The Cold War: The Mix Master

After taking the capital city of Vientiane by storm, Laos' General Phoumi Nosavan moved to town with his new Premier, easygoing Prince Boun Oum, and a clutch of U.S. "advisers." A majority of the National Assembly had already voted Boun Oum into power, and King Savang Vatthana even bestirred himself to leave the pagodas of his home town, Luangprabang, and visit the capital to give the new government his blessing. But the civil war in Laos was in fact no nearer to an end than ever—and at week's end the Communists were moving ominously to intensify it. Furthermore, the U.S. was at odds with its allies about the whole thing.

Defeated in Vientiane, the pro-Communist battalion led by Paratroop Captain Kong Le simply retreated 50 miles north into the mountain wilds, picking up support from the Russian-backed Pathet Lao guerrillas along the way. Last week plainly marked Russian Hyushin-14 planes swooped daily over Kong Le's stronghold to drop supplies from neighboring Communist North Viet Nam.

When U.S. observers in a C-47 flew up to photograph the operation, a machine gun, either in the Ilyushin or on the ground, opened up, shot out one engine on the American C-47 and riddled the fuselage.

War by Deputy. The Russians insisted their aid was perfectly legal, having been requested by the government of neutralist Premier Souvanna Phouma before he was ousted by Phoumi. But the blatant Russian airdrops were plainly designed to alarm the U.S.'s allies, and they succeeded. Both British and French were frankly appalled at the spectacle of the U.S. and Russia shaping up toward another "war by deputy" on the Korean model. The British argued for a cease-fire and a neutralist Laos with a coalition government that would include the pro-Communist Pathet Lao. They even sent a note to Nikita Khrushchev to propose revival of the international control commission (India, Poland, Canada) that was set up to patrol Laos at the end of the Indo-China war. Khrushchev piously declared he was for it, and added that even better, the Geneva conference (which originally partitioned French Indo-China after Dienbienphu) should be reconvened to consider the whole problem.

Privately, the British do not dispute the desirability of having a totally anti-Communist government in Laos, but they seriously question whether such a government can muster the energy and determination to eliminate the Pathet Lao.

They argue that the Pathet Lao would find it as hard to take over the country as their anti-Communist opponents have.

Basically, they consider Laos ungovernable by anybody, because of the oddities of its terrain and the unshakable eccentricities of its princeling politicians. Their view was succinctly summarized by the London Times: "If Laos is left to the Laotians, it can be a danger to nobody." The U.S. retorts that, by allowing the Communists to use the country as a supply line into South Viet Nam, Laos can be a danger to its neighbors.