Conflicting Vietnam Advice

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32034, 8 July 1969, Page 15

Conflicting Vietnam Advice

(By JAMES RESTON of the New York Times News Service, through N.Z.P.A.) NEW YORK, July 7. Once more, the war in Vietnam has reached a. point where the con - scions common sense oi* officials on both side i suggests the possibilitiei ; of a negotiated settlement. President Nixon took the.' lead by announcing the withdrawal of 25,000 American, combat troops. The enemy has mocked the; President, but has recalled', several organised regiments; into North Vietnam, reduced', the flow of infiltrators intq> the battle zones, and released a few American; prisoners. Always in the past, wheat this sort of thing has happened, there has been a tendency on both sides to interpret concessions as evidence of weakness.

This has been the tragedy of the peace talks so far. One side, feeling weak, says it must build itself up in order to negotiate from a “position of strength.” Then, when it has achieved military equality or super - iority, it begins to dream oif victory and refuses to negotiate. Meanwhile, the other sidi; falls into the same tragic dilemma of refusing to negotiate out of fear when it its weak, and refusing to negotiate out of confidence when it thinks it is strong enougli to win.

The question now is whether this latest evidence of mutual withdrawal fron a the battlefield will be re - garded as an opportunity ar a trap. Both arguments are beinjg made to President Nixon as they were made to Presiden t Johnson.

Some of his aides are argu .- ing that the enemy is ii i trouble, so we should in .- crease the military pressure and push on to the victor] r all Americans, and particu - larly President Nixon, would like to achieve.

Other advisers in the White House and the State Department are urging him to respond to what they think is a serious bid for a compromise settlement, and encourage further reduction quickly with another announcement of more withdrawals of American troops. It will be interesting to watch President Nixon’s reaction to this conflicting advice. He has had a lot of it lately from his moderate and conservative colleagues about the Chief Justice of the United States, the chief doctor for the Federal Government, and what to do about the public school integration guidelines, and in the end he has tended to side with the conservatives.

On the elemental question of peace or war in Vietnam, however, the political stakes and the cast of characters are different President Nixon has seen President Johnson, whose political skill he admired. Driven out of the presidency by Vietnam, all the evidence we have suggests that what-

ever he said about Vietnam in the past, he wants a compromise settlement now or as soon as possible. His Secretary of State, Mr William Rogers, and his principal foreign affairs adviser in the White House, Mr Henry Kissinger, also look at compromise settlement in Vietnam more objectively than Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow, who served in these influential positions under President Johnson. Mr Rogers is a cautious but a powerful influence on the President

He has stayed out of the spotlight, but when the North Vietnamese began slowing the infiltration of troops into the battlefield and withdrawing their regiments into North Vietnam, he began talking publicly, almost for the first time, about taking “some risk to end the war."

So the old struggle begins again. Mr Kissinger in the White House will probably side with Mr Rogers on taking risks for peace and announcing new United States troop withdrawals to encourage further reduction of the fighting and killing.

The generals and the political conservatives on the other hand will no doubt be arguing that this is no time to make concessions,- for “the enemy is in trouble,” and in the end the President will have to decide. The guess is that Mr Nixon will not go with the generals as he did in the anti-ballistic missile controversy, or with the conservatives, as he did in the Knowles issue between the Republican liberals and the American Medical Association leaders, but-that he will side with Mr Rogers in taking “risks for peace.” He knows that he will not like the ,peace he gets—for any peace now will leave Ho Chi Minh and General Giap as the men who -expelled the French from Indo-China, fought the Americans to a compromise, and “liberated” that peninsula from “foreign domination.”

But, like General Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War, Mr Nixon has to decide between the risks of continuing the war or the risks of ending it—and the chances are that he will take the risks of ending it.