Camelot's Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (31 page)

But no one could deny the precariousness of the Saigon government. And no one in the White House believed Diem could survive without some kind of U.S. intervention. With the Berlin issue finally quieting down, the focus on Vietnam continued to grow. In a memo to Kennedy on October 5, Rostow warned that unless they acted soon the United States would face a “slow but total defeat” in Vietnam. At a White House meeting with his full national security team on October 11, Kennedy came under intense pressure to respond proactively to the crisis. Rostow predicted a possible catastrophe: “The gut issue . . . is this: We are deeply committed in Viet-Nam,” or at least Rostow was. “If the situation deteriorates, we will have to go in; the situation is, in fact, actively deteriorating; if we go in now, the costs—human and otherwise—are likely to be less than if we wait.” With the advantage of hindsight, it is clear that a large commitment then would only have moved forward the disaster that was to befall the United States.

Whatever the timing of U.S. involvement, no one endorsed passivity. The Joint Chiefs, the State and Defense departments, and the Southeast Asian Task Force called for some kind of decisive action, whether through the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the U.N., an appeal to Moscow for a neutrality agreement, a direct use of American military power, or a plan for quickly turning the South Vietnamese army into a more effective fighting force. The cry was for an effective response. “It
is
now or never if we are to arrest the gains being made by the Viet Cong,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense William Bundy, McGeorge’s brother, insisted. He later recalled the mood of all the planners “that we had to act fast and hard if we were to act at all.” Trying to anticipate every contingency following a deployment of U.S. forces, the Joint Chiefs imagined a Chinese intervention that would compel consideration of “whether to attack selected targets in north China with conventional weapons and whether to initiate use of nuclear weapons.” If they were forced into a war with China, the Chiefs wanted no half measures.

Kennedy wisely refused to be rushed into anything. The failure to vet the Bay of Pigs invasion sufficiently, the Galbraith-White warnings, and the Chiefs’ talk of nuclear bombs on China made Kennedy determined to gather as much information as possible before he took an irretrievable step, or at least to hold off doing anything by studying the situation. He directed Taylor, Rostow, and Lansdale, as well as two leaders of the Vietnam task force, to make a fact-finding trip to Vietnam, where they were to assess the need for dispatching U.S. forces and the alternative of relying on additional economic aid and military advisers. It was one way to ease the pressure for quick action. In the meantime, Kennedy avoided any open discussion of sending U.S. troops. An aide leaked a story to the
New York Times
that American military chiefs were opposed to deploying forces to Southeast Asia, which of course was untrue, and that they wished to rely on local troops guided by U.S. advisers. The leak speaks volumes about Kennedy’s continuing fear of involvement in an Asian land war and the degree to which he felt compelled to counter domestic political demands for military intervention in South Vietnam.

In choosing the team he selected, Kennedy could hardly expect any of them to recommend less than a forceful U.S. effort to save Vietnam. Every one of them had already made clear that they favored the most aggressive possible support for Diem in combating the communist insurgents. Moreover, the presence on the trip of the Washington columnist Joe Alsop seemed to make it essential that Kennedy show resolve to meet the communist threat by sending the most tough-minded members of his administration to assess the risks. Alsop was a hawk of hawks: “Is there any real foundation for all the talk about the Kennedy administration ‘lack of firmness?’” he asked in a column. “On the way to troubled Vietnam where the administration’s firmness is once again being tested, the forgoing question looms very large indeed.”

Like Johnson before them, the White House investigative team went to Saigon with, in Johnson’s words, a “stacked deck.” Kennedy had already made clear to them what the limits of his commitments would be. “We would like to throw in resources rather than people if we can,” Rusk said privately after the meeting. Taylor told Lemnitzer that he was instructed to “give most discreet consideration to introduction of U.S. forces if he deems such action absolutely essential.” Because they were known hawks eager to meet the communist threat head-on everywhere, proposals they might make—short of sending U.S. troops, which was favored by the Joint Chiefs, congressional conservatives, and Alsop—could not be attacked as the reluctance of administration liberals favoring negotiations over militancy.

On October 16, the day before he left for the sixteen-day trip to Vietnam, Rostow had already made up his mind on what to do. He urged Taylor to instruct the commander of America’s Pacific forces to prepare a plan for “systematic harassment by U.S. naval and air power of North Viet-Nam.” The United States could not rely on any prompt and radical improvement in Diem’s forces. Whatever Rostow and Taylor might conclude at the close of their mission, “especially those relating to U.S. forces,” Kennedy cautioned them against discussing it prematurely or “outside your immediate party in terms that would indicate your own final judgment. . . . Rumors of your conclusions could obviously be damaging.”

Despite Kennedy’s directive, as the mission concluded on November 2 speculation was rife that he would be pressured into sending U.S. combat troops to Vietnam. A Nolting report that the South Vietnamese were virtually unanimous in their desire for U.S. participation in the fighting became public, and rumors that the Joint Chiefs were eager to enter the war moved Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield to caution the president against being drawn into “a quicksand” war. It could be considered a revival of colonialism by millions of Southeast Asians, the Montana Democrat predicted. Additional military and economic aid was one thing, but combat troops were an entirely different matter. Mansfield could only imagine four ruinous outcomes: an ultimate retreat in failure, a drawn-out, indecisive conflict like in Korea, “a major war with China while Russia stands aside,” or “a total world conflict.”

Mansfield’s memo was part of a torturous debate that now exploded about Vietnam. Kenneth T. Young, the U.S. ambassador in Thailand, and a leading expert on Southeast Asia, had a view diametrically opposed to Mansfield’s. Young saw nothing but disaster from losing Vietnam. “Denial of Southeast Asia to Viet Cong, Chinese or Russian control,” he asserted, “is indispensable for United States interests and purposes in the whole world. . . . Southeast Asia is the critical bottleneck stopping Sino-Soviet territorial and ideological expansion—territorial in Asia, ideological in the whole world.” Defeat in Vietnam would mean losing all of Southeast Asia, with the United States “forced off the mainland of Asia.” It was the view of a regional advocate blind to other considerations, but it resonated with most of the country’s foreign policy experts, who shuddered at the prospect of a renewed attack on the State Department and others in the administration for losing yet another country to communist aggression.

Taylor and everyone on the mission came away from Vietnam with a heightened sense of alarm. Taylor described a country suffering from “a collapse of national morale.” The answer he and his colleagues saw was “vigorous American action . . . to buy time for Vietnam” to save itself. But they warned that time was running out, and that Kennedy had to act quickly. He needed to endorse a shift in American policy “from advice to limited partnership.” The alternative was nothing less than disaster: Vietnam’s collapse would bring global wars of national liberation, raise universal doubts about U.S. resolve to resist communist expansion, and provoke a domestic debate about the administration’s competence and wisdom in defending the national interest.

But what specifically could be done to save Vietnam? The Taylor group recommended a multi-tiered partnership—economic, military, and political, showing the Vietnamese how to finance and fight the war and how to bring a majority of their countrymen to the government’s side. The addition of six to eight or possibly ten thousand U.S. military advisers, who would counsel the Vietnamese on strategy and tactics, was essential. The mission also considered promoting a coup to replace Diem with a military dictatorship, but they rejected the proposal as too risky and based on a hasty dismissal of the possibility that U.S. advisers could compel necessary political reforms to save Diem’s regime.

After seeing President Kennedy on November 4, Taylor said that the president’s initial reaction to his recommendations was to raise “many questions. He is instinctively against introduction of U.S. forces.” McNamara and Rusk shared the belief that saving Vietnam was essential and initially supported sending U.S. troops immediately, with the option to add reinforcements later if necessary. McNamara, Rusk, and the Chiefs worried that a limited force would “get [us] increasingly mired down in an inconclusive struggle.” Eventually we would have to send six to eight divisions of about 220,000 men. They also favored a warning to Hanoi that it was risking U.S. retaliation if it did not halt its assault on South Vietnam.

Pushback against sending combat troops and a large-scale involvement came immediately from Undersecretary of State George Ball. Ball saw Vietnam as a “serious” problem but believed it was “hopeless” as a nation the United States could defend against a communist takeover without a massive military commitment that could last for years without much success. He worried that we would replicate the French experience: French friends had taught him that “there was something about Vietnam that seduced the toughest military minds into fantasy.” During a White House meeting with Kennedy on some international economic matters, Ball pressed him not to accept the recommendations of the Rostow mission, telling him that committing “American forces to South Vietnam would be a tragic error. Once that process started . . . there would be no end to it. Within five years we will have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again. That was the French experience. Vietnam is the worst possible terrain both from a physical and political point of view. To my surprise, the President seemed quite unwilling to discuss the matter, responding with an overtone of asperity: ‘George, you’re just crazier than hell. That just isn’t going to happen.’”

But not because Kennedy believed that a limited U.S. force could secure Vietnam; rather, as he told Schlesinger after reading the Taylor-Rostow report, he did not “like the proposal of a direct American military commitment. ‘They want a force of American troops,’” he 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 crowd 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.’ The war in Vietnam, he added, could be won only so long as it was
their
war. If it were converted into a white man’s war, we would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier.”

McNamara recalled that no sooner had he endorsed the Taylor-Rostow recommendations than he had second thoughts. And the more he considered the matter, the more doubtful he became. Rusk and his advisers at the State Department came to the same conclusion. They composed a memo to Kennedy “advising against sending combat forces in the way Max and Walt had recommended. While acknowledging that such forces might be necessary someday, we pointed out that we were facing a dilemma: ‘If there is a strong South Vietnamese effort, may not be needed; if there is not such an effort, U.S. forces could not accomplish their mission in the midst of an apathetic or hostile population.’”

The memo gave Kennedy support for his resistance to sending troops. During a White House meeting on November 11, 1961, Kennedy put eight questions before eleven advisers, including McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, Taylor, Rostow, Lemnitzer, and Bobby Kennedy. It was the forty-third anniversary of the end of World War I and the horrors of that conflict were never far from Kennedy’s mind. The list was a window into Kennedy’s thinking: Could the Taylor-Rostow program be effective without including the introduction of a U.S. troop task force? He wanted to know how they could turn down a request by Diem for U.S. troops without antagonizing him. What circumstances might compel a reconsideration of not sending troops? Should they go public with their decision to save South Vietnam or keep it secret? Would help to Diem depend on his implementation of requested reforms? The rest of Kennedy’s memo asked about plans for realizing the team’s recommendations.

At the meeting, Kennedy raised additional concerns about the Taylor-Rostow proposals. He warned that Congress would be less than supportive: The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Georgia senator Richard Russell, and other senators were opposed. Kennedy said, “Troops are a last resort. Should be SEATO forces.” He expected a decision to send U.S. forces to create a domestic problem. He wanted to keep any commitments to rescue Diem and South Vietnam as quiet as possible. Reflecting Kennedy’s wishes, Bobby described the president’s public response to the Taylor mission as an emphatic denial of any major military commitments: “We are not sending combat troops,” Bobby declared. Armed force might be necessary, but the United States and the South Vietnamese needed to rely on SEATO as much as possible. William Bundy came away from the meeting convinced that Kennedy clearly opposed the dispatch of “organized forces” as “a step so grave that it should be avoided if . . . humanly possible.” Nor was Kennedy prepared to support a “categorical commitment to prevent the loss of South Vietnam.”

A fierce argument now erupted over what to do. Harriman weighed in with a political-diplomatic proposal that would forestall heavy military U.S. commitments. He urged discussions with Moscow. He also favored additional U.S. military aid in conjunction with SEATO to avert a Vietnamese collapse while pressing Diem to get on with internal reforms. At the same time, Rusk instructed Nolting not to return to Washington for consultations, in order to be available for delicate negotiations with Diem.