A Thousand Days

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

  As he thought aloud, it was evident that he hoped to steer the course between intervention and retreat and end up somehow with neutralization. Lippmann and I proved of little help. Later that day the National Security Council discussed the possibility of moving a small number of American troops into the Mekong valley not to fight the Pathet Lao but to deter them by their presence and provide a bargaining counter for an international conference. Walt Rostow argued persuasively for this restricted commitment; but the Joint Chiefs opposed the sending of ground forces to the mainland of Asia, drawing a lurid picture of an all-out communist response, with thousands of Viet Minh pouring into Laos and the ultimate possibility of war with China. Their recommendation was all or nothing: either go in on a large scale, with 60,000 soldiers, air cover and even nuclear weapons, or else stay out.

  The President himself was reluctant to order a limited troop movement into the Mekong. He knew how weak the conventional strength of the United States was, and, with Cuba in the wings, troubles in Vietnam and the Congo and the ever-present problem of Berlin, he did not wish to tie up armed force indefinitely in Laos. Moreover, the diplomatic road was not finally blocked. The British with Kennedy’s strong approval were about to reintroduce the ICC plan along with a proposal for a conference in Geneva to be called after verification of a cease-fire in Laos.

  Neither the meeting on March 20 nor another session the next day reached a decision. Kennedy’s objective remained a political settlement. True, if the Russians remained intransigent, he might have to take the next step—a limited commitment of troops along the Mekong; and this might lead to further steps. But, unless the Russians believed that he was ready to go down this road, there would be no incentive for them to accept a political solution. As for the American people, Kennedy saw contradictions in their feelings between the desire to ‘get tough’ with the communists and the disinclination to get involved in another Asian war; still, if the worst came, he was confident that they would support intervention.

  The problem now, in Kennedy’s judgment, was to make Moscow understand the choice it confronted: cease-fire and neutralization on the one hand; American intervention on the other. On March 23 his press conference took place against the unusual background of three maps of Laos illustrating the progress of communist encroachment. The Soviet Union, he said, had flown more than 1000 sorties into the battle area since December. There could be no peaceful solution without “a cessation of the present armed attacks by externally supported Communists.” If the attacks do not stop, “those who support a genuinely neutral Laos will have to consider their response.” As for the United States, no one should doubt its objective. “If in the past there has been any possible ground for misunderstanding of our desire for a truly neutral Laos, there should be none now.” Nor should anyone doubt our resolution. “The security of all of southeast Asia will be endangered if Laos loses its neutral independence. Its own safety runs with the safety of us all—in real neutrality observed by all. . . . I know that every American will want his country to honor its obligations to the point that freedom and security of the free world and ourselves may be achieved.”

  His tone was grave; and he backed it up with military and diplomatic action. The Seventh Fleet moved into the South China Sea, combat troops were alerted in Okinawa, and 500 Marines with helicopters moved into Thailand across the Mekong River from Vientiane. In Japan 2000 Marines, performing as extras for the film “Marine, Let’s Go!” vanished from the set. On the diplomatic front Kennedy asked Nehru to support a cease-fire, which the Indian Prime Minister promptly did; and he arranged a quick meeting with Prime Minister Macmillan, then in the Caribbean, at Key West, where Macmillan reluctantly agreed that, if limited intervention along the Mekong became necessary, Britain would support it. Dean Rusk went to a SEATO conference at Bangkok on March 27 and secured troop pledges from Thailand, Pakistan and the Philippines, though French opposition prevented the organization as a whole from promising anything more specific than “appropriate” measures. In Washington the President saw Gromyko at the White House, took him to a bench in the Rose Garden and, observing that too many wars had arisen from miscalculation, said that Moscow must not misjudge the American determination to stop aggression in Southeast Asia. Chip Bohlen told me that night that Gromyko was “serious” this time, as he had not been in his talk with Rusk nine days earlier; obviously he had new instructions. The sense of acute tension over Laos appeared to be subsiding. For his part Khrushchev had no desire to send Russian troops to fight in the jungles of Laos and even less to set off a nuclear war. Moreover, he could console himself, and hopefully the Pathet Lao, with the thought which had already occurred to Kennedy and which Khrushchev put to Llewellyn Thompson in an expansive moment: “Why take risks over Laos? It will fall into our laps like a ripe apple.” After weighing these various factors, Khrushchev on April 1 expressed readiness in principle to consider the British proposal.

  4. THE HUNDREDTH DAY

  Kennedy had won his first objective. But Khrushchev was at first unwilling to call for a cease-fire as the condition of an international conference. For more than three weeks the British and the Russians debated this point. It is not clear whether Khrushchev was stalling because he wanted time to explain his policy to the Pathet Lao and the Chinese or because he wanted to give the neutralist and communist forces the chance to occupy as much of Laos as they could: probably for both reasons. Certainly the Pathet Lao and Kong Le continued to make new gains and the Phoumi regime to show new weaknesses.

  The fighting in these weeks made it more clear than ever that a cease-fire would mean little if Laos lacked a government strong and stable enough to deal with the Pathet Lao. Kennedy had come early to doubt the briefings he received about the virtues of General Phoumi. In February, David Ormsby Gore, now a Member of Parliament and an Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office, stopped by in Washington and, speaking with the bluntness of an old friend, offered a caustic picture of American policy in Laos. The United States, he said, had done its best to destroy Souvanna Phouma, who represented the best hope of a non-communist Laos, and instead was backing a crooked, right-wing gang; the impression of Washington always rushing about to prop up corrupt dictators in Asia could not have happy consequences.

  Then late in March Averell Harriman, on his first assignment as roving ambassador, arranged to see Souvanna Phouma in New Delhi. He did this without authorization from Washington. Accustomed to the informality of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s diplomacy, when he would go off on the most delicate missions with a few lines of general guidance, he was not yet used to the postwar State Department and its habit of tethering envoys with pages of minute and comprehensive instruction. His talk with the Laotian prince was friendly. Souvanna said that the people of Laos did not wish to be communist and that Laos could be saved from communism, but that time was running out. He proposed the establishment of a coalition government, including the Pathet Lao, and the guarantee of Laotian neutrality by the fourteen-nation conference. He felt that, with the support of 90 per cent of the people, he had the authority to unite his country.

  Harriman was favorably impressed. In addition, he had known Winthrop Brown from wartime days in London and had more confidence in Brown’s estimate of Souvanna than in the State Department’s inevitable judgment that the beleaguered prince was practically a communist. Washington, or at the least the White House, found Averell’s testimony weighty. He was, after all, the most experienced and distinguished of American diplomats. Only his age had disqualified him from consideration as Secretary of State. He had spent much of his life in dealing with the Russians—ever since he had bargained with Trotsky over mining concessions in the twenties. During the Second World War he had worked with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin and attended nearly all the wartime conferences. He had served as ambassador to Moscow and London. He had run the Marshall Plan in Europe and had been Truman’s national security adviser during the Korean War. In all these years he had not succumbed to
illusions either about communism or about the anti-communist crusade.

  His world trip had shown him the brilliance of the hopes excited by the new President. Convinced that America had not had such potentialities of world influence since the days of F.D.R., he bounded back to Washington filled with energy, purpose and ideas, looking years younger than he had in his last melancholy days as a New York politician. I remember his coming shortly after his return to a farewell dinner I gave for Ken Galbraith, who was about to depart on his new assignment as Ambassador to India. Harriman, in the highest of spirits, talked everyone down, especially the guest of honor; this last, of course, was no inconsiderable feat. When Harriman reported to the White House, he delighted Kennedy, who had known him in his political rather than his diplomatic role, with his freedom and vigor of mind in foreign matters, his realism of judgment and his unconcealed contempt for received opinion. The President concluded that Washington ought to take a new look at Souvanna, and the prince was encouraged to add the United States to his world tour. Souvanna scheduled his Washington visit for April 19–20 but then canceled it when Rusk said he had a speaking engagement in Georgia and could not receive him. Snubbed again, as he thought, Souvanna returned to Moscow.

  In the end Rusk did not keep his Georgia engagement, for this was the week of the Bay of Pigs. On Thursday, April 20, Kennedy, determined not to permit restraint in Cuba to be construed as irresolution everywhere, transformed the corps of American military advisers in Laos, who up to this point had wandered about in civilian clothes, into a Military Assistance and Advisory Group, authorizing them to put on uniforms and accompany the Laotian troops. Later that day, when Nixon saw the President and urged an invasion of Cuba, he also urged “a commitment of American air power” to Laos. According to Nixon’s recollection, Kennedy replied, “I just don’t think we ought to get involved in Laos, particularly where we might find ourselves fighting millions of Chinese troops in the jungles. In any event, I don’t see how we can make any move in Laos, which is 5000 miles away, if we don’t make a move in Cuba, which is only 90 miles away.”*

  On April 24 the Russians finally agreed on the cease-fire appeal. They were perhaps impressed by the introduction of MAAG and undoubtedly swayed by the intervention of Nehru. (The Indian leader had been skeptical about the American desire for neutralization until Galbraith assured him that Americans were practical men and did not set military value on the Lao, “who do not believe in getting killed like the civilized races.”) The next day the Laotian government gratefully accepted the call. So did Souvanna, still on his travels, and even Souphanouvong. But fighting did not cease; and, according to reports reaching Washington on Wednesday, April 26, the Pathet Lao were attacking in force, as if to overrun the country before the cease-fire could take effect. On Thursday the National Security Council held a long and confused session. Walt Rostow has told me that it was the worst White House meeting he attended in the entire Kennedy administration.

  Rostow and the Laos task force, supported by Harriman who was now on a trip of inspection in Laos, still urged a limited commitment of American troops to the Mekong valley. But the Joint Chiefs, chastened by the Bay of Pigs, declined to guarantee the success of the military operation, even with the 60,000 men they had recommended a month before. The participants in the meeting found it hard to make out what the Chiefs were trying to say. Indeed, the military were so divided that Vice-President Johnson finally proposed that they put their views in writing in order to clarify their differences. The President, it is said, later received seven different memoranda, from the four Chiefs of Staff and three service secretaries. (It was about this time that a group of foreign students visited the White House and the President, introduced to a young lady from Laos, remarked, “Has anyone asked your advice yet?”)

  The military proved no more satisfactory in explaining the proposals they were prepared to make. The President was appalled at the sketchy nature of American military planning for Laos—the lack of detail and the unanswered questions. One day they suggested sending troops into two airstrips in Pathet Lao territory; they could land a thousand troops a day, and there were 5000 enemy guerrillas nearby. Kennedy, after interrogation, discovered that the airstrips could only be used by day and that it would take a week or so for troops to reach them overland. He then asked what would happen if the Pathet Lao allowed the troops to land for two days and then attacked. The military did not seem to have thought of that.

  For all their differences, the military left a predominant impression that they did not want ground troops at all unless they could send at least 140,000 men equipped with tactical nuclear weapons. By now the Pentagon was developing what would become its standard line in Southeast Asia—unrelenting opposition to limited intervention except on the impossible condition that the President agree in advance to every further step they deemed sequential, including, on occasion, nuclear bombing of Hanoi and even Peking. At one National Security Council meeting General Lemnitzer outlined the processes by which each American action would provoke a Chinese counteraction, provoking in turn an even more drastic American response. He concluded: “If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory.” The President sat glumly rubbing his upper molar, saying nothing. After a moment someone said, “Mr. President, perhaps you would have the General explain to us what he means by victory.” Kennedy grunted and dismissed the meeting. Later he said, “Since he couldn’t think of any further escalation, he would have to promise us victory.”

  The Chiefs had their own way of reacting to the Cuban fiasco. It soon began to look to the White House as if they were taking care to build a record which would permit them to say that, whatever the President did, he acted against their advice. This had not yet been identified as a tactic, however, and in April 1961 their opposition to limited intervention had a powerful effect. As Robert Kennedy said, “If even the Marines don’t want to go in!” Immediately afterward, the President encountered equally formidable opposition from congressional leaders. In New York that night for a speech, he gathered other opinions. General MacArthur expressed his old view that anyone wanting to commit American ground forces to the mainland of Asia should have his head examined. He added that, if we intervened anywhere in Southeast Asia, we must be prepared to use nuclear weapons should the Chinese enter in force. And there always remained the difficulty of justifying intervention against communism in Laos while rejecting it against communism in Cuba.

  General Lemnitzer had already gone to Laos, where he joined Harriman. Once on the spot, Lemnitzer endorsed the case for the more limited commitment. When I returned from my post-Bay of Pigs trip to Europe on May 3, the President said, “If it hadn’t been for Cuba, we might be about to intervene in Laos.” Waving a sheaf of cables from Lemnitzer, he added, “I might have taken this advice seriously.” But he was determined to avert total collapse. He had, I believe, been prepared to undertake limited intervention in Laos before the Bay of Pigs, and he did not altogether exclude it now. Once again he ordered troops on the alert. At Okinawa 10,000 Marines were ready to go. Kennedy told Rostow that Eisenhower could stand the political consequences of Dien Bien Phu and the expulsion of the west from Vietnam in 1954 because the blame fell on the French; “I can’t take a 1954 defeat today.”

  The Russians knew about the preparations, and they appeared to have their effect. Certainly the Pathet Lao probe on Monday seemed less terrifying than it had the preceding Thursday. On May 1 representatives of the warring factions negotiated a cease-fire. The International Control Commission arrived on the scene and reported on May 11 “a general and obvious discontinuance of hostilities.” The next day the conference opened at Geneva to lay down the conditions for a neutralized Laos.

  April 30 marked the hundredth day of the Kennedy administration. Either Cuba or Laos by itself would have constituted a sufficient initiation into the horrors of the Presidency; but Kennedy endured both with customary composure. I saw him mostly those days in regard to Cuba;
but his occasional comments on Laos were invariably detached and dispassionate. His self-control helped produce a corresponding calmness of public reaction. The Laos crisis of 1961 differed greatly from the Dien Bien Phu crisis of 1954, when vague and menacing statements by the Vice-President, the Secretary of State and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff heightened both popular and international tensions without leading to any useful result. Instead, Kennedy made quiet but hard military preparations, let the Russians know about them and let them know at the same time that there was an honorable alternative to fighting. The outcome was to halt the imminent communization of Laos.

  This was a first experiment in Kennedy diplomacy under pressure, and it was marked by restraint of manner, toughness of intention and care to leave the adversary a way of escape without loss of face. Khrushchev, for his part, found himself involved with a group of local communist militants whose actions he could not entirely control and whose allegiance he sought in the struggle for the international communist movement. But he did not want war, and, once he believed that Kennedy would fight if pushed too far, he retreated to negotiation, confident that history would eventually deliver what opposition had temporarily denied. In retrospect, the Laos crisis of 1961 seems in some ways a dress rehearsal for the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.