Hanoi and the Election

By Timothy M. James

The Politburo

Hanoi, North Viet Nam

Dear Sirs:

It is happening again. The peace negotiations have resumed in Paris, and that means that Americans are once again attuned to what the diplomats call "nuances." Last week there were 1 1/2 nuances to ponder. The half nuance was the fact that for the first time ever, your press mentioned the meeting between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho--a hint that now you may be serious about the talks. The full nuance was that enthusiastic piece that your party newspaper ran in praise of the "McGovern phenomenon"--an indication that you may have no intention whatsoever of settling the war with Richard Nixon.

Actually, we are not surprised that you have not yet got your nuances in line. You have obviously been debating among yourselves just what the U.S. election could mean in terms of the war that you have now been fighting for 27 years. By all accounts, you have a tough decision to make. Should you reach for a ceasefire at this time on the assumption that Richard Nixon will win his second term in November and thereupon prove much less eager to talk? Or should you just do nothing and gamble that a McGovern Administration will simply abandon the field to you?

Even Nixon's critics are rather surprised that you have not already grabbed his offered ceasefire, which would cost you little and gain your people a rare respite from battle. There are, of course, some visceral reasons why you may be reluctant. Possibly you recoil at the very notion of a settlement that would help to re-elect the man who personally hurled his B-52s against your country. Moreover, as everyone acknowledges by now, you gave a lot more than you got at Geneva 18 years ago last week, when you agreed under pressure from the big powers to abandon your war (against the French, then) and allow the division of Viet Nam into North and South.

But Nixon's negotiators do not want a grand denouement to the war. They want merely a cease-fire in place, which would be followed by a total U.S. withdrawal in four months, in return for release of the U.S. prisoners. The central political issue of who controls Saigon--vital to you but less and less important to the U.S.--would be settled later by the two Viet Nams. As Washington, and almost every Communist capital, sees it, cold logic simply demands an agreement along those lines.

Certainly much of that logic is not only cold but brutal. True, Nixon is a long way from redeeming his promise that the war "will not be an issue in the campaign." But it is also true that he has been able to mine your ports and bomb your bridges with astonishing political impunity. You may have noted that Mike Mansfield, the dovish majority leader of the Senate, last week promised to suspend action on antiwar bills so as not to interfere with Nixon's plans. If he is reelected, Nixon may be under even less effective pressure to end the violence than he is now.

Moreover, for the first time since the U.S. entered the war, your allies are simply not rallying round. In fact, you are probably weary of hearing your Russian, Chinese and even your Eastern European friends tell you about the wisdom of going for a cease-fire now. Possibly your understandable hatred for the American enemy has kept you from the kind of knowledge of the American mood that Moscow and Peking now seem to have. More concretely, you must surely recognize that despite all the denials Nixon and Kissinger went to Moscow and Peking with what the Godfather would have called an offer they could not possibly refuse: access to the Western technology and markets they so badly need, in return for diplomatic cooperation.

The White House is satisfied that your offensive is not going to dislodge Thieu, and that nothing is likely to enhance your negotiating position for six to nine months. The Soviets appear to have an "understanding" with Washington not to ship you the hardware needed for you to mount another offensive.

It is by no means certain that U.S. involvement in Indochina would be ended sooner or with fewer strings by McGovern's plan than by Nixon's. If Le Due Tho agreed to a cease-fire next week, under Nixon's plan the 47,000 G.I.s remaining in Viet Nam would be home by November--six months earlier than they would be under the plan offered by McGovern, who, if elected, would stop the bombing on Inauguration Day (Jan. 20) and pull the troops out within 90 days thereafter.

You have obviously noted that Nixon and McGovern have fundamentally different attitudes about the U.S. and Viet Nam. As the presidential campaign progresses, however, they could prove to be somewhat closer on how to get out of the war than you might imagine. McGovern has already slightly qualified that quick, clean break he promised by conceding that he would, after all, keep "residual" air and naval forces in Indochina until the P.O.W.s are released. McGovern has not yet been specific about U.S. military and economic aid to Saigon; Nixon plans to continue it, although the level is negotiable. The in-place cease-fire he proposes would recognize the military situation as it exists, and even allow you to resupply your troops. If you are right that popular support for the Thieu regime is thin, then you would be well within reach of your political goal: the elimination of Thieu. Even if he were to survive a ceasefire, which now seems likely, that would not necessarily be forever. No U.S. troops would be reintroduced, whatever happens, to prop him up.

Nixon continues to refuse to agree to the replacement of the Thieu regime with the coalition government that you have been pushing for. But you must remember that while he may be willing to end the war on some of the softest terms since Queen Victoria bugged out of the Crimea, he is too much of a politician to do it in public. That is why he wants to divide the issue into a military problem, which can be settled in Paris now, and a political problem, which could be solved later by the two Viet Nams--just as the two Koreas have begun to do.

Of course, much of the peace talk emanating from the White House these days is aimed at the American gallery. Lately, Administration aides have been lamenting that "if there was not an election campaign, there would be an objective basis for settlement"--as if the arrival of 1972 had been somehow unexpected. Even so, there is a deep realization in Washington that the violence has finally reached the point where all Vietnamese want an end to war. The U.S. is anxious for an end to the violence, too, in return for some kind of settlement that would permit a reasonably graceful departure.

A glance at a calendar suggests that a likely time for such a settlement would be mid-September. That is about the latest that Richard Nixon would be able to announce that the U.S. involvement is over and that all American troops, under the four-month withdrawal timetable, will be home by Inauguration Day. A nuance--but a significant one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.