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Spain of the Sixties. Individually the countries may seem too exasperating and unimportant to bother about. Their per capita income (with the exception of Malaysia) averages between $50 and $100 a year; their illiteracy rate is 30% or 40% ; their political stability is about as solid as a bamboo in a breeze. Yet taken as a whole, they matter greatly. Says a veteran U.S. foreign officer in Hong Kong: "Southeast Asia is the Spain of the 1960s. If we can't and don't win here, how can any friend of ours believe we can win anywhere?" And in Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge adds: "We are not talking about some small neck of the woods, but of an area about 2,300 miles long and 3,000 miles wide, with about 240 million people."
The key to the situation remains the U.S. struggle to keep South Viet Nam from falling to Communism. The coun try's goateed little Premier, Nguyen Khanh, on whom Washington has now placed its chips, is doing his best to take hold; last week he received a unanimous vote of confidence (there was little choice) from the 53 members of the Military Revolutionary Council, which supposedly governs the country. In Washington, Secretary McNamara repeated once again that the U.S. will not pull out of South Viet Nam and left open the possibility of direct action against North Viet Nam if it becomes necessary. Just what that action might be was no clearer than before. But it has been clear for a long time what would happen if South Viet Nam gave way to Communism: the reaction described by the famous "domino theory" would undoubtedly set in.
First to be knocked over by the fall of South Viet Nam would obviously be Laos and Cambodia. Little Laos, "Land of the Million Elephants"—or the Million Irrelevants, as Americans on the scene put it—lies bloodied and paralyzed by a Geneva neutralist agreement that has resulted only in chaos. The pro-Communist Pathet Lao and the neutralist-rightist armies fire dutifully at each other amid the gigantic burial urns on the Plain of Jars, usually trying not to hit each other but still taking a daily toll of human life. Recently, gunfire erupted one night in the backwater capital of Vientiane (two stop lights, one sidewalk). It was an eclipse of the moon, and to the natives that meant but one thing: a frog, presumably inhabited by an evil spirit, was swallowing the moon. The gunfire broke out when everyone, following tradition, began shooting at the moon to frighten away Mr. Frog.
Fear of the Future. Next, Thailand would be severely threatened. In Bangkok last week, the Great Emerald Buddha, Palladium of the Kingdom, had been dressed in his summer costume of emerald-encrusted gold filigree—a ritual uninterrupted by political tension following the recent death of Strongman Sarit Thanarat. Though a scandal involving Sarit's finances has been tossed into the lap of his successor, General Thanom Kittakachorn, and in the north a pocket of pro-Red outlaws persists, anti-Communist Thailand is still the stablest country in the neighborhood. But it would -have a hard time holding up amid the other falling dominoes.