Mao Tse-tung.

The talk at the South China summit of forming an "Indochinese People's Army" convinced the Nixon Administration that the Communists in Cambodia seriously intended to establish a puppet regime in Phnom-Penh. It was one thing, White House officials reasoned, for the Communists to be operating out of privileged sanctuaries that were tolerated by a neutralist Sihanouk government. It would be quite another for the enemy to enjoy a completely free run of the border regions under a Sihanouk regime totally beholden to Hanoi and Peking. Thus the chief purpose of the intervention in Cambodia was to shore up the Lon Nol government, although the President was not to mention the regime in his speech.

Nixon spent Saturday with his friend Bebe Rebozo at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., but the Indochina situation was very much on his mind. He telephoned Kissinger and asked him to fly in with the proposed options for Cambodia. Nixon and Kissinger spent two hours discussing the plans on the retreat's sunny terrace, but made no decision. That evening the President, Kissinger and Rebozo cruised on the Potomac River aboard the Navy's Sequoia. The following day, April 26, after attending church in the morning, the President again called the National Security Council to review the situation. Nixon was genuinely concerned about the situation of the U.S. troops in South Viet Nam. Said he at one point: "All right, a year from now I will be sitting here with most of our combat troops out of Viet Nam, and what do I do then?" He suggested, obviously on the advice of the military, that protection of the remaining troops would be more difficult then and he also worried about Vietnamization and pacification. Still, no firm decisions were taken.

Nearly everyone close to Nixon favored solution No. 4--the military strike. Rogers was reportedly the sole doubter, raising objections based on both international and domestic reaction to such a scheme. But he eventually came round. As he put it during a session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 27: "The President has the problem: Do you continue fighting the war in a way that doesn't make sense, or do you change it?" When he testified, such a change was under very active consideration, and Rogers provided only the barest hint of it. As a result, some committee members felt deceived when it became known just two days later. Still, Nixon had not then definitely made up his mind. Among others whom Nixon still wanted to consult was his former law partner, Attorney General John Mitchell. Mitchell's counsel: there would be "severe implications" politically if the plan did not work, but it was still a wise move.

Softening Up

One of the touchiest parts of the plan involved Cambodia's neutral status. The Lon Nol government, though plainly pro-Western, is determined to preserve at least the facade of neutrality. Moreover, it hopes to win diplomatic support--and arms aid--later this month at a conference of Asian nations called to discuss Cambodia by Indonesia. To avoid weakening the shaky regime, the U.S. decided to forgo the legality of wangling an invitation from Phnom-Penh to attack the Communist bases in Cambodia. The omission meant that Washington was openly violating the Geneva accord of 1954 (which it did not sign but has repeatedly claimed to respect), guaranteeing Cambodian neutrality. Still, there is no doubt that the U.S. obtained tacit consent. Cambodia's Foreign Minister, Yem Sambour, said it all when he registered the government's feeble objection. "In principle," he said with a broad smile, "we must protest the action."

On Monday, Nixon had Kissinger round up "unvarnished recommendations" from several sources, including U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General Creighton Abrams in Saigon. He took the suggestions back to the White House and read past midnight. Next morning, he summoned Rogers, Kissinger and Laird to give them the news: not only would U.S. advisers accompany ARVN troops into Cambodia, but the American-led Fishhook attack would be staged a day later as a second and even more unexpected jolt to the Communists. The orders were quickly passed to a delighted South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. As Nixon retired to the luxuriant White House Rose Garden to work on his speech, U.S. warplanes and artillery began softening up the sanctuaries.

Applause but Not Approval

Calling his hardest-lining (and fastest-working) speechwriter, Pat Buchanan, the President told him to work up a first draft from some dictated notes. As Buchanan typed into the evening, his boss kept dictating into his IBM recorder. Three more of the machine's recording tubes arrived that night. "It was the old man's speech," said Buchanan. "He knew just what he wanted to say."

Nixon failed to inform a single legislator, even in his own party, about the attack. It was an omission that raised more hackles than necessary. When G.O.P. Senator George Aiken finally got the news, he recalls, "I counted slowly--up to about 12,000." Finally, an hour before he went on television, Nixon gave 40 congressional leaders and other officials a preview of the speech. "You've got to take things as they are," he told them, attempting to illustrate his dilemma in Indochina with a personal anecdote. It concerned a young woman who once told him that his face did not project well on TV. "This is the face I've got," Nixon replied to her. "I've got to accept it as it is." When he rose to leave for the Oval Room, his audience stood and spontaneously applauded. It was a demonstration not of approval but of understanding. Said Mansfield, who harshly criticized the President's action in the Senate the next day: "His burden is awesome. The final responsibility is his. It was a gesture by a bunch of humans to another human."

It was the toughest speech of Nixon's presidency. Said Senate Minority Leader Scott afterward: "The North Vietnamese may have been going on a pussycat theory about Nixon. Now they know they have a tiger." The President announced the news of the attacks and explained their purpose as proof that "we will not allow American men by the thousands to be killed by an enemy from privileged sanctuaries." Added Nixon: "Any government that chooses to use these actions as a pretext for harming relations with the United States will be doing so on its own responsibility and on its own initiative, and we will draw the appropriate conclusions." He obviously meant that statement as a warning to Communist powers against retaliation. There was some speculation, moreover, that Nixon also intended it as a coded message to Russia that the U.S. is deeply unhappy over the Soviets' increasingly active role in the Middle East conflict (see THE WORLD). The Israelis, at least, hoped so. Said one high Israeli diplomat: "If the U.S. lets Lon Nol go down the drain, the Russians will conclude that the Americans have gone soft. It will also be very bad news for us."

Nixon ensured that the speech would stir more emotion than was necessary by his aggressive tone and his flights into needlessly overstated rhetoric. He promised that the nation would not be "humiliated" or "defeated." Said he: "If when the chips are down the world's most powerful nation--the United States of America--acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world." Such potent images, at a time when the nation is trying desperately to heal the wounds caused by Viet Nam, were likely to deepen the divisions--as the instantaneous reaction on the campuses proved.

Seeping Back

Nixon combined his appeal to Americans' pride in their country as a world power with one of those public revelations of his agonized political soul-searchings that have become an embarrassing feature of his speeches. Acknowledging that he would be vulnerable if his decision proved wrong, he pronounced: "I would rather be a one-term President and do what I believe is right than be a two-term President at the cost of seeing America become a second-rate power."

Nixon's move won virtually unanimous endorsement from the Pentagon. There was open jubilation. The border retreats have unquestionably prolonged the war by providing the Communists with muscle--and killing power--far be yond their actual strength. "You are a colonel in South Viet Nam," explains TIME Correspondent John Mulliken, "who has been staring into Cambodia for months, watching the Communists in those sanctuaries, knowing that one night they will come out and hit your firebase. As that colonel, you are happy about the President's speech. To the military, the opportunity of an anti-Communist regime in Cambodia seemed irresistible. The attacks into Cambodia are really taking place simply because of the new anti-Communist government in Phnom-Penh. One officer told me: The State Department would not let us make a move while Sihanouk was still there because they thought they could win him over.' "

A mop-up of the Communist staging areas, one White House adviser estimates, will buy the U.S. and South Viet Nam a year's freedom from sanctuary-based attacks. According to his reckoning, the Communists will be bogged down for four months when the monsoon weather begins, and for eight months after the rains end while they resupply. "They may come back and restock the bases, but we'll have a year to push pacification and to consolidate the government."

That timetable may be wishful thinking. When sweep-and-destroy missions were fashionable three years ago, the enemy managed to seep back almost overnight. Allied officials have made it clear that if the Communists reoccupy the sanctuaries, they will be swept out again. But how frequently can this be done," particularly with the U.S. pulling out and Saigon increasingly preoccupied with defending its own territory?

Ultimately, Nixon and his advisers hope, the Cambodian thrusts and the new tough line will persuade North Viet Nam to negotiate seriously. Lyndon Johnson used much the same argument in supporting the bombing of North Viet Nam. True, the situation is different now; by all accounts, the North Vietnamese are weaker and the South Vietnamese stronger. Still, the echoes of Johnsonian logic are disturbing (see box). It is possible that the North Vietnamese will allow themselves to be driven into real negotiations; but it is hard to believe, since they have fought so long and cleverly, are still supplied and armed by Russia and China, can still count on the desperate U.S. need to withdraw from South Viet Nam sooner rather than later.

Congress was full of such doubts. Vermont's Aiken said flatly that the President has lost any chance he ever had of winning a majority in the House and Senate this November. A Democratic Congressman happily predicted that the President's policy would cost the G.O.P. 50 congressional seats. Said Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield: "We're sinking deeper into the morass. The feeling of gloom in the Senate is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. A dull knife." Even those who fell into line behind Nixon did so, for the most part, out of loyalty to his office. The Foreign Relations Committee, headed by longtime war critic William Fulbright, asked the President to explain himself "at your earliest convenience." It was the first such meeting requested by the committee since it asked Woodrow Wilson for an accounting during the debate over joining the

League of Nations in 1919. Nixon agreed to a meeting, but he offended the sensitive Senate group by inviting along its less prestigious counterpart in the House. At week's end the Senate committee was still undecided whether to accept on Nixon's terms. He also offered to meet with the House and Senate Armed Services committees.

In Congress, the President's course will be subjected to formal debate this week when the Senate is scheduled to vote on the repeal of the 1965 Tonkin Gulf Resolution, the measure that Lyndon Johnson often cited as his legal authority for conducting the war. Repeal is virtually certain, and this would open the way for a much more explosive possibility: a Senate foreign affairs resolution putting the Senate on record against the use of U.S. troops in Cambodia. Liberals, moreover, are hoping to capitalize on the chamber's antiwar sentiment to secure passage of Majority Leader Mansfield's longstanding resolution to withdraw some of the 310,000 U.S. troops from Europe.

Yet another possibility lies in Congress' power of the purse. Mansfield intends to work hardest on this route, hoping to deny Nixon the power to order troops into Cambodia by refusing to authorize funds for such an action in the next military appropriations bill. For the moment, he admits, "there's not much we can do." Should the Senate or House manage to place real limits on the President's freedom of action, the executive and legislative branches could become locked in an unprecedented constitutional confrontation. At issue would be the President's authority as Commander in Chief of the military and Congress' exclusive authority te declare war. The only forum where it could be settled legally would be the Supreme Court, but it is almost inconceivable that the conflict would be carried that far. It is much more likely to be solved in the realm most familiar to both parties--politics, and there the Commander in Chief is probably capable of mobilizing enough resources to face down his challengers.

Nixon, who can hardly relish the prospect of a drawn-out controversy over the war as the November midterm elections approach, is betting that his course will be vindicated fairly swiftly. It will lead, he hopes, to a reduction in casualty figures, or faster withdrawal or some other tangible sign of progress in what has become a debilitating experience for most Americans. He apparently believes that in the process he can conclusively demonstrate the strength of U.S. will to the Communists. Although he has so carefully delimited the aims of the Cambodian operation, Nixon may be hoping that such a show of strength--one last try, one more effort --can break the other side and in effect still bring a U.S. victory. The fact that this has never been true before does not mean that it might not be true now. But the odds are against it.

If his gamble pays off and Nixon brings the Communists to serious negotiations, he will have achieved a near triumph. If he only manages to clean out the Cambodian sanctuaries without further escalation, he will have achieved a significant, though probably temporary success. But what if his gamble fails, and instead of a surgical action against the sanctuaries, the U.S. is drawn into a messy, protracted effort to keep Lon Nol's regime intact? In that case, the President will appear in retrospect to have been intransigent rather than firm, and to have prolonged the war rather than shortened it.

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