The High Cost Of Maintaining Appearances

"War is a continuation of diplomacy by other means," declared the 19th century Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz in his famous aphorism. He would well appreciate what the Communists are up to on the battlefields of South Viet Nam these days. In military terms, the war is largely a standoff, with no prospect in sight that either side can deliver a knockout punch to the other. But to help out the Communists negotiating with the U.S. in Paris, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong have adopted what might be called a strategy of appearances.

They seem willing to take enormous casualties in largely futile military thrusts in the hope of creating enough havoc--and enough headlines--to improve their bargaining position. They are also interested in keeping American casualty rates high: last week Saigon announced that 562 Americans had died in the week ending May 11, a record weekly total for the war.

Only a strategy aimed at maintaining appearances can explain the recent "second Tet" attack on Saigon. Two weeks before it started, the highest ranking defector to come over to the allied side, Lieut. Colonel Tran Van Dae, brought with him the complete battle plan. Nonetheless, the Communists attacked, launching 26 battalions toward the city, more than twice as many as employed during Tet. With the allies waiting, it was a lemming-like march to almost certain destruction. Not a major unit got inside Saigon proper. Many of the attackers were so youthful and green and recently infiltrated that they got lost en route. Some 5,000 were killed, and another defector, North Vietnamese Regimental Commander Lieut. Colonel Truong Trung Doan, surrendered because he had been ordered to make suicidal attacks. Militarily, Tet II was disastrously expensive for the enemy. But it did inflict severe new wounds on Saigon and its people. Moreover, Hanoi got its headlines, its pictures of whole blocks on fire and of the suffering of the capital's 60,000 newly homeless refugees. As a postscript, and to celebrate Ho Chi Minh's 78th birthday, the Communists last week launched a fresh shelling of Saigon; one rocket narrowly missed the palace, where President Nguyen Van Thieu and his family were sleeping.

Protective String. The allies look for a series of Communist attempts at "spectaculars" over the coming months, to accompany the peace talks in Paris. They believe that next on the target list is the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands, where the Communists nearly cut Viet Nam in half just before the U.S. buildup in 1965. Within a month, the U.S. also expects another division-size thrust across the Demilitarized Zone, aimed at the Camp Carroll artillery base and perhaps sliding off toward Khe Sanh again. The allies anticipate more trouble for the Marine base at Danang, and within three months perhaps even another attempt on Saigon.

The Communist buildup in the Highlands is already under way, seeping out from Laos toward the string of allied fire bases and such Special Forces camps as Dak To, where some of the bloodiest fighting of the war took place last fall. Moving in bad weather, North Vietnamese are filtering along the mountain ridges and positioning themselves close to Route 14, along which most of the 250,000 people in the Highlands live. Their aim is to capture Kontum and hold it for at least a while, thus scoring a propaganda victory; but they cannot begin to do that until they eliminate or neutralize the protective string of allied outposts, such as the Special Forces camp of Polei Kleng twelve miles west of Kontum. Last week they began their Highlands campaign in earnest.

Harrowing Operation. Some 5,000 North Vietnamese troops closed in on the Kham Due outpost astride Route 14 about 70 miles from Kontum. The post was defended by 1,300 allied soldiers; most of them were civilian irregulars, reinforced by a U.S. Marine artillery platoon and an element of the U.S. 196th Light Infantry Brigade. Kham Due shaped up as the kind of set-piece battle that General William Westmoreland yearned for in the early days of the massive U.S. presence in Viet Nam, when so much of his military force was expended in fruitless hunts for an enemy refusing to stand and fight. But now set-piece battles are not welcome in Washington, because of the high rate of U.S. casualties that result from hand-to-hand combat.

So instead of reinforcing Kham Due, the U.S. decided to evacuate the camp. There were tactical reasons for the evacuation as well: the mountainous, triple-canopied terrain around Kham Due favored the enemy, and only limited ground reinforcements were available. With the Communists bunched around the camp, the U.S. also hoped to use its airpower to maximum effectiveness --and it did, killing hundreds of the Communists and setting off dozens of secondary explosions. Nonetheless, the evacuation turned out to be a harrowing operation. Two C-130s, a Skyraider fighter-bomber and five helicopters were gunned down by the North Vietnamese, including one C-130 loaded with the camp's Vietnamese defenders and their dependents. How many were on board no one knows, but if, as likely, the plane had a capacity load of 150, its destruction produced the worst loss of life in the history of aviation.

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