On the Line

It all seemed pretty terrific. News paper headlines bannered the fact that the U.S. was sending 4,000 battle-ready troops into Thailand. New Frontier and Penta gon flacks vied with one another to see who could put out the most stirring state ments about U.S. determination to save Southeast Asia from Communism. White House staffers got to complaining that the Pentagon was leaking news about decisions even before those decisions were made.

The whole hullaballoo stemmed from the fact that Communist forces in Laos had broken a cease-fire agreement, sent Laotian government troops scampering, and were now threatening Thailand as well as South Viet Nam (see THE WORLD).

This dirty trick seemed to outrage (for good reason) and astonish (for no easily articulated reason) Washington.

Kooky Country. The current crisis in Southeast Asia has been perfectly predict able for many months. When President Kennedy took office, Communist troops in Laos were already on the offensive. Hardly anyone seemed to care. Laos assuredly was a kooky kind of country, economically, politically and socially. But militarily it was a dagger thrust into Southeast Asia --it flanked South Viet Nam on the west and Thailand on the east.

For Kennedy, the Laos crisis of March 1961 was among the first crises of his Administration. He went on national television to declare that a Communist takeover in Laos would "quite obviously affect the security of the U.S." The plain implication of that statement was that the U.S. would not stand for any such takeover. But Kennedy was, in fact, trying some scare tactics that did not work. Within a week, the Administration began to downgrade Laos, and the U.S.

eventually was forced to accept the compromise of a coalition government that would include Communist leaders.

Down the Drain. From that moment on, Laos was on the way down the Communist drain. And from that moment the military threat to South Viet Nam and Thailand was implicit.

In 1961 Kennedy called in Administration officials, congressional leaders and many other types. He asked them, in effect: "What ought we to do?" In 1962 there was none of this. The President himself decided that troops should be sent to Thailand, and that the action would be more than a mere show of force. Then he told congressional leaders about it.

Whatever further actions the U.S.

might feel it necessary to take, U.S.

troops are now deployed in Southeast Asia for all the world to see and note. In domestic considerations, there could no longer be any realistic talk about a Southeast Asia crisis inherited from the Eisenhower Administration. The decision, the tactics, the policy--all were John Kennedy's. Laos is still a dagger in the guts of Southeast Asia. But the presumption is that the presence of U.S. troops means that the U.S. intends to hold the line, prevent any further Communist incursions by force if necessary. As to whether or not the Communist tide can be rolled back, that will have to emerge from future decisions.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.