Clubs are trumps in South Vietnam

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33515, 22 April 1974, Page 12

Clubs are trumps in South Vietnam

“In politics, when no other card is agreed upon, " clubs are always trumps. In international politics, “no other card ever is agreed upon”. The grim and recurrent aptness of this old injunction to young diplomats is demonstrating itself in Vietnam. The Paris agreement on how to settle the conflict in Vietnam was acknowledged in January, 1973, to be a convenient means for the United States to withdraw from South Vietnam. By the very vagueness of its terms, it seemed to offer the possibility of an accommodation between the factions in South Vietnam. Doubts expressed then have proved to be only too well founded. More than 200 people were killed each week on the Government side during 1973 after what was supposed to be a cease-fire: at least the same number probably died in the areas held by the Viet Cong’s Provisional Revolutionary Government Last January, on the anniversary of the cease-fire, the largest and fiercest battles in a year were fought and no progress had been made towards effectively supervising the cease-fire or implementing the political arrangements prescribed in the Paris agreement. Last month the record of cease-fire violations reached a new level of intensity; last week the rate of killing exceeded anything since the major battles of the late 19605. For some months the official United States attitude has been that the promise of American aid for the reconstruction in both North and South Vietnam was inhibiting the North Vietnamese and their allies in the South from military action on a large scale. The American policy is now in disarray. Clubs, not dollars, are trumps. The conflict has been revealed again for what it has always been — a fray in which there is an element of civil war conducted by a small minority of South Vietnamese who could not have continued to pose a serious threat to the Saigon Government were it not for the support from North Vietnam. No conflict since the Korean War — with the possible exception of Biafra’s attempt to secede from Nigeria — has produced casualties and suffering on such a scale. This is not an exercise in American power politicis; it is a callous and brutal attempt by a State to overwhelm a neighbour whose Government holds conflicting beliefs. Long before any substantial American engagement in South Vietnam, the North Vietnamese leadership acknowledged that the military defeat of this kind of Government was the essence of its policy towards South Vietnam. Since the American withdrawal, the determination of the North Vietnamese has been proved again: and, whatever reservations may be held about the qualities of the Saigon Government, it continues to command the loyalty — if not the affection — of people who might readily find themselves under the control of the Viet Cong. In fact, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese still find it necessary to subdue the majority of the South Vietnamese by force. Reprisals by the South Vietnamese military might be considered a deterrent to such defection from the Saigon Government: but even this depends on the continued loyalty of the Saigon forces, which so far appears to be remarkably solid.

The Communists are determined to secure and expand their communications from North Vietnam to Cambodia, southern Laos, and the area around Saigon by eliminating South Vietnamese strongpoints in the Central Highlands. General Giap, Hanoi’s Minister of Defence, has said frequently that “he “ who controls the Central Highlands controls South “ Vietnam ”. To ensure this, the Communists are now prepared to violate the cease-fire in major battles. Clubs, and weapons a good deal worse, are being wielded; the rest of the world does itself little credit by pretending that the pretence of a cease-fire has solved the question of South Vietnam’s future. The South Vietnamese Government has many faults; vet its resilience in the face of a foreign invasion should demonstrate that it has the support of the majority of its own people. It deserves respect — if not a great deal more — from the rest of the world which pays lip-service to such labels as “ freedom ” and “ self-determination ”.