Nixon's Negotiators

In his campaign speeches last fall, Richard Nixon pledged an honorable peace in Viet Nam, but carefully refrained from revealing any of the specifics that he would prescribe to end Southeast Asia's three decades of bloodshed and turmoil. Thus Nixon is assuming the presidency unfreighted with any of the electioneering labels that proved so embarrassing to Lyndon Johnson. The President-elect is neither avowedly hawk nor dove, and the Communist negotiators he will face in Paris, knowing nothing of the President-elect's intentions, are finding a match for their own studied inscrutability.

Nixon's choice of William P. Rogers as his Secretary of State offered no clue. Rogers is proud that his record is unmarked by a single public statement on Viet Nam. But when Nixon last week named Henry Cabot Lodge, his 1960 running mate, to be chief U.S. negotiator in Paris, it seemed to many that the new Administration was at last tipping its hand. Lodge, who twice served as U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, was the instrument of American power in Viet Nam at crucial moments of the war. A number of commentators argued that his selection was a signal that Nixon was committed to a tough policy and that the Communists could hope for few concessions. They recalled Lodge's close association with South Viet Nam's impetuous Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, who heads his government's balky delegation in Paris, and interpreted Nixon's decision to retain Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker in Saigon as another sign of a hardening line.

In contrast, the Washington Star's Mary McGrory maintained that while there was joy in Saigon over Lodge's nomination, there was also "stealthy satisfaction among Washington doves." If Nixon were preparing to cut U.S. losses in Viet Nam and settle for less than Lyndon Johnson was willing to concede, she argued, Lodge would be the ideal broker. His past credentials as an unbending anti-Communist would help convince American opinion that the U.S. was making the best possible deal.

Wiggle Watching. Hanoi was not sure that Lodge would be any more pliable than Averell Harriman--or any less. Reacting with scorn, North Viet Nam's army newspaper Quan Doi Nhan Dan broke out in doggerel: "Which of the two has the more weathered skin,/ The man going out or the man coming in?" To Quan Doi, Lodge is "doomed to follow in the footsteps/Of Nixon the elephant/And feed on his leavings."

Harriman, a staunch Democrat, had not expected to be asked by Nixon to stay beyond Jan. 20. His deputy, former Under Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, will remain in Paris for a month or so to brief Lodge and the No. 2 man, New York Attorney Lawrence E. Walsh, a longtime associate of William Rogers. The delicate business of detecting minuscule wiggles in Hanoi's line, often signaled by a change in the tense of a single verb, will fall to two eminently competent professionals. They are Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Philip Habib, who was Lodge's political right hand in Saigon, and Marshall Green, who as U.S. ambassador in Indonesia displayed his capacity for low-key, imaginative diplomacy.

Modern Victory. For the time being, the U.S. team in Paris can expect continued stonewalling from its South Vietnamese allies, who are stubbornly engaged in what looks to impatient outsiders like puerile bickering over seating arrangements and furniture design. Nonetheless, the Saigon regime has an immensely important point to make in all the wrangling: that it should not recognize the Viet Cong as an equal, which for the South Vietnamese is the crux of the talks. Unremitting delay is also likely to be the Communists' tactic while they attempt to get the measure of their opponents. Indeed, Hanoi won a modest diplomatic victory last week when neutral Sweden announced that it would recognize the North Vietnamese regime. It was the first Western nation to do so--though Britain maintains a consulate in Hanoi.

There were other reasons behind Hanoi's determination to wait and see. Nixon has in fact given nothing away by naming Lodge. The President-elect, who has never concealed his determination to take personal charge of U.S. foreign policy, will serve, in effect, as his own chief bargainer. Nixon is fully cognizant that his No. 1 priority is Viet Nam. Key policies, both at home and abroad, depend upon a speedy settlement of the divisive war that has already claimed 30,644 American lives and drains $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury each year. Like Lyndon Johnson before him, Nixon will draft his instructions to his spokesman in Paris in minute detail. Like Harriman, Lodge will act strictly in response to his orders from the top.

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