North Viet Nam: The Jungle Marxist

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Perhaps as a result, Premier Pham Van Dong has recently begun warning that the war might take another five to ten years, and Hanoi's three dailies take up great swatches of space reporting U.S. "teach-ins" and predicting the ultimate rejection of the war by the American people. As Honey says: "Reading the Hanoi papers, you would think that the only Senator in the U.S. is Wayne Morse and the only columnist Walter Lippmann. They offer all this as proof that their cause will succeed."

The Grinding Bind. At the same time, Ho is experiencing ever greater factionalism within his own Lao Dong Party. Foreign Minister Nguyen Duy Trinh and Party Secretary Le Duan tug toward Peking, while Defense Minister Giap and Premier Pham Van Dong lean toward Moscow. This leads many observers to wonder if Ho has real control over his country. Actually, Ho is too supple to be drawn into murderous internecine party battle. He remains above the raging policy debates; then when the contestants are weary and the options laid out, he tips the scales with his own view.

An oft-heard argument is that Ho should be left alone to reunify Viet Nam, since he would doubtless emerge as the Tito of Southeast Asia and hence become a man who could be dealt with reasonably by the West. This is wishful thinking. Ho does not have the 1,100 miles of buffer zone separating him from Red China that Tito had from Russia; nor has Peking's attitude toward North Viet Nam relaxed as Moscow's did toward Yugoslavia before the 1948 break. And when Tito broke clear, he had a unified nation under him, plus all of Western Europe to turn to for economic aid and military assistance.

For all his experience and agility, Ho is now caught in a grinding bind. Neither Moscow nor Peking will put up with him as a purely Vietnamese patriot; each wants him in its camp. The West cannot countenance his Communist expansionism for fear that it will eventually inundate the rest of Southeast Asia. It will take a lot more than his guile and staying power to emerge a victor in Southeast Asia.