44. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council
(Rostow) to the
Secretary of State1
Washington, February 14,
1964.
SUBJECT
- Contingency Planning for Southeast Asia
Governor Harriman, Alexis Johnson,
Roger Hilsman, Bill Sullivan and I will be
meeting with you at 4:30 p.m. today.2
The purpose of our meeting will be to report to you the results of our
individual review of the attached report on Southeast Asia prepared by
the Policy Planning Council. A summary of the concept and key issues
examined in this report are at Tab A. I recommend you thumb through the
table of contents (Tab B)3 which will give you an idea of the
scope of the paper.
I recommend that you give your approval to the following proposals:
- 1.
- That the Tuesday Planning Group at its next meeting take on
the job of serving as a steering group to provide general
guidance and direction to the preparation of a contingency plan
for the imposition of measured sanctions against North Viet-Nam.
As you know, Governor Harriman and Alex Johnson
are regular members of that group. For these purposes we would
add others as required, including immediately senior
representatives of FE and USIA.
- 2.
- That the Planning Group establish a working group under State
Department chairmanship to prepare the necessary studies and
plans.
The objective of the next planning stage is not to produce a recommended
policy. It is to produce a complete politico-military scenario which we
can lay before senior officers of the Government so that they may judge
whether and under what circumstances a forward policy of the kind
examined here might prove wise and viable.
[Here follows discussion unrelated to Vietnam.]
[Page 76]
Tab A
SUMMARY OF CONCEPT AND KEY ISSUES
I. The Concept
The paper is not a plan, but an exposition of issues that would need
to be examined in preparing a plan. It examines a concept designed
to cause North Vietnam (the DRV) (a)
to cease its illegal infiltration of men and arms into South
Vietnam, its direction of the war in South Vietnam and its
supporting activities in Laos; and (b) to withdraw its troops or
cadres from both countries and to comply fully with the 1954 and
1962 Geneva Accords.
The concept is based upon the assumption that the imposition of
graduated political, military and, possibly, economic sanctions on
the DRV could cause it to call off
the war principally because of its fear that it would otherwise risk
loss of its politically important industrial development; because of
its fear of being driven into the arms of Communist China; and
because of Moscow’s, Peiping’s and Hanoi’s concern about
escalation.
II. Key Issues
- 1.
- The question of how to define operational objectives that will
command wide support at home and abroad; provide a reasonably
clear-cut basis for measuring Communist performance and not
provide undue opportunities for Communist delaying tactics and
political warfare; and therefore provide the basis for
determining when U.S. pressures should be continued, when
halted. As a related matter, how important and how feasible are
inspection arrangements or other means of insuring continued
DRV compliance?
- 2.
- The question of the degree of the U.S. commitment. We must be
prepared to withstand, if necessary, possibly great
international political pressures which might force us to desist
before we have achieved our objective. We must consider how far
we are prepared to go in meeting Communist military responses.
We must consider the actions that we would take in the event of
either success or failure.
- 3.
- Against the background of the past, how do we develop a
convincing case against the DRV
that will command, at a minimum, broad domestic U.S. support and
some international support and at the maximum, broad
international support?
- 4.
- How might the crisis be terminated? Are there acceptable
turning off points? Under what circumstances would we be
prepared to go to an international conference and for what
purpose?
- 5.
- We must consider how far we are prepared to go in providing
additional commitments of support to South Vietnam, Thailand
and, perhaps, the Philippines, and whether, even with such
commitments, they will give us their initial and their continued
support.
- 6.
- We face broad tactical choices: whether we should move quickly
or slowly in posing and carrying out our threat to the DRV; whether we should begin on the
covert or the overt level and how and when we should move from
one level of action to the other.
- 7.
- We need to reexamine organization for making and implementing
policy in the context of an intense and possibly protracted
politico-military crisis to insure responsiveness to top-level
control without neglect of expert advice and local
problems.
