South Viet Nam: The Final Reckoning

Hue . . . Khe Sanh . . . An Loc . . .

Quang Tri . . . The names stir bitter memories of battle sites drenched in blood, the blood of thousands of Vietnamese and Americans who fought so hard and suffered so much to defend or retake those contested pieces of land. Once these places were proclaimed essential to the survival of South Viet Nam and, in the view of successive U.S. Administrations, to the ultimate security of America. Now, in a stunning and unexpected move, the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

Saigon had decided abruptly to abandon much of its territory to the Communist forces, sending long lines of forlorn refugees stumbling southward from northern provinces and the Central Highlands. They were joined by demoralized ARVN soldiers, whose rushed retreat was aimed strategically, and perhaps wisely, at reinforcing the defenses of Saigon and the Mekong Delta.

Beyond Control. The events, understandably, spread gloom to a big Boeing 707 jet flying over the deserts of Saudi Arabia one day last week. U.S. reporters on board heard one of the blackest assessments of global events ever uttered by a certain "senior American official." That prescribed euphemism, of course, failed to disguise the obvious source: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. To hear him tell it, sounding like an airborne Spengler. American foreign policy seemed to be spinning out of control--and almost solely because Americans had plunged masochistically into a self-destructive attitude toward world affairs induced by their Viet Nam and Watergate experiences. Kissinger warned that the Russians and Chinese might conclude that the U.S. no longer has the will to act and might apply new pressures against American interests wherever they could.

Kissinger linked the uncertainty over U.S. aid to Cambodia and South Viet Nam with other current U.S. diplomatic setbacks, including his difficulties in arranging an Israeli pullback in the Sinai. At week's end, with the Arab-Israeli talks deadlocked. Kissinger gave up and flew home to Washington, leaving the future for peace in the Middle East in disarray (see THE WORLD).

While negotiating in Jerusalem, Aswan and Damascus, Kissinger had kept a worried eye on the rapidly deteriorating situation in Viet Nam. Bitterly, he blamed Congress for failing to continue a high level of military aid to the Saigon government. If he had had any inkling at all that U.S. aid would be cut back, he insisted, "I could not in good conscience have negotiated" the Paris Accords of 1973. "If we had put forward a reasonable effort and then they collapsed," he said of the South Vietnamese forces, "that's one situation. But if their collapse is traceable to our cutting back the aid year after year, that's another thing."

In fact, however, the Paris agreement made no specific commitment to continued U.S. military aid, although it did permit each side to replace its then existing military equipment. This could be construed as an implied U.S. obligation to resupply the ARVN, although the agreement was also based on the premise that the righting was to sputter out and stop. Kissinger was on shaky ground, too, in assuming that the U.S. Congress would remain committed to indefinite continuance of military aid whatever the sense of the nation at the time. The accords did not require and did not receive ratification by Congress.

Similar thoughts were expressed last week by President Ford. To support economic aid, Ford revived the much-belabored "domino theory" of falling nations. "If we have one country after another--allies of the United States --losing faith in our word, losing faith in our agreements with them, yes, I think the first one to go could vitally affect the national security of the United States," he insisted. He also warned against a "new isolationism" among Americans. "We are counseled to withdraw from the world and go it alone," he said. "I have heard that song before. I am not going to dance to it."

Doom Prophecies. There were other events to support the alarms of the Ford Administration. Thailand suggested that it might order the U.S. to stop using that nation's airfields for munitions flights to Cambodia and to withdraw all military missions in Thailand within a year. In Western Europe, where U.S. strategic interests are far greater, the government of Portugal turned more leftward, possibly jeopardizing the future of U.S. bases in the Azores and Portugal's commitments to NATO.

The view that all such events are linked has long been held by Kissinger. Yet the idea seems both faulty and dangerous when applied so obsessively to such peripheral situations as South Viet Nam and Cambodia. As U.S. policymakers argue for last-ditch aid to Cambodia, for instance, warning of worldwide repercussions if the demands are denied, they run the risk of creating selffulfilling prophecies of doom. Certainly Americans are disillusioned with their Viet Nam experience, and rightly so. They are less ready to support U.S. military aid or intervention elsewhere. But that does not mean that even the collapse of South Viet Nam would turn Americans so sour on foreign affairs that they would desert their commitments in more vital areas: Europe, the Middle East, Japan and some other parts of Asia. There will be no such desertion, unless the Ford-Kissinger rhetoric convinces the public that each global trouble spot is equally significant, or equally insignificant, to the U.S.

Tragic Effort. The hard fact is that the government of Cambodia's Lon Nol is tenuous at best and probably ultimately untenable. South Viet Nam has far stronger moral claims on U.S. support, and, until this week at least, seemed to have far greater strength to resist. But in Viet Nam too, U.S. military aid cannot go on indefinitely. President Ford's suggestion of three more years and $5.5 billion is undoubtedly too much for Congress. On the other hand, the proposal to cut off military aid by June 30 would end the help too abruptly. Dates and amounts are arguable.

Is the rest of the world really losing confidence in America because of events in Indochina? The evidence so far suggests otherwise. Most of the world some time ago absorbed the long-overdue U.S. decision to cut its losses in Southeast Asia, after an enormous and tragic effort. Many of America's friends indeed were relieved, and still are, hoping that the U.S. will henceforth be freer to concentrate on other areas and problems. Confidence in America ultimately depends not on the aftermath of Viet Nam but on how firmly and wisely the U.S. acts elsewhere.

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