Onto the Offensive

Out of Washington and Paris last week came promise of a vigorous new effort to staunch the bloody attrition of the seven-year-old Indo-China war and check Communism's threat to South Asia. The Eisen hower Administration proposed to double the U.S.'s contribution to the costs of the Indo-China fighting, from $400 million to $785 million. France, for its part, will throw more troops into the struggle, and give the 27 million people of Indo-China real assurance of independence.

It was an encouraging forward step in the making of free world strategy. In the eight years of cold war, the West's boldest moves--Greek-Turkish aid, Marshall Plan, Berlin airlift, Korea--were evolved almost piecemeal in the press of sudden necessity, the haste of improvisation. The new Franco-American plan for Indo-China was a specific, long-range blueprint drawn by the strategy-makers of Washington and Paris.

Last spring former Premier Rene Mayer and Foreign Minister Georges Bidault came to the U.S. to get more U.S. aid for the Indo-China war. The U.S., then paying 40% of the costs, replied that France needed a bold new scheme for winning the struggle, and a more specific plan to give the Indo-Chinese their long-sought freedom once victory came. The French recast their Indo-China policy, dispatched energetic General Henri Navarre to command with an offensive-minded plan for fighting a showdown, decided to send nine more battalions of French troops to Indo-China, and build up the native armies to 200,000 men by the end of 1953. Paris added a promise to give genuine independence to the Indo-Chinese states of Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, once the war is won.

Last week, impressed by the French proposals, the U.S. National Security Council recommended the extra U.S. aid, and the Administration set about trying to persuade economy-minded U.S. Senators that the money is vital.

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