Indochina: Nixon's Strategy of Withdrawal

Stand not upon the order of your going, but go at once.

--Macbeth

MANY Americans anxious to see the U.S. disengage from Indochina have urged on President Nixon what might be called the Shakespearean solution to the war. To them, the invasion of Cambodia last spring and the current incursion into Laos seem only to be widening the theater of fighting--an odd order of going indeed. Last week, at an informal press conference, the President reiterated that he intends to go on reducing the U.S. role in the war through progressive troop withdrawals. But Nixon left a wide margin for maneuvering to carry out that intention.

No Limitation. The President ruled out the use of U.S. ground troops in Laos, Cambodia or North Viet Nam. But, reaffirming a policy first spelled out last December, he said: "I am not going to place any limitation upon the use of airpower ... It will be directed against those military activities which I determine are directed against and thereby threaten our remaining forces in South Viet Nam."

Nixon also declined to shut the door on the possibility of a South Vietnamese invasion of the North--an idea that South Viet Nam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky has repeatedly mentioned. The President is aware that any full-fledged attack against North Viet Nam could draw China into the conflict, and he has taken extraordinary pains to reassure Peking that U.S. policy does not threaten its interests. But he also knows that three divisions of North Vietnamese regulars are massed just across the DMZ. To discourage Hanoi from sending them to attack the ARVN troops in Laos, Nixon deliberately left open the possibility of a South Vietnamese counterattack across the DMZ.

The sole limitation on airpower, Nixon said, will be to disregard "a rather ridiculous suggestion that is made from time to time--I think the latest by Hans Morgenthau--that our airpower might include the use of tactical nuclear weapons." The President was referring to an article written for the New Republic by Morgenthau, the University of Chicago political scientist and inveterate war critic. Morgenthau argued that while the Administration's plan to "Vietnamize" the war will "change the color of the casualties," its goal is still a military victory. And the only way to win a war of national liberation, he added, is to deliver a crushing blow to the enemy--the kind of blow that tactical nuclear weapons "could accomplish overnight."

Actually, North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas are so widely dispersed that no crushing blow is possible. The U.S. could destroy Hanoi and other population centers with tactical nukes--that is, if it wanted to ensure Peking's entry into the conflict, or even risk World War III.

Danger Point. The President's professed rationale is to protect retreating U.S. troops by keeping the enemy at bay. As the White House sees it, the Communists hope to wage an all-out attack early next year, in an attempt to influence the 1972 election. Nixon argues that the best course is to move now to destroy the supplies that the Communists are planning to use later. Said he: "What this relates to ... is not this year, but next year. Next year will be a year when the Vietnamization program's very success creates the greatest point of danger."

Increasingly, however, critics insist that the real reason for the Cambodia and Laos incursions and the wider use of airpower is not primarily to protect G.I.s on their way out of Viet Nam. It is, they argue, to buy time for President Nguyen Van Thieu's regime in Saigon and, to a lesser extent, for the government in Phnom-Penh. "The President appears to be imposing Thieu and his group on the South Vietnamese people," said Averell Harriman last week. "That's what Vietnamization amounts to." The Communists, for their part, of course, seem equally intent on deposing Thieu before they will make peace.

Policy of Violence. Nixon's supporters are undoubtedly right when they say that Vietnamization is speeding the U.S. withdrawal. It is also evident that the strategy is militarily effective for South Viet Nam. The country is more secure and its army stronger than at any time since the U.S. arrived. The same cannot be said for Cambodia and Laos, whose civilian populations are paying dearly for that strength. For that reason, Senator Edward Kennedy last week decried Vietnamization as a "policy of violence" that has led to "war and more war."

The White House, focusing on American rather than Asian casualties, replies that monthly U.S. losses in the war are one-fifth of what they were when Nixon took office, that the U.S. troop level is down by nearly 215,000 men from its early 1969 peak of 543,000, and that the level should be around 50,000 by the end of next year. U.S. military commanders plan to send ARVN troops back into Laos and Cambodia as often as necessary to keep South Viet Nam secure. The South Vietnamese might not be so enthusiastic about the idea, however, if they were handed an embarrassing defeat on the battlefield. At week's end, with the Communist resistance in Laos growing in ferocity, the possibility of such a defeat could not be ruled out.

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