[The following article is reprinted from the February 19 issue of Rouge, weekly newspaper of the Ligue Communiste, French section of the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
To understand U.S. imperialism's new Indochina strategy one must integrate a certain number of apparent- Iy contradictory facts. Nixon's determination to keep control of Southeast Asia has certainly not diminished. The evolution of the situation in China, however, and the intensification of the Sino-Soviet conflict make less acute the necessity of militarily maintaining a costly base. But Nixon, policeman of imperialism, must always protect his reputation as a guarantor, especially since the Indian subcontinent is on the move and rumblings are being heard in Thailand and Burma. Just one push and down go the Asian dominos. All of the tactics employed up to now have not succeeded in ending the Indochinese peoples' revolutionary struggle. More than that, on the military level, U.S. failure is unquestionable.
The large-scale operations in the South, the bombings of the DRV, the fighting in Laos and Cambodia have all been stinging military defeats for the Americans. Moreover, the imperialist war has resulted not only in turning the greater part of world opinion against the United States, but also its own youth, its veterans, and even - this is something new — certain sectors of the working class, who have supported the big NPAC [National Peace Action Coalition] mobilizations.
U.S. ground forces, disgusted with a war that is more than questionable, refuse to fight, take drugs, shoot their officers. In short, they are no longer usable in ground combat. All this didn't happen overnight. The outlines of this crisis have been discernible for the past several years.
On the other hand, the air force, privileged, generally kept away from the dirty work, has remained usable, as have the Marines.
How could imperialism get out of the impasse? Nixon's response was twotold. First, Vietnamization, that is, the increasingly exclusive use of puppet troops as cannon fodder for the "dirty work," the ground operations. Secondly, chemical warfare, massive bombings, the intervention in Laos and Cambodia to aid and reinforce the puppets.
But this strategy, followed during 1969 and 1970, presupposed the ability to bolster the puppet regime enough to keep it from collapsing. It also assumed that chemical and aerial warfare would be enough to support the Saigon troops effectively. But the strategy has not been successful or, in any case, not successful enough to assure that U.S. ground forces, which are leaving Vietnam on a rather regular basis, will be replaced by puppet troops.
So imperialism again changed its strategy, still maintaining the same general orientation that includes the inescapable necessity of bringing the GIs, who are no longer capable of fighting, back to the United States.
The Electronic War
How to make U.S. support most effective with the least possible recourse to ground troops? The answer is the air force. It has a number of obvious advantages. It need not be based in Indochina. It needs only a small number of well-paid, elite troops who see the war only as flights that are as calm as those of a regular airline, punctuated for just twenty seconds by the release of twenty tons of anonymously unloaded bombs; soldiers without direct responsibility, who see no unpleasant spectacles like My Lai massacres.
But it's not precise enough. The blanket of B-52 bombs, thick and destructive as it is, falls haphazardly in the jungle. The attempted resolution of this problem is electronic warfare. By now, everybody has a rough idea of what this means.
The Pentagon has most obligingly come up with a whole array of gadgets, supposedly infallible. Generally, these electronic detectors are supposed to sniff out the presence of troops on the march, report the passage of trucks, transmit to the U.S. command the slightest order given by a "Vietcong" section commander.
Once detected, the objective is destroyed by an artillery barrage or 224
by bombings, themselves electronically directed. The nature and position of the target can be ascertained, even at night, by the use of infrared rays, lasers, or ultrasensitive cameras. Anything that can be seen is destroyed.
In theory, all this is very disturbing. But in reality, it seems to be otherwise. U.S. reports indicate numerous failures, gaps, errors in transmission or interpretation. In fact, there is no proof that the B-52s-which unfortunately bomb with impunity, because south of the seventeenth parallel the Indochinese revolutionaries have no means of fighting themhave become any more effective as a result of these gadgets.
This does not mean that the bombings themselves do not, by their intensity and repetition, create a certain problem for the Indochinese revolutionaries. But not to the point of interrupting communications between different regions, or with the North and Laos.
Reinforcing the Puppets
How to bolster the puppets? In our view, this second aspect of the operation is more important. We must be frank. The complete collapse of the military and political structures of the Saigon regime has not been achieved. Certainly, without the American presence in 1965 and 1968, things would have been different.
But what's the situation in 1972? It seems that an operation unprecedented in history has been unleashed by the imperialists. It consists of substituting for the natural life style and structures of South Vietnam a new life style and new structures which can totally alter social life in a way that delivers the population, bound hand and foot, to the puppet regime.
This operation has two aspects:
1) Systematic destruction of Vietnamese cadres, not only those supposedly belonging to the National Liberation Front, but also those of traditional Vietnamese village lifepeople who are presumably potential supporters of the resistance. This is Operation Phoenix, initiated several years ago.
2) Forced urbanization of the rural South Vietnamese population, either bringing them into large towns or into concentration camps. For the imperialists, this policy has several advantages:
• It protects a substantial part of the population from "bad influences," which cannot be spread so easily in the closed milieu of urban or concentration-camp life.
• It suppresses or considerably reduces the natural base of support for the Indochinese revolution: the people, among whom the guerrillas move with ease.
• It destroys traditional structures, notably the family life of Vietnamese society, which is, in the local context, a factor in resistance to the "American way of life."
• It allows for the replacement of rural life-already made difficult by the war-by an urban life replete with new needs: dependence on food supplies, the black market, prostitution, subordination to the economy of military occupation, etc.
As Noam Chomsky has commented, this different society, this artificial creation of a special infrastructure, is a prelude to the consolidation of this society through its industrialization under free enterprise, which is projected by the American leaders.
Confidential reports such as the Smithies report for the Institute for Defense Analysis and those of the South East Asia Development Advisory Group (a U.S. agency specializing in Southeast Asia) confirm the deliberateness of this policy.
In fact, the United States wants to integrate South Vietnam into a huge economic complex of free enterprise and heavy investment, in which capitalist Japan will play an important role.
All this permits the construction of a "credible" puppet power on a more solid basis, ultimately resting on a real social foundation, dependent on the American system and tied to that system by all the bonds that create the neocolonial life style for those it enchains.
Multinational corporations, including French ones, have an important role to play in this operation- not only by their economic role, but also because they involve their coun tries of origin. The affair of the UDR [Union pour la Défense de la République-the Gaullist party deputy Boscher will appear in this light one of these days.
While waiting for this new "sphere of Asian prosperity" (that old dream of imperial Japan) to be constructed, the United States must assure the survival of the puppet regime. For that, they must help it on the ground, underwriting the great expense of an army of more than 600,000 men.
The fighting value of these men is low. That was seen in Laos. But while they are in Saigon uniforms they are fed, lodged, paid. Their pillage and depredation are tolerated. They are the "clientèle" of the United States, certainly not by conviction but only because they have to eat and support their families.
Imperialism's maintenance of a "national" army, paid to do nothing but repress the people, is an old ploy - of which Africa and Latin America offer numerous examples. But this army still cannot stand on its own feet. It needs help. That is the aim of the electronic war and the operations of the B-52s, which are, at least from the ground (as we have seen), beyond the reach of the Indochinese revolutionaries' weaponry.
The Third Front
This policy will not be completely effective, according to American officials cited by Chomsky, until 1973-75. Until then imperialism must hold on. To accomplish this, Nixon and Kissinger moved on the diplomatic front. With a two-sided diversion aimed at gaining time- announcing their trips to Moscow and Peking and spectacularly launching a clever, although totally launchilig a cever, annough totally fallacious, "peace" plan in order to deceive public opinion-the two confederates executed an adroit maneuver.
Either thev will lead Peking or Mos-
Either they will lead Peking or Moscow, or both -unfortunately on this point the present interests of the two bureaucracies converge-to put pressure on the Indochina Revolutionary Front to accept, in one form or another, a new Geneva. The second phase of the operation can then be set in motion after Nixon is reelected, whether the negotiations have been successful or not.
Or else, they will exacerbate the contradictions between the Soviet Union and China, playing one against the other, to the detriment of political and material support to the Indochina Revolutionary Front, and wind up, through alternately advancing threats and apparent concessions, at gaining the several months they want in order to assure Nixon's reelection and con- March 6, 1972
solidate their economic grip on South Vietnam.
All this is perfectly coherent. U.S. imperialism has learned a lot. It knows that it can protect its control over an apparently unfavorable situation by playing its "national" and even "neutralist" card. The Middle East and Africa are good examples. Neocolonialist strategy has matured. It has acquired experience from ten years of mistakes.
It benefits from the aid it receives from the peaceful-coexistence and great-power policies of the two big workers states, whose leaders have never met their responsibilities to the Indochina revolution.
A Crucial Period
But is this strategy irresistible? Far from it! Above all because the Indochinese revolutionaries have always remained unshaken in their determination to fight on. The nub of the problem is the real solidity, present and future, of the puppet regime. If the famous neutralist, or even discreetly anti-American, regime is installed in Saigon-which in the Pentagon Papers Johnson's adviser Under Secretary of Defense MeNaughton considered an acceptable solutionvery quickly succumb to the adulterated charms of neocolonialism? And what about the puppet regimes in Vientiane and Pnompenh? Who will exercise real power over the masses of those cities?
If the whole situation very quickly swings in the direction hoped for by all the world's revolutionary Marxists, won't Nixon then be led to respond with another massive escalation? Is that why the B-52s and the U.S. aircraft carriers are heading to the Tonkin Gulf? Won't they try to accomplish what McNamara did not succeed in doing: throwing up a blockade across the seventeenth parallelan atomic blockade if necessary - without bombs, but simply with radioactive wastes? Rumors about this have already started.
The coming weeks and months will be crucial. They will, all evidence indicates, decide the future evolution of all Southeast Asia. Our task is quite clear! More than ever before: massive militant, permanent, material, and political support to the Indochina Revolutionary Front.
No to the new strategy of imperialism!
Not one cent, not one weapon, not one investment to the puppets!
End the divisions in the workers' camp in defense of the Indochinese