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                                                                                May 1, 1972

The President Battles on Three Fronts



     All along, President Nixon and his advisers knew that a
crucial time of testing for the Administration's Vietnam policy
had to come. With geometric inevitability, the descending curve
that describes the withdrawal of U.S. ground combat forces would
have to intersect the curve that plots rising South Vietnamese
responsibility for the war. At that juncture, Hanoi would surely
test the American resolve, Nixon's own commitment to his policy,
and the staying power of the South Vietnamese. Four weeks ago,
that testing point arrived with brutal bluntness when a carefully
orchestrated force of North Vietnamese soldiers, well backed by
tanks, artillery, antiaircraft guns and supplies, burst across
the DMZ and the Cambodian border into South Vietnam. There had
been nothing like it in the war, not even the Tet offensive of
1968.

     Dramatic Answer. In response the President played his last
card -- but it was a powerful one. Early last week, for the first
time in four years, American bombs fell in the area of the North
Vietnamese capital and the key port of Haiphong. The
Administration assembled the strongest air and sea armada in
Indochina since the war last peaked in 1968. More than 150 fresh
planes were rushed to the theater from bases as far away as North
Carolina; the B-52 fleet has been nearly doubled since the North
Vietnamese offensive began. When Midway and Saratoga join the
four aircraft carriers now on station off North Vietnam, the
U.S. and the South Vietnamese will have 150 ships and over 1,000
aircraft, equipped with some of the most sophisticated weaponry
in the history of warfare to use against a North Vietnamese force
of 110,000 to 130,000 men.

     It was a dramatic answer to the enemy, a riposte full of
hazards for the President on three fronts. In Vietnam,
militarily, it was the first real test of the Nixon Doctrine that
the U.S. will support its Asian allies if they provide most of
the manpower for their own defense. Second, Nixon was vulnerable
to a Soviet response that might end his cherished plan for a
Moscow summit in May; the U.S.S.R. has provided the materiel for
Hanoi's offensive, and there were Russian ships in Haiphong
harbor during the American attack. And third, on the home front,
Nixon risked alienating all over again the large numbers of
Americans who were baffled, vexed or outraged by his last
dramatic initiative in behalf of Vietnamization -- the incursion
into Cambodia two years ago. Another Cambodia, another Kent
State, and his re-election could be in doubt.

     The first seven days that followed Nixon's unleashing of the
huge B-52s and the smaller, faster fighter-bombers proved no
decisive answers for the President. Neither the Nixon Doctrine
nor the South Vietnamese army has failed -- yet. U.S. airpower
has not turned back the North Vietnamese -- yet. If it had
prevented an almost certain rout of ARVN, the issue on the
battlefields was still in doubt. A 20,000-man ARVN force led by
President Nguyen Van Thieu's personal elite guard, dispatched to
relieve An Loc, abandoned the effort 15 miles short of its goal
on Highway 13. Late last week, in an astonishing go-for-broke
gamble, the last uncommitted North Vietnamese division began
moving south toward the DMZ to join two others battling for
control of South Vietnam's two northernmost provinces.

     Piercing Eyes. Within hours after the magnitude of the first
North Vietnamese invasion thrusts became clear, Nixon began to
search for the best response. Less than a week after the invasion
began, he ordered the Washington Special Action Group --
representatives of the CIA and the State and Defense departments,
chaired by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger -- to study
the feasibility of bombing Hanoi and Haiphong and of a naval
blockade of North Vietnamese ports. The purely military answer
was clear enough: both could be done, and both would be useful.

     For the next week, Nixon mulled over the WSAG analysis. He
kept his counsel, but he was visibly angry. "The President was
showing the cold fury which only makes him more determined," said
a top-level man at State. "You could see the jaw harden, the eyes
narrow and become more piercing." Another senior official put it
less elegantly. Said he: "You could tell the old man had made up
his mind he won't be screwed."

     There were repeated meetings with Kissinger, Secretaries
William Rogers of State and Melvin Laird of Defense, CIA Chief
Richard Helms and Admiral Thomas Moorer, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs. Ex-Congressman Laird was concerned about the bombing for
fear of political reaction at home; Rogers and Kissinger were
scarcely more enthusiastic, though evidently less concerned about
what might happen politically. Finally the President made up his
mind. Top-secret instructions were sent in code via satellite to
the B-52 bases and to the Seventh Fleet. Next day he sent the
order to raid Hanoi and Haiphong. Within a few hours, the B-52s
lifted off the long runways and the Phantoms catapulted from
carrier decks in the Tonkin Gulf.

     Partly Political. Says a ranking Administration official:
"It was not a portentous, cataclysmic one-shot decision. We
consider it a tactical decision." The bombing, he adds, was
"partly political, partly military": "We are trying to compress
the amount of time the North Vietnamese have to decide on whether
the offensive is worth continuing and whether they have the means
to continue it." The White House military argument is that
bombing supply depots and petroleum stores in northern North
Vietnam now will hurt the enemy in the front lines six to eight
weeks hence. However, experts in South Vietnam think that the
North Vietnamese have enough supplies already in place to last out
the year at least.

     One senior official estimates that the Hanoi-Haiphong raids
destroyed 30% of North Vietnam's fuel supplies, more vital to
them than ever before in the war because of the mechanized nature
of their new onslaughts. Beyond that purely military achievement,
the President had two other goals in mind:

     -- He wants to reach a settlement with the Vietnamese before
Election Day. The raids were designed to show Hanoi that Nixon is
not powerless, though his options may be limited. For the moment,
however, the Administration refuses to treat with Hanoi's
negotiators in Paris until the offensive is called off. The North
Vietnamese mission at first demanded that the Americans end the
bombing and return to the conference table. The Americans
refused. Under the supposed "understanding" of 1968, U.S. bombing
would stop if -- among other things -- North Vietnam agreed not
to violate the DMZ and not to infiltrate its forces into South
Vietnam. Hanoi's chief negotiator, Xuan Thuy, released the North
Vietnamese version of the talks that led up to the bombing halt.
In effect, he said that there were no "understandings" and that
the U.S. agreement to stop bombing was unconditional. But at the
same time Hanoi made a concession: it was willing to resume the
talks even while the bombing continued. The U.S. is not, until
the offensive stops.

     -- Nixon wants to go to Moscow in a position of strength.
Nixon gambled that the Soviet Union would not call off his summit
visit, even if Russian ships were damaged in the Haiphong raid.
The Russians want to counter the new U.S. rapprochement with
China and to talk about so many things beyond Vietnam, he
reasoned, that they wold react to the bombings cautiously. He was
right. The present Soviet leaders -- Leonid Brezhnev, Aleksei
Kosygin and Nikolai Podgorny -- were in power in 1968, when the
Russians insisted that there could be no summit meeting with
Lyndon Johnson until the U.S. stopped bombing the North. But so
far the Soviet response has been mild. As the B-52s were bombing
North Vietnam, Brezhnev received, within hours of each other,
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz and Hanoi's ambassador to
Moscow. As Moscow factory workers were being marshaled for
"Vietnam, We Are With You" rallies, other workers were sent out on
the Potemkin-village mission of cleaning up or tearing down
eyesore buildings on Nixon's Moscow route. As the foreign ministry
ground out a protest against the damage it claimed had been done
to Soviet shipping in Haiphong, a 24-man American party under
Brigadier General Brent Scowcroft arrived to arrange logistics,
security and press and communications facilities for the
presidential visit. The U.S. replied to the Soviet note with a
tough, unequivocal note.

     For reasons of its own, Peking also reacted with restraint
to the news that Hanoi and Haiphong had been bombed. The North
Vietnamese practically wrung a measured, pro forma statement out
of Premier Chou En-lai, who noted simply that "escalation failed
in the past and will continue to fail" because it makes "the
entire Vietnamese people unite ever more closely in their fight."
The Chinese want nothing to interfere with the opening of
relations with the U.S. A few days later, Chou was all
graciousness as he received the Senate's leaders, Democrat Mike
Mansfield and Republican Hugh Scott, who are on a three-week tour
of the People's Republic. The Chinese are unhappy with Hanoi for
switching prematurely to a large-unit campaign against their
advice, instead of building up the Communist political
infrastructure in South Vietnam. The Sino-Soviet rivalry is also
a factor in Peking's tepid backing of Hanoi. North Vietnam's
tanks, artillery and antiaircraft weapons come from the Russians;
if Hanoi wins its battles using them, it will be a blow to the
Maoist doctrine of "people's war" and a boost for the Soviet
power in Southeast Asia. Moscow could then point to Vietnam as
well as India's victory in the Indo-Pakistani war to show that
its friendship counts -- and Peking's does not.

     Thinner Reed. Even on Nixon's third front, at home, the
bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong failed to ignite antiwar passions
to the degree it would have in the past. To be sure, critics
noted that bombing North Vietnam has never persuaded Hanoi to
bargain before. Quite the contrary, Lyndon Johnson got the North
Vietnamese to Paris in 1968 only by stopping the bombing north of
the 20th parallel -- and he got them to start talking only by
stopping the bombing sorties entirely. Before the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee Rogers and Laird insisted that the Commander
in Chief's constitutional duty to protect American troops
justified the bombing raids. Conceivably, that rationale could
cover tactical air-support missions in support of ARVN troops in
South Vietnam, where American forces remain, but it is a thinner
reed to lean on to defend bombing the North Vietnamese capital
and the country's biggest port.

     Rogers put on an uncharacteristically tough performance
before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, easily matching
wits with Democratic Chairman J. William Fulbright. That was no
accident. Nixon had told Rogers to take the offensive; Rogers
spent the weekend with his top advisers, rehearsing for the
hearings. He ruled out no possible U.S. course except use of
nuclear weapons and commitment of U.S. ground troops to the
fighting. "We're not going to make any announcement about what
we're not going to do," he said. "We think there has been
altogether too much of that in this war." Predictably, Laird was
more truculent, leaving open the chance that the U.S. could mine
Haiphong harbor or even blockade all of North Vietnam's ports.

     Politically, the man who stands to gain the most if there is
a reaction to Nixon's belligerence is Senator George McGovern of
South Dakota. His identification with the antiwar cause will
doubtless help him in this week's primaries in Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania. Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine pledged to stop the
bombing of the North and withdraw all troops from Indochina, in
return for the release of U.S. P.O.W.s, "within 60 days of my
inauguration." Hubert Humphrey, his chief centrist rival, knows
that he is tarred with having been Lyndon Johnson's Vice
President, and having turned from hawk to dove. He told a hissing
University of Pennsylvania audience last week: "I hope some of
you will have the courage to change your mind when you find that
what you've been doing isn't the right thing."

     But even Humphrey is a dove of long standing compared with
several Democrats who announced their conversion last week after
the Hanoi-Haiphong raids. "I'm for gettin' out," George Wallace
said last week, to the general astonishment. If the Communists
should wind up taking over in Saigon, "it will be tough," Wallace
added. "But I want us out." On Capitol Hill, Speaker Carl Albert
of Oklahoma, abandoning his usual caution, voted with the House
Democrats who endorsed, 144 to 58, by far the most stringent
antiwar resolution ever to get anywhere on that side of the
Capitol. (The House has always been more hawkish than the
Senate.) Even Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills of Arkansas,
long a tacit Administration backer on Vietnam, proclaimed: "It's
high time we got out of there."

    Around the U.S. particularly in the Northeast, students
demonstrated against the bombing with varying degrees of fervor.
At Harvard, 150 demonstrators once more ransacked the Center for
International Affairs, after a march from downtown Boston. After
a bitter meeting of the university senate, Columbia joined 100
other college in a one-day closedown last week. At the University
of Maryland, Governor Marvin Mandel called out the National Guard
to enforce a curfew after students repeatedly blocked U.S. 1.
Last weekend in New York, 50,000 marchers -- some from as far
away as Nebraska -- demonstrated in the rain against the bombing.
Much of the protest was genial, even languid, but there were
incidents of violence. In Palo Alto, Calif., hard by Stanford
University, police made 210 arrests after some rock throwing
along El Camino REal, a major highway. In Detroit, 15 out of some
250 sit-in demonstrators were arrested at the Federal Building.
The drawdown of U.S. forces has made the war a less personal
issue to many collegians, and many 18- to 21-year-olds may be
saving their spleen for the November presidential election, the
first in which they may vote; if the war continues to be in the
news, their supposed apathy may prove to have been overestimated.

     Terrible Toll. The President seems willing to accept the
political risks of bombing. A high Administration official quoted
him as saying: "By doing what I must do, even if it means the
election of someone else, I will at least give him a chance to
have a viable, credible foreign policy." In fact, despite the
anguished complaints that he is prolonging the war and adding to
its terrible toll in lives over the years, his tough line may
well be profitable at the polls. A talented opinion sampler who
has the White House as a client, Albert Sindlinger of Swarthmore,
Pa., reports a big upswing in support of Nixon's Vietnam
policies since the North Vietnamese invasion, continuing into
last week after the Hanoi-Haiphong bombings. He put Nixon's
current popularity at 48.5% of the voters by his measuring, the
highest any President has reached since Eisenhower's record after
two months in office.

     Nixon believes that everything rides on his Vietnam gamble
-- his global policies, his re-election, perhaps his place in
history, and he means to press ahead. U.S. troop levels will be
down to 69,000 at the beginning of May, and he huddled with
Kissinger at Camp David last weekend to work out the next
withdrawal announcement. Intelligence experts in Washington think
that the vital element in the North Vietnamese offensive is the
psychological impact on the South Vietnamese -- and on the U.S.
electorate, as at the time of Tet in 1968. The experts predict
much more heavy fighting and scattered Communist advances,
successful at least for long enough to hold a village or a town
for a day or so. But they believe that the North Vietnamese
momentum has been blunted by the heavy bombing, and by ARVN.
Still, ARVN is spread thinly, vulnerable to a dramatic
breakthrough by the enemy. Both sides have more to gain, and to
lose, than at any time since American combat troops were rushed
in to save Saigon from collapse in 1965. This time, for the U.S.,
the counterpressure must be applied from the sea and, above all,
the air.