Assessing the Bombing

FROM the very outset of the U.S.-North Vietnamese negotiations in Paris four months ago, the main obstacle to progress has been the issue of the continued bombing of part of North Viet Nam. Hanoi's representatives have adamantly clung to their long-held demand that the U.S. must stop bombing their territory before anything else can be discussed. The U.S. has persistently and unsuccessfully asked for assurances that Hanoi will reciprocate with some kind of de-escalation of its own once the bombing is stopped. No such assurances have been forthcoming. The result is that the talks have so far got nowhere and U.S. planes continue to hit military targets in the North Vietnamese panhandle south of the 19th parallel.

The Administration's arguments against a bombing halt rest on both military and political considerations. Understandably, U.S. generals want to take no more chances than they absolutely have to, and they want to keep allied casualties as low as possible. Stopping the bombing, they reason, would only result in heavier Communist infiltration, increasing the danger to allied fighting men--particularly the U.S. and Vietnamese troops in northernmost I Corps, which borders on the Demilitarized Zone. President Johnson reflected that view in a speech last month when he asserted that "we are not going to trade the safety of American fighting men for any Trojan horse." General Creighton Abrams, U.S. Commander in Viet Nam, has reportedly estimated that a halt to the bombing would permit a fivefold increase in Communist strength within a matter of days.

The air strikes do not, of course, prevent infiltration as it is. At best, some generals claim, bombing can knock out only 10% of sighted infiltration. But even that is valuable enough to the men charged with the conduct of the war and responsible for the lives of their men.

The military also fears that a bombing halt in the panhandle would allow the North Vietnamese to move artillery and jet fighters to the very rim of South Viet Nam, where they could operate with impunity at close range. But beyond such specific worries, U.S. military leaders also weigh a bombing pause in terms of momentum and morale. The air campaign is the only part of a frustrating war in which the allies exert control over the tactical situation and the pace of the action.

The political side of the case against a halt is less precisely stated. Essentially, it rests on the negative fact that no one in Washington has any idea if and how a halt would influence the Paris talks. Pessimists in the intelligence community are convinced that a unilateral U.S. concession would simply lead to another difficult demand by Hanoi. The North Vietnamese might well, for example, insist that since the U.S. and North Viet Nam had finished the pressing business between them, the U.S. could now go talk to the National Liberation Front about the rest of the war. That the U.S. is not eager to do: the Front controls neither infiltration nor force levels nor the Demilitarized Zone nor the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Hanoi holds the key to all of those. And negotiations with the N.L.F. would create major problems for the South Vietnamese government.

The problem with all these arguments is that the only practical way to test their validity is to stop the bombing. Supporters of a halt argue that an effort to get meaningful peace talks under way would be worth the military risks. There is no proof, they say, that allied forces would be unduly endangered or that the North Vietnamese would at once use a break to step up infiltration. No one really knows how Hanoi would react; the margin of ignorance in Washington about North Viet Nam and its intentions remains considerably larger than the core of knowledge. If the Communists did take advantage of a halt by shuttling heavy artillery close to the DMZ, allied troops could conceivably shunt a few miles to the south, out of range; indeed, contingency plans exist for such a move.

Politically, a halt would put Hanoi on the defensive. World opinion, for what it is worth, would back Ambassador Averell Harriman in pressing for a concession from Hanoi. A halt would also assuage U.S. domestic divisions over the war, so bitterly exposed in the fight over the Viet Nam plank in the Democratic Party's platform two weeks ago in Chicago. It might also boost the U.S. in its attempt to persuade Moscow, which provides Hanoi with the bulk of its hardware, to give a helping hand with the North Vietnamese. The Soviets have long made it clear that they could do nothing so long as the bombing continued.

The U.S. could always resume the bombing if Hanoi failed to respond to a halt, though Washington worries that U.S. and world opinion would make a resumption difficult. In any case, North Viet Nam does not provide the only target area against infiltration. Since the bulk of North Vietnamese replacements and equipment still pours south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, Washington could conceivably compensate for a bombing halt in the North by stepping up the air campaign over Laos. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford told the National Press Club last week that since the U.S. had limited its aircraft to the panhandle last March 31, the bombing had actually become more effective. Targets are easier to find and pilots have become better acquainted with their smaller area of operations. Presumably the same argument could be applied to an even narrower target area consisting of a portion of Laos or the border areas of South Viet Nam.

There are those who argue that the Administration might find it eminently worthwhile to return to the original concept behind the bombing campaign in the North. It was once conceived to be an on-off affair consisting of a period of bombing, then a pause to sniff the political wind, then a new round of strikes if there was no reaction from the other side. Under this concept, the U.S. could halt the bombing long enough to see if Hanoi would reciprocate, then start again if it did not. Short of a complete bombing halt, that could be the most acceptable strategy to try to get the Paris talks and the war off dead center.

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