250. Letter From the President’s Consultant on Vietnam (Taylor) to President Johnson1
Dear Mr. President:
As the New Year approaches, I am sure that the thought uppermost in your mind and that of your senior advisers is what to do about Viet-Nam in 1966. Not knowing exactly the present state of development of plans within the government, I am venturing to convey to you some of my personal views as to the goals set for next year.
Our overall objective remains that of assuring South Viet-Nam the right to determine its own form of government and its own way of life [Page 711] without having to accept a Communist government imposed by Hanoi. It may or may not be possible to attain this objective in 1966; we should, however, establish ambitious bench marks in all sectors of our endeavors which, if reached, should offer a reasonable hope of convincing the Communist leaders that the invincibility of the “War of Liberation” being waged in South Viet-Nam is a myth and hence they had better change their game.
In seeking to establish an objective for the ground combat in South Viet-Nam during 1966, I would suggest its expression in terms of population made sufficiently secure to permit progress by the non-military agencies in developing the secured areas. At present, it is estimated (although the estimate is sometimes challenged) that about 53 percent of the population is already in this state of security. If we took some figure like 75-80 percent of the population as our year-end goal for security, it would have the effect of focusing the military effort more specifically on population as our primary objective rather than territory. If we take control of territory as our goal, it invites us to disperse our forces throughout the jungles and forests of negligible military and political value and into terrain most favorable to the military operations of the enemy. It will create endless U.S. troop requirements if we undertake to pursue the guerrilla bands into the remote fastnesses of Viet-Nam; we had better concentrate our troop resources on securing the maximum number of people and thus get the most out of our deployments.
The role of our U.S. ground forces in this campaign for increased population security should be primarily the destruction of mainline Viet Cong-North Vietnamese units, preferably after they have been located by South Vietnamese ground action. Let the South Vietnamese army find and fix the enemy; we are best suited to hold and destroy them. I know that no pat formula such as this can apply in all cases but it can serve as a general guide. I have been disturbed by growing evidence from Saigon that our military in South Viet-Nam are inclined to turn over all or most of the heavy fighting to U.S. forces and allow the bulk of the Vietnamese forces to retire behind a screen of U.S.-provided protection to perform clearing jobs and local defense. At least half of the South Vietnamese regular units should be used in mobile combat roles and some such level of Vietnamese participation should be required by the U.S. military authorities in Saigon.
It is more difficult to set concrete goals in the area of development and rural reconstruction. I would suggest one, however; namely, that we take as a 1966 objective the conduct of free elections in all the secure areas of South Viet-Nam for the purpose of electing a constituent assembly. If all elements of civil government are oriented toward this goal, I would expect substantial progress to be made in all the subordinate programs for such purposes as the improvement of administration, agriculture, distribution of commodities, public health and the like. For our part, we [Page 712] should indicate our unequivocal support for such elections and our willingness to accept the results whatever they may be.
In planning the air campaign against North Viet-Nam for 1966, we should first remind ourselves of the three purposes we had in starting it in February, 1965. First, there was the need to give the South Vietnamese the opportunity for the first time in eleven years of conflict to strike back at the source of all their troubles; it also gave us an opportunity to retaliate for such terrorist attacks as the mortaring of the Bien Hoa air base, the bombing of the Brink hotel and the attack on U.S. barracks at Pleiku. Second, there was the need to use our air superiority to retard and make more difficult the continued infiltration of men and materiel from North Viet-Nam into South Viet-Nam. No one expected air power alone to be able to stop infiltration and clearly it has not. But any serious examination of the physical destruction of our bombings and the effect on daily circulation of our armed reconnaissance is bound to conclude that the air campaign has made life very difficult for those in the North who are supporting the Viet Cong insurgency.
The third and, in the long run, the most important purpose of our bombings was and is to convince the Hanoi leaders that the aggression must stop or they will have to pay an increasingly high price for its continuance. We are all aware that they have thus far given no indication of an intention to mend their ways. But neither did the leaders in Moscow give any intention of calling off the Berlin airlift or the North Korean-Chicom leaders of abandoning their effort to take over South Korea until the game had been played down to the last card. Up to that point, their attitude was one of defiant, aggressive confidence. We should expect nothing different from Hanoi now. The leaders there still hope that international or U.S. domestic pressures will cause us to weaken and modify our purpose—or perhaps the Saigon Government may cave in as it has in the past. Until these hopes prove vain, I am convinced we must keep up the pressure and pursue inexorably a bold offensive course in 1966.
In this spirit, I would recommend that, during 1966, we continue the deliberate destruction of all fixed targets in North Viet-Nam outside of heavily populated areas which have any relation to the war-supporting capability of North Viet-Nam and continue to interdict road and rail movement throughout the country. This will require after due warning the aerial mining of the principal ports. In order to increase the reluctance of the DRV to denude North Viet-Nam of army units to reinforce the Viet Cong in South Viet-Nam, it may be desirable to encourage the South Vietnamese to conduct commando raids with U.S. support along the North Vietnamese coast to give an occasional reminder that the ground of North Viet-Nam may eventually be no more of a sanctuary than its air space.
[Page 713]On the politico-economic front in Saigon, we need to sustain and improve the Ky government and work increasingly to hold inflation within bounds. We also need to keep the Saigon political leaders in mental step with us as we plan for the termination of hostilities. If, as I believe, we are going to be obliged to take the Viet Cong in some form into any negotiation, we need to work hard now to overcome the inevitable objections of our ally.
In conditioning Hanoi for negotiation, we need to work much harder in 1966 to carry the message to the people of North Viet-Nam and to the Viet Cong that a better life awaits them if they abandon their aggression against the south. Some of the specific advantages need to be spelled out more precisely than up to now. All our propaganda activities should then be directed at getting this message to a people who must be coming increasingly unhappy under the burdens of war.
On our domestic front, I am sure you will agree that there is continuing work to be done in explaining the Viet-Nam situation to our people. Since returning to the U.S. in August, I have made nearly fifty speaking or TV appearances from which I have drawn two conclusions. The substantial people of the country are solidly behind the actions of our government but there is wide-spread criticism that the government does not adequately explain what is going on. There is even some suspicion that this government is holding back and perhaps concealing some of the facts. At the moment, in many quarters there is an unreasoning confidence in negotiations as an end in themselves and their initiation as necessarily synonymous with the restoration of peace. Our people need to be reminded again and again of our Korean experience—twenty-five months of negotiations while we lost some 46,000 American and 150,000 allied casualties. I suggest the need in 1966 of many more high-level explanations to our people of the basic issues in South Viet-Nam to give them the feeling of being taken more into the confidence of their government.
In closing, let me say that, as one of your advisers, I am not discouraged or dismayed by the prospects in Viet-Nam for 1966—provided we stay on course and refuse to be diverted from the overall objective which you have stated so many times—the independence of South Viet-Nam and its freedom from attack. My attention was recently drawn to a staunch sentence of Sir Francis Drake which gives me considerable comfort in such times as these. “There must be a beginning of every matter but it is continuing unto the end that yields the true glory.”
With warm regards for a New Year which will bring its share of glory,
Respectfully,
- Source: Johnson Library, White House Central Files, Confidential File, ND 19/CO 312 (Situation in Vietnam, 1964-1965). Secret. McGeorge Bundy sent this letter to the President with the following comment: “Max Taylor prepared this at my request, and I think you will find it an interesting and thoughtful contribution.” A note on Bundy’s covering memorandum indicates this letter was sent to the President in Texas on December 31 at 11:45 p.m.; a notation on the memorandum indicates that the President saw it.↩