Foreign Relations: Northwest’s Passage

FOREIGN RELATIONS

Over the blare of a dance band, the flat, jarring crack of explosions rang loud and near. “Gee,” said a woman, “I hope that’s a salute.” Hubert Humphrey peered into the rainswept gloom outside Saigon’s Independence Palace and said: “I hope so, too.” The three salvos were in fact salutations from the Viet Cong, whose mortarmen thus welcomed the U.S. Vice President to Viet Nam and attempted to turn last week’s inaugural reception for President Nguyen Van Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky into a wake. Fired from the roof of a shack in downtown Sai gon, the shells hit in the palace garden, precisely where Humphrey, Thieu, Ky, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General William C. Westmoreland would have been standing had rain not forced the party indoors.

Syntax Soldier. The shelling was an ominous interlude in the Vice President’s three-day swing through South VietNam, a tour of syntax soldiering that found Humphrey at his ebullient best. Traveling by armed Huey helicopter, C-118 transport, Jeep, limousine and shanks’ mare, the Vice President—who bore the code name Northwest-coursed from the Delta to the Demilitarized Zone on a threefold mission.

First, he talked to American troops—Marines at Danang, flyers back from the air war up North, sailors on river assault boats—urging them not to be dismayed by the dissent at home. Second, he talked through newsmen to the American public, pointing up the progress in the war and calling for patience. Third, he talked to South Viet Nam’s newly installed leaders, demanding a more vigorous effort in both prosecuting the war and broadening the base of Saigon’s government.

“If there are two things that characterize America in war,” he told the U.S. embassy staff in Saigon, “they are disagreement and valor.” At the burgeoning base of Chu Lai, where he awarded medals to soldiers of the America Division, Humphrey reminded his audience that “nation-building is our business,” and warned that “unless we win it here, America doesn’t have another chance.” In sessions with Thieu and Ky, he urged development of sound political parties and an end to the corruption and wrangling that has so often disrupted Vietnamese political life. To one and all, he passed along his primary message: “The Americans are here so that the Vietnamese can develop their own country in their own way. We don’t want everything stamped ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ We want it stamped ‘Made in Viet Nam by the Vietnamese for the Vietnamese.’ ”

Still, the American stamp was ev ident wherever the Vice President went. Accompanied by a horde of Secret Service men and military police (“They think I have a machine that spits M.P.s,” groused one provost marshal), he cop-tered to the U.S.S. Benewah, flagship of River Flotilla 1 anchored off the Delta, to pass out Purple Hearts and news from home. “Who won the Minne sota-Michigan game?” asked a Minnesota sailor. “We took them 20 to 15,” grinned Old Gopher Humphrey. Jetting up to Phu Bai, a small Marine outpost near the embattled DMZ, he boarded a transport plane for a look at Con Thien and Dong Ha. Circling at 1,500 feet, he Watched Marine artillery fire slam the Communist positions hidden among the craters (“Just like Minnesota,” he said, pointing to the thousands of rain-filled shell holes), then landed at Danang for an afternoon of pep talks and presentations (a Presidential Unit Citation to the Third Marines, Silver Stars and Distinguished Service Crosses to Americans and South Vietnamese troops).

Back at Chu Lai for a pre-departure press conference, Humphrey told reporters: “I almost hate to go back. I haven’t heard a single gripe from one American—but when I get back to Washington, I’m sure that I will be able to compensate.”

Technical Aid. Humphrey had two other important stops to make before he got back to Gripesville. The first was Kuala Lumpur, capital of Malaysia, where Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman said that Malaysia is considering a revival of its rural-assistance program to South Viet Nam, which lapsed with the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963. Malaysia already trains South Vietnamese in police work and American troops in jungle techniques. Warned by the Tunku that Communist China will certainly capture all of Southeast Asia if the war is lost, Humphrey repeated in essence what he had said in Viet Nam: “We mean to stick it out.” The Vice President’s only defeat of the two-day Malaysian tour came in a golf match at the hands of Deputy Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak (“I’d like a little bit of technical aid from Malaysia,” quipped Hubert). During a tour of the Malaysian Parliament, the Vice President sat in the Speaker’s chair and ruefully commented: “The one at home is more wobbly, in more ways than one.”

From Malaysia, Humphrey flew on to Djakarta; he was the first top-ranking American to visit the Indonesian capital since “President for Life” Sukarno was eased from power 16 months ago. Fearful that American visibility would only aid the Reds in their comeback attempts, the U.S. has maintained a “low profile” position in Indonesia since the anti-Communist resurgence against Sukarno began in October 1965.

However, Humphrey was greeted by thousands of Indonesians waving tiny paper American flags—a far cry from the raging mobs that burned and looted the U.S. and British embassies in years past. At a dinner in Humphrey’s honor. Acting President Suharto frankly appealed for U.S. economic assistance and warned that “if the economy cannot be improved in a relatively short time” the Indonesian Communist Party might well score a comeback. Clearly, the Indonesian economy would be the key topic during the Vice President’s four-day stay—as it was at a conference of world businessmen in Geneva (see BUSINESS).