LAOS: The Price of Peace

In his palace in steamy Vientiane one day last week, handsome King Savang Vatthana of Laos stared thoughtfully at a freshly opened cable from U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold. "I permit myself," wired Hammarskjold, "to express the hope that the line of independent neutrality . . . will be firmly maintained." Twenty-four hours later, with full approval of the U.S. State Department, King Savang Vatthana quietly overthrew the "pro-Western" army group that fortnight ago tumbled the government of ex-Premier Phoui Sananikone (TIME, Jan. n).

Behind this odd situation lay a coldeyed appraisal of power realities in Laos. In the crisis-ridden months that followed last summer's invasion of Laos by Red guerrillas from Communist North Viet Nam, Phoui Sananikone, 56, the Prime Minister, became painfully aware that the non-Lao tribesmen who make up nearly half of Laos' population had no loyalty to their six-year-old nation. To transform Laos into a reasonable facsimile of a functioning nation would take years of rural economic reform — and peace. Pro-Western as he was, Phoui concluded that Laos would not have such peace if it provoked trouble with its omnivorous neighbors, Communist North Viet Nam and Red China.

To the self-confident commanders of the Laotian army and the aggressive young Laotian politicians who call themselves the Committee for the Defense of the National Interest, Phoui's turn to neutralism was weak-kneed behavior. They agreed with Phoui's basic diagnosis, but not with his cure; they favored junta government, openly allied to the West. They had the full support of 52-year-old, Paris-educated King Savang Vatthana, a shy Buddhist who took over the throne only last fall upon the death of his polygamous, bon vivant father (TIME, Nov. 9). Resenting his constitutional position as a national figurehead, the King worked behind the scenes with the army to drive out Phoui. He was sure that if Hanoi or Peking reacted violently, Western military aid would come pouring in.

Caviar & Cliaos. But U.S. policymakers saw little profit in trying to make a free-world bastion out of an isolated jungle nation whose government had so little popular support. The chaos left after Communist hit-and-run attacks amply bore out a U.N. report's blunt findings that massive aid to Laos ($225 million from the U.S. since 1955) " not so far achieved significant results." The Laotian army, on which 70% of the U.S. aid was spent, has shown itself an unimpressive fighting force; most of the rest of the U.S. money, instead of being used to finance rural economic development, has never got out of Vientiane, whose leading families have developed discriminating tastes in German cars, Scotch whisky, caviar and air-conditioning equipment.

Dag Hammarskjold, seeing an opportunity to exert the U.N.'s tranquilizing influence, was quick to turn the U.S. dilemma to account. With U.S. blessing—and only pro forma Russian protests—Hammarskjold, on his own, sent Finland's Sakari Tuomioja to provide a U.N. "presence" in Laos and to look into ways of bringing U.N. help to the Laotian economy. The unspoken condition of U.N. intervention—Laotian neutrality—struck the U.S. as a reasonable price to pay for peace in Southeast Asia.