NIXON'S HARD CHOICE IN VIET NAM

THE war in Viet Nam remains an inexorable burden for the President of the U.S. For Richard Nixon, who entered office amid new hopes that peace might not be far off and that Ho Chi Minh might finally be amenable to agreement, that discovery was not long in coming. Last week continued Communist attacks in South Viet Nam forced him to confront his first foreign-policy crisis as President. It not only undercut his attempts to reassure Europeans that the U.S. is not preoccupied with Southeast Asia, but jeopardized the climate of calm and unity that he had worked so hard to create.

The attacks in South Viet Nam left 453 Americans dead in the first week, a higher toll than for any one week since last May--higher even than in the first full week of the Tet offensive a year ago. U.S. dead in Viet Nam now number 32,376, and the total is fast approaching the Korean War figure of 33,629. With round after round of Soviet-made 122-mm. rockets crashing into cities and killing Vietnamese civilians, the Communists appeared to be violating the tacit understanding that Lyndon Johnson thought he had with Hanoi when he ordered the bombing halt: in return, the Communists would withdraw troops from the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Viet Nam, begin serious negotiations in Paris --and end the shelling of major population centers.

Like last year's Tet offensive, the present Communist attacks are clearly designed to embarrass the U.S. forces--which have been the target of most of these assaults--cause heavy casualties and demonstrate that the Communists can still stage dramatic attacks on the big cities of South Viet Nam. Ho Chi Minh thereby hopes to test the mettle of the young Nixon Administration by rekindling dissatisfaction with the war in the U.S., and to strengthen his bargaining hand in Paris. As the attacks continued on the President's return from his European tour, the country waited for him to speak. He did not waste much time in doing so.

Clear Warning. The forum that Nixon used was a 55-minute press conference, during which, coolly and without notes, he reviewed the spectrum of U.S. concerns abroad, from Berlin and the Middle East to Peru's expropriation of American oil properties. When he came to Viet Nam, there was no question that he said exactly what he intended. Although he warned against the peril of using "words threatening deeds in order to accomplish objectives," he seemingly did just that.

"We have not moved in a precipitate fashion," said the President, "but the fact that we have shown patience and forbearance should not be considered as a sign of weakness. We will not tolerate a continuation of a violation of an understanding. But, more than that, we will not tolerate attacks which result in heavier casualties to our men at a time when we are honestly trying to seek peace at the conference table in Paris. An appropriate response to these attacks will be made if they continue."

The warning was clear enough--and so were Ho's actions. On the eve of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird's arrival in Viet Nam for his first inspection tour, the Communists launched the heaviest rocket attack ever mounted on Saigon, killing 24 civilians and injuring at least 47 others. In the Central Highlands, U.S. fighter-bombers knocked out two Russian-built PT-76 tanks attacking a Special Forces camp at Ben Het. It was only the second appearance of North Vietnamese armor in the entire war. Communist artillery was used for the first time in the II Corps area, shelling 4th Division positions. Some 100 North Vietnamese troops were spotted in the DMZ late last week--the largest number since the bombing halt. In the current offensive, the enemy has been expending small-arms ammunition, rockets and artillery shells at a much greater rate than during the 1968 Tet offensive. U.S. intelligence concludes that the Communists are well supplied for a push that could be sustained from one to three months.

Acute Dilemma. The offensive disrupted the Paris peace talks. At last week's meeting in the Hotel Majestic, U.S. Chief Negotiator Henry Cabot Lodge confined himself to repeating bitterly, word for word, his accusation to the enemy the week before: "The consequences of these attacks are your responsibility. They clearly raise a question as to your side's true desire to work toward a peaceful settlement of this conflict." Saigon's chief spokesman, Pham Dang Lam, broke off the session an hour and a half early, and South Viet Nam's Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky took off from Paris for Saigon without attending last week's meeting, saying that he might not return.

Nixon's dilemma is clear and acute. If his "appropriate response" is not forceful enough, the U.S. position at the Paris bargaining table will be weakened. But if he escalates the war, he faces grave difficulty with an American public that drove Johnson from the presidency and elected Nixon in the hope of ending the conflict. He also risks a Communist pullout from the Paris talks.

Nixon spoke hopefully at his press conference of enlisting the Soviets in attempting to achieve a Viet Nam settlement, and during his European trip urged General de Gaulle to use his good offices as well. If diplomatic pressures fail, however, he has a series of increasingly serious--and increasingly dangerous--options open to him. He could order air strikes against fuel and weapons dumps installed by the North Vietnamese after the bombing halt just above the DMZ, and along the border of South Viet Nam inside Laos and Cambodia. The next step might be to attack military targets near lesser cities in North Viet Nam's southern panhandle. A more drastic reaction would be to resume bombing Hanoi, which has been free from air assault since raids ended above the 20th parallel on March 31, 1968.

Likely Choice. Other military options in North Viet Nam would go beyond anything the U.S. has done thus far in the war, and would raise the level of conflict to new peaks. Among them: invasion in force of Laos or even North Viet Nam with U.S. troops, bombing the Red River dikes to flood the North's chief food-producing region, or making a direct aerial attack on the key North Vietnamese port of Haiphong. Neither U.S. nor world opinion would stand for any of those, and Nixon's new entente with Western Europe would vanish overnight. Still untried, but less drastic, would be a naval blockade of Haiphong or Sihanoukville in Cambodia, the two biggest ports of entry for enemy materiel. The most likely choice, however, is an intensification of the ground war in South Viet Nam, perhaps marked by a large-scale American offensive. None of these courses is without risk, either military or political, and much will depend on the recommendations that Mel Laird brings back to Washington this week.

Nixon has assiduously tooled and oiled the analytical machinery of his new government. The Communist offensive of spring 1969 in Viet Nam is the first sudden test thrust upon it from abroad without lead time for exhaustive reflection. If the Nixon Administration can meet this challenge and go on to find the honorable end to the war that Nixon promised in his campaign, there will be hope that finally the U.S. can fully devote its great energies to resolving its domestic crises. If Nixon fails, the U.S. may well sink back into the swamp of suspicion and dissension in which his predecessor left it.

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