New Approach in Indo-China

Thirty-two villages in Indo-China recently switched voluntarily from the allies to the Communist offensive, despite the fact that French and Vietnamese forces had the military power to protect them. After seven years of weary jungle war, France is discouraged by these desertions, as is our State Department which has used pressure to keep the French fighting. The picture of Indo-China as the block to Red control of Southeastern Asia is fading with the continued inability to rally support of the native population behind French defenses.

Blame for this increasingly apparent failure is not the absence of American military aid. Guns and airplanes from the U.S. are available, and plans are now underway to send technicians to service the equipment. America is, in fact, paying for two-thirds of the war's cost. Yet all of the dollars spent in weapons has won neither the war nor the friendship of the Indo-Chinese.

There is now the danger of a loss like the reversal suffered in China when Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government fell. Although the U.S. was sending him supplies of arms, Chiang was unable to hold control of his troops long enough to make a good try at stopping the Red flood. The difficulties that besieged the Chinese Nationalists are not completely parallel to those in Indo-China, but American expectation that military aid will solve the problem is the same.

If nothing else, the desertion of the villages in Indo-China should remove any delusions in the State Department that military aid is a panacea in the fight against Communism. To return to the early days of the Truman Doctrine or the Marshall Plan when the U.S. seized the tactical offense in the cold war, however, would not be feasible. Such a shift would neglect the primacy of a military balance of power, necessary as the Soviet menace has increased. But the requirements for rifles and tanks should not obscure the advantages of economic and technical assistance.

Needed is increased non-military help in addition to the present arms aid. Chester Bowles' experience in India demonstrated that best results in a technical aid program do not come with blatant give-away campaigns. More good was accomplished by the introduction of a ten-dollar modern plough than by a thousand dollars of free rice. And this is the policy that America should follow in Indo-China, as well as in other countries in like situations. The U.S. should attempt to maintain good will among the citizens of Indo-China by convincing them that America is interested in their well being, while supplying them with weapons for battling the Communists.