Johnson’s trip to Saigon launched Kennedy on one of his most persistent and frustrating problems: the contradictory reports he received about South Vietnam.
The Saigon press corps kept reporting a steady decline in support for Diem and steady increases in Vietcong strength. David Halberstam (who supported the war until 1965) of the New York Times, Neil Sheehan of UPI, Nick Turner of Reuters, Peter Arnett of the Associated Press, Bernard Kalb and Peter Kalisher of CBS, James Robinson of NBC, Charles Mohr of Time, Francois Sully of Newsweek, Pepper Martin of U.S. News & World Report, and Stanley Karnow of Time consistently argued that the Diem regime was isolated and paranoid, that a stable democracy would never develop as long as the Ngo family held power. In short, the United States and South Vietnam were losing.
In June 1961 the Department of Defense sent Eugene Staley of Stanford University to Saigon to study the situation. In August, Staley told Kennedy that American policy must have three objectives: provide military protection from the Vietcong to peasants; convince Diem that “military operations will not achieve lasting results unless economic and social programs are continued and accelerated”; and create a self-sustaining economy in South Vietnam. Only then would the war be winnable. But no sooner had Kennedy received Staley’s report than Theodore H. White, a prominent journalist and fellow Bostonian, wrote from Saigon with a different story. White, a highly respected Asian expert who was then finishing his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Making of a President, 1960, which Kennedy had read in draft form and heartily enjoyed, claimed: “The situation gets steadily worse almost week by week.... Guerrillas now control almost all of the Southern delta—so much so that I could find no American who would drive me outside Saigon in his car even by day without military convoy.... What perplexes the hell out of me is that the Commies, on their side, seem to be able to find people willing to die for their cause.”
For a straight answer, Kennedy sent Taylor and Rostow to South Vietnam in October. Rostow argued that to build a loyalty among South Vietnamese, the United States should finance the construction of an infrastructure of schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, land development, farm cooperatives, communications systems, and a stable currency. Rostow’s ideas reflected his book on the stages of economic growth—which critics dubbed the “TV-in-every-thatched-hut” theory—and he wanted to push the country rapidly toward modernization. At the same time Taylor’s theories about flexible response were coming to fruition. He criticized the training efforts of the Eisenhower administration, which had focused on conventional tactics, how to fight a war of fixed battles and territorial acquisition in a country where the population was friendly. For Taylor, South Vietnam was not that place. It was a tropical jungle of hitand-run guerrilla attacks where the local population was neutral at best. American training should teach ARVN how to fight a war of attrition against a guerrilla enemy. Rostow and Taylor called for the deployment of 8,000 regular United States ground troops and a 5,000-man combat engineering group. Between 1955 and 1961 the United States had poured $1.65 billion into South Vietnam, and ARVN troops were still not ready. While counterinsurgency was giving stability to Diem and training to ARVN to take over the war, Kennedy would have to increase the number of American troops until the Vietcong lost the will or the ability to fight. Rostow added that Kennedy should consider largescale bombing of North Vietnam and the infiltration routes, which earned him his new nickname, the “Air Marshal.”
Kennedy was worried, however, about committing combat troops. He suspected that 13,000 soldiers would put up a good fight against the Vietcong, but he was unsure of what North Vietnam would do, how many troops could be sent south, and what role the Chinese communists would take. In a comment to Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., a Harvard historian and one of his advisers, Kennedy remarked: “They want a force of American troops.... 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 more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to have another.” Years later Taylor remarked that Kennedy “just didn’t want to be convinced that this was the right thing to do.... It was really the President’s personal conviction that U.S. ground troops shouldn’t go in.”
Kennedy found an ally in General Douglas MacArthur. Feeling heat from conservative Republicans complaining about the administration’s softness on Asian communism, Kennedy sponsored a congressional luncheon with MacArthur as the guest speaker. The general did not disappoint him. He argued that “we would be foolish to fight on the Asiatic continent” and that “the future of Southeast Asia should be determined at the diplomatic table.” Maxwell Taylor saw that the speech had “made a hell of an impression on the President... whenever he’d get this military advice... he’d say, ‘Well, now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince General MacArthur, then I’ll be convinced.’ But none of us undertook the task.”
For the time being Kennedy preferred a middle road—no ground troops but enough American expertise and firepower to get the job done. If Vietnam fell, Kennedy could expect political crucifixion at the hands of the China Lobby in the Republican party. Kennedy planned on running for reelection in 1964, and he was not anxious to give the Republicans a moralistic campaign issue. “I can’t take a 1954 defeat today,” he told Rostow, meaning that his campaign could not withstand a defeat like that at Dienbienphu. But at the same time Kennedy did not want the war to get out of control. It was primarily a South Vietnamese affair; the United States should provide only technical advice and economic support. American pilots in South Vietnam were never to go up in the air without a Vietnamese trainee along (or, if no pilot trainee was available, at least some Vietnamese pilot who could pretend was a trainee). American advisers with ARVN were never to engage the Vietcong directly; and no American soldier wounded in action was allowed to receive a Purple Heart.
John Kennedy was a pragmatist, a man comfortable with compromise. Between the caution of George Ball and the rush to escalate that Lemnitzer, Rostow, and Bundy wanted he could try a moderate, steady increase of economic and military resources, nothing dramatic and attention getting, but enough to be effective. The trouble, of course, was that moderation meant escalation. When Kennedy took office in early 1961, there were nine hundred United States military advisers in South Vietnam. At the end of 1961 there were more than 3,200 advisers.
While the Kennedy administration debated the future of Vietnam, a crisis erupted in Laos. A mountainous country of two million people, Laos shared much with Vietnam. In 1945 the French had returned to Laos along with Vietnam, and two half-brothers vied for control of the government. Prince Souphanouvong hated the French and had a passionate respect for Ho Chi Minh. In the 1950s he emerged as the leader of the Pathet Lao, a group of guerrillas bent on expelling the French and reforming Laotian society. Farther to the right was Souvanna Phouma, who rejected the revolutionary rhetoric of Souphanouvong but shared his passion for independence. After the Geneva Accords of 1954, which gave independence to Laos, the two formed a coalition government. But as the cold war intensified, John Foster Dulles became more opposed to the coalition and intent on ousting Souphanouvong and the Pathet Lao. Between 1954 and 1959 the CIA spent $300 million fighting the Pathet Lao in a secret war. The CIA spent enormous sums to see to it that General Phoumi Nosovan, a hopelessly corrupt right-winger and former lackey of the French, took control of Laos as head of the so-called Committee for the Defense of the National Interests. By 1960 it looked as if the first domino in Indochina was about to fall. Souvanna Phouma and Souphanouvong joined forces in a guerrilla war against Phoumi Nosovan and the CIA. Just before he left office, Eisenhower made the American commitment clear: “We cannot let Laos fall to the Communists even if we have to fight,” which meant propping up the Nosovan government. But Nosovan could not be saved. He was just too corrupt and too alienated from the Laotian people. Souvanna Phouma and Souphanouvong made steady headway. It seemed onl
y a matter of time before Laos fell.
In March 1961 Kennedy stationed 5,000 American troops in eastern Thailand, hoping the show of force would provide some encouragement to Nosovan. But it was too late. The Defense Department offered a proposal for airlifting American troops into Laos, but Kennedy was skeptical. Laos was landlocked, and it would have been logistically impossible to support the troops. The Bay of Pigs mess had left Kennedy suspicious of his military and CIA advisers. The president decided on a diplomatic settlement. In May 1961 the United States participated in the Geneva Conference on Laos. W. Averell Harriman, heir to the great railroad fortune and former ambassador to the Soviet Union, headed the American delegation. The agreement, signed in July 1962, created a neutral Laos with Souvanna Phouma at the head of a coalition government including Souphanouvong and the Pathet Lao, called for an end to CIA activities in Laos, and insisted on the withdrawal of Vietminh troops from the northeastern border. The CIA, the Pathet Lao, and the Vietcong had no intention, of course, of keeping the agreement. The CIA had already commissioned Air America, the CIA commercial airliner, to begin dropping supplies to Meo (Hmong) tribesmen, a 9,000-member Laotian mercenary army hired to fight the Pathet Lao and attack North Vietnam supply routes.
While the Geneva Agreement gave Kennedy some breathing space on Laos, it rigidified his approach to South Vietnam. Harriman urged a diplomatic settlement for Vietnam, arguing that the Diem regime was “repressive, dictatorial and unpopular.” Chester Bowles, an undersecretary of state, told the president that by committing support to Diem the United States was “headed full blast up a dead end street.” Both advisers wanted the president to consider a comprehensive diplomatic settlement followed by an American withdrawal. But after failing at the Bay of Pigs and then allowing the Pathet Lao some power in a neutralist Laotian government, Kennedy was worried about appearing weak. As a result, the administration did not take seriously any proposals for a diplomatic solution, a coalition government in Saigon composed of the Vietcong and Diem supporters, or a unilateral withdrawal. Nikita Khrushchev, head of the Soviet Union, did not help much. In January 1961 he had publicly announced Soviet support for “wars of national liberation” around the globe, and Kennedy took that threat as given seriously. Instead of a negotiated settlement, the Kennedy administration opted for a political and military alternative—counterinsurgency.
Maxwell Taylor’s counterinsurgency proposals seemed perfect for South Vietnam. Kennedy had been intrigued with the idea ever since reading The Uncertain Trumpet. What he needed was someone he could trust as a counterinsurgency adviser. Kennedy picked Victor (“Brute”) Krulak. At five feet, four inches and 134 pounds, Krulak had talked his way into the Naval Academy in 1930 when he was only sixteen. The other midshipmen called him “Brute,” and the nickname stuck. But what Krulak lacked in size, he made up for in imagination. He graduated in 1934, went into the Marine Corps, and in 1937 designed the standard landing craft used in the Pacific during World War II. Eleven years later Krulak was ahead of his time in seeing the tactical advantages of the newly invented helicopter, and he wrote the Marine Corps manual describing helicopter tactics. During World War II, Krulak won the Navy Cross in the Solomon Islands. During an amphibious raid on Choiseul in 1943, his landing craft hit a coral reef and began to sink under Japanese fire. John F. Kennedy pulled his PT boat beside the landing craft and rescued the marines. Krulak thanked Kennedy and promised him a bottle of fine Scotch. In the confusion of battle, Krulak did not get the bottle sent, but in 1961 he remembered and shipped a bottle of Three Feathers to the White House. Kennedy remembered. In 1962 he named Krulak, then a major general, as counterinsurgency specialist to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Kennedy, Krulak, and Taylor did not have to create a counterinsurgency strategy. They brought to the task American experience fighting the Huk Rebellion in the Philippines and the successful British campaign against the Malayan communists. Soon after gaining independence in 1946, the Philippines had faced a communist-led radical movement with more than a million followers on Luzon. The CIA sent Edward Lansdale to build a counterinsurgency movement, and Lansdale selected Ramon Magsaysay, secretary of defense for the Philippines, as a principal leader. Together they reformed the Filipino army, improving pay and discipline and firing incompetent, politically appointed officers. Army treatment of civilians improved; election laws were enforced; tenant farmers gained the right to sue landlords. Magsaysay and Lansdale offered the Huk rebels amnesty or death. By 1953 the rebellion was over. The British had similar success in Malaya. Early in the 1950s, communist insurgents threatened the British colony. British officials launched a large-scale counterinsurgency effort under the direction of Robert Thompson. Thompson concentrated on winning over the ordinary Malayans by providing them with military security, land reform, and economic development. Although it took ten years to put down the insurgency, Malaya was secure by 1960.
Edward Lansdale went to South Vietnam to head the CIA effort. In 1961 Thompson arrived in Saigon as head of the British liaison mission, where he could provide technical expertise to the counterinsurgency program. In Washington, Roger Hilsman began working on counterinsurgency. Hilsman, a Texas native with a Yale Ph.D. in international relations, had spent the 1950s with the CIA before becoming director of intelligence for the State Department in 1961. He warned repeatedly in 1961 and 1962 that military action alone could not solve guerrilla wars; popular support gained through economic development and political reform, proven in the Philippines and Malaya, was indispensable. Krulak, Hilsman, Lansdale, and Thompson hatched what became the Strategic Hamlet Program, a project for drawing peasants into secured centers where they could benefit from economic and social reform as well as protection from insurgents.
What none of these experts realized was that the model programs that had worked in the Philippines and Malaya did so for reasons specific to each. In the Philippines the insurgents were not nationalist leaders. The United States had granted the Philippines independence in 1946. Many Filipinos spoke English and even more lusted after the American consumer culture. The two countries were allies during World War II, and Douglas MacArthur was a Filipino hero. Filipino Independence Day was the Fourth of July. When Lansdale launched the CIA counterinsurgency program on Luzon, he represented a country and a culture widely admired by Filipinos. In Malaya the British were still colonialists in the 1950s, but independence was palpable. Most Malayans expected the British to do what they had already done in India and Pakistan. Britain was the government in Malaya and did not have to work through client politicians and military officials. The British counterinsurgency effort was efficient and disciplined. Ethnic reality simplified the British task. The communists were ethnic Chinese, a minority group in Malaya greatly resented by the native population. There was little chance the communists could launch a broad-based peasant uprising. Few Malayans would die for Chinese revolutionaries.
The Kennedy administration also faced a communist insurgency in Indonesia. In the former Dutch East Indies, nationalists had proclaimed the independence of Indonesia in 1945, but the Dutch did not recognize sovereignty there until 1949. A period of liberal democracy ensued until 1957, when Sukarno proclaimed martial law and imposed a virtual dictatorship. The Communist Party of Indonesia launched an insurgent movement aimed at overthrowing Sukarno and proclaiming a communist state. Financial chaos and gross corruption in the capital of Jakarta provided fertile ground for communist recruitment among Indonesian peasants, and the communists steadily increased in power. Because of its vast oil deposits, Indonesia dwarfed Vietnam and Laos in economic significance. Early in the 1960s, when it appeared that the communists might come to power in Indonesia, the Kennedy administration flirted with the idea of military intervention, but decided against such action. With its huge population scattered across thousands of islands, Indonesia was six times larger in area than South Vietnam and equally rugged in terrain. Convinced that Indonesia would become a military quagmire, Kennedy decided against the i
ntroduction of American ground troops. South Vietnam would become the testing place for military intervention in Southeast Asia.
Compared to South Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaya had been easy. Communism and nationalism fused in the minds of millions of Vietnamese, northern and southern, and Ho Chi Minh wore the mantle of independence. The Diem government was corrupt and isolated, its Roman Catholicism alien in a Buddhist society. The Vietcong and the South Vietnamese were the same people ethnically and culturally, which made it almost impossible to identify the enemy. The Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) spent eight years trying to prepare ARVN for conventional war, but the Vietcong were getting bolder and better. ARVN still needed more flexible military training. The United States would have to buy the time.
On February 12, 1962, Kennedy made the first purchase when he established the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam or “Macvee,” to direct the United States military effort in South Vietnam. Maxwell Taylor personally selected “one of my boys” to command MACV—General Paul Harkins.
Where the Domino Fell: America and Vietnam 1945-1995 Page 13