FOREIGN POLICY: INDOCHINA: HOW MUCH LONGER?

“We have so much blood on our hands out there. Why do we thirst for more?”

—Idaho Democratic Senator

Frank Church

“There was a cry for help in the dark of night, which I did not want to deny.”

—New York Republican Senator

Jacob Javits

Once united in their opposition to U.S. involvement in Indochina, the two Senators were now divided on whether to provide more American military aid to Cambodia. The split dramatized the agony among political leaders in Washington as battlefield events in the small nations of Cambodia and South Viet Nam once again troubled America’s long-tortured conscience concerning its role in that distant part of the world. The persistent Khmer Rouge rebels seemed on the verge of final military success as they pinched the Cambodian capital of Phnom-Penh. Communist forces in South Viet Nam stepped up the fighting there to its most intense level since the Paris Peace Accords were supposed to have ended it all in 1973. The problem for the U.S. was what, if anything, it should or could do about either situation.

The debate in Washington was remarkably calm and reasoned, even though it revived the nation’s receding emotions over its most distressing military entanglement. At issue were the Ford Administration’s request to send $222 million in additional military aid to President Lon Nol’s shaky Cambodian government and, less urgently, $300 million in more arms to the less immediately endangered government of South Viet Nam’s Nguyen Van Thieu.

For the moment, Gerald Ford was pressing his Cambodia request hardest, personally telephoning key Republican members of Congress. Only a few years ago, any such relatively trifling request for military funds in Indochina would have speeded through Congress with barely a whimper of protest. Now, while prospects for approval of some limited aid varied day by day, they appeared forlorn by week’s end. The House, in particular, seemed adamantly opposed.

Clearly the opponents of aid to Cambodia were more aggressive. Generally they insisted that Lon Nol’s forces were doomed with or without U.S. aid, that further help would merely prolong the killing without affecting the outcome and that the U.S. had neither a vital interest nor a commitment to either side in Cambodia’s internal fighting. Defenders of aid echoed Ford’s claim that the funds were needed to sustain the government troops until the rainy season, when a negotiated settlement could be sought, thus avoiding a “bloodbath” that might be inflicted by rampaging rebels. The Administration had also argued that failure to help a friendly government, even in a losing cause, would undermine faith in the U.S. from other allies elsewhere in the world.

Ford had been forewarned that his aid requests faced an uphill struggle. A Gallup poll released last week reinforced that feeling; it showed that 78% of those polled opposed more aid for either Cambodia or South Viet Nam. Nevertheless, Ford received two pleasant surprises as the Congress began processing his Cambodia proposal. By identical squeak-through margins of 4 to 3, a subcommittee in each chamber kept the notion of some kind of aid to Cambodia alive.

It was the liberal Javits who unexpectedly supplied the pivotal vote—startling even Ford—as a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to provide $125 million in emergency aid and $90 million for humanitarian help (such as food and medical supplies). Democrat Hubert Humphrey, who chaired the subcommittee, argued that Cambodia’s military situation was “hopeless,” the Lon Nol government was too weak to negotiate and the Administration wanted the aid merely to show that the U.S. had not “copped out.” Javits contended that one final injection of help could make negotiations more likely by “continuing some level of resistance” to the rebels. “I’m reluctant to pull the plug,” he told the subcommittee. On purely humanitarian grounds, Javits said, he could not resist Cambodia’s “cry for help.”

The key voting switch in a subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee came from Delaware Republican Pierre S. Du Pont. After voting earlier against aid, he provided the majority vote for a compromise package of $82.5 million spread over 90 days and tied to monthly reports by Ford on progress in seeking a negotiated settlement. All military aid would end June 30. Du Pont, 40, argued that this would be more useful in achieving peace than an abrupt cutoff of help.

Despite those two slim victories, Ford’s aid fight rapidly skidded downhill. In both the Senate and the House, the controlling Democrats held party caucuses and voted strongly against further aid to either Cambodia or South Viet Nam. The Democratic Senators argued the matter for more than two hours as South Dakota’s James Abourezk led opposition to aid. He complained that the political maneuvering over Cambodia seemed to center more on “whom to blame” when Cambodia falls than on “ending the slaughter.”

The full House Foreign Relations Committee then rejected the advice of its subcommittee and killed the compromise $82.5 million aid plan by a vote of 18 to 15. It did so after hearing Assistant Secretary of State Robert S. Ingersoll contend that an aid cutoff would render the U.S. incapable of applying effective pressure to get the contending parties to negotiate. A majority of the committee seemed to feel that the Administration should have been pushing harder for negotiation long ago.

The Administration’s fading hopes will focus this week on the Senate. There the Foreign Relations Committee will take up the pro-aid recommendation of its subcommittee in deliberations that one staff member describes as “searching their souls, trying to make the right decision.” Committee sentiment seems almost evenly split, with prospects in the full Senate equally uncertain if an aid bill reaches the floor. Unless some aid measure also emerges from the House, however, any Senate approval will be in vain. In practical terms, the Administration’s best bet seems to lie in getting approval to shift existing Pentagon funds to keep ammunition flowing to Cambodia rather than in seeking new money.

Some opponents of more aid to Indochina suspected that the Administration’s push for Cambodian funds was aimed at enlisting help later for South Viet Nam. The Cambodia request allows members of Congress to appease anti-aid sentiment at home by voting against it, this theory goes, and thus makes a later vote for Viet Nam funds less risky. Moreover, if Cambodia soon falls and there are recriminations, it will be harder to vote against aid for Saigon.

Those suspicions may be unfair, and indeed a White House adviser insisted that Ford will not lead any drive to blame the Democrats if Cambodia’s forces collapse; the President said as much himself in his most recent press conference. Yet, this aide conceded, Ford would not have to push any such attack, since others would. He added, “The President knows that he’s said his piece; he did his best. If the Democrats won’t do it, they won’t do it.” In fact, however, a considerable number of Republicans also oppose further aid; the developing majority against it will probably be bipartisan.

At week’s end a frustrated President Ford relayed word through his press secretary that he was “terribly disappointed” at the reluctance of Congress to move promptly to help Cambodia’s beleaguered government. All that the Administration wanted, insisted one of Ford’s top national security aides, was to help effect “some kind of reconciliation” among Cambodia’s contending forces that “would protect the lives of the bulk of the Cambodian population.” Frankly and refreshingly, he conceded that the U.S. had “no strategic interests” in Cambodia and seemed to admit that, in any case, the military battle had been lost. But that was not true, he insisted, in South Viet Nam. Indeed, battlefront reports from both nations (see next page) supported the White House view that sharp distinctions exist between the two troubling situations. Unfortunately, they also made clear that for all those involved, including the U.S., more anguish and perhaps more difficult choices wait ahead.