INDO-CHINA WAR Effects of adventure in Laos assessed

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 5

INDO-CHINA WAR Effects of adventure in Laos assessed

(By NAYLOR HILLARY)

When South Vietnam attacked Communist positions in Laos nearly two months ago the London “Economist” remarked that the Saigon Government had identified the “Achilles Heel” of its enemy; the question was, whether they had the teeth to bite into it.

In the wake of the South Vietnamese withdrawal, the metaphor might be extended in two further questions: Did the South Vietnamese bite off more than they could chew? Did they bite off enough to inhibit Achilles’ ability to fight?

The debate on the success of the raid into Laos will go on for much longer than the incident itself. The real test will be in the Communists’ ability to mount offensives in Cambodia and South Vietnam perhaps six months from now when the monsoon rains end. Even then no-one, in the West at least, will be sure how far the Communists’ behaviour has been changed by the recent attack on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Those who defend, and those who oppose the raid, at least agree that the test of success is the amount of damage done to Communist reserves and supply dumps in southern Laos, and the amount of disruption to the movement of Communist reinforcements on the way to Cambodia and South Vietnam. Opposing ..views g

President Nixon has said that North Vietnam will never recover from the six weeks that the Ho Chi Minh Trail was partly closed; Senator Mike Mansfield, a spokesman for the opponents of the attack, has replied that the South Vietnamese were forced into a premature and hasty withdrawal, the roads will be reopened before the monsoon rains begin early in May, and the enemy has suffered only a slight reverse at enormous cost to the Allies.

Proponents of both points of view can find plenty of evidence to support their case. The operation was a confused, fast-moving affair. The South Vietnamese, unlike the Americans, did little to help journalists to reach the main centres of operations inside Laos. As a result, most of the “news” had to be gleaned from helicopter pilots as they returned to Khe Sanh, the big American support base just inside South Vietnam.

Communist attacks along the border and inside South Vietnam received full publicity; reports on events inside Laos were sketchy, at best In a war which has been fought for years in a blaze of publicity, the South Vietnamese preferred to behave as military professionals and fight without the attentions of television cameras and reporters. Even so, a balance sheet of gains and losses can be drawn up. From South Vietnam’s point of view, the principal “asset” of the operation was the disruption of the roads, pipelines and paths which form the Ho Chi Minh

j “trail” for several weeks—at the time when Communist traffic is usually at its heaviest. The flow was probably never stopped completely, however, for the South Vietnamese did not penetrate far enough west to block all the highways. At least 14,000 tons of Communist supplies were destroyed, more than in the incursion into the Cambodian “sanctuaries” last year; about 13,000 enemy soldiers, most of them regular North Vietnamese troops, were reputedly killed. The Communist road system has been uprooted and left mined, and repairs should take some time. More North Vietnamese manpower has been drawn off to rebuild it. The South Vietnamese showed a fighting capacity greater than at any time in the war—until it was clear they were outnumbered and out-gunned.

American aid North Vietnam is facing a severe shortage of manpower; almost all its regular army is deployed outside the country and women workers have, on Hanoi’s admission, been mobilised in large numbers to keep the economy from foundering under the demands of the war.

On this South Vietnamese balance sheet, the principal liability is the acknowledged dependence on United States technology. Eight hundred American helicopters were needed to keep the troops moving; when these were grounded by the weather the South Vietnamese lost their mobility. They also depended on American artillery; when the fighting moved beyond the range of American guns in South Vietnam the lighter South Vietnamese guns were no match for the Communists.

The limits of American air power were exposed in the face of accurate antiaircraft fire. The Communists escaped the worst of the B-52 “jungle busting” bombs by remaining in close contact with the South Vietnamese so that high-level bombing could not be used because of the risk of hitting friendly forces.

The disruption of the trail may not have lasted long enough, and was never complete enough, to make any long-term difference to the Communist capacity to strike further South. New strains appeared between the Americans and the South Vietnamese who complained that the Americans did not do enough to help them, especially when they ran into suicidal attacks by superior Communist forces. In particular, the South Vietnamese resented the priority which United States helicopters gave to rescuing their own comrades who had been shot down instead of providing continuous close support for the infantry. Above all, the North Vietnamese scored an important propaganda victory through the speed and disorder which marked the South Vietnamese withdrawal. Much more was at stake, however, than a calculus of military gains and losses on both sides. Mounting an operation which involved much of South Vietnam’s strategic reserve underlined the improved security of South Vietnam itself; it showed that the initiative has passed, temporarily at least, to the Allies after years in which the Communists have been able to choose the time and place for battle. It also represented a deescalation of the fighting, in spite of the geographic spread of the war. The Laos invasion, like the Cambodian invasion a year ago, was fought in- thinly-populated areas or areas where the civilians have long since been forced to retreat to the cities by the havoc of war. The Indo-China War is now much less of a “people’s war" in Chairman Mao’s terms, and much more a war between regular armies, than it has ever been. Neutrality myth The myth of the neutrality of Laos has been laid once and for all. At least 40,000 ;North Vietnamese troops were on hand (some estimates put the figure much higher) and if the operation ihad been designed to prove

in the most simplistic terms who is the “aggressor” in Indo-China it could not have done a better job in damning the Hanoi Government. But the war has never been as simple as that. Noone has ever really pretended that the North Vietnamese were not running the show and doing an increasing amount of the fighting throughout Indo-China. North Vietnamese tenacious fighting to keep the trail open amply demonstrated just how important it is to Hanoi’s future war effort. The demilitarised zone between North Vietnam and South Vietnam has been effectively closed; the Cambodia coup and the Allied raid there last year closed Cambodian ports to Communist supply ships; Thailand is ■an effective block to overland supply west of the Mekong River. Only the long “handle” of Laos stretching down to touch Cambodia and South Vietnam remains as a means of arming and reinforcing thousands of Communist soldiers in the southern half of Indo-China. The Chinese, too, made it clear they consider the “trail” is a vital link in the war effort. Peking called the incursion into Cambodia “a provocation;” the Laos incursion, however, was “a most serious threat” and the Chinese Government hinted that if the fighting moved closer towards its border then Chinese troops could be expected to join in. It is probably fortunate that the operation showed up the weaknesses of the South Vietnamese sufficiently to deter Vice-President Ky, at least for a time, from any grand design that the war might be won by invading North Vietnam.

It may also have upset President Thieu’s calculations for South Vietnam’s presidential elections later this year. An easy and spectacular victory would have helped the President’s prestige with the army and the electorate; the indecisive result, in which at least four of South Vietnam’s best battalions were cut to ribbons, may tell against the President. Buying time President Nixon, too, must have weighed the effects of the operation on his prospects for re-election late next year. For him, the outcome is better than for President Thieu.

Almost certainly, the invasion has “bought time” for the United States, time in which more Americans can be withdrawn from the war before any major Communist offensive gets under way. The President’s political future undoubtedly rests on the credibility of his attempts to withdraw United States forces from combat without appearing to abandon the South Vietnamese. So far he has succeeded better than his critics or supporters had hoped. The Cambodian operation “bought time” for a year; Laos may have repeated the success, but no-one will know until the rains lift in October.

Most important of all, perhaps; what effect has the Laos incursion had on the “peace” talks in Paris? The meetings were stopped by the Communists as a protest while the invasion was on. Hardly anyone noticed; they were achieving nothing anyhow. In the loniger run the Laotian raid may be most important. If Communist planning has been seriously disrupted there may be fresh initiatives from Hanoi at the talks, again as a means to “buy time” while the Communists look for ways to restore their position in Cambodia and South Vietnam. The events of the last two months should serve to remind both sides that the real negotiating is still going on in Indo-China. The conference table can do little more than reflect the relative strengths of the two sides in the field. Events in Laos suggest the military position is close to stalemate. This may make real talking in Paris possible; or it may simply encourage both sides to look for an impressive way of breaking the deadlock. Here, too, the basic unknown is the most important of all —how far are the Com-

munists in Cambodia and South Vietnam able to fight on? Only time can supply the answer.