Counter-Insurgency: Going Multilateral?

SINGAPORE (DSNI)-Is counter-insurgency going multilateral? A confidential Asian Development Bank study on Vietnam suggests the possibility. The classified report predicts the Vietnam war will wither to a "low level insurgency" by 1973 with 25,000 American military men remaining in the country and multilateral assistance complementing U.S. aid on an expanded scale.

In 1970, the ADB approved its first projects in Vietnam-about $2.7 million toward fisheries development and a rural banking system.

"We're supposed to be wary," said ADB President Takeshi Watanabe, "about getting involved in projects in the three states of what used to be called, and is now being so called once more, Indochina. Some translate wary as 'no.' My dictionary suggests a better definition: 'cautious.'"

"To the question 'will it help?" said Watanbe, "we answered 'yes' when examining, last year, the possibility of financing an agricultural development scheme near the capital of Laos. We still think it will help."

"To the same question we answered 'yes' when examining, in 1970, the possibility of financing a fisheries development project in the Republic of Vietnam. 'The weaknesses and distraction in Vietnam's wartime economy have to be corrected now and not at some future date when peace is restored,' Emile Benoit reminds us. We think the fisheries project will help."

Emile Benoit, to whom Watanabe refers, is an American specialist who did a special South Vietnam study for the ADB last year. The study has not been released, is marked "for official use only" and is called "classified" by Bank officials.

According to the Benoit study: "Assuming that aid cuts will be inevitable after 1972, it would seem reasonable to aim for U.S. residual financing of a pre-buildup (i-e-1964) level of per capita imports, adjusted for price increases. We estimate this for 1975 at $514 million in 1969 (U.S. export) prices, but we project a further $70 million of Republic of Vietnam capital imports, financed by an assumed increase in non-U.S. aid and loans between 1969 and 1975."

"It is important," added Benoit, "that the U.S. encourage other countries and multinational agencies to participate in Vietnam's aid program. . . ."

The question thus becomes not "will it help?" but "whom will it help?"

There is another question too: why would hard-headed bankers be persuaded to put up even modest amounts of capital toward the aid of a country like South Vietnam, particularly when short of capital themselves?

Benoit provides a provocative but mysterious answer: ". . . Vietnam hostilities will effectively end, probably without a peace treaty by 1973, through a Hanoi decision to withdraw, and by the re-civilianization of the Viet Cong and transition to a low level insurgency-thus providing the Republic of Vietnam with a respite of uncertain duration."

"The withdrawal of U.S. troops will proceed at a pace of roughly 12,000 a month until the latter part of 1972, and at an average rate of around 3000 a month thereafter until a residual force of 25,000 volunteers engaged mainly in training and specialty functions will be reached in 1975."

"Vietnamization will proceed to transfer a vast quantity of U.S. equipment and bases to the ARVN, one of the most powerful, as well as largest, armies in the world. Furthermore, when hostilities cease, circa 1973, confidence that hostilities will not recommence will be weak, and a high level of military preparedness will be maintained for the rest of the decade."

If not exactly a projection of guaranteed security, this assessment is not a projection of disaster, either. Perhaps the bankers conclude it is worth putting down money in Vietnam to secure investments elsewhere in Southeast Asia.

BUT HOW does Benoit know so much? That the U.S. is going to leave troops in Vietnam, that no negotiated settlement will be reached, that low level insurgency will go on and on?

Benoit says that these predictions are based on a set of "assumptions" which for lack of space should not be included in his survey-though they could be had upon request.

But not if you are a journalist, the "assumptions" remain buried in the bowels of the ADB as secret as a highly classified document of state.

Queried on the Benoit report, John R. Petty, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs and head of the U.S. delegation to the Asian Development Bank's fourth annual meeting just concluded in Singapore, said. "I do not foresee a significant substitution of multilateral aid for U.S. assistance in the next one or two years."

Petty did not rule out the possibility that a significant amount of multilateral aid would go to Vietnam in a "post-hostilities situation," particularly into developing the Mekong River into a vast industrial complex.

Asked whether he foresaw such aid going to North Vietnam as well. he said he did not rule out the possibility but pointed out that the United States "contributes to these various multilateral institutions because it sees them to be in long-term American interest . . . We would not contribute to multilateral assistance which would permit a country to divert more resources toward its military." Copyright 1971-Dispatch News Service International