LAOS: The Old One-Two

Cheek by jowl with all the cheery advance stories about the Eisenhower-Khrushchev talks last week in U.S. newspapers were brief and confusing reports of trouble in just the kind of far-off place where Communists like to probe Western intentions. Probably half of all Americans would stumble in pronouncing Laos and even more have trouble locating it.

Laos (pronounced Lah-oze) is a faithfully Buddhist kingdom known as “the land of a million elephants,” which five years ago was carved out of French Indo-China in the Geneva conference after Dienbienphu. It has Communists to the north of it (China), Communists to the east of it (North Viet Nam), and Communists inside it (the Pathet Lao). Only 18 months ago it seemed to be slipping inexorably toward Red rule. As the result of a queer, credulous armistice with its own Communist rebels, the Laotian government reserved two of its Cabinet posts for Communists and agreed to absorb two battalions of Communist rebels into the royal Laotian army.

But in a scant year since taking office, hard-driving Premier Phoui Sananikone. 55, has reversed this tide. Publicly lining Laos up “on the side of the free world,” Phoui (pronounced Pwee) cleansed his government of Communists and successfully “integrated” the army, i.e., interned one of the rebel units—a move that sent the other fleeing toward Communist North Viet Nam. He made it clear that he no longer wanted any part of the three-power (Poland, India, Canada) international control commission established by the 1954 Geneva agreement, for while the Canadians sat around frustrated, the Reds used the Poles to keep close tab on Laos. Things were going well for the West in Laos.

Cleft Stick. The Reds struck back. Despite the monsoon rains that were pouring down, sweeping away airstrips and flooding the valleys, Communist-led Black Thai tribesmen, trained and equipped in North Viet Nam, last month invaded the remote northern Laotian provinces of Phongsaly and Samneua. Slipping expertly through the suffocating jungle, the Red guerrillas surprised one small Laotian army garrison after another, inflicted 300 casualties on government forces and captured several villages lying astride the classic invasion route into Laos from the battle-renowned village of Dienbienphu.

In the Laotian capital of Vientiane, Phoui ordered a roundup of top Laotian Communists, including the biggest of them all, Red Prince Souphanouvong, nephew of Laos’ ailing, 74-year-old king. The royal Laotian army, though hampered by a communications system that in forward jungle areas consists of runners carrying messages in cleft sticks, slowly succeeded in reconquering most of the lost villages. Early last week Vientiane reported that the bulk of the Communist forces had apparently withdrawn, leaving behind 1,000 men “to conduct political activity and prepare for the next action by Communist troops.”

Yankee, Go Home! Just when the Red efforts seemed to be flagging, Communist China leaped in last week to heat things up. At first, Peking’s propaganda line on Laos had been curiously restrained—presumably because Chairman Mao Tse-tung and all the top leaders have been away from Peking, hashing over their domestic difficulties at a secret conclave in the provinces. (Best guess as to their meeting place: the northwestern Chinese city of Sian, which fortnight ago received an otherwise inexplicable visit from North Viet Nam’s goat-bearded Ho Chi Minh.) Last week, as if to make up for lost time, Red China’s Foreign Ministry burst out with implied threats reminiscent of those that preceded Mao’s intervention in the Korean war.

“Sole responsibility for the present situation,” charged Radio Peking, “rests with the U.S. and the Sananikone government.” Peking accused the U.S. of trying to turn Laos into a U.S. military base. “This naturally poses a threat to China and [North] Viet Nam. To eliminate the tension in Laos, all American military personnel and arms and ammunition must be withdrawn, all U.S. military bases must be abolished.”

Time for Anti-Thaw. Fact is, as Peking well knows, that the U.S. has no bases in Laos and U.S. “troops” there consist of 70 men supervising the supply of light World War II U.S. weapons to the royal Laotian army, plus 100 army officers on inactive duty assigned to a French military training mission.

Militarily, the conflict in Laos was strictly small bore. Why, then, had Red China wheeled up such heavy political artillery? The minimum Communist ambition may be to frighten Phoui into accepting return of the international control commission and readmitting the Laotian Reds into his government. But this seemed hardly worth a fuss that might queer Khrushchev’s trip to the U.S.—unless, as some British diplomats speculate, it was Mao’s way of reminding Khrushchev that Red China does not want any thaw in U.S.-Russian relations. The U.S. State Department, however, implicitly accused Moscow of complicity in the Laos invasion (after all, Ho Chi Minh had just been in Moscow).

Washington is resigned to the fact that whenever the East-West conflict in Europe and the Middle East temporarily eases up, trouble breaks out in Asia. But whether or not the trouble was Mao’s doing alone, or Moscow’s too, there was nothing haphazard about it. When joined with Peking’s saber rattling against India (see below), it became clear that Red China was in the mood to make trouble. Peking may hesitate to start up Quemoy again (having been thrown off last time), it may fear new hostilities in Korea, but it is plainly determined to start something on its southern frontiers.