An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 (75 page)

The receding problems over Berlin, joined to the conviction that Laos—headed by an even less reliable ally than Diem—would be a poor place to take a military stand against communist aggression, had moved Kennedy to give Vietnam greater attention. And so, in his U.N. speech at the end of September, when he had reported to the assembly “on two threats to peace,” Vietnam had come first and Germany and Berlin second. “The first threat on which I wish to report,” he said, “is widely misunderstood: the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia.” These were not “wars of liberation” but acts of aggression against “free countries living under their own governments.”

Kennedy’s remarks at the U.N. had been a response to reports that the end of the rainy season in October would bring a major assault on South Vietnam by communist infiltrators from the North. On September 15, Rostow had advised Kennedy of Diem’s belief that Hanoi was about to shift from guerrilla attacks to “open warfare.” Three days later, in response to a query from Kennedy about “guerrilla infiltration routes through Laos into South Vietnam,” Taylor had reported a two-year increase in Viet Cong forces from twenty-five hundred to fifteen thousand, most of which had come from outside the country. In his U.N. address, Kennedy had asked “whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Viet Nam,” he declared, “the gates will be opened wide.”

The pressure on Kennedy to do something about Vietnam now reached new levels. Before his Bobby-engineered ouster, Bowles had told Rusk on October 5 that an agreement on Laos would not reverse America’s steadily more precarious position throughout Southeast Asia, where it faced “a deteriorating military situation in Vietnam and a highly volatile political position in Thailand.” Diem’s government, which lacked “an effective political base,” was growing weaker, putting the communists “in a position to rapidly increase their military pressure with every prospect for success.” Was the answer U.S. military intervention? Not surprisingly, Bowles had thought not: “A direct military response to increased Communist pressure,” he had said, “has the supreme disadvantage of involving our prestige and power in a remote area under the most adverse circumstances.”

The journalist Theodore White, whose skeptical writings about Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists during and after World War II had made him famous, sent the president a similar message. On October 11, after returning from a trip to Asia, he wrote Kennedy that “any investment of our troops in the paddies of the [South Vietnamese] delta will, I believe, be useless—or worse. The presence of white American troops will feed the race hatred of the Viet-Namese.” He thought the U.S. would be forced into a guerrilla war that could not be won. “This South Viet-Nam thing is a real bastard to solve—either we have to let the younger military officers knock off Diem in a coup and take our chances on a military regime . . . or else we have to give it up. To commit troops there is unwise—for the problem is political and doctrinal.”

But most of Kennedy’s advisers thought otherwise. In a paper titled “Concept for Intervention in Viet-Nam,” U.S. military and State Department officials recommended “the use of SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] (primarily U.S.) Forces ‘to arrest and hopefully to reverse the deteriorating situation’ in Vietnam.” A force of between 22,800 and 40,000 men would be needed, it said, and if the North Vietnamese and Chinese intervened, that might have to increase to four divisions.

Although he did not openly dismiss the proposal, Kennedy was quite skeptical of military commitments that could become open-ended. At a White House meeting on October 11, he instructed Taylor, Rostow, Lansdale, and several other military and diplomatic officials to visit Vietnam. Kennedy made clear to Taylor that he preferred alternatives to sending American forces. He was willing to send a token contingent that would establish “a U.S. ‘Presence’ in Vietnam,” but he wanted discussions in Saigon to focus on providing more assistance rather than U.S. combat troops. To reduce press speculation that the mission was a prelude to committing American forces, Kennedy considered announcing it as an “economic survey.” At a press conference later that day, Kennedy described the mission as seeking “ways in which we can perhaps better assist the Government of Viet-Nam in meeting this threat to its independence.” But despite his hopes, the press now speculated that Kennedy was preparing to send U.S. troops to Vietnam, Thailand, or Laos.

Though he did not characterize the mission as limited to economic concerns, Kennedy responded to press reports of possible U.S. military intervention by telling the
New York Times
off the record that American military chiefs were reluctant to send U.S. troops and that they intended instead to rely on local forces assisted by U.S. advisers. At the same time, Rusk told Budget Director Dave Bell that “Vietnam can be critical and we would like to throw in resources rather than people if we can.” General Lyman Lemnitzer cabled Admiral Harry Felt, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the increase in press reports about sending combat troops was troubling the president; he wanted the Saigon discussions to consider the use of American forces, but only if it were “absolutely essential.” Felt agreed: The introduction of U.S. troops into Vietnam, he said, could identify America with neocolonialism, provoke a communist reaction, and involve it in extended combat.

The Taylor-Rostow mission, which lasted from October 17 to November 2, produced a blizzard of paper on Vietnam. With rumors flying about what Taylor would recommend, Kennedy instructed him not to discuss his conclusions, “especially those relating to U.S. forces.” Kennedy was eager to prevent leaks about military actions that he did not want to take.

TAYLOR’S FIFTY-FIVE-PAGE REPORT
to the president, which represented the collective judgment of mission members from the State and Defense Departments, the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the intelligence division of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), emphasized the need for an emergency program promptly implemented, including retaliation against North Vietnam if it refused to halt its aggression against the South. Taylor and his colleagues believed that more was at stake here than Vietnam—namely, the larger question of “Khrushchev’s ‘wars of liberation’,” or “para-wars of guerrilla aggression. This is a new and dangerous Communist technique which bypasses our traditional political and military responses,” Taylor said. But the U.S. was anything but helpless in the face of this new kind of warfare. “We have many assets in this part of the world,” Taylor declared, “which, if properly combined and appropriately supported, offer high odds for ultimate success.”

The Taylor group recommended that the United States expand its role in Vietnam from advisory to a “limited partnership.” U.S. representatives needed to “participate actively” in Saigon’s economic, political, and military operations. “Only the Vietnamese could defeat the Viet Cong; but at all levels Americans must, as friends and partners—not as arm’s-length advisors—show them how the job might be done—not tell them or do it for them.” Most telling, Taylor’s report recommended introducing a military task force of six to eight thousand men, split between combat and logistical troops operating under U.S. control, in order to raise South Vietnamese morale, give logistical support to South Vietnamese forces, “conduct such combat operations as are necessary for self-defense,” and “provide an emergency reserve to back up the Armed forces of the GVN [Government of Vietnam] in the case of a heightened military crisis.” The American troops could be dispatched under the fiction of helping the Vietnamese recover from a massive flood in the Mekong Delta.

The planners also considered the possibility of ousting Diem in a South Vietnamese military coup. His regime was a cauldron of intrigue, nepotism, and corruption joined to administrative paralysis and steady deterioration. “Persons long loyal to Diem and included in his official family now believe that South Viet Nam can get out of the present morass only if there is early and drastic revision at the top.” But the planners uniformly recommended against overthrowing the existing government. It would be dangerous, “since it is by no means certain that we could control its consequences and potentialities for Communist exploitation.” It seemed better to force “a series of de facto administrative changes via persuasion at high levels, using the U.S. presence . . . to force the Vietnamese to get their house in order in one area after another.” In any case, the U.S. could not afford to abandon Vietnam: It would mean losing “not merely a crucial piece of real estate, but the faith that the U.S. has the will and the capacity to deal with the Communist offensive in that area.”

McNamara, Gilpatric, and the Joint Chiefs now weighed in with recommendations for military steps that went beyond Taylor’s. They agreed that the fall of South Vietnam would represent a sharp blow to the United States in Southeast Asia and around the world, and they felt that the likelihood of stopping the communists in Vietnam without the introduction of U.S. forces seemed small. “A US force of the magnitude of an initial 8-10,000 men—whether in a flood control context or otherwise—will be of great help to Diem. However, it will not convince the other side (whether the shots are called from Moscow, Peiping, or Hanoi) that we mean business.” They urged the president to face “the ultimate possible extent of our military commitment”: A prolonged struggle requiring six U.S. divisions—a force of about 205,000 men—to counter North Vietnamese and potential Chinese intervention.

Rusk and the State Department were less confident that sending in a massive or even limited number of U.S. combat troops made sense. In a memo to the president on November 8, Rusk, McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs recommended a compromise between the competing Taylor, Defense, and State policy recommendations. They agreed that Vietnam’s collapse would represent a disaster for the United States, “particularly in the Orient,” but also at home, where the “loss of South Vietnam would stimulate bitter domestic controversies in the United States and would be seized upon by extreme elements to divide the country and harass the Administration.” They also described the chances of preventing Vietnam’s collapse without direct U.S. military support as distinctly limited; for the immediate future, however, they were content to endorse Taylor’s proposals for a “limited partnership,” including the reorganization and expansion of MAAG to ensure the fulfillment of cooperative military and political goals.

Despite considerable concern about losing Vietnam, Kennedy was determined to resist the mounting pressure for an overt American military response. In October, he had told
New York Times
columnist Arthur Krock that “United States troops should not be involved on the Asian mainland. . . . The United States can’t interfere in civil disturbances, and it is hard to prove that this wasn’t largely the situation in Vietnam.” He told Schlesinger much the same thing. “They want a force of American troops,” Kennedy said. “They say it’s necessary in order to restore confidence and maintain morale. But it will be just like Berlin. The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.” He believed that if the conflict in Vietnam “were ever converted into a white man’s war, we would lose the way the French had lost a decade earlier.”

After a private meeting at the White House with the president on November 5, Taylor recorded that Kennedy “had many questions. He is instinctively against introduction of U.S. forces.” At a “high-level meeting” scheduled for November 7, Kennedy wanted advisers to assess the quality of the proposed program, say how it would be implemented, and describe its likely results. He did not ask for a discussion of sending U.S. troops to Vietnam. Indeed, to counter pressure for a substantial military commitment, Kennedy mobilized opposing opinion. Rusk, who faithfully reflected the president’s views, responded to the Taylor-JCS proposals for military deployments by favoring more help to the Vietnamese to do their own fighting.

During the first two weeks of November, while Taylor and others argued the case for military commitments, Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader and an expert on Asia, Galbraith, George Ball, and Averell Harriman opposed the suggestion in letters and an oral presentation to the president. All four agreed that sending U.S. combat forces to Vietnam carried grave risks. Although they offered no uniform or convincing alternatives for saving Vietnam from communist control, they shared the conviction that putting in American combat units would be a serious error. Mansfield saw “four possible adverse results: A fanfare and then a retreat; an indecisive and costly conflict along the Korean lines; a major war with China while Russia stands aside; [or] a total world conflict.” At the very least, “involvement on the mainland of Asia would . . . weaken our military capability in Berlin and Germany and . . . leave the Russians uncommitted.”

Ball was as emphatic. At a meeting with McNamara and Gilpatric on November 4, he told them how appalled he was at Taylor’s proposal for sending U.S. forces to South Vietnam. His two colleagues had no sympathy for his view. Instead, they were “preoccupied with the single question, How can the United States stop South Vietnam from a Viet Cong takeover? . . . The ‘falling domino’ theory . . . was a brooding omnipresence.” During a conversation with the president three days later, Ball told Kennedy that committing American forces to Vietnam would be “a tragic error.” Like Mansfield, who had wondered where “an involvement of this kind” would conclude—“in the environs of Saigon? At the 17th parallel? At Hanoi? At Canton? At Peking?”—Ball predicted that “within five years we’ll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again. That was the French experience,” he reminded Kennedy. “Vietnam is the worst possible terrain both from a physical and political point of view.”