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In Cambodia, Neutralist Prince Norodom Sihanouk has turned neat profits by taking aid from both sides in the cold war, including $300 million from the U.S. But he is wary of the threat the Communists pose. "In order to remain on good terms with my Communist friends, we prefer not to have a common frontier with them," he said recently. Since the West's default in Laos, he has become frankly pessimistic. "I am trying to prevent Cambodia from going Communist, but I do not think that the free world can stop the movement of Communism," he said last week. It was part of the U.S. task to demonstrate to Sihanouk that Communism indeed could be stopped.
The Leader. In committing itself to the defense of South Viet Nam, the U.S. has also committed itself to the support of President Diem, who has long had a common border with the Communists, has never mistaken them for friends, and thinks they can be stopped.
His achievements are impressive. From a desk in his big, yellow stucco Freedom Palace, he has fought the Communists 16 hours a day for seven years. In that time, he has built a nation from the wreckage of the Indo-Chinese war. His critics were sure he would fall within six months after he took office in 1954. Instead, he and his country have survived and thrived. Rice exports have quadrupled and currency reserves are at a record level. To Diem's credit is a successful land-reform program, lower rents for peasants, a boom in light industry; with the help of almost $2 billion in U.S. aid, he has built a network of roads, irrigation projects, power plants and rail lines.
But Ngo Dinh Diem is no democrat by instinct; he remains aloof from the masses in the tradition of a mandarin who follows the ancient Confucian code of a divinely guided prince. "A sacred respect is due the person of the sovereign. He is the mediator between the people and heaven as he celebrates the national cult," he once wrote. A chain-smoking bachelor, he runs things his way, taking advice only from a few aides and his tight-knit family; his closest adviser is a brother who has an office in the palace. All departmental reports go to Diem's office for scrutiny; no battalion commander in the field would dare mount a major attack without his personal O.K.; until recently, in fact, no South Vietnamese passport could be issued without the signature of the President himself.
Diem is an obsessive talker who can hypnotize a visitor with four and five hours of monologue. One recent visitor arrived at 4 p.m., rose to leave at 8, pleading a dinner engagement. "Call them and tell them you will be late," said Diem, and talked on for another two hours. He breakfasts on bouillon, rice and pickles. "I am no aristocrat. I eat like a peasant," he says.