In Southeast Asia last week, two states that the U.S. had carefully nurtured as buffers a gainst Communist expansionism were showing alarming and increasing fragility:
South Viet Nam, since 1954 the recipient of more than $1 billion in U.S. aid, was digging itself out after a surprise revolt against autocratic President Ngo Dinh Diem by three crack paratroop battalions (TIME, Nov. 21). As firmly anti-Communist as Diem himself (most of them are refugees from Red-held North Viet Nam), the paratroopers mutinied to force a change in Diem's dictatorial ways, which they charged were costing him popular support in the fight against...
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