One-Way Traffic on a Two-Way Street

"Escalation" is one of those windy words that are foisted on the public by military bureaucrats, interminably parroted by the press and kept in the vernacular long after losing any real meaning. Though the word--let alone its antonym, de-escalation--appears in neither Webster's Second nor the Oxford English dictionary, it has become synonymous with the U.S. commitment to Viet Nam. More specifically, it has become a pejorative term encompassing any American increase in the level of fighting.

Escalation has thus become a one-way word on what is clearly a two-way street. For the truth is that while Washington has steadily increased its military commitment to Viet Nam since early 1965, Hanoi has been busily intensifying its own participation in the war for even longer--since 1954, in fact. Last week, in half a dozen areas, both sides were stepping up--or escalating--the war.

In the South, the Viet Cong were embarked on a new wave of terrorism aimed at thwarting village elections (see following story). In the Demilitarized Zone and in I (pronounced eye) Corps, the area comprising South Viet Nam's five northernmost provinces, there was an ominous upsurge in Communist military preparations, prompting the Allies to send in heavy reinforcements. North of the 17th parallel, the U.S. air war was measurably intensified by the first bombing raids within the city limits of Haiphong, North Viet Nam's second city and principal port.

New Bulge? For U.S. military planners, I Corps and the DMZ were the most worrisome peril points--particularly with 65,000 main-force enemy troops and local guerrillas infesting the five provinces and at least 35,000 North Vietnamese regulars poised just above the DMZ. Two weeks ago, the Communists overran and briefly occupied the provincial capital of Quang Tri. Since then they have beamed warnings at the ancient imperial capital of Hue that it may be next on their list.

The situation in I Corps, said U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp in Washington last week, is "tight, very tight." Said South Viet Nam's Foreign Minister Tran Van Do during a Washington meeting with representatives of the six nations* that have sent troops to his country: "I cannot exclude the possibility of larger-scale invasion. Our two northern provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien are presently under terrible pressure." Columnist Joseph Alsop believes that "a new Battle of the Bulge" may be in the making. "Everything is now to be gambled [by Hanoi] to reverse the war's unfavorable trend," predicts Alsop, "by achieving a Dien-bienphu-like success against American troops in I Corps." U.S. Pacification Chief Robert Komer, a World War II combat historian, agrees that a climactic battle may be imminent, but compares it to Saint-Lo, when the Allies burst out of the Normandy perimeter and began the great sweep to Berlin. There may be hard fighting ahead for the U.S., but once the I Corps challenge is met, Komer implies, it may prove to be "a downhill run."

Long-Term Confrontation. Few military men expect Hanoi to launch a full-scale invasion across the DMZ--though Sharp says: "I just hope they do. Then we can use our firepower." But most experts foresee a bitter, long-term confrontation in I Corps, where the Communists' supply lines and infiltration routes are shortest. For that reason, the U.S. has airlifted nearly a full Army division into the area, while the South Vietnamese have rushed in three elite battalions to augment the thinly stretched forces on the spot--Lieut. General Lewis Walt's 75,000 U.S. Marines, two understrength South Vietnamese army divisions and three Korean battalions.

As a result, American strength is being thinned out elsewhere and some top-echelon planners believe that a total of 600,000 Americans will now be needed in Viet Nam instead of the 475,000 planned for the end of 1967. This week General William Westmoreland and his top Saigon manpower experts are to discuss in Washington the subject of ground reinforcements.

Mini-Maginot. To prepare for a major Communist offensive in I Corps, Allied engineers last week were bulldozing a 220-yd.-wide "death zone" across the Quang Tri plain, some two miles south of the DMZ. The project, brainchild of South Vietnamese Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, is reminiscent of the two 20-ft.-high walls built just north of the 17th parallel by the Nguyen dynasty in the 1630s in a vain effort to discourage invaders from the north.

Ultimately "the Obstacle," as military men call it, will stretch from the foothills of the Annamese Cordillera, the spiny range that bisects I Corns, to the South China Sea--a twelve-mile corrdor bristling with barbed wire, minefields, sensing devices, pillboxes and watchtowers. Its function will be to provide a wide field of fire in case of attack, but U.S. officers privately scorn it as a kind of mini-Maginot Line that will cost far more than it is worth. For one thing, V.C. mortars are zeroed in on the zone and have already killed four men and wounded 62. For another, the corridor will stop before it reaches the mountains --which is precisely where the Communist infiltration routes begin.

To defuse the dangerous situation, Secretary of State Dean Rusk suggested that both sides pull back ten miles from the six-mile-wide DMZ, creating a 26-mile neutral belt that would be policed by an international commission. Rusk's sensitivity to charges of escalation may well have prompted the plan; with the U.S. strengthening its forces in the area, he wanted to be on record with an offer to start talking before the U.S. starts shooting. Predictably, Hanoi thumbed down the proposal as "a trick."

In the face of such intransigence, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization's Council of Ministers ended a three-day meeting in Washington last week with a demand for "reciprocity" from the North in exchange for any Allied reduction in the fighting. But the prospects that Hanoi will accept a mutual step-down are as remote as ever. "We can't get the other side even to whisper to us behind the hand," complained Rusk.

Not Even a Whisper. With Hanoi obviously unwilling to talk--or even whisper--the U.S. significantly stepped up its bombing attacks last week in an effort to reduce the North's capacity to send troops and weapons into the South. Air Force pilots destroyed a 60-car freight train and repeatedly struck an army training center near Hanoi--on one occasion getting embroiled in dogfights with 17 MIGs that cost one U.S. plane and possibly five of the enemy's.

The Haiphong raids hit two thermal power plants--one barely a mile from the downtown business center, the other 2.1 miles away. Nearly 160 Navy jets took part, swooping off the decks of the attack carriers Kitty Hawk and Ticonderoga to strike at noon and again 4 1/2 hours later. Dumping almost 150 tons of bombs on the plants, the strikes destroyed 80% of their generating capacity--and 12% of the North's total power supply--without losing a single plane. As one pilot said on his return to the Kitty Hawk: "There are no lights tonight in Haiphong."

The raids, said Rear Admiral David C. Richardson, whose Task Force 77 carriers launched the jets, "will show some people that their sanctuaries are not what they think they are." A few off-limits areas remain nonetheless--Haiphong's port facilities and its huge cement plant, Hanoi's industries, the MIG airfields and the dikes that channel water to the Red River rice bowl.

Whether they, too, are eventually bombed may well depend on what the three or four North Vietnamese divisions along the DMZ decide to do. If they come on down, the bombing is likely to intensify and U.S. officers in the South are likely to get all the reinforcements that they request. And in that event, Hanoi--for a change--will be clearly branded the escalator.

*The U.S., the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Thailand.

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