New Dangers in Cambodia

A HEAVY guard of Cambodian soldiers crouched silently by their guns behind half-built sandbag fortifications at Phnom-Penh's Pochentong Airport. Army Jeeps revved noisily through the night, pausing at military checkpoints throughout the city's deserted streets. Then, at the first sign of light, the soldiers picked up work where they had left off the afternoon before: at the airport, around banks and government buildings, and on major street corners, they unrolled coils of American-made barbed wire and stacked up new walls of sandbags. Cambodia's capital was girding for attack.

The three-month-old regime of Premier Lon Nol was faced with the fight of its life. Daily strikes by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops throughout the country could no longer be considered just random harassment designed to wear out Cambodia's army. Instead, the Communists seemed to have embarked upon a new all-out strategy designed to strangle Phnom-Penh. Diplomats in Cambodia speculated that the Communists had decided to try to overthrow the Lon Nol government as quickly as possible --probably within six months.

Serious Setback. If that was indeed the Communist strategy, the tactic clearly was to cut off Phnom-Penh from outside sources of supplies and military aid. Last week the city was at times completely isolated on the ground, with all major highways and railroads closed down by Communist troops and blockades. The train route to Bangkok was severed when Communist troops halted two trains, one a heavily loaded freight, the other carrying passengers. They carried off 200 tons of rice, forcing the passengers to act as porters, then destroyed both locomotives with B40 rocket blasts. That line also runs through the provincial capital of Battambang, where most of Cambodia's rice reserves are stored in warehouses. Heavy fighting was reported at TonleBet and Kompong Thorn, two northern cities that have been under frequent attack for weeks.

Untenable Position. To the southeast and southwest, other raids cut off Phnom-Penh from Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville), the country's only deep-water seaport and site of its sole oil refinery. As a result, the capital was down to about two weeks' supply of fuel. Another serious setback was the temporary severing of Route 1, which runs between Phnom-Penh and Saigon and is thus one lifeline to Cambodia's most likely source of quick military help. The only other surface route, the Mekong River, was still open, though ships were subject to scattered attacks from the river's banks.

South Vietnamese units, which are charged with guarding Route 1, together with Cambodian troops, managed periodically to pry open enemy roadblocks on some of the routes. But the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops, using their familiar hit-and-run tactics, often closed them down again a few miles away. Most residents of Phnom-Penh unconcernedly continue their daily lives at the normal slow and smiling pace. They are intrigued by all the newly visible artifacts of war, and many have taken to wearing pieces of military gear--anything from Red Chinese garrison caps to American cartridge belts --but are almost wholly unprepared for real trouble. That could change rapidly. "If the Viet Cong keep it up," says one East bloc observer in Phnom-Penh, "they won't have to take the city. The Cambodians will be only too happy to give it to them."

The Communists' threat to Cambodia's present government presents a dilemma for almost everyone involved in the Indochinese war. South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu has said that a Communist regime in neighboring Phnom-Penh would be "intolerable." The anti-Communist government of Thailand would be scarcely less horrified by such a prospect. When Richard Nixon ordered U.S. troops into the border sanctuaries in eastern Cambodia on April 30, he warned that the Communist occupation of all Cambodia "would mean that South Viet Nam was completely outflanked and the forces of Americans in this area as well as the South Vietnamese would be in an untenable position." But when U.S. forces withdraw from Cambodia next week, the situation Nixon sought to prevent will be closer than ever to reality.

Reign of Chaos. The Communists can choose between two basic methods to carry out their strategy. One is to continue their stranglehold on the capital's sources of food and outside supplies, hoping that the regime will cave in from chaos and panic. The other is to attack Phnom-Penh directly, either to occupy it permanently or to force its destruction by provoking South Vietnamese bombing raids or other counterattacks. Either result, says a Western diplomat in Phnom-Penh, would be a double victory for the Communists. His reasoning: "The Communists think they will prove that the sanctuary operations were a failure--that they still have the capability to mount a major offensive, and that by entering Cambodia, the U.S. and South Viet Nam have only condemned the country."

In purely military terms, that may be too gloomy an assessment. For one thing, no show of Communist strength in Cambodia can gainsay the enormous hauls of Viet Cong and North Vietnamese weapons and other supplies that allied troops have uncovered in the sanctuary areas. Moreover, while U.S. troops will be coming out of Cambodia, the South Vietnamese are firmly determined to keep the sanctuaries free of Communist troops and supplies no matter who is in power in Phnom-Penh. As long as they succeed, U.S. military advisers seem unworried over Cambodia's eventual fate.

There is deep concern, however, in other quarters. If all or most of Cambodia falls to the Communists, both world and U.S. opinion will be haunted by questions: Was this fall necessary? Did the U.S. incursions loose Communist troops on a small, ill-prepared nation? It can be argued that without U.S. intervention, the weak Lon Nol regime would have had even less chance against the Communists, who were already in Cambodia in force. But there is little doubt that the U.S. incursion forced Communist units over a far wider area than they had ever occupied before. If Cambodia should fall, President Nixon's speech announcing the sanctuary operation as a "swift, surgical strike" would seem vastly overstated, and his verdict calling it "the most successful operation of this long and difficult war" far too hasty.

Other Agonies. The alternative to abandoning Cambodia--providing aid for Lon Nol's hard-pressed, largely untrained army--presents agonies of another sort. Nixon has flatly ruled out sending in American troops. Last week Thailand's Premier Thanom Kittika-chorn paid a visit to Saigon, evidently to discuss moving some of his troops now stationed in South Viet Nam to Cambodia. The Administration is also negotiating with Bangkok over the possibility of placing home-based Thai army units in Cambodia at American expense. But the White House is plainly worried that Congress might outlaw the use of funds for that purpose. The Pentagon has prepared a contingency plan for an emergency airlift from Saigon to Phnom-Penh if the Cambodian capital should become completely sealed off on the ground. The U.S. has also shipped some $7.9 million worth of arms to Cambodia and will undoubtedly send in more.

But none of these measures could blunt a full-force Communist attack. Cambodia's only real hope for military help rests on South Viet Nam. A spokesman in President Thieu's office has promised that "we can get a regiment into Phnom-Penh in six hours, and if it is attacked, we will be there to help defend it." But Thieu, who last week was planning a major new campaign against Communist units in South Viet Nam's Mekong Delta, has his own military problems. If South Viet Nam should be drawn into an endless conflict in Cambodia, the course of Vietnamization, and thus of U.S. withdrawal, would almost certainly suffer a slowdown.

The U.S. move into Cambodia was designed to end a longstanding and troublesome pattern--the Communists' ability to strike at South Viet Nam from unchallenged sanctuaries. The goal has been at least partially accomplished. But in the process, Nixon has triggered a series of secondary explosions that may well exceed the original danger.

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