The Tough Man in the Tight Squeeze

NGUYEN VAN THIEU is an easy man to underrate, and both the U.S. and his South Vietnamese opponents have made that mistake. Bland in appearance, cautious by nature, reserved in public, he is not exactly the model of the charismatic leader of a small country pitted in a life-and-death struggle against an implacable foe. Yet Thieu has demonstrated a knack for survival that has confounded his doubters. Not since Ngo Dinh Diem has a national leader been able to stay in power for so long in South Viet Nam, much less run a viable government. But Thieu has been able to do both.

He approaches his task with a mixture of cunning and circumspection. Until it looked as if the 1963 plot to overthrow Diem would succeed, he did not take sides. By skillful maneuvering, he managed to elbow aside the more flamboyant Nguyen Cao Ky and stand for President in 1967. Once thought to be the stronger of the pair, Ky never recovered from the humiliation. Last year Thieu arranged to run for re-election without any opposition whatsoever.

The prop of his power is the military, pure and simple. By an adroit system of promoting and demoting, of granting favors and withholding them, Thieu has built up an apparatus that is loyal to him. In the process, he has not made the best appointments from a strictly military point of view. His generals have been slow to take the offensive and not very imaginative in battle. He has had to fire two out of four Military Region commanders, and a division commander has been charged with treason. Beyond that, the army and much of the rest of the government has been riddled with debilitating corruption. Thieu himself remains untainted, but his customary caution has kept him from acting decisively.

In one area, he did, though. He foresaw almost two years ago the moment that finally arrived last week, and he systematically and shrewdly prepared for it by adding to his powers. More recently, he has moved even more vigorously. After the North invaded last spring, he went before the National Assembly to ask for virtually dictatorial powers for six months. The Assembly initially balked, but eventually Thieu got his way. As dictators go, he has proved to be relatively mild, though he has shut down all but a few of the vociferous opposition newspapers and thrown thousands of his political opponents into jail, many without benefit of trial. In August he also put an end to local elections; from then on, officials of hamlets and villages would be appointed with Saigon's approval.

The reason for the clampdown is that Thieu needs all the power he can muster in order to deal, on the one hand, with the Communists and on the other, with the U.S. His power--a chief complaint against him--does not lie with the people at large. He rarely ventures out to give a public speech or shake a hand, though he has made many recent visits to the battlefield. He remains a very private person for a public figure. His life is pretty much confined to what is known as "isolation palace," and he seems to be content to stay there. He leads a quiet home life with his Roman Catholic wife; though Thieu was brought up a Confucian Buddhist, he converted to Catholicism a few years after his marriage. He is the son of a farmer and fisherman.

To judge by his public utterances, he remains an unyielding antiCommunist. He recently remarked: "We have to kill the Communists to the last man before we have peace." Whether he believes that or not, he acts as if he does. "He is extremely conscious of his survival," says an American who has observed him close at hand. "Yet he has a flexible mind. The pattern of his behavior is to be ahead of us on most issues involved in the negotiations."

Yet Thieu knows as well as anybody that his survival rests ultimately with the U.S. Like Diem before him, he could be removed if the U.S. so decreed. Since the Kissinger plan does, indeed, ultimately and inherently decree that, the real question is the manner of his going --with dignity or defiance, restraint or rebellion. The man of caution is being tested as never before.

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