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Northerners and the pliable, easygoing Southerners. There are signs that the Viet Cong have become resentful that North Viet Nam took over direction of the war, and they do not relish being the horses for Hanoi's knights. The essential difference is that Hanoi still hopes to outlast the U.S. on the battlefield, but the Viet Cong seem somewhat more amenable to compromise and coalition. A most realistic prospect would be for Washington to encourage appeals to the regional patriotism of the Viet Cong, aiming for them to negotiate a separate peace.
The U.S. embassy in Saigon now believes that the best way out of the war would be through direct negotiations between the South Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker has been quietly promoting the idea, but President Thieu resists,1 arguing that his own generals would get up in arms against him if he were to dare recognize the Viet Cong. Thieu last week was drafting a letter to Ho, proposing to meet him face to face. In the unlikely event that Ho accepts, Thieu will ask the U.S. to stop bombing for seven days and to continue the pause even longer if Ho shows intentions of making the conversations fruitful.
Such allies as Thailand and South Korea are much more hawkish than the U.S. State Department and do not want to negotiate. Along with many Americans, they believe that when enough military might is applied, the Communists will realize that they are whipped and will "fade" back into the jungle. Then the enemy would be unable to demand votes, unification or anything else. A frustrating fact about this otherwise desirable concept is that U.S. generals have been expecting the Communists to fade for at least two years and, though they are plainly sweating hard, they so far have shown no symptoms of evaporation. By its official plan, North Viet Nam figures to wear down the U.S. resolve by the early 1970s. Though the U.S. is winning the clear-cut battles, the Communists still may not be convinced that they are losing the war.
For an Acceptable Fnd
Diplomatic compromise is not as satisfying as military victory, but—with all its obvious risks—negotiation could lead to an acceptable end to the war. At a dozen flash points in two decades of cold war, non-Communists and Communists have managed to work out some let-live arrangements. Analogies are dubious because the Vietnamese situation is different from all others; for example, the South Koreans did not have to contend with an internal rebellion, and the Malayan Communists botched their own revolt. Even so, recent history has some worthwhile lessons for Viet Nam. Giving political rights to large Communist parties—as France and Italy did after World War II—does not necessarily subvert democracy. In Laos, the U.S. and other nations agreed with the Communists in 1962 to set up a left-right-center coalition government and, much to everyone's surprise, that tenuous troika is still rattling along.