The War: One-Way Traffic on a Two-Way Street

"Escalation" is one of those windy words that are foisted on the public by military bureaucrats, interminably parroted by the press and kept in the vernacular long after losing any real meaning. Though the word—let alone its antonym, de-escalation—appears in neither Webster's Second nor the Oxford English dictionary, it has become synonymous with the U.S. commitment to Viet Nam. More specifically, it has become a pejorative term encompassing any American increase in the level of fighting.

Escalation has thus become a one-way word on what is clearly a two-way street. For the truth is that while Washington has steadily increased its military commitment to Viet Nam since early 1965, Hanoi has been busily intensifying its own participation in the war for even longer—since 1954, in fact. Last week, in half a dozen areas, both sides were stepping up—or escalating—the war.

In the South, the Viet Cong were embarked on a new wave of terrorism aimed at thwarting village elections (see following story). In the Demilitarized Zone and in I (pronounced eye) Corps, the area comprising South Viet Nam's five northernmost provinces, there was an ominous upsurge in Communist military preparations, prompting the Allies to send in heavy reinforcements. North of the 17th parallel, the U.S. air war was measurably intensified by the first bombing raids within the city limits of Haiphong, North Viet Nam's second city and principal port.

New Bulge? For U.S. military planners, I Corps and the DMZ were the most worrisome peril points—particularly with 65,000 main-force enemy troops and local guerrillas infesting the five provinces and at least 35,000 North Vietnamese regulars poised just above the DMZ. Two weeks ago, the Communists overran and briefly occupied the provincial capital of Quang Tri. Since then they have beamed warnings at the ancient imperial capital of Hué that it may be next on their list.

The situation in I Corps, said U.S. Pacific Commander Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp in Washington last week, is "tight, very tight." Said South Viet Nam's Foreign Minister Tran Van Do during a Washington meeting with representatives of the six nations* that have sent troops to his country: "I cannot exclude the possibility of larger-scale invasion. Our two northern provinces of Quang Tri and Thua Thien are presently under terrible pressure." Columnist Joseph Alsop believes that "a new Battle of the Bulge" may be in the making. "Everything is now to be gambled [by Hanoi] to reverse the war's unfavorable trend," predicts Alsop, "by achieving a Dien-bienphu-like success against American troops in I Corps." U.S. Pacification Chief Robert Komer, a World War II combat historian, agrees that a climactic battle may be imminent, but compares it to Saint-Ló, when the Allies burst out of the Normandy perimeter and began the great sweep to Berlin. There may be hard fighting ahead for the U.S., but once the I Corps challenge is met, Komer implies, it may prove to be "a downhill run."