The Soviets Settle In

Hanoi turns to Moscow for help and is coming up with lots of it

Following Hanoi's conquest of South Viet Nam in 1975, the country's Communist leaders repeatedly emphasized their determination to stay clear of great-power entanglements and to preserve their hard-sought independence. They have not succeeded. With surprising swiftness, Viet Nam has in the past three months turned increasingly to the Soviets for help in keeping its far-flung military machine running. In return, Moscow has extended its strategic and military reach into Southeast Asia with a vigor that has alarmed Japan and the Association of South East Asian Nations and certainly angered China.

Viet Nam's tilt toward Moscow became conspicuous in 1978. Hanoi first joined COMECON, the Soviet-bloc economic organization, then signed a 25-year treaty of friendship and cooperation with Moscow in November. The dramatic new Soviet military role in Indochina surfaced in February, when China invaded Viet Nam. Once proud of its self-reliant mobility, Hanoi has become virtually dependent on the Soviets for logistics and aerial reconnaissance.

Soviet "volunteer" technicians assist not only in the operation of Viet Nam's major airfields, but also in keeping open its ports. To move Hanoi's troops between its forward bases in Cambodia and the China border and the rest of Viet Nam, Soviet pilots fly them in mammoth Antonov-22 transports. Tan Son Nhut airport near Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) is kept busy handling incoming flights of Ilyushin-76s, carrying pallets of artillery ammunition for use, presumably, in Cambodia. Danang airport, almost a ghost field after 1975, now serves as a refueling base for long-range TU-95D reconnaissance planes of the Soviet naval air fleet.

To support all this aerial activity, Moscow is completing two electronic eavesdropping complexes in Laos, and has started construction of a radar tracking center near Sisophon, in northwestern Cambodia. Soviet merchantmen ply between Vietnamese coast ports and the Cambodian port of Kompong Som on resupply missions. Submarines of the Soviet Pacific fleet glide in and out of the huge American-built complex at Cam Ranh Bay, even though it is not a full-fledged Soviet naval base.

Even the old Air America routes in Laos have been partly taken over by Soviet pilots in Antonov-12s. There have been reports that some of the pilots supplement their income by smuggling Laotian gold into Viet Nam. Observed a cynical military attache: "Without the Russians it would be almost impossible to move around the greater Vietnamese Empire, er, excuse me, the Greater Indochina Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Moscow's burgeoning military presence in Indochina gives the Soviet Union a potential to control the vital shipping lanes of the South China Sea. That prospect has caused Japan to threaten Hanoi with a cutoff in aid, which now amounts to $50 million, if it allows Cam Ranh Bay to become a Soviet base. Last week the five ASEAN states of Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines poured cold water on Hanoi's offer of a nonaggression pact. The pact was apparently designed to allay ASEAN fears that have been raised by the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, but Hanoi's prospective partners in the treaty would have none of it. Malaysia, which is probably Viet Nam's closest friend in ASEAN, pointedly noted that if Hanoi wanted to prove its sincerity, "deeds should speak louder than words."

Viet Nam, which once touted itself as a model of socialist development, has become a troubled pariah. It is only now recovering slowly from the bloody but inconclusive border war with China. Although the repressive regime of Cambodia's Premier, Pol Pot, has been driven out of Phnom Penh, Vietnamese forces are bogged down in what appears to be a protracted guerrilla war in Cambodia.

The Vietnamese economy is a shambles, and the thousands of refugees who land on other Asian shores every week are visible proof of the country's internal problems and unrest.

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Hanoi is seeking some new international friends and potential benefactors. One notable target of opportunity is the U.S. Last month Minister of State Nguyen Co Thach told a visiting delegation from the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong that he would "fly to New York" the following day, if necessary, to reopen stalled talks with the U.S. on normalizing relations. He even hinted, preposterously, that Hanoi might permit the U.S. military to use its former bases in Viet Nam if relations improved. "There are two eventualities facing Viet Nam," he said. "One is normalization with the U.S. to diversify our relations. The other is no normalization and no diversification. The door is very widely open."

Whether or not the U.S. walks in is another matter. In Washington, American officials insisted that a settlement of the Cambodian situation ought to be a precondition of any further discussions. Said one skeptic of the latest Vietnamese overture: "They like to make people think one thing, and then they will do another." -

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