WHAT NEGOTIATIONS IN VIET NAM MIGHT MEAN

ALMOST from the moment that it started bombing targets in the North, the U.S. has repeatedly stated its willingness to negotiate peace in Viet Nam--any time, anywhere. But so far, the possible terms for a settlement have been discussed in only the most general way. President Johnson has said that South Viet Nam should be guaranteed peace, independence and democracy--the same conditions that the Viet Cong tirelessly call for. Senator William Fulbright speaks of neutralization and mutual withdrawal by U.S. and North Vietnamese forces. Senator Eugene McCarthy speaks rather broadly of withdrawing to strongpoints, reducing military operations and trying to negotiate. Such veteran cold warriors as Henry Cabot Lodge and Dean Acheson, arguing that the only riskless settlement is victory on the battlefield, contend that the U.S. should not seek negotiations but do more to win the war.

The apparent main concern inside the U.S. Government --at the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon--continues to be prosecution of the war rather than formulation of terms for peace. As far as public priorities are concerned, this is logical enough; what private thoughts the Administration has about a settlement should remain private until they can be used for practical effect. But since the war quite possibly will end by negotiation, the U.S. had better have clearly in mind the maximum goals that it aims for and the minimum terms it will settle for.

The question of terms has lately achieved a new importance. The Viet Cong, speaking through Russian and Rumanian diplomats, have communicated to the West what seem to be hints that they might be willing to negotiate. Captured Communist documents in Viet Nam tend to suggest the same possibility. Negotiations usually start when one side demonstrates clear military or political superiority and the other side seeks to protect what it still has. The Communists are hurting badly in the field and at home. They are losing more than four men for every one lost by the allies--in some recent actions the ratio is more than ten to one--and they are expending troops so extravagantly as to suggest an element of desperation.

This does not necessarily mean that negotiations will come soon, or that the shooting will stop as soon as talks start. In the Korean War, the fighting continued while truce talks dragged on for two years at Panmunjom, and the U.S. suffered 62,200 casualties during the negotiations. In Viet Nam, there are four primary belligerents, and nobody can agree on who will talk about what to whom. The Viet Cong rebels say that they will talk only directly to the U.S.; the South Vietnamese leaders say that they will talk only to Ho Chi Minh; and Ho--unlike the Viet Cong--apparently will talk to nobody. But in war, negotiations sometimes come when least expected, just after one side or the other swears that it will never countenance them. When that time comes in Viet Nam, its resilient Communists will characteristically try to twist Clausewitz and turn diplomacy into war by other means.

Maximum Goals & Minimum Compromises

It must be assumed that any U.S. approach to negotiations would begin with the premise that this is a war not so much about South Viet Nam as it is about all of Asia. The basic U.S. goal--which is imperfectly understood because it has been inexpertly explained--is to contain Communism and in the process prove to aggressors from Peking to Havana that so-called wars of liberation will not be allowed to succeed. With that in mind, the maximum immediate U.S. goal is to suppress the Viet Cong rebellion, push out the North Vietnamese invaders, preserve South Viet Nam's non-Communist status--and win solid guarantees that the situation will stay stable. The maximum Communist goal, of course, is just the opposite: throw out the Americans, depose the Thieu-Ky government, and establish a regime controlled by the Viet Cong. The V.C. would then unify with the North and support--at least in principle--Communist-fueled wars of liberation elsewhere in the world.

Beneath the rhetoric, there is understandably some give in both positions.

The U.S. now can think in terms short of total victory for three main reasons. First, the war has proved to be costlier in lives, treasure and international prestige than the U.S. anticipated when it began fighting in earnest almost three years ago. Second, while the primary goal has been elusive, the U.S. has accomplished some of its lesser objectives in Viet Nam. Its intervention has bought time--time for such nations as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to reinforce their own political, economic and military defenses against subversion. And it has helped the process of nation-building in a truncated chunk of a former French colony; for all its political deficiencies, South Viet Nam is at least starting toward democracy. Third, and perhaps most important, the U.S. became involved in Viet Nam at least partly because of a desire to contain Chinese expansionism; in the past two years, China's internal upheavals have made it far less threatening.

Considering these factors, what could the U.S. settle for now? Instead of aiming for firm guarantees that South Viet Nam will be forever free of aggression from within and without, the U.S. might honorably accept an arrangement that would give the country a reasonable chance of success. In broad terms, it might consider a peace that would arrest Communism instead of smashing it.

Evacuation & Inspection

The Communists have scaled down their goals. Shortly after the U.S. air raids began in early 1965, North Viet Nam stopped demanding "immediate reunification" and "immediate departure of U.S. troops." In messages to their cadres, the Viet Cong now say that they may agree to the setting up of a coalition government in the South while U.S. troops remain on the scene. This might serve as a basis for negotiations, but from the U.S. viewpoint, there is a major sticking point. The Communists have never retreated from that part of their maximum demand which insists that the affairs of South Viet Nam must be directed "in accordance with the program of the National Liberation Front"--meaning control by the Viet Cong.

In any negotiations, the key issue is likely to be the future political role of the Viet Cong. They are certain to demand several Cabinet seats, and there are those who feel that the U.S. must be just as certain to refuse. "If you give the Viet Cong the Interior Ministry," says one senior U.S. diplomat, "that means you lose. If you give them anything less, it's meaningless." But the U.S. is willing to see the Viet Cong get some political representation. The State Department has indicated as much. The V.C. certainly might be recognized as a political party, and it is not entirely out of the question that they might be permitted to administer the hamlets that they now control, which, by the government's probably optimistic estimate, contain only 17% of the population. In that kind of arrangement, the Thieu-Ky administration would keep hold of the central government, all the cities, and those rural areas that it controls.

Not surprisingly, the Thieu-Ky forces bitterly oppose any such plan. But Communist cadres have been working hard on their villages for years and, although under increasing military pressure, their political infrastructure remains essentially intact. For the central government, the problem is not merely rooting out that infrastructure, but also creating an effective anti-Communist substitute. This the government has been unable to do, partly because the Viet Cong have so coolly assassinated practically every mayor, doctor, teacher or engineer who opposed them in areas that they dominate.

One basis for compromise might be that the Viet Cong would lay down their arms and agree to stop their violence in return for political rights--much as the French Communists did in a deal with De Gaulle in 1945. Then, in the next South Vietnamese election in 1970, the Viet Cong could put up candidates for office, along with the non-Communist parties. There is some doubt that many Reds would want to run for office in government-controlled areas--city people tend to equate the Viet Cong with assassins, and quite a few have old scores to settle. Though the Viet Cong are a powerful political force in some parts of the country. South Viet Nam stands a good chance of voting a non-Communist majority because of its sociological complexity--a characteristic that, ironically, has discouraged and dismayed many Americans. The people are fragmented into a multiplicity of racial, regional, religious and political groups and sects. It is quite possible that in most election districts, the candidate of the dominant group--Buddhist or Catholic, Cao Dai or Hoa Hao, Southern native or Northern refugee--would beat the Communist.

A deal for the Communists to control some districts and compete in others would work only if the North VietNamese troops left the country. A massive stumbling block here is that nobody can conceive of an effective means to guarantee that the Northerners get out and stay out, or that the Viet Cong really halt their terror. That job is supposed to be done now by the three-nation International Control Commission (Canada, India, Poland), a leftover from the Geneva Conference of 1954. But the commission lacks the manpower, vehicles and--on the part of its Polish and Indian members--the will to do the task. Any future system of inspections and guarantees would have to involve many more nations, many more troops, trucks and planes, and a system of sanctions. Even with that, it would depend on a shaky combination of mutual good will and mutual blackmail between both sides in Viet Nam--and would remain a major problem.

The only real way to guarantee a peace acceptable from the U.S. point of view is the presence of some American troops for at least several years. Lately, the Communists have been fuzzing their old demand that the U.S. has to remove all its troops and dismantle its military alliance with South Viet Nam before any peace treaty is signed. At the Manila Conference of 1966, President Johnson pledged to withdraw U.S. troops within six months if "the other side withdraws its forces to the North, ceases infiltration and the level of violence thus subsides." The last phrase is enough of a hedge to provide quite a bit of leeway. The U.S. still has 50,000 troops in Korea, and is likely to keep at least twice as many in South Viet Nam for two to ten years.

Opportunity for Initiative

As for the issue of reunification, it is becoming less emotional and more negotiable than before. North Viet Nam still views it as a means to take over the less populous South (17 million people, v. 19 million in the North). But the Viet Cong seem less than eager to be swallowed by the North. Through their representatives in Paris, Algiers, Bratislava and even Hanoi, the V.C. have announced that reunification should take place step by step, over a period of five to 20 years. All this pleases Viet Nam's smaller, frightened neighbors, some of whom use the same maxim that Britons apply to Germany: they love the country so much that they like to see two of them. Of course the U.S. is in no hurry for reunification. The Viet Cong's de-emphasis of the question may be a political ploy, but the fact is that the V.C. are more moderate than Hanoi on many issues. While some Western experts feel that the differences between the two Communist factions are superficial, a growing number suspect that the split is basic and widening.

If a real or potential split exists, there is opportunity for U.S. diplomatic initiative to.exploit it. Vietnamese history is a long chronicle of conflict between the intense, driving

Northerners and the pliable, easygoing Southerners. There are signs that the Viet Cong have become resentful that North Viet Nam took over direction of the war, and they do not relish being the horses for Hanoi's knights. The essential difference is that Hanoi still hopes to outlast the U.S. on the battlefield, but the Viet Cong seem somewhat more amenable to compromise and coalition. A most realistic prospect would be for Washington to encourage appeals to the regional patriotism of the Viet Cong, aiming for them to negotiate a separate peace.

The U.S. embassy in Saigon now believes that the best way out of the war would be through direct negotiations between the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker has been quietly promoting the idea, but President Thieu resists,1 arguing that his own generals would get up in arms against him if he were to dare recognize the Viet Cong. Thieu last week was drafting a letter to Ho, proposing to meet him face to face. In the unlikely event that Ho accepts, Thieu will ask the U.S. to stop bombing for seven days and to continue the pause even longer if Ho shows intentions of making the conversations fruitful.

Such allies as Thailand and South Korea are much more hawkish than the U.S. State Department and do not want to negotiate. Along with many Americans, they believe that when enough military might is applied, the Communists will realize that they are whipped and will "fade" back into the jungle. Then the enemy would be unable to demand votes, unification or anything else. A frustrating fact about this otherwise desirable concept is that U.S. generals have been expecting the Communists to fade for at least two years and, though they are plainly sweating hard, they so far have shown no symptoms of evaporation. By its official plan, North Viet Nam figures to wear down the U.S. resolve by the early 1970s. Though the U.S. is winning the clear-cut battles, the Communists still may not be convinced that they are losing the war.

For an Acceptable Fnd

Diplomatic compromise is not as satisfying as military victory, but--with all its obvious risks--negotiation could lead to an acceptable end to the war. At a dozen flash points in two decades of cold war, non-Communists and Communists have managed to work out some let-live arrangements. Analogies are dubious because the Vietnamese situation is different from all others; for example, the South Koreans did not have to contend with an internal rebellion, and the Malayan Communists botched their own revolt. Even so, recent history has some worthwhile lessons for Viet Nam. Giving political rights to large Communist parties--as France and Italy did after World War II--does not necessarily subvert democracy. In Laos, the U.S. and other nations agreed with the Communists in 1962 to set up a left-right-center coalition government and, much to everyone's surprise, that tenuous troika is still rattling along.

By keeping up the military pressure during the negotiations, the U.S. could probably help speed them. Together with its allies, the U.S. might reasonably negotiate for a series of compromises: a cease-fire policed by a greatly expanded International Control Commission; a withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops in return for the recognition of the Viet Cong as a political party; the guarantee of South Viet Nam as an independent country for five or more years, during which time the U.S. would be permitted to keep troops in the country--much fewer than at present, but still a substantial force.

Helped by considerable U.S. economic, educational and medical aid, the South Vietnamese government could go about the job of nation-building, peacefully trying to woo the man in the paddy away from the Viet Cong. The U.S. --as President Johnson has suggested--might even make considerable contribution to the rebuilding of North Viet Nam's economy. Many years from now, the combined effort might result in development of either a permanently independent South Viet Nam or a unified Viet Nam with a non-Communist majority.

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