The War: No Easy Formula

U.S. military planners call it “the red envelope.” Shaped like a triangular flap, the 10,000-sq.-mi. zone encompasses the industrial heartland of North Viet Nam (see map). Yet, as though sealed off by an invisible cordon, its cluster of strategic installations around Hanoi and Haiphong has hardly been grazed by the war, for the U.S. has proscribed bombing raids on the triangle—save for some Soviet SAM missile sites and a few minor targets—ever since its day-in, day-out raids against the North began last February.

Pentagon analysts, who color the inviolate area red on their war maps, have pinpointed some 30 prime targets within the envelope, an enclave anchored by the Red River town of Yen Bai in the northwest, crucial harbor ports of Haiphong and Cam Pha in the northeast and Thanh Hoa at the southern apex. Around Hanoi are a thermal power plant, an engineering facility, key bridges and the Phuc Yen airfield, where Chinese-supplied MIG-17s are based. In addition to its vast port, Haiphong’s potential targets include two power plants, two cement factories, two airfields and three storage areas that hold 70% of the country’s POL (petroleum, oil, lubricant) supplies. Also within the envelope: 22 SAM sites, a network of earthen irrigation dikes in the fertile Red River delta, extensive mining operations.

Bono Fides. Thus far the U.S. has exempted the area because attacks might, in Pentagonese, prove “counterproductive.” No matter how scrupulously residential areas are avoided, bombing Hanoi (pop. 650,000) and Haiphong (375,000) would certainly cause civilian casualties—and a U.S. propaganda setback. Blasting the docks or mining the harbor at Haiphong would provoke furious protests from America’s allies, who have hauled some 100 shiploads of cargo there so far this year. Air raids might also stiffen rather than weaken morale on the ground, as happened in both Britain and Germany during World War II. Nor would the destruction of its industrial plant necessarily hobble Hanoi’s war in the South, since Peking, Moscow and other Communist capitals have been the Viet Cong’s chief armorers all along.

Opening the envelope would inevitably take a higher toll of American planes and aircrews; close to 150 U.S. aircraft have already been lost over North Viet Nam. Red Chinese planes, possibly troops as well, might be prompted to enter the war. “China doesn’t want to risk her air force,” a U.S. official points out, “but she may have to, or else lose all her bona fides.” Stone-Age Solution. Despite these drawbacks, the Administration has been under intense pressure to bomb the Hanoi-Haiphong complex. Echoing the Joint Chiefs, politicians of both parties —notably Georgia Democrat Richard Russell, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and his opposite number in the House, South Carolina Democrat L. Mendel Rivers—have be gun to protest that privileged targets hamper the war effort. Richard Nixon called for stepped-up bombing of the North to prevent the U.S. from becoming “bogged down” in the ground war. G.O.P. House Leader Gerald Ford and Republican Conference Chairman Melvin Laird warned that Viet Nam would be a major issue in next year’s congressional elections—as it should be.

On the other hand, bombing raids on Hanoi may well be routine by election time. As U.S. casualty rates climb, President Johnson will almost certainly feel obliged to take any logical step to weaken North Viet Nam’s war machine. Few experts agree with General Curtis LeMay, retired commandant of the Strategic Air Command, that the U.S. should “bomb them back into the Stone Age.” Rather, they believe that a carefully phased buildup of air attacks, while damaging Hanoi’s strategic capability, would serve the even more important purpose of putting the North Vietnamese on notice that they, rather than Peking, will pay the ultimate price for their aggression.

Some Administration officials expect the President to order attacks on at least some targets in the area this winter. Even more significantly, they expect U.S. ground forces to grow from the current total of 165,000 to 320,000 by mid-1966. For however intensively the U.S. may bomb the North, there is no quick formula for victory. The fight for the South is a struggle for terrain, an infantryman’s war that will have to be slugged out on the ground.

Magnifying Tendency. As an indication of the cost, U.S. headquarters in Saigon announced last week that 240 American soldiers had died in a single seven-day period (the average weekly combat toll in Korea was 145), reflecting the heavy losses of the fight in the la Drang Valley. U.S. casualties since 1961 have totaled 1,335 dead, 6,131 wounded — nearly half in the past two months. In the same four years, 26,900

South Vietnamese soldiers were killed v. an estimated 88,800 Communist troops. But Hanoi, which already has seven and possibly nine regular regiments in the South, is expected to infiltrate four full combat divisions in the next few months.

The prospects, as General William C. Westmoreland, U.S. commander in Viet Nam, warned last week, do not justify easy optimism. “When the American people read the headlines about victories,” said Westmoreland, “there may be a tendency for them to magnify these actions. I believe there is a certain danger that we may lose sight of what I consider a true appraisal of the situation.” The general’s appraisal: “A long conflict—and we must be prepared to accept this.”