Indochina: Blunting a Buildup

THE hints were subtle at first, then more direct. As the week began, all attention was fixed on Cambodia because of the recent Communist attacks in and around Phnom-Penh. But as the week wore on, the Administration insistently telegraphed its comparable concern about the situation in another Indo-chinese country, Laos. There were reports of a disturbing buildup by the Communists and of saturation bombing raids by the U.S. Secretary of State William Rogers noted that with the advent of the dry season, Communist activity was up sharply along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and in new staging areas in the jungles flanking the trail. With U.S. troops scheduled to turn over principal "combat responsibilities" to South Viet Nam's forces by midsummer, Rogers warned: "There is a very critical period about to ensue."

At week's end there was every indication that the U.S. and its allies were mounting an extraordinary response. Attacks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it snakes down the narrow panhandle of southern Laos were stepped up to 400 or more sorties a day. B-52s hammered a Communist buildup zone near Khe Sanh, just south of the Demilitarized Zone. Rumors flew that South Vietnamese troops, backed by heavy U.S. air support, were massing somewhere north of the border shared by Laos, Cambodia and South Viet Nam. As happened during the Cambodia invasion last May, a third U.S. aircraft carrier joined the two already on station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Huge C-130 transports all over South Viet Nam were suddenly diverted to "high-priority missions."

Complex Effects. A thrust into Laos was actively discussed in Saigon last May, at the time of the allied assault on the Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia. Recently ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) special-forces teams probing into the Laotian panhandle found that many truck depots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail were too heavily fortified to be destroyed by anything less than an all-out ground assault. Saigon has had a contingency plan for just such an operation. ARVN troops would slip into Laos, join a small army of ARVN and Laotian special forces and Montagnard irregulars, then work north along the trail's most vulnerable segment: the 75-mile stretch between Route 9 and the Mu Gia Pass (see map). Along the way, the raiders would set up permanent firebases to make sure that the trail was permanently closed. The North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao--with some 100,000 troops in Laos--would savagely contest any such effort.

Either way it went, an all-out effort to seal forever the infiltration route named for Ho Chi Minh would have tremendous implications. If successful, Hanoi would lose not only face, but also its one remaining pipeline to the south. Should ARVN troops and U.S. airpower fail, Hanoi's prestige would be enhanced, and the political repercussions might force fundamental changes in Saigon and Washington.

More immediately, the renewed military concentration on Laos is bound to have a complex impact on the future of Indochina's intertwined nations. For one thing, it will certainly affect the peace talks that have dragged along for nearly a year between the Communist Pathet Lao (who have demanded a cessation of U.S. bombing in Laos) and neutralist Prince Souvanna Phouma (who refuses to ask the U.S. to stop the bombing until Hanoi pulls its estimated 50,000 troops out of Laos). Souvanna has been under severe pressure from right-wing elements in Laos to scuttle the peace talks; last week he accused the Communists of using the negotiations to disguise preparations for a general offensive in Laos. An allied military foray into Laos could be aimed at the Communists, who control the eastern half of the country, or it could be aimed at strengthening Souvanna's hand against the right.

The main U.S. concern is the increasing flow of rice, fuel, ammunition and other supplies down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which became more important to the Communists than ever when the Cambodian port of Kompong Som (Sihanoukville) was closed to them last year. In December, a U.S. bomber hit a jungle-covered truck depot 700 yards off the trail. Subsequent raids caused 7,000 secondary explosions and ignited fires that sent smoke rising 6,000 ft. That find and others like it have strengthened Washington's belief that the Communists are scrambling to restock the sanctuaries along the South Vietnamese border that were cleaned out last spring. The Communists already pose a threat to South Viet Nam's I Corps. the northernmost military region. If they continue to establish supply lines and depots through the Laotian panhandle and northeastern Cambodia, they will be in a position to strike hard at II Corps (the Central Highlands) and III Corps (Saigon's hinterland). The threat to withdrawing U.S. troops, according to this line of speculation, would be great.

Barely in Business. The suddenly intensified U.S. air war also implies a worry that if the pro-Western regimes in Cambodia and Laos were to collapse. South Viet Nam would come under intolerable pressure. In skirmish after skirmish, the Cambodian regime's 160,000-man army has proved unable to hold its own against Communist forces without American support in the air and help from the South Vietnamese on the ground. After the spectacular raids on Pochentong airport and targets in Phnom-Penh, Premier Lon Nol was described by his aides as "depressed." He could not have been particularly heartened either by exiled Prince Norodom Sihanouk's remark that in a year or two Cambodia will "fall by itself like a ripe fruit."

Despite White House assertions that there is no U.S. commitment to ensure the survival of the Lon Nol government, the Administration seems determined to prove Sihanouk wrong. Soon after the Pochentong disaster, the Pentagon sent two new UH-1 ("Huey") helicopters to Phnom-Penh--a start at rebuilding the broken Cambodian air force. Within the limits imposed by Congress, the Administration is sending in military specialists. An American demolition team has arrived in Phnom-Penh, much to the relief of Cambodian demolition men, who have been sighted in the capital, standing over unexploded terrorist grenades and bombs while puzzling through old French demolition manuals.

The U.S. embassy staff in Phnom-Penh has swelled from seven in 1969 to 84, including 48 military men. Scheduled to arrive shortly are 16 members of a military-equipment deployment team, whose job will be to see that arriving U.S. military hardware goes where it should. Washington is at pains to point out that the MEDT men are not advisers. Nevertheless, they can go into the field with Cambodian troops for "in-use checks" of how the arms are used, even during actual combat.

Eight-Day Notice. One thing Washington does not seem to be able to give Cambodia is a sense of urgency. Before the recent sapper attacks, U.S. experts repeatedly pointed out the vulnerability of fuel-storage areas, electric-power utilities and other facilities in Phnom-Penh. Last week the Cambodian government blandly revealed that it had known eight days beforehand that an attack on Pochentong was coming. Nothing was done, because there was just not enough barbed wire on hand.

In Phnom-Penh last week, a North Vietnamese army defector insisted that Communist strength in Cambodia totaled no fewer than 150,000 men--a seasoned core of 35,000 North Vietnamese regulars plus 115,000 Cambodian peasants recruited in the countryside. Little wonder, then, that after he emerged from a grim meeting with Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, Armed Services Committee Chairman John Stennis said: "The margin is so thin." By intensifying the pressure against Communist supply routes in Laos, Richard Nixon seemed to be accepting grave risks in hopes of fattening the margin, not just in Cambodia but in all of Indochina.

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