148. Memorandum of Conversation Between Secretary of Defense McNamara and the Ambassador at Large (Harriman)1
I saw Bob McNamara Saturday morning, May 28. He said he had spoken to the President about my going to Moscow and was very keen that I should go.
[Page 405]He hopes for some settlement, and gave me the impression he didnʼt see any value in escalation. He said he thought a good settlement would be: if North Vietnam would pull its troops out, we should do the same; and establishment of an expanded ICC to assure no evasion.
From the Russian standpoint, they would not want to have escalation which eventually might affect them, and he thought I should underline the dangers.
On the plus side, he thought we could agree to a parallel reduction in the Defense budget, which he was sure the Kremlin wanted. He said he thought it might be a good idea for me to tell Kosygin that whereas on June 30, 1965 we had in the Army 968,000 men, this year we would have 1,217,000, and in June 1967, 1,600,000. We could certainly agree with the Kremlin to reduce our troop level.
On interim steps, we might stop bombing if the North Vietnamese stopped infiltration of men and perhaps supplies.
We should agree, he thought, to let the South Vietnamese decide their own future even if it meant a coalition government with the Viet Cong, which might or might not take over.
- Source: Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Box 486, McNamara, Robert S. Secret; Personal. Prepared by Harriman on May 30.↩