THE Nixon Administration has secretly decided to respond to the Communist lull in the fighting in Viet Nam. The Pentagon is drafting orders instructing the military command in Saigon to reduce and limit the current strategy of "maximum pressure." The decision came after months of subdued debate. Some top State Department officials seemed as reluctant to modify the allies' aggressive strategy as their counterparts in the Pentagon. The hard-liners at State agreed with their military colleagues that the lull has little if any political significance. If it had, they said, the Communists would have found ways and means to let the U.S. know.
Other State Department officials were more willing to take a chance. Their argument was that the strategy of maximum pressure puts the burden of cutting back the level of fighting entirely on the enemy. Sooner or later, U.S. pressure results in Communist counterpressure. The question is essentially whether or not the possibility of reducing the level of combat and taking another step toward total disengagement from the war is worth the military risk involved. Last week the Administration decided that it was.
Ignored Advice. General Earle Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was dispatched to Saigon to discuss the new tactics with General Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam. Wheeler will also discuss the feasibility of withdrawing as many as 100,000 more U.S. troops from Viet Nam by the end of this year, if the lull continues. The President was expected to meet with Abrams next week, either in Saigon or Bangkok, as part of his nine-day, 24,070-mile tour of seven countries.
The new orders do not deny the necessity of an active defense, but they would scale down the massive search-and-destroy missions that have dominated U.S. strategy. Said one Government official: "Where we used to have division-sized sweeps, we now want to see whether the job can't be done by 25-man patrols. Where we now send out 25-man patrols, we want to see whether a five-man patrol won't do. And we must keep in mind that we are no longer out for military victory." The new approach also calls for increased Vietnamization of the war. U.S. troops would spend less time in combat and far more time training ARVN. Obviously, both proposals are designed to cut U.S. casualties.
The new Nixon concept of conducting the war—withdrawing troops gradually, dropping the level of combat and sending fewer G.I.s out on missions—seems a limited step in the direction of the "enclave theory" that was advanced in 1965 by retired Lieut. General James Gavin. Under Gavin's plan, American troops would withdraw to garrisons in Saigon, Cam Ranh Bay and Danang, and concentrate on upgrading the South Vietnamese army. However, the new orders do not entail an actual movement of U.S. forces to fixed enclaves, as Gavin proposed.
The military did not accept the Gavin concept then, and they are not enthusiastic now about the prospects of deescalation. They argue that maximum pressure is nothing more than an "active defense." Unfortunatelv, the line between attack and defense is not always clear. The military, for example, regarded the bloody assault on Hamburger Hill last May as essentially a defensive action, though it cost the U.S. 84 killed and 480 wounded.