Policy Planning Staff Files: Lot 64D563
Memorandum Prepared in the Policy Planning Staff
United States Policy Toward Indochina in the Light of Recent Developments
The receipt of Paris’s telegram no. 783 of August 12, on top of reports received from General Erskine and Melby, together with telegrams from our representatives stationed in Indochina, suggests that the situation in Indochina is more serious than we have reckoned. The question then arises—is our present policy toward Indochina realistic?
The French are seeking a solution of the Indochina problem on a military plane. Coping only with indigenous Viet Minh resistance, which has thus far not been supported by significant Chinese aid, the French have enjoyed notable success through resort to arms. But now it has been revealed that the French have no confidence in their ability to maintain a position should the Chinese Communists seriously go to the aid of the Viet Minh, either directly or indirectly. The reports which we have been receiving from our own representatives, including the MDAP Mission, give us no reason to believe that the French are unduly alarmist in this appraisal. If the French send reinforcements to Indochina, as they are reportedly planning to do, they will further deplete defenses of Western Europe without—so far as we can tell—solving the Indochina problem.
If what Bruce was told and what Erskine and Melby have reported is true, it is questionable whether such air and naval support as we could muster would, in the light of our Korean experience, balance the scales in favor of France and its associated states. The question inevitably arises: “Can we then supply supplementary ground forces”? The answer, subject to check with the Defense Department, would seem to be in the negative.
All of this being the case, the French position in Indochina is indeed imperiled. We would be deceiving the French Government were we to offer encouragement of decisive military support. Furthermore, we would be undertaking a responsibility for the course of military events in Indochina which could be flung back in our face with recriminations should the military effort fail. The conclusion, therefore, is that if the French—and we—are to be spared a humiliating debacle in Indochina, some means other than reliance on military force must be found.
What political moves can be made?
The French Government’s inclination to appease Peiping is not only futile but a disturbing commentary on the general state of mind [Page 858] in Paris. Obviously, we should give the French no encouragement along such lines.
A dispassionate examination of the Indochina problem leads one to the familiar conclusion that the only hope for a solution lies in the adoption of certain drastic political measures by the French themselves. We recognize that those measures would be extremely distasteful to the French. But the only foreseeable alternative would seem to be even more disagreeable and embarrassing. This is a matter for voluntary decision by the French Government. The American Government should not take the responsibility for pressing Paris to any decision on this score. To do so would only lead to misunderstandings and mutual reproaches between allies.
We would, however, be less than frank with the French if we did not expose to them our views regarding a possible new approach to the problem of Indochina. Such an approach might be along the following general lines: It would seem that the March 8 agreements are an inadequate basis for attacking the Indochina problem on a political plane. It appears that genuine nationalism in Indochina would not, in view of the embittered atmosphere, be satisfied with anything less than independence by a definite date—perhaps two years hence, at a maximum. If the French make such a commitment, we can visualize the removal, of much of the suspicion among the Indochinese and other Asians, leading to a greater degree of spontaneous cooperation, both within Indochina and from South Asians, with the current French military efforts. Subsequent to such a declaration, were Paris to pass a large measure of responsibility for the Indochinese problem to the United Nations, it might well enlist an even wider support from free Asian countries and inhibit somewhat Chinese Communist support to Ho. Such developments would make our own military and economic aid role in Indochina more popular in this country.
An approach along the foregoing lines would in our estimation tend to (1) reduce the political appeal of Ho, (2) increase the support throughout Indochina of the Viet Nam regime, (3) raise the morale of the Viet Nam forces to a level approaching that of the ROK army, (4) provide for international surveillance of the border, (5) bring the Western powders and the new national states of Asia into closer alignment, (6) reduce our commitments in what is for us at best a tertiary theater, and (7) provide the French the least humiliating means for their inevitable retirement from the Indochina scene.
If Paris does not feel that it can adopt a bolder political approach with respect to Indochina, we must recognize that the French and we may well be heading into a debacle which neither of us can afford. For our part, it will become necessary promptly to reexamine our policy toward Indochina.