I think the Tet offensive was a very striking indication to them and to everybody what it means to win. During the Tet offensive, in effect, the NLF just won the whole war. They took over all the cities- they hadn't taken over all the bases and they hadn't taken over all of Saigon but basically they conquered the cities after having taken the countryside.

But it didn't do them any good. The U.S. just wiped out all the cities. It was no sweat. That indicates to them that they can't take over the cities even if they have that military capacity. Most people in Lao think that the Pathet Lao could have taken over the last CIA bases like Long Cheng but they didn't want to pay the cost.

What do you think would happen in Thailand if a revolutionary force there gained enough power to attack the American B-52 bases as the NLF did in Vietnam before they were removed?

The United States can't lose. We can always fight from the sea. During the Tet offensive the NLF actually did threaten the bases and, in fact, the helicopter bases were attacked. I think about a thousand or fourteen hundred helicopters were destroyed on the ground. So what the U.S. did was send in a helicopter carrier.

The United States has infinite resources compared with the NLF or any Vietnamese force, any indigenous Southeast Asian force, and I think we'd fight even harder to preserve Thailand than Vietnam for all sorts of reasons.

But if it were ever threatened . . . The bombing of Vietnam also goes on from Okinawa. It's an Asian war.

Is the situation in Thailand- the situation of the people- comparable to that in the other three countries?

One difference is that Thailand has had a pretty stable military dictatorship for over 20 years now. Thailand's a very rich country by Asian standards. There hasn't been a great deal of guerrilla insurgency. Bangkok is superficially rather affluent and it's basically a Western city implanted in Thailand. For some part of the Thai population- that part which is either the elite or those who are involved in service for the elite- has a fair amount of commodities.

As far as the peasantry are concerned, up until recently there haven't been overwhelming sources of peasant discontent except in the tribal areas of the northeast.

But the United States has moved in Thailand very soon and very quickly. They want to undercut the thing before it begins. The preventive counterinsurgency efforts in Thailand are extremely intensive. The place is just flooded with anthropologists.

There was a good article in the New York Review [of Books] last week about counterinsurgency research in Thailand which showed how the anthropological profession has committed itself almost completely to a major counterinsurgency effort there.

And its not just that- for example, in Thailand the Meo happen to be the guerrillas. In Laos they're the CIA.

How did the Laotian Meos come to fight for the CIA?

There always have been antagonisms between the mountain tribesmen and the lowland peoples and they were exploited very effectively by the CIA, who offered them guns and told them they would protect them against the Lao or lowland people and also the North Vietnamese whom they're very afraid of.

And they buy their opium and no doubt the CIA ships it through Saigon or wherever the outlet is. Incidentally the Meo are split, there are Meo on the other side too.