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Treasure. The U.S. has apparently agreed in principle to the dismantling of what the Nixon Administration has maintained with blood and treasure as South Viet Nam's constitutional government and to back the writing of a new constitution with Communist participation. In the process, Thieu, whom Nixon promised never to abandon, would be forced to negotiate against great odds just to retain his position in the interim and must certainly lose it in the long run. Through the cease-fire "in place," the package would "reward aggression," as Nixon once put it, by ceding the Communists territory obtained by military means, which would be used by them to guarantee a place for themselves in any new government. Finally, the Administration has yielded the point that any new elections must be presidential ones, which would have worked to Thieu's advantage and the disadvantage of the Viet Cong, who control much land but few people. The U.S. could argue, however, that this is superseded by its position that the future government of South Viet Nam should be determined by concession and not by imposition. The proposed elections for a constituent assembly under a caretaker government might favor the Viet Cong by giving them a better chance to display the broad support they claim to have.
For its part, Hanoi has agreed to negotiate directly with the Thieu government while the South Vietnamese President is still in power, which it had said that it would never do. In fact, the Communists even seem willing to let Thieu remain in office until the caretaker government is formed, again a retreat. And they have agreed to forgo a strictly tripartite government with precisely one-third representation guaranteed them.
But it seems certain that, should Thieu still be around at that point, the constituent assembly would in effect simply write him out of power. Thus the plan would allow the Administration both to preserve a role for Thieu for a time and—after a decent interval —have him set aside and satisfy the future political realities of Viet Nam.
Whether that would be perceived by the U.S. public as an abandonment of an oft-repeated Administration commitment is unclear. Doubtless, the White House is aware that with its profusion of committees and procedural steps—not to mention the possibility that negotiations between Saigon and the P.R.G. on the caretaker government could slog on for years—the plan would make it tough for anyone to judge with any certainty whether or not Nixon had made good on his pledge not to "join our enemy to overthrow our ally."
In the narrow sense at least he would have kept that vow. Whatever happened to Thieu and to the makeup of the Saigon government—the complexities of Vietnamese life after so many years of war are such that few foresee any sudden Communist "takeover"—the Administration could argue that it had "imposed" nothing on the country, that it was all "up to the Vietnamese themselves."