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Ky to Power. Yet the enemy now faces an irrevocable U.S. commitment, and as a result, Saigon of late has had a spring in the step and a sparkle in the eye missing for years. Its visible embodiment is jaunty, popular Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, 35, who has moved with verve from scarf-clad air force commander to chairman of the board in the military collegium now ruling the nation. Ky is the closest thing to a national hero that South Viet Nam has and wherever he goes in Saigon, admiring teen-agers gather round.
Ky's promises of social reform and a vigorous attack on corruption, coupled with the recent allied successes against the Viet Cong, have so far kept the nation's fractious Buddhists and Catholics quiescent: they simply cannot find credible grievances that will bring crowds into the street. Even though the Ky government has made no dent in the nation's two big problems—its 680,000 refugees and its soaring inflation—Saigon's political situation, say old hands, is the most stable that it has been since 1960. From time to time, there are complaints that it is too stable, precisely because the military junta is running it, and that civilians ought to be in charge. Ky's Chief of State, Major General Nguyen Van Thieu, answers that bluntly: "I don't believe that any civilian government would have enough power to fight the Communists."
Before Ky and the U.S. buildup, Vietnamese desertions were running at a disastrous 500 a month and recruiting was at an alltime low. The desertion rate has now fallen to minimal levels, and Saigon's reserves are at last swelling at the targeted rate of 10,000 new men a month.
Working Together. Perhaps the best measure that the nation increasingly shares Ky's credo is the fact that negotiation with the Viet Cong is seldom even discussed. "The only way we can lose this war now," says Thieu, "is in a political or moral way — not in a tactical way. So why should any of us talk of negotiation? If we talk about negotiation now, we give the enemy hope and confidence." Still no one in Saigon — or Washington — has any illusions about the job remaining to be done. General Harold K. Johnson, Army Chief of Staff, used to think in terms of ten years to finish off the Viet Cong, now says cautiously, "Maybe I'm a 9½-year man." Even the most optimistic U.S. officials think five years the outside minimum.