The Pressures Mount

Before each acceleration of the U.S. military effort in Viet Nam over the past 30 months, Lyndon Johnson has painstakingly reviewed the progress of the war and the prospects for peace. Last week, dissatisfied with the conflict's grindingly slow pace, the President was in the midst of yet another reappraisal. The choice, as the White House sees it, is either to maintain pressure on the Communists at roughly the present level or increase the punishment significantly in the next few months.

Johnson does not consider present policy a failure. The Communists, after all, have been thwarted in their attempt to isolate Saigon and undermine it politically. They can no longer hope to bisect the country at its waist along Route 19. Their third and most ambitious effort, to take the northernmost provinces by storm, has been blocked at great expense to Hanoi.

The price to the U.S. has been substantial as well. More than 12,400 Americans have died. Nearly 500,000 men are in South Viet Nam, and the number will grow. The dollar cost now runs some $25 billion a year. While this tremendous investment has denied Hanoi and the Viet Cong hegemony in the South, the U.S. and the Saigon government have also been unable to win effective control. General Harold Johnson, Army Chief of Staff and a man not given to hyperbole, said last week in Saigon that he sniffed a "smell of success," that the enemy was choosing to run rather than fight more often than a year ago.

Yet despite the punishment being absorbed daily by the Communists, no one envisions any dramatic breakthrough in the military balance very soon. This prospect has already prompted both pro-and anti-war camps to cry ever more loudly for drastic changes in strategy, leaving President Johnson little choice but to press for considerably more substantial gains in the field to bulwark his Administration's showing before 1968.

Rolling Thunder. One logical decision, long urged by his military advisers, would be a determined thrust by land and sea in and above the so-called Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Viet Nams. The "Inchon Thing," as Pentagon planners call it--referring to Douglas MacArthur's end run into enemy territory during the Korean War --would carry the ground war to North Vietnamese soil for the first time. The purpose would be to seal off the DMZ as an operational base for North Vietnamese regular forces above the 17th Parallel and to crimp the southward flow of Communist troops. The major drawback of any such offensive is that it would still leave unplugged the Communists' infiltration routes through Laos and Cambodia.

Johnson has also been under pressure to ease rigid proscriptions that have spared many of North Viet Nam's most inviting targets from U.S. air attack. Target selection has been one of the most controversial questions of the war since regular U.S. bombing of the north began on Feb. 7, 1965. The Administration's goal, restated yet again last week by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, is to reduce enemy infiltration but not to "invade, conquer or destroy" North Viet Nam or to "risk widening the war, with all that implies." Yet the movement of men and munitions continues; despite 1,000,000 tons of bombs dropped so far in what the Pentagon has code-named Rolling Thunder, Communist forces in the South are better equipped than ever.

Pulled Punches? Military commanders and some members of Congress would like to "dry up" Haiphong as a usable port with bombs, mines, or both, to knock out canal locks, industrial plants, military command headquarters in Hanoi, as well as major MIG bases and rail lines and roads in regions that have been on the prohibited list. According to one expert, only 50% of the approximately 225 targets identified by the military have been open to attack.

Last week demands for wider air strikes reached a new crescendo on Capitol Hill. Republican House Leader Gerald Ford demanded: "Why are we still pulling our air-power punch?" Until the limitations are lifted, Ford said, he sees "no justification for sending one more American" to Viet Nam. The Senate Preparedness Subcommittee heard testimony from Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, commander of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. Although the hearing was closed, it was no secret that Sharp had unreservedly argued the case for intensified bombing. Subcommittee Chairman John Stennis commented: "I've never said we ought to step up the bombing or get out, but that is the way I feel now." Present bombing tactics, he warned, mean the war could go on "for years to come." At week's end, the Air Force was allowed for the first time to hit a key bridge near the center of Hanoi (see THE WORLD), and the Administration was beginning to approve other targets that had previously been off limits.

Allied View. Regardless of the pressure, Johnson is unlikely to make any radical or hasty decisions. The most obvious inhibitions are the risks of en couraging Chinese intervention in Viet Nam and of hardening further the Soviet Union's position. Thus, if Johnson decides to make a land assault on the southernmost portion of North Viet Nam, it is likely to be limited in scope and duration--and to be so labeled in advance. While wider bombing is in prospect, it is doubtful that the President would sanction the obliteration of Haiphong, since Soviet ships would be in the line of fire.

Another factor in his deliberations is next month's Vietnamese election. Johnson would like to give the newly elected government a chance to get its bearings before undertaking any innovations. General Nguyen Van Thieu, the present chief of state and the military's candidate for President, has announced that if elected (as seems probable), he would be inclined from a position of strength to suspend the bombing for a week and try to instigate peace talks with Hanoi. President Johnson sought peace negotiations before previous military step-ups, and might well try again, however remote the chances of success.

Before making any major policy departure, the Administration may decide to mount another allied summit meeting. After a fact-finding trip through the Pacific, General Maxwell Taylor and Clark Clifford, chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, this month reported to the President that Thailand, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand all favor sterner military action in Viet Nam and have little concern about possible Chinese intervention. They argue that Hanoi and Peking only regard U.S. restraint as a sign of weakness.

Celebrated Trait. Johnson, of course, found no such unanimity at home. Critics of both parties on and off Capitol Hill voiced doubts that the Vietnamese elections would be honest, and demanded assurances against "fraud." (However, congressional leaders turned down Saigon's invitation to send observers.) Johnson has already warned Thieu and his running mate, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, that a rigged election would be disastrous in terms of U.S. public opinion about the war. Dr. Martin Luther King announced a nationwide campaign to place war referendums on ballots in local and state elections as a "unique and dramatic way for our people to deliver their mandate against the war."

What King and other critics ignore is that the allies have accomplished a great deal in South Viet Nam. The

U.S. has guaranteed the country's independence, stimulated the beginnings of internal reform and pointed the nation toward democratic self-government --a rare thing in Southeast Asia. Yet the positive side of U.S. policy is too often drowned out in the debate. Even the long-sought Vietnamese election may have already, because of a minor boo-boo, been permanently stigmatized as a "farce" by premature condemnation on Capitol Hill.

The most dismaying prospect for Americans and their allies in Viet Nam is that President Johnson must make crucial military decisions in a political atmosphere at home that does not encourage either prudence or perseverance --and at a time when his popularity is at an alltime low. Yet if the decisions are not made or do not work, South Viet Nam's independence and the massive American investment in that country may become swift victims of that celebrated American trait, impatience for quick success.

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