751G.00/9–953
Memorandum by the Director of the Office of Philippine and South-East Asian Affairs (Bonsal) to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Johnson)1
Subject:
- Alternatives in Indochina
I refer to Mr. Ogburn’s memorandum of September 82 on the above subject. I think that perhaps the brief condensed paragraphs which [Page 794] I contributed to the Solarium Project do not sufficiently cover the ground.
If the Navarre plan with its political concomitant, the establishment of a viable non-Communist government in Viet-Nam fails, we will be confronted with (a) sending U.S. troops to Indochina to hold the country, or (b) letting Indochina go the way of China. Therefore, we must not let the Navarre plan fail. No one can now decide, it seems to me, whether the conditions of its failure would be such as to create a situation in which our bosses, the Congress and people of the U.S., would permit the sending of U.S. troops to the area.
The alternative to any plan which leaves the Communist dominated regular divisions undefeated is a turn-over of the country to the Communists no matter how you camouflage it with plebiscites or U.N. supervision or negotiations. Both our military people and the French military people disagree with Mr. Ogburn’s view as to the probable impossibility of the French being able to eliminate the regular enemy divisions. There is of course no such thing as certainty in war. Nevertheless, the increase of Gen. Navarre’s striking force to a point where the enemy could be denied fertile and populated territory which he now occupies and from which he draws much of his strength in manpower and food, and the disruption of the enemy’s major supply routes seem to present a good chance of success and one which the Joint Chiefs are ready to back.
The third alternative presented by Mr. Ogburn would under present circumstances merely be a slight camouflage of a free world defeat in Indochina. I do not believe that the Communists would permit a political solution acceptable to us in Indochina as long as they have their present military strength. The possibility that at some time in the future the U.N. solution, after the French and Vietnamese have achieved military successes in Indochina, might be an acceptable face-saver for a Communist defeat may be worth studying when the time comes. At the present time, however, such ideas, prevalent in certain French and Vietnamese circles and including the concept of negotiations, merely represent attempts to camouflage the defeat which I do not believe we are ready to accept or to regard as inevitable. Consideration of such ideas also tends to distract the French and others from the immediate task at hand—the carrying out of the Navarre concept.