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With the disintegration of the West's position in Laos, most areas along the South Viet Nam border are now held by the Pathet Lao, and the Ho Chi Minh Trail has become an almost open thoroughfare through which Communist reinforcements pour into Diem's beleaguered country. Already the Communists are hard at work enlarging camps and even building airstrips in southern Laos for the rising struggle against South Viet Nam's harassed 150,000-man army.
The Decisions. Faced with this Communist challenge, the U.S. has made a major decision: South Viet Nam must be defended at all costs. While all Asia watched, the U.S., by fumbling unpreparedness and the lack of a dependable local fighting force to attach itself to, last spring abandoned Laos to its fate. South Viet Nam has been U.S.-sponsored from the start; its government is militantly antiCommunist, and its soldiers are willing to fight. If the U.S. cannot or will not save South Viet Nam from the Communist assault, no Asian nation can ever again feel safe in putting its faith in the U.S.—and the fall of all of Southeast Asia would only be a matter of time.
Once the decision was made that the line must be drawn at South Viet Nam, the Kennedy Administration acted vigorously. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was dispatched to Saigon to assure President Ngo Dinh Diem that the U.S., though it had retreated in Laos, could be depended on to help South Viet Nam defend its freedom. In Washington, a special Viet Nam task force was set up in the State Department. Last week a committee headed by Stanford Research Institute Economist Eugene Staley, back from a four-week study of South Viet Nam, submitted an inch-thick secret report to President Kennedy containing a detailed set of recommendations on just what needs to be done to buttress and shore up South Viet Nam for the imminent battle. Most immediate was a recommendation for funds to increase South Viet Nam's forces by another 20,000 troops. Overall, the report would commit the U.S. to the most detailed program of economic and social reform that the U.S. has ever undertaken in Southeast Asia.
Exposure for Two. The stakes are high. The collapse of Laos exposed two other nations to the threat of Communists on their borders—Thailand and Cambodia. Both will be closely watching the U.S. performance in South Viet Nam.
Thailand, a land of green canals, gilded pagodas and 20-ft.-high poinsettias, is headquarters for SEATO. Although the Thais are gentle people and not famous for stalwart struggle in the face of adversity (they surrendered to the Japanese with embarrassing speed in World War II, soon switched sides and happily declared war on the U.S.), they are bossed by tough Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, who has built a strong 100,000-man army with the help of $550 million in U.S. aid. A popular dictator, Sarit made his country prosperous, faces no serious domestic discontent, and has kept his few domestic Communists well in hand.