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But disengagements could also come through secret, direct agreement in the Paris peace talks. The only conditions that the U.S. will absolutely insist on there are guarantees that North Vietnamese troops will depart at approximately the same rate as its own, and assurance that the present Saigon government has the facilities to maintain its own security. Hanoi has expressed willingness to negotiatevftn the first condition, but adamantly insists that the U.S. must reach a separate accord with the National Liberation Front on the second—the better to emphasize the Front's legitimacy. At stake is the eventual future of a South Viet Nam without foreign troops—but faced with a sizable number of native Communist insurgents.
One possible solution would be for the Front to forswear violence in return for the privilege of forming a political party that would exert power in South Viet Nam like any other party, to the extent that it wins votes. This arrangement is now discussed as the "Greek solution," since the N.L.F., like the Greek Communist Party following the civil war in 1950, would have to change its name in order to comply with the South Vietnamese constitution. Thieu has spoken derisively of such a proposal, though he has not actually ruled it out. Indeed, there is little doubt that, in one form or another, he must some day accept its principal component: the participation of the N.L.F. in Saigon's political processes. Certainly his own outline for an end to the war—for Hanoi to "acknowledge its aggression against South Viet Nam and accept to end that aggression"—seems an unlikely outcome. The Communists have done too well in the war for that. On the other hand, neither side any longer takes very seriously the idea of an outright coalition government; neither side wants it, and no one can imagine that it would survive longer than a few months.
Within both the unilateral and negotiated routes are hosts of tactical considerations. Probably the most important for Nixon is to decide which is the most conducive to fruitful negotiations; a policy of exerting continuing military pressure or one of inviting de-escalation by example. Despite the strong faith of some critics in the efficacy of voluntary deescalation, the evidence that Hanoi was signaling tacit willingness to lower the level of fighting during the battlefield lull is still far from compelling. The Communists, after all, needed the rest just as urgently for military reasons —and may well have decided to stay in the jungle in order to prepare for another blow that would force Nixon's hand.
Since a big tactical factor in judging the advantages of de-escalation is the U.S. death toll, the Administration ordered a new study of casualty causes. The results have been inconclusive, but if anything, they suggested that most U.S. soldiers are wounded and killed during enemy-initiated actions—and not as a result of their own aggressiveness. Moreover, looking back to the experience of the Panmunjom negotiations in Korea—during which the U.S. command