Nation: THE POLITICS OF WAR

THE Democratic Party this week has to face up to the task of formulating a credible campaign policy on Viet Nam. But which Democratic Party? And which policy?

Lyndon Johnson loyalists can hardly be expected to suggest that the war has, after all, been a mistake, or to conjure up a speedy solution after so many years of searching for one. Hubert Humphrey's adherents, while professing residual loyalty to Johnson's policies, must at the same time proffer some hope for an early and tenable peace. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, though nominally rivals, will continue to urge approximately similar terms for ending the war posthaste.

All approaches are clouded by the enigmatic status of the war itself. No one, from Paris to Washington to Saigon, can say with any certitude at this point whether the recent reduction of military activity in South Viet Nam represents a planned de-escalation by Hanoi or whether it presages yet another all-out offensive.

The prevailing, but by no means unanimous, view within the Administration is that Hanoi is merely regrouping and re-equipping its forces in preparation for a new assault. This has been the history of previous lulls—and "lull" is a relative term. Fierce fighting continues, and at the end of last week Communist-initiated ground action was accelerating. U.S. military commanders in Viet Nam, pointing to the massive infiltration of troops (150,000 so far this year) from the North, believe that the big attack will come any day and that the main thrust will be aimed at Sai gon itself.

Accepting this premise, the White House, along with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, has been in no mood to yield to the North Vietnamese demand that the U.S. halt all bombing of the North as the price of advancing the Paris negotiations. Rather, Washington insists that Hanoi make some parallel gesture. "All they have to do," said Defense Secretary Clark Clifford last week, "is get word to us that they have reduced the level of combat and will continue to reduce the level of combat, and that that constitutes a de-escalatory step." What Washington wants is private or public assurances from Hanoi to the effect that it intends to reduce, or at least not increase, its war effort. Barring that, some concrete evidence, such as a reduction in infiltration, could be taken as a token of good faith. To date, Clifford pointed out, there has been no recognizable "clear signal."

One Little Note. Some other officials take a less rigid stand. Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance, the U.S. negotiators in Paris, think that the time may be at hand to try a bombing pause. Humphrey too, in private Administration deliberations, has been arguing for a pause. He is inclined to take the lull at face value, to accept it as a pacific gesture of sufficient weight to justify a bombing suspension. In public, of course, he cannot break with the Johnson Administration. Yet Humphrey clearly is continuing to edge toward a more conciliatory position, in the process attempting to come out on the left of Richard Nixon.