The Fighting Finally Stops for the U.S.

Its fighters and bombers grounded, its guns silenced, and its soldiers withdrawn from battlefields, America last week ceased waging war in Indochina for the first time in nearly a decade. At midnight on Tuesday (Washington, D.C., time) all U.S. combat activity ended. It was one of the great anticlimaxes in the nation's history. There were no speeches, no celebrations, not even among the professional pilots (see following page) who had been finally the only ones left to carry on the war. From a high of more than 600,000 U.S. combatants, only 62,000 had remained to wage war in Indochina, and all of them were stationed in Thailand and on Guam or on aircraft carriers offshore.

Up to the final moment, U.S. warplanes pummeled the area around Phnom-Penh, the Cambodian capital. It was the last day of more than six months of frantic U.S. air support of the Lon Nol regime, during which the U.S. flew 32,000 sorties (including 8,000 by B-52s) and dumped more than 245,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. This deluge totaled 50% more than all the conventional bombs the U.S. rained upon Japan in World War II. Most of it, of course, was aimed at guerrillas hiding in heavy jungle. As a result, the bombing obviously did not inflict the kind of destruction caused by raids over population centers. Nor did it cause the Khmer insurgents to surrender. Only in the few days immediately prior to the bombing halt did the insurgents fall back -- about ten miles from Phnom-Penh -- and then it was probably to regroup. Insurgents now control 80% of Cambodia and many of the roads leading to its capital.

Without U.S. air support, President Lon Nol is vulnerable. His army of 180,000 is undertrained and undermotivated. Lon Nol's fledgling air force of 30 World War Il-vintage, T-28 propeller-driven fighters will hardly be a substitute for U.S. airpower. Some of the regime's top generals have already established secret contacts with insurgent officers. With the exception of a few Americans, diplomats in the capital are betting that the Lon Nol regime cannot survive until the end of the year. When the insurgents get ready to attack, Phnom-Penh will fall, they predict.

Scant Result. If that happens, Cambodia will have little to show for the hardships it suffered after the U.S. extended the war into the once placid Cambodian countryside in May 1970.

Only Saigon benefited from the fighting in Cambodia, which diverted North Vietnamese troops and thus gave South Viet Nam's President Nguyen Van Thieu a chance to consolidate his military and political position. Instead of keeping Cambodia nonCommunist, the American incursion helped catalyze the minuscule pro-Communist Khmer Rouge guerrillas into a movement of na tional scope. It pushed Prince Norodom Sihanouk, a dedicated neutralist who was overthrown as Cambodia's ruler in spring 1970, reluctantly into the hands of Hanoi and Peking.

Hanoi has already managed to se cure its lines of supply through Laos under a peace plan expected to be signed this month. The plan ratifies Communist Pathet Lao control over 80% of Laos' land. The Pathet Lao also will have a nearly 50% share in its new government, which certainly will do nothing to interfere with North Viet Nam's use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Yet it was the goal of interdicting the trail and eliminating base camps that originally lured the U.S. into intervening in both Laos and Cambodia.

A comparison of a map from 1965, when the Marines (the first U.S. units sent to Viet Nam for combat) landed at Da Nang, with a map of Indochina to day reveals the Communist advances.

Despite the eight years of fighting, the Communists now control more land.

They have more troops in South Viet Nam, where the Paris agreement gives 140,000 North Vietnamese troops the right to remain.

Because so much of the Communists' area of control in the South is sparsely populated, they have begun encouraging thousands of North Vietnamese civilians, many of them former Southerners, to come South to settle. This will create a population loyal to Hanoi and secure the area as a base for future military attacks against Saigon's forces. The settlers will also be an important addition to the already existing Communist political structure in the South, should the struggle between Saigon and Hanoi shift to a purely political arena, as envisioned by the Paris accord.

A map, however, cannot accurately reflect many of South Viet Nam's ad vantages, such as its experienced officers, large air force, and extensive transportation network--all legacies of U.S.

involvement. Also left behind by the U.S. is an economic infrastructure especially valuable to a developing nation: roads, airfields, ports, technicians trained in modern skills, power lines, and a radio and television network binding the country together.

Thieu's land-reform program has already given much of the peasantry reason to back him. He has done little to reform Saigon's corrupt bureaucracy and has openly disregarded democratic processes, but he nonetheless might be a match for his Communist adversaries.

This was hardly the case eight years ago.

Then Saigon's government was in a shambles, and new political leaders arrived and disappeared with revolving-door regularity. The Communists were defeating one South Vietnamese battalion and capturing one district headquarters per week. In this sense, therefore, the U.S. has perhaps succeeded in making South Viet Nam stable and strong enough to have a deciding voice in shaping its own future.

The other voice, of course, belongs to Hanoi. As usual, it has kept its intentions to itself. Yet the moderate tempo with which it is infiltrating arms and men into South Viet Nam, and the content of its recent directives to its cadres, indicates that it has no plans for a major military offensive soon. Instead, according to veteran Hanoi watchers, the handful of aging Communists who rule North Viet Nam intend to use the next three or four years to secure their strongholds in the South.

One U.S. analyst observes: "The North Vietnamese haven't given up any of their goals. It's just that they've given themselves a period of years without military struggle. From now on it's mostly political." Hanoi wants to strengthen its cadre network in the South and to rebuild the bomb-shattered economy in the North. Nonetheless, it gives every indication that it is prepared to start fighting again if it fails to win the South politically. In contrast to eight years ago, when the Viet Cong were poorly armed and waging primarily a guerrilla war, the Communists are now armed with heavy weapons. Intelligence sources estimate they have 400 tanks within or near the borders of the South, as well as many artillery pieces, including the 17-mile-range 130-mm. cannon.

Thieu will use the political period for his own benefit, to strengthen his regime and keep the South independent of the North. That independence has already brought a measure of stability to Southeast Asia. Singapore's tough Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, acknowledged this last spring, remarking: "The American intervention in Viet Nam has broken the hypnotic spell on the other Southeast Asians that Communism is irresistible, that it is the wave of history. Communist victory was demonstrated not to be inevitable." With the bombing ended, Lee acknowledged early this month that he was now "in a more uncomfortable position." To reassure him and other Southeast Asians the U.S. plans to keep some of its bombers and fighters on bases in Thailand and on Guam. This is close enough for a quick reaction, should Congress ever authorize the President to respond if the Communists some day launch another major military offensive.

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