Windup off a No-Win War

Hollow claims of triumph as China pulls back from Viet Nam

"But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin,

"Why, that I cannot tell, "said he;

"But 'twas a famous victory."

--Robert Southey, The Battle of Blenheim

The China-Viet Nam War wilted like a frostbitten blossom last week. China's 100,000 or so infantry and armored troops arrested their languid advance 15 to 20 miles inside the Viet Nam border, wheeled, and began a gradual, piecemeal withdrawal. Vietnamese artillery and front-line units of the 70,000-man-strong border defense force put on a show of hot pursuit but coolly refrained from any real, obstructive attack. Judging from the ferocity of each side's victory claims, it seemed safe to conclude that neither side had won--or lost.

"An important victory," crowed Peking, proclaiming that "the Chinese armed forces exploded the myth of invincibility of the Asian Cuba," and thus also "dealt a telling blow to the Soviet Union's scheme of expansion in Southeast Asia."

"A splendid victory," cried Hanoi, claiming that the "badly defeated" Chinese troops had been forced into a humiliating retreat by "a vigorous retaliatory blow from our army and our people."

China warned that it "reserved the right" to strike back at any recurring border provocations, while Viet Nam said that it would "severely punish" continued "barbarous acts of war" by the withdrawing Chinese. Indeed, there was the possibility that the righting could start up again in earnest at any time, but as both sides grudgingly announced a conditional willingness to negotiate, the menace of a wider, Sino-Soviet conflict appeared remote. Dropping its warnings of retaliation against China, the Soviet Union smugly noted that Peking appeared to have "sobered up," and congratulated itself on the restraint that had foiled China's "perfidious design" of "instigating a clash between our country and the United States."

It was almost as difficult to discern the battle lines of disengagement as it was to determine what, if anything, the three-week war had accomplished. Most of the fighting took place around Lang Son, a provincial capital twelve miles south of Friendship Pass on Highway 1 leading to Hanoi. The Chinese claimed the city's capture during their initial drive; the Vietnamese never conceded it. More likely, the blitzed city belonged to neither. One almost comic-opera theory was that at some point a Chinese unit had rushed in just long enough to hoist a flag, then hurried out again to avoid entrapment by Vietnamese in the surrounding hills.

Hanoi did not challenge China's claim to have occupied Lao Cai, a rail junction on the Red River in northwest Hoang Lien Son province. There, according to a Peking dispatch, troops of the People's Liberation Army uncovered stores of Chinese-made weapons and ammunition supplied to the Vietnamese for General Vo Nguyen Giap's war against the U.S. The stores included "soap and towels marked PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA and bicycles made in Shanghai."

Official casualty figures, Western observers believe, were as fictive as the rhetoric of triumph. Viet Nam boasted that it had "put out of action 45,000 enemy troops, knocked out 273 tanks and armored personnel carriers, and hit hundreds of artillery pieces and mortars." More realistically, perhaps, China claimed to have killed or wounded 10,000 Vietnamese and taken 1,000 prisoner.

China clearly had not won a decisive military victory that would have achieved the stated goals of the invasion: to "punish" the Vietnamese and to dis courage them from future bor der harassments. As military operations go, the invasion was something of a botch. It had been telegraphed in advance, and had thereby robbed the Chinese army of the element of surprise. The Vietnamese were able to keep their regular army units out of action as the Chinese launched "human wave" charges in their assault across the border and early in the righting even employed horseback troops with tootling buglers. Last week there were Washington reports that Viet Nam was finally being forced to recall some of its units from Cambodia. That suggested a possible Chinese success in drawing support away from the Viet Nam-backed government of Heng Samrin, which has been under in creasing pressure from insurgent forces loyal to China's client, defeated Premier Pol Pot.

Even if the Chinese armies return home without further incident, the war will not be quite over. As it was, Viet Nam accused the Chinese of leaving a scorched earth behind them, with "plundering, bombing shelling." of China people's did not homes deny and that wanton its troops were rooting out military installations and blowing ^up bridges and railroads as 1 they withdrew, in order to sanitize the border against future [I Vietnamese mischief. Peking also hinted that it might send back some troops in several disputed border enclaves--an affront to Hanoi's delicate sensibilities. Although the Vietnamese escaped punishment, Premier Pham Van Dong is unlikely to forget the humiliation of the invasion, and might launch a few guerrilla forays of his own across the frontier with China. There are also potential domestic implications for the People's Republic. The inconclusive outcome of the war may have hurt the prestige of Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing, who is chief of staff of the P.L. A. More than anyone else in the Politburo, Teng has been personally identified with the invasion. If it should be perceived as a flop in the future, opponents could conceivably use it against him, much as the Cuban missile crisis was used against Khrushchev. Some diplomats noted that last week another, lesser known Vice Premier, Li Hsien-nien, had assumed an expanded role as Peking's spokesman on the war.

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