24. Letter From John M. Steeves, Political Adviser to the Commander in Chief, Pacific, to the Special Assistant for Political and Military Affairs, Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs (Green)1
Dear Marshall: You have perhaps heard of recent discussions among our military friends about possible replacement of piston-type aircraft with jets in the Vietnamese Air Force (VNAF). As you know, a move of this kind would raise serious questions relating to the prohibition in the Geneva Accords against introduction of other than “replacement” equipment and specifically against “jet engines and jet weapons”.
While the military are fully aware of the Geneva Accords and their implication, another aspect of the matter seems to pose a serious problem for all of us. We are informed that shortly spare parts for the present aircraft in the VNAF will no longer be available. It appears that parts for the outmoded craft are no longer manufactured and that cannibalization must soon end for lack of further planes to strip. When that time is reached we will be faced with the somewhat awkward choice of (1) beginning uneconomic manufacture of the [Page 66] spare parts, (2) being unable to provide repairs and maintenance for VN planes, or (3) introducing jets.
This background gives more meaning to military proposals that we move jets into Viet-Nam despite the Geneva Accords. One proposal, as you may know, is initially to introduce only unarmed trainers in inconspicuous numbers. Another is to assert that conditions and facts pertaining when the Accords were signed have so substantially changed as to terminate the obligations thus invoking the legal principle rebus sic stantibus. Still another is to act despite the Accords noting that neither the United States nor the Vietnamese signed (the French signed for Viet-Nam) and that the Vietnamese, in their declaration of July 21, 1954,2 specifically reserved the right to act independently in accordance with their own national interests.
We will be interested in anything you may hear about this subject in Washington. We try, of course, to keep before our military colleagues a clear perspective on the relationship between the military and political aspects of the problem and, at the moment, the relationship of this problem to moves to get the ICC out of Laos.
Warm regards.
Sincerely yours,
- Source: Department of State, Vietnam Working Group Files: Lot 66 D 193, Jet Aircraft. Secret; Official–Informal.↩
- Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. XVI, p. 1546.↩
- Printed from a copy which bears this typed signature.↩