FOREIGN FOCUS
No new Vietnam in Laos
CRABRO
War knows no frontiers. During the Algerian conflict the French army 'was con- tinuously faced with a choice between, on the one hand, acceptance of the fact that their guerrilla adversaries enjoyed sanctuary for rest, recuperation, and receipt of supplies across the frontier in Tunisia, and, on the other, pursuit into Tunisia, with all the international complications that course pro- voked.
The American position in Laos and Cam- bodia is at once more flexible and more dangerous. It is more flexible in that the governments Of Laos and Cambodia, unlike the governments of Tunisia and Morocco during the Algerian war, also regard the guerrilla armies as a threat to their in- dependence, and in the case of Laos American assistance in resisting it has been accepted. It is more dangerous in that the line between military 'advice' and assistance and full-scale military involvement cannot be drawn, as the Americans are only too well aware from their earlier experience in Viet- nam. A further complication is that only six- teen years ago Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were all part of the same French colony of Indochina. The boundaries between them are largely artificial, and—notwithstanding their professions of support for Laotian and Cambodian integrity and neutrality—the rulers of North Vietnam are suspected of coveting the whole of the former colony.
In his lengthy report to Congress on American foreign policy last month Presi- dent Nixon affirmed that the us electorate 'must have the full truth' about the situation in South-East Asia. It would be an un- derstatement to say that many Americans are not convinced that this is what they are getting from Mr Nixon's administration. For too long the pretence was maintained that no American forces were stationed in Laos. The administration has now acknowledged the presence of American troops. But the way in which the President's assertion that 'no American stationed in Laos has ever been killed in ground combat operations' has been followed within a week by the admission that American troops have been killed on the ground, although not in 'combat operations' (they were apparently caught in an ambush, and so presumably did not have an op- portunity. to 'combat' the guerrillas who killed them) is all too painfully reminiscent of the unplanned slither into the Vietnam war.
The administration's- critics among the Democrats are, no doubt, guilty of ex- aggerating the scale of us inVolvement in Laos to suit their own political ends. The President remains, from their point of view, embarrassingly popular with the electorate at large, and the leaderless Democrats urgently need a popular grievance with which to reduce his standing before the mid-term elec- tions. But the events of the past week have once more highlighted the obstacles in the way of the policy of discreet withdrawal which is euphemistically described as the `Vietnamisation' of the war.
The Russians' rejection of the call for a reconvening of the Geneva Conference Sinless the Americans are first prepared to halt thcbgtabiog.of-the.:214LCW-Mitillitiatt through Laos can have surprised nobody—not even the British government, pathetically anxious though it remains to muscle, in on the act if it can. The Russian government has no power to restrain the infiltration of Laos and Cambodia by the North Vietnamese, even if it wanted to. Nor can Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia really have expected to obtain any comfort from Moscow or Peking in his attempts to main- tain the neutrality of his country. And for once Vice-President Agnew was surely right when he rejected suggestions that a suspension of American bombing inside Laos might induce the North Vietnamese to leave that country alone.
There is no such thing as a limited in- volvement of western powers in the affairs of South-East Asia. So long as American troops are fighting in Vietnam it would be ir- responsible for an American government to leave them unprotected against infiltration from Laos and Cambodia. Once American troops have withdrawn then the two smaller states will only survive, if they survive at all, as clients of Hanoi. But it is no use U Thant protesting at this late stage that the Americans must 'contain the rush of com- munism' on the mainland of Asia, for the United States electorate has already decided it has had enough.
And that is why, despite the ominous and obvious parallels, it is possible to be fairly confident that Laos will not develop into a second Vietnam. It is to be seen rather as one of the painful symptoms of withdrawal, rather than as the blossoming of a new com- mitment. The 'silent centre' of American politics may reject an abject scuttle: but it is just as adamantly opposed to the indefinite prolongation of the war—and Mr Nixon knows it.
Should we, then, accept that John Foster Dulles with his dominoes was right after all: that. after Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia will be the first to fall (they may indeed even precede Vietnam), only to be followed by Thailand—where American involvement is deeper than it is in Laos already—and then. presumably, by Burma? Only time will tell. But here, too, there are grounds for limited
'Thou should not dig the fuzz. 'Thou should not lift another cat's pot. 'Thou should not turn on. , Thou should not work for the pigs, 'Thou should share thy bird. 4P1on.should-dig the scene
optimism. Thailand has a long history of independence. It never formed part of the In- do-Chinese empire, and the guerrilla warfare in the northern part of the country does not have the overtones of acquisitiveness from Hanoi which are evident in the campaigns in Laos and Cambodia. Laos, Cambodia and South Vietnam may stand or fall together : Thailand should be able to stand apart.
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