Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume II, Vietnam, 1962

275. Letter From the Counselor of the Department of State (Rostow) to the Ambassador in Vietnam (Nolting)¹

Washington, September 5, 1962.

Dear Fritz: There has been increasing interest in Washington in recent days in the political component of the effort against the guerrillas in Viet Nam. I know that this is, of course, also very much on your mind and I have been greatly encouraged to read the reports of the progress you have been making in this area as well as in other areas. We have also been encouraged by recent talks with Rufus Phillips about his explorations and activities relating to this problem.² At the same time I am sure that you would agree that we ought to canvass all possible avenues for improving the rate of progress.

While I have no illusions about the possibilities for ending the war quickly, I do have the personal feeling, based upon the indicators I have seen, that we may in the next few months be approaching the real turning point of the struggle. If this is true, it becomes particularly important that we explore every possible measure that makes any sense and that might help get us over the hump. Guerrilla wars—like battles for air supremacy—tend to come to a peak and spiral in one direction or another. I do not feel that this one is likely to spiral against us in the next six months; but it could—as seen from a great distance—spiral for us if the hamlet program, and all it stands for, takes hold. It is for that reason that those cheering your team on from Washington, may appear to be straining under circumstances which otherwise represent a very great accomplishment over the past nine months or so.

Bob Johnson, a member of the Policy Planning Council, several weeks ago completed the attached study³ on the subject of central government relationships with the countryside. I believe that you were given an earlier draft of the paper at the time of the last Honolulu meeting.⁴ Necessarily our information on the subjects covered was somewhat incomplete at the time the paper was prepared and there have been further developments since that time. In particular the description of US programs in Section VI is out of date.

We realize that at this distance from Viet Nam we cannot possibly have the feel for the situation that you and your colleagues in Saigon have acquired. I am sending you the paper solely with the thought that the analysis and the suggestions in it may be of use to you as a further source of ideas in your daily work on these problems. I am also enclosing with this letter a list of additional suggestions which we obtained when we sought reactions here to the paper. This list, too, may contain ideas that you can use.

If the paper were to be revised today we would need to take account of the following major points bearing upon the recommendations contained in it which have emerged from informal review of the paper in Washington.

1. We get conflicting information here as to which are the weakest links in the GVNʼs administrative relationships with the countryside where improvement in training and use of new training techniques may be most needed. Possibly we have not identified the highest priority targets. It is our understanding that there is much more information in Saigon on the status of training programs than is available here. (A recent airgram (Toaid A-513),⁵ for example, contains information on provincial training centers which was not previously available in Washington.) We believe that our suggestions on the character, general priority and organization of training programs have merit, however.

2. The recommendation that appointive councils be continued at the village and hamlet level and that elective advisory councils be created and given major functions (Recommendation 6) was based upon two assumptions. One was that, under present circumstances, it would be very difficult to get genuinely free elections of hamlet officials who would be bearing the main burden of administering the government programs at the hamlet level. We assumed—and some of the available GVN instructions on the program seemed to support this assumption—that province and district officials would assure that their candidates would be elected. We also had some doubts, based also in part upon GVN instructions, as to whether the GVN intended to give these elected hamlet councils real authority over constructive programs that would have genuine popular appeal instead of limiting them solely to control of the rural population and to the imposition of onerous-seeming burdens on the population. We are still not certain whether these assumptions are incorrect but some reports seem to suggest that really free elections are being permitted and that there might be plans for giving continuing constructive tasks to the hamlet councils. It is obviously important that this should be the case.

3. It is our understanding that you are now using the provincial military advisers as temporary provincial AID advisers as the paper suggested (Recommendation 8) independently of any knowledge that such a proposal was under consideration. It is, of course, obvious that this must be a stop-gap measure until we have the people and have made the arrangements with the GVN for AID personnel to handle such jobs. It seems important that installation of AID advisers at provincial levels proceed with some speed.

4. We have been greatly encouraged by recent progress with respect to the Montagnards (Recommendation 11). As we understand it the government has just embarked, with our help and support, on a country-wide Montagnard program directed not only toward immediate urgent relief requirements for those that have come out of the hills, but also toward longer-range welfare and economic needs. I have also been delighted to hear of the progress that is being achieved in making the Montagnards into a significant military factor and of the GVNʼs apparent enthusiasm for this program.

I hope that Bill Trueheart may get back to Washington in the near future and that I can get together with him to discuss political aspects of counterinsurgency in Viet Nam. I know that his activities as chairman of the Committee on Province Rehabilitation have brought him into intimate daily contact with the problems involved. As a purely personal thought I have been wondering recently whether there might not be real utility in devoting some significant portion of one of the Honolulu meetings to the political component of our effort in Viet Nam. Obviously such a discussion should be carefully prepared in advance and it would also be necessary to include some additional top-level people from Washington and Saigon. I might informally discuss such a possibility with Bill if he comes to Washington.

In closing I want to say again that we are most impressed with the job you are doing and with the momentum that is, as a result, beginning to develop in Viet Nam.

With warmest greetings to you both and the children. Practice your ping-pony for my next visit.⁶

Yours,

W.W. Rostow⁷

[Enclosure]

Paper Prepared in the Department of State

Washington, undated.

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTIONS FOR POSSIBLE ACTION

1. Scholarships as Rewards. The Government ought to be encouraged to search for additional means of satisfying the desires of rural youth for increased status and upward mobility which they may otherwise seek to satisfy through participation in Viet Cong activities. For example, education is the key to vertical mobility for many Vietnamese and consideration might be given to providing scholarships to young Vietnamese as a reward for active participation in hamlet defense units, heroism under fire, etc. Perhaps these youth should be selected by popular secret ballot or by hamlet councils (where they are elected by truly free electoral process). Their training might be in subjects useful to them personally (e.g., higher education that would qualify them for Government service) or to the hamlet itself (e.g., education in health or mechanics).

2. Land Reform. The GVN now holds 260,000 hectares of land acquired from former French landlords and about 125,000 hectares from Vietnamese landlords which is still undistributed. This land might, wherever possible, be distributed free to young people who distinguish themselves in building or defending strategic hamlets. This again would help satisfy the desire for vertical mobility on the part of such young people. It might also be possible to distribute some of this land to the strategic hamlets themselves as common land, the income of which would be used for the support of hamlet officials or local facilities such as hamlet schools. Finally, some of this land might be distributed to families of Viet Cong victims. If such actions were exploited effectively by information media (along with an exposition of Communist land policy in North Vietnam) they might help nullify the appeal that Communist land reform seems to have for the peasant in Vietnam. Finally, we ought to encourage the GVN, as part of the strategic hamlet program, to make it the responsibility of elected hamlet officials to enforce provisions of the land reform act.

3. National Strategic Hamlet Congress. We might encourage the GVN to hold a national strategic hamlet congress in Saigon in the near future with elected representatives from each strategic hamlet. Such a congress could study the program, compare notes on experiences and advise the GVN. An important part of such a Congress might be the honoring of bona fide strategic hamlet heroes. Perhaps the distribution of land and/or scholarships to some of these people by President Diem could be the principal event of the congress. Such a congress would help foster a sense of national identity, giving the rural population some feeling of participation in the national government, and could provide some useful ideas on the organization and administration of the program. Information media could play all of this back to the countryside.

4. Employment of National Assembly Deputies in the Strategic Hamlet Program. National Assembly deputies are, for the most part, loyal, intelligent and talented people and in many cases their abilities are badly under-employed. We might consider suggesting that some of them could play an active hamlet-level role in the strategic hamlet program. At a minimum, they might be attached to appropriate regional strategic hamlet committees as special advisers and inspectors.

5. Provincial Administration. Some reports suggest that one of the weak links in the administrative chain is at the level of the provincial bureaucracy. We should encourage the GVN to continue to prune the provincial bureaucracy of corrupt or abusive officials and to improve training programs, perhaps along the lines suggested in the paper.

6. Reunification. The government might gain some increased popular support by a carefully-designed and well-publicized policy statement on this issue.

1. Source: Department of state, S/P Files: Lot 69 D 121, Vietnam 1962. Secret; Official-Informal. Drafted by Robert Johnson. copies were also sent to Rice, Harriman, Cottrell, and Wood.
2. In June 1962, Rufus Phillips had gone to Vietnam as a consultant to AID to make a survey of the insurgent war and recommend a program for counterinsurgency support. A copy of his 21-page report is attached to a note from Lansdale to William Bundy, September 10, in Washington National Records Center, RG 330, OASD/ISA Files: FRC 69 A 6214, Vietnam-Reports, Studies.
3. See Document 249 and footnote 3 thereto.
4. Presumably the July 17 draft referred to in footnote 3, Document 249.
5. Not found.
6. Attached to the source text was Noltingʼs reply, October 10, in which the Ambassador stressed that he hoped greater political expression would arise in Vietnam as the military pressure was reduced, and noted that, while much remained to be done, he was optimistic about the outcome.
7. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.