CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND VIET NAM

The ninth World Youth Festival convened last week in Sofia, Bulgaria. As in all Communist-dominated slogan-fests, the talk in delegates' dormitories and around restaurant tables rang with indignation and accusation. No one, protested one young Rumanian Communist, has any right to interfere "in the internal affairs of other people." Was he lambasting the U.S. role in Viet Nam, as usual? Not at all. He was talking about the Soviet Union's squeeze on Czechoslovakia -- a matter that exercised many of the 15,000 delegates far more than the festival's official theme of "solidarity with the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American imperialist aggressors."

The Socialist youths in Sofia symbolized and expressed the widespread sentiment of Communist parties across Europe. It was this opposition, the prospect of profoundly splitting the already splintered Communist world, that was a big factor in the outcome of the Russian-Czechoslovak confrontation. In a memorable turn of events, Russia last week backed down on nearly all its demands of Alexander Dubcek's reformist regime in Czechoslovakia (see following story).

Learning to Limit. The U.S. involvement in South Viet Nam and Russia's handling of Czechoslovakia are, of course, totally different situations. Both conflicts, though, serve to show the limits of big-power action. The U.S. and Russia must move with caution for fear of touching off nuclear conflict, and pay some attention to the opinions of their allies. Both superpowers must come to accept some changes that they do not like. The Russians may eventually learn the limits not only of military intervention, of which they have always been rather chary, but of political subversion as well.

As for the U.S., it faces in Viet Nam a situation from which it cannot extricate itself by any Cierna-like meeting. Despite the Paris peace talks and a lull of sorts on the battlefield, the main confrontation is still on the battlefield.

Last week, in fact, Washington stiffened its attitude toward Hanoi and showed that, for the time being, President Johnson appears determined to stick to the U.S.'s full commitment to South Viet Nam. Over the past few weeks, as a lull in ground fighting continued, critics of the war have argued with increasing volume that the lull constituted Hanoi's concession toward peace. As a reciprocal step toward deescalation, they insist, the U.S. should halt all bombing of the North. Last week, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and President Johnson flatly rejected the notion that North Viet Nam had taken any such "political decision" toward a scaledown.

There is no reason that Hanoi "cannot find ways to let us know" of any conciliatory intentions, said Rusk. His point, while logical enough, served to close a gap that the U.S. had purposely left open in previous statements, which maintained that the North Vietnamese "wouldn't have to state" their moves toward deescalation. Johnson, moreover, spoke of "the chance that we will have to act promptly on additional military measures" in Viet Nam -- a hint to some that the President was preparing for an increase in the fighting or bombing, perhaps even a final push to prove that the war can be won militarily. Johnson, however, was careful to preface his warning with the announcement that the U.S. has new cause for alarm in "evidence that a massive enemy effort is under way."

Elusive Movements. During July, said Johnson, no fewer than 30,000 infiltrators made their way into South Viet Nam -- a number "greater than at any other time in this war" and nearly enough to fill all the Communists' man power gaps. Intelligence sources also report that captured documents point to ward a "third-wave offensive," coming in the next few weeks. Unit troop movements have been particularly elusive, placing some enemy manpower far out side immediate fighting range; this could be in anticipation of an extended lull, or it could be simply for safe refitting and regrouping. In fact, the evidence is ambiguous, and as with Hanoi's unenlightening silence, the Administration has chosen to interpret it pessimistically. If there is more fighting, both sides will try to use it to improve their bargaining positions in the peace that must eventually come.

Without the universal human urge for freedom, the South Vietnamese would not still be fighting -- regardless of all U.S. military help. After peace comes to Viet Nam, the U.S. must count on this same urge to bring about new political strength among the South Vietnamese and the desire to keep their country independent. The concept of freedom is vastly different in Asia, of course, from that of a highly sophisticated and Westernized country like Czechoslovakia. But freedom is contagious when it is allowed to survive at all -- and that is both the U.S.'s hope and the Russians' fear.

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