163. Letter From George B. Kistiakowsky to Secretary of Defense McNamara1
Dear Mr. Secretary:
The eight days of briefings certainly have not made us into Vietnam experts or enabled us to reach well-founded conclusions. However, they helped us to reach, among ourselves, a large measure of consensus on several tentative inferences and also to identify several problem areas, the intensive study of which might lead to conclusions and recommendations useful to you.2
We have been strongly impressed by the arguments of our military briefers that effective suppression and liquidation of main enemy forces [Page 456] is a necessary condition to the successful prosecution of the war of the villages and pacification of the countryside. However we heard no evidence that it is also a sufficient condition for achieving this ultimate objective. In fact, the emphasis on the war of the big battalions and the attendant buildup of U.S. forces is apparently having harmful effects on the war of the villages because of its economic impact on South Vietnam, gradual disintegration of the fabric of Vietnamese society, etc. There was presented to us no convincing evidence that the war of the villages is progressing favorably on the whole. There is thus already, from this point of view—aside from many other reasons—a strong incentive for rapidly winning the war against the hard core forces of VC and PAVN.
The military briefers left us with the impression that this war will “bottom out” early in 1967 so that the going will be easier thereafter. However we were forcibly impressed by the extraordinary unreliability and uncertainty of data on the infiltration of manpower and supplies from the North, on attrition of enemy forces, etc., data which, we assume, are the basis of their cautiously optimistic predictions for the course of war in the next twelve months.
If these predictions come true or if the will to fight of North Vietnam is broken in the meantime, what we propose to do will be a wasted effort. However we feel that prudence requires us to act on a more pessimistic view of the course of the war, which is that the war of the big battalions will continue escalating far into 1967 without the turning point being reached. This process will, we suspect, make the winning of the subsequent war of the villages much more difficult. One natural reaction under these circumstances is likely to be a very major escalation of the air war north of the 17th parallel. Whether this would be successful in forcing North Vietnam to give up the fight we are unable to judge, but we are mindful of the historical facts that aerial bombing never did it in the past and that the government of Ho Chi Minh is a very tough bunch. What the briefings did bring out is that the present level of bombing has caused only limited damage to North Vietnam and could have had no significant effect on the present level of the flow of manpower and supplies to the south, although undoubtedly making this flow more difficult to maintain. We would, however, like to examine the relevance of these difficulties to the capacity of DRV to prosecute the war. Since North Vietnam, with its comparatively easy terrain and high density of population and roads, is most likely not the choke point in the logistic supply line from China to South Vietnam, probably only its conversion into total shambles could interdict such flow. We should like very much the opportunity through detailed study to understand better whether that is so.
Since an operation leading to destruction of North Vietnam could have some very undesirable consequences for United States, we feel that the search for a different military policy option should become the central theme of our project. This option we can define at present only very [Page 457] vaguely as the creation of interdictory force fields (i.f.f.) at the proper choke points from the North and thus reduce the flow of materiel and manpower to such levels that the war of the big battalions could be substantially de-escalated. Where the choke points are—near the border between Laos and North Vietnam, in Laos or within the borders of South Vietnam—is not yet clear to us. Also the nature of interdictory force fields—stationary fences, air-sown mines and delayed action bombs, ECM, in addition to a further tightened sea barrier, etc.—or some combination of these—is still totally unclear to us, although the briefings left us with the impression that the present bombing of the Laos roads alone is not sufficient. The option for interdictory force fields, incidentally, may have some attractive side effects, aside from making the war of the big battalions more difficult for the enemy. If these fields are reasonably successful, the complex arguments for continued bombing of North Vietnam become clearly separated and some components eliminated. Also the acceptance of a cease-fire and subsequent policing of it will clearly be more feasible. On the other hand, we should be mindful that an i.f.f. could itself become a source of escalation of the war.
One of the major factors for the determination of the nature of the optimum interdictory force field is better understanding of intelligence data on infiltration rates and rates of attrition (men and materiel) since, for instance, large dumps of supplies in the Laos-South Vietnam border area would make materiel flow interdiction further North less attractive. If the infiltration of personnel is the controlling factor, quite a different i.f.f. may be required, and so on. Hence we would like to study the base of intelligence data.
A possible component of the interdictory force fields is an effective disruption of the enemyʼs command and control structure by selective electronic jamming and more sophisticated measures. The very limited information given to us does not prove that this would be either impossible or harmful to U.S. objectives on an over-all basis. We would like to study this question, also.
Needless to say, these studies will include thorough exploration of means for better utilization of our technology in the war, although, generally speaking, we do not propose to become involved in a broad effort at inventing new gadgets.
After some consideration, we concluded that the chances of our making useful contributions to the prosecution of the war of the villages and to the effectiveness of South Vietnam government are even less than in the above areas and do not propose to engage in systematic studies of these problems.
for Jason-East
- Source: Washington National Records Center, RG 330, McNamara Vietnam Files: FRC 77–0075, Vietnam, 1966. Confidential; Privileged.↩
- From June 13 to June 22 a group of more than 40 distinguished scientists met in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for briefings on the Vietnam war by military and civilian officials and follow-up discussions. The meetings were organized by the JASON Division of the Institute for Defense Analyses under a contract funded by the Department of Defense. A list of attendees and an agenda for their meetings are attached to the source text but are not printed. Following the Wellesley meetings, the participants broke into four study groups and in late August submitted to Secretary McNamara four reports, which concluded that the bombing of North Vietnam was ineffective and recommended construction of a barrier as an alternative means to check infiltration. The reportsʼ major conclusions are excerpted in The Pentagon Papers: Gravel Edition, vol. IV, pp. 115–123 and in the appendix to Document 269, and are discussed in Document 233.↩