South Viet Nam: Holding On

"If that's not an all-out offensive, I don't know what is," said one American official in Saigon last week. He was referring to the latest outbreak of fighting in South Viet Nam, which the U.S. Defense Department, at least at first, did not seem to regard as particularly serious. The South Vietnamese military, understandably, took a grimmer view. For the first time in a year, the ARVN high command revived (at 3:30 p.m.) the once-famed "5 o'clock follies"--the daily military briefing for the 60-odd foreign newsmen presently in Saigon.

The ARVN briefers had plenty to tell.

Communist forces attacked along an immense arc running down strategic Route 14 from the Central Highlands cities of Kontum and Pleiku all the way to Tay Ninh, 230 miles to the southwest. There were other assaults as well, especially in the northernmost Military Region I. But the Communists' main objective was clearly to create a broad corridor of control straddling Route 14, the major north-south highway in the interior of the country.

The assault began with a series of attacks on bridges and roads leading from the Central Highlands to the coast--apparently an effort to cut the area's major cities and garrisons off from the rest of the country. The Communists overran six district capitals, three in the highland region, two in Military Region I and one in Military Region III, before zeroing in on their primary target: Ban Me Thuot, a sleepy Montagnard city of 80,000 and the capital of Darlac province, where in a quieter era the Emperor Bao Dai used to hunt for tiger.

A sapper attack before dawn on the command headquarters in the city caught many troops of the South Vietnamese 23rd Division sleeping in their homes. At the same time, elements of the North Vietnamese 320th Division, which infiltrated into the area from Laos last month, attacked the city's airstrip.

Within a few hours, Communist tanks had penetrated the outskirts of Ban Me Thuot, forcing some 4,000 ARVN troops to abandon the downtown area. The South Vietnamese provincial commander, Colonel Nguyen Trong Luat, called on the air force for help. Bombing inaccurately at high altitudes to avoid North Vietnamese ground-to-air missiles, the South Vietnamese F-5s and A-37s managed to blow up Luat's command headquarters. Meanwhile, the 23rd Division's forward command post had been destroyed by sapper charges. For a time, the only ARVN communication with the outside world was provided by an FAC spotter plane circling overhead. Trapped in the city were nine Americans, official U.S. Consular Representative Paul A. Struharik and eight missionaries.

By midweek, the battle for Ban Me Thuot had become the biggest engagement of the Viet Nam War since the Paris Accords were signed more than two years ago. South Vietnamese pilots flew sortie after sortie, and claimed to have knocked out 46 tanks and dozens of artillery pieces on the city's main streets--accidentally killing Province Commander Luat in the process. Troop-carrying helicopters flew through withering antiaircraft fire and successfully landed ARVN reinforcements east of the city. Each side was estimated to have between 6,000 and 7,000 troops within the embattled city.

At week's end, the Communists announced that they had captured the capital; Saigon admitted only that the enemy forces had not been dislodged--but conceded that two-thirds of the city had been severely damaged.

The attack on Ban Me Thuot was only part of a coordinated upsurge of military activity in South Viet Nam. In Quang Tri province in the extreme north of the country, assaults on district towns forced some 20,000 people to seek shelter in the old imperial capital of Hue, which was already crammed with war refugees from other embattled areas in Military Region I. South of Ban Me Thuot along Route 14, the Communists captured the district capital of Duc Lap and three base camps, thereby threatening Quang Duc province and its capital of Gia Nghia. Still farther south, in Military Region III, the North Vietnamese tightened the pressure on another embattled provincial capital, Tay Ninh (TIME, Feb. 17), by trying to cut Route 22, which connects it to Saigon.

So far, at least, the offensive does not seem to be as massive as the one launched during the 1972 dry season. Nonetheless, the Communists are in a more threatening military position than at any time since the signing of the Paris Accords. If the Communists successfully hold Ban Me Thuot, the city would become the second provincial capital to fall this year. That would be a major psychological defeat for Saigon. In addition, the Communists' scattershot assaults along Route 14 may enable them to consolidate their hold on the entire strip of mountainous territory that borders on Cambodia. More ominously, with the Central Highlands as a staging area, they are now in a position to strike toward coastal provinces, thereby cutting South Viet Nam in two.

Since January Hanoi has infiltrated about 56,000 fresh troops into the South, although some were replacements for soldiers who died in fighting or returned North. They have also brought in hundreds of tanks and heavy artillery pieces, as well as SA-7 antiaircraft missiles. Recently, several small units from Hanoi's strategic reserve have glided through the Demilitarized Zone.

Still, the evidence does not suggest that Hanoi will try to topple the Saigon government by military means alone --at least not soon. Captured Communist documents call for limited offensives in various parts of South Viet Nam during the current dry season, which will end in late May. The main purpose is to erode ARVN morale, break up Saigon's administrative network in government-controlled districts and upset the South Vietnamese economy while killing or capturing as many troops as possible. Hanoi evidently hopes that a series of defeats will demoralize the South Vietnamese army. There are signs that the Communist strategy may work. The desertion rate for ARVN is now 24,000 men a month, up from 19,000 in the second half of 1974. During the current offensive, South Vietnamese casualties, including both killed and wounded, have been running at about 1,000 men a day.

Nonetheless, Thieu seems in no imminent danger of falling. Saigon still firmly controls over 50% and partially controls another 40% of the South Vietnamese population. Despite the desertions and casualties, ARVN still has an imposing numerical superiority over the Communists (850,000 troops to 305,000).

Economically, too, Saigon has shown some surprising strength in recent months. True, the rate of inflation has been running at around 40% a year, while soaring oil costs have resulted in a gaping foreign trade deficit. But a strict austerity program for petroleum and a cutback on imports has reduced the outflow of foreign exchange. More important, South Viet Nam in 1975 should become a net rice exporter for the first time since 1964.

Even South Viet Nam's hardy and often volatile non-Communist political opposition has lately been relatively quiescent. Several months ago, anti-Thieu activity, led by anti-Communist Roman Catholics, reached such a peak that many were reminded of the devastatingly effective anti-government Buddhist protests of the 1960s. Last month Thieu jailed 19 journalists and closed five opposition newspapers; for the moment, his crackdown seems to have silenced the opposition movement. His government's increasingly hostile treatment of the foreign press brought tragedy last week when the Saigon police ordered Agence France-Presse Correspondent Paul Leandri to National Police Headquarters to discuss a story. Leandri resented the interrogation, attempted to get away in his car, and was shot and killed.

Thieu's long-range prospects are uncertain. There could easily be a resurgence of dissent, especially if the military situation continues to deteriorate. Any major cutback of American aid would obviously damage his position. But it might also encourage the non-Communist opposition in Saigon to work toward setting up a new government more willing to reach a negotiated settlement of the war. It is difficult to predict what the outcome would be. Certainly, the Communists would be influential in any kind of coalition government that might arise; they may well dominate it. That result would hardly please the U.S., but the only alternative is an ever more bloody military stalemate of the kind that has afflicted South Viet Nam for more than a decade.

What then should the U.S. do? With regard to Cambodia, the question may already be academic. Obviously Washington would gladly settle for a neutralist regime based on the Laotian model as a replacement for Lon Nol, but there is little reason to believe the Khmer Rouge would now accept anything less than full power. There is a chance, of course, that nationalists will temper the ardor of the Communists in the insurgent movement. Perhaps the clever Sihanouk will play a larger role than is now anticipated. The Khmer Rouge, which lacks a strong cadre of leaders, may be forced to rely upon the existing bureaucracy. Moreover, the traditional Cambodian hatred of all things Vietnamese may prove a stronger motivating power than Hanoi's ideology. But such matters are largely beyond the bounds of U.S. influence.

South Viet Nam poses a more difficult problem for U.S. policymakers. Implicit in the nature of the U.S. withdrawal at the time of the Paris Accords was the assumption that the U.S. could no longer guarantee the existence of a non-Communist government in Saigon, no matter how desirable that might be. Still there is a case for maintaining a reasonable amount of U.S. economic aid to South Viet Nam over the next several years because a very special relationship exists between the two countries. The temptation to cut off all military aid at once is strong. It would be better, however, to give Saigon some warning first and set a deadline. A year or 18 months should be enough. At that point the Saigon government should be as strong as it will ever be to resist further attacks. Thereafter, like the other countries of Indochina, it will have to rely largely on its own strength to maintain its independence if its people want it. By then the U.S. would also have more than amply demonstrated to the world that it is not an unreliable ally, if it has not done so already.

What about long-range U.S. aims in the area? Thirty years after the start of the Indochina War, in which nearly 50,000 Americans died and the U.S. spent $150 billion, Washington today seems to have no coherent policy in Indochina, and not very many options.

Despite its recent brief reappearance, the "domino theory" is not a sensible base for U.S. policy; if taken seriously and literally, it might well mean sending U.S. troops back into Indochina sooner or later. The dominoes immediately adjoining Viet Nam may well fall to Communism if the present Saigon government collapses, though what kind of Communism, with what admixture of neutralism or nationalism, is far from clear. Strategically, this would not matter very much to the U.S. The more remote dominoes that do matter--Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines--would probably not be seriously affected (see box page 14). As for China, which was once thought to be panting to expand into Southeast Asia, there is no evidence that it has the means or intention to do so in the near future.

Almost certainly, a new balance of forces in Indochina will have to come about, with no military but some U.S. economic presence. The U.S. will have to find its own new, relatively minor role in the theater of its past failures and misjudgments. Hard as it may seem to imagine now, it may even be able to share in the rebuilding.

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