Dear Mr. President:
First let me thank you most warmly for your kindness in letting me come
in the other day to talk about the possible East-West center on
management science and my forthcoming trip to Moscow. The guidance you
gave me was very clear, and I am getting myself up to date on all the
diplomatic background just in case there should be any serious talk on
Vietnam. I will be in Washington for this purpose and for an invisible
task force meeting (one of Ben Heineman’s) on May 6, 7 and 8.
Meanwhile, I have been conscious of the fact that I did not give you much
help when you asked what more I could suggest for us to do in Vietnam. I
have now brooded over your question and done the attached memorandum. As
you will see, it comes out pretty strong on the side of limiting the
bombing in the North, but you know me too well to mistake this for a
sudden switch to appeasement. I have been for bombing from the beginning
and I am sure it has been and still is indispensable, but I just don’t
believe the people who think that a lot more of it brings us nearer to
solution today. I think a middle course is better, and the memorandum
attempts to suggest one, as well as to show where you can get some
unexpected (to me) support for it.
I think we are in a time not unlike the spring of 1965 when the Baltimore
speech2 did so much to bring our policy into
focus and balance, and it is in the spirit of our discussions of that
time that this memo has been drafted. I am not on top of all the
relevant information, of course, and I know better than anyone that I
could be wrong—but I sensed in our last talk that you were interested in
alternatives to think about, and these pages suggest one.
Bob McNamara knows my thinking a little, but no one else does, and even
Bob has not seen this memo.
Attachment
MEMORANDUM ON VIETNAM POLICY
American opinion is increasingly uneasy about Vietnam because there
appear to be no defined limits to the levels of force and danger
that may lie ahead. Anyone who knows the President and his principal
advisers will be confident that they are keeping a very sharp eye on
the real risks involved, and the record of the two years since
Pleiku does not suggest that the prophets of gloom and doom have a
very good batting average—in fact, both Russian and Chinese
reactions have been well within the limits of national estimates in
all cases known to me. (In this connection the especially good
record of the CIA estimators
deserves note.) But the caution and restraint of the top men are
better known to the few than to the many.
Since the Communist turndown of our latest offers in February, there
has been an intensification of bombing in the North, and press
reports suggest that there will be further pressure for more attacks
on targets heretofore immune. There is also obvious pressure from
the military for further reinforcements in the South, although
General Westmoreland has
been a model of discipline in his public pronouncements. One may
guess, therefore, that the President will soon be confronted with
requests for 100,000–200,000 more troops and for authority to close
the harbor in Haiphong. Such recommendations are inevitable, in the
framework of strictly military analysis. It is the thesis of this
paper that in the main they should be rejected, and that as a matter
of high national policy there should be a publicly stated ceiling to
the level of American participation in Vietnam, as long as there is
no further marked escalation on the enemy side.
There are two major reasons for this recommendation: the situation in
Vietnam and the situation in the United States. As to Vietnam, it
seems very doubtful that further intensifications of bombing in the
North or major increases in U. S. troops in the South are really a
good way of bringing the war to a satisfactory conclusion. As to the
United States, it seems clear that uncertainty about the future size
of the war is now having destructive effects on the national
will.
On the ineffectiveness of the bombing as a means to end the war, I
think the evidence is plain—though I would defer to expert
estimators. Ho Chi Minh and
his colleagues simply are not going to change their policy on the
basis of losses from the air in North Vietnam. No intelligence
estimate that I have seen in the last two years has ever claimed
that the bombing would have this effect. The President never claimed
that it would. The notion that this was its purpose has been limited
to one school of thought and has never been the official Government
position, whatever critics may assert.
[Page 372]
I am very far indeed from suggesting that it would make sense now to
stop the bombing of the North altogether. The argument for that
course seems to me wholly unpersuasive at the present. To stop the
bombing today would be to give the Communists something for nothing,
and in a very short time all the doves in this country and around
the world would be asking for some further unilateral concessions.
(Doves and hawks are alike in their insatiable appetites; we can’t
really keep the hawks happy by small increases in effort—they come
right back for more.)
The real justification for the bombing, from the start, has been
double—its value for Southern morale at a moment of great danger,
and its relation to Northern infiltration. The first reason has
disappeared but the second remains entirely legitimate. Tactical
bombing of communications and of troop concentrations—and of
airfields as necessary—seems to me sensible and practical. It is
strategic bombing that seems both unproductive and unwise. It is
true, of course, that all careful bombing does some damage to the
enemy. But the net effect of this damage upon the military
capability of a primitive country is almost sure to be slight. (The
lights have not stayed off in Haiphong, and even if they had,
electric lights are in no sense essential to the Communist war
effort.)3 And against this distinctly marginal impact we
have to weigh the fact that strategic bombing does tend to divide
the U. S., to distract us all from the real struggle in the South,
and to accentuate the unease and distemper which surround the war in
Vietnam, both at home and abroad. It is true that careful polls show
majority support for the bombing, but I believe this support rests
upon an erroneous belief in its effectiveness as a means to end the
war. Moreover, I think those against extension of the bombing are
more passionate on balance than those who favor it. Finally, there
is certainly a point at which such bombing does increase the risk of
conflict with China or the Soviet Union, and I am sure there is no
majority for that. In particular, I think it clear that the case
against going after Haiphong harbor is so strong that a majority
would back the Government in rejecting that course.
[Page 373]
So I think that with careful explanation there would be more approval
than disapproval of an announced policy restricting the bombing
closely to activities that support the war in the South. General
Westmoreland’s speech to
the Congress made this tie-in, but attacks on power plants really do
not fit the picture very well. We are attacking them, I fear, mainly
because we have “run out” of other targets. Is it a very good
reason? Can anyone demonstrate that such targets have been very
rewarding? Remembering the claims made for attacks on oil supplies,
should we not be very skeptical of new promises?
The case against major troop reinforcement in the South is more
complicated and I advance it with somewhat less conviction. In
particular, the points I have to make do not say in any decisive way
whether the limit should be set just where it is today or some tens
of thousands higher. All that I can say is that I think there should
be a limit and that it should be stated and understood fairly
soon.
The American forces in Vietnam have been decisive in preventing
defeat and in opening a hope of real success. They have been
magnificently handled and their performance has been worthy of their
leadership. Perhaps their most important achievement has been to buy
time for the rehabilitation of the Vietnamese forces to which
General Westmoreland paid
such glowing tribute. But this war will have no end as long as it
merely pits foreign troops against Communists. In the end, it is
safety in the villages that is the object of the war. Cabot Lodge had it right when he
quoted Ho Chi Minh on the
decisiveness of the contest among the villagers of South Vietnam. I
believe that a clearly defined limit on the American forces in South
Vietnam would serve to focus the attention of all on this centrally
Vietnamese task and on the continuing responsibility of the South
Vietnamese themselves. The forces we have now on the scene can
continue to give severe punishment to Communist main-force units,
and even in the village war American troops can have a most
constructive role, as some dispatches from the central area suggest.
But where the requirement of 1965 was for proof of the American
effort, the requirement of 1967 is for re-emphasis upon the role of
the Vietnamese themselves, always with our advice and support.
Just as a recommendation against strategic bombing should not be
confused with the “stop-the-bombing” campaign, so this suggestion of
a troop ceiling should not be confused with the fatuous proposal
that American troops be confined to “enclaves.” The “enclave”
proposal is a good way of losing first the countryside and then the
country. My point is simpler and more limited: in the absence of
major Communist escalation, we are reaching the point of diminishing
returns from U.S. troop buildups.
[Page 374]
So far I have been talking about the validity of limitation in
relation to Vietnam. There is, I think, an equal validity when we
look at the home front. The best observers agree that the only hope
in Hanoi today is for American disunity and war weariness. On this
point I think Westmoreland
and Lodge are both right, and it seems to me the height of pettiness
to criticize them for expressing these honest (and I think accurate)
views. But their argument underlines the critical importance of
holding the country together and giving it a solid basis for
confident determination in its persistence. I believe that
restriction of strategic bombing and a ceiling on troops are both
entirely justified in terms of the overall situation in Vietnam
itself; they are still more justified by their value in stabilizing
American opinion. In April 1965, in his Baltimore speech, the
President laid out a balanced program of military firmness and
readiness for unconditional negotiation. In spite of all the costs
and uncertainties of the last two years, that platform has worn
well. Now we need a fresh and clear statement which will limit the
fears of our own people and at the same time underline our national
determination to stay the course.
It is true that some civil and military hawks would criticize any
such policy of announced restraint. The criticism can be
countered—in my judgment—by a powerful assembly of technical and
expert opinion as to the lack of value of strategic bombing and the
great importance of avoiding endless increases in American manpower.
I am confident, on the basis of a recent conversation, that General
Lauris Norstad would be willing to accept the task of rounding up
senior Air Force heroes like Spaatz and Twining—and he thinks
perhaps even Le May—to support a policy of bombing restraint.4 (Norstad
himself would actually stop the bombing in the North—at least for a
while—but I think he would gladly fall in with the present proposal
to restrict ourselves to the “tactical.”) I suspect that a similar
effort could be launched through General Bradley in favor of a policy of
troop limitation. (Obviously, the position will be greatly
reinforced as and when we are able to refer to a new and stronger
military/technological barricade against infiltration.)
More generally, I think there is no one on earth who could win an
argument that an active deployment of some 500,000 men, firmly
supported by tactical bombing in both South and North Vietnam,
represented an undercommitment at this time. I would not want to be
the politician, or the general, who whined about such a
limitation.
There is a major diplomatic scenario which could be developed to go
along with a national decision of this sort. In essence, it would
avoid any further public campaigns for negotiation, for the present,
while [Page 375] maintaining every
possible private diplomatic contact. It would anticipate a
demonstration during the next 6 to 9 months that this kind of
course—“steady as we go”—could be matched by political gains in the
South and by increasing South Vietnamese self-reliance. It would be
prepared to move dramatically once more in the field of negotiations
sometime early in 1968. There is a great deal of underbrush that
could be cleared away at the right time, so as to demonstrate
plainly to all who will look that reasonable ways out are open for
the taking to all who are fighting on the wrong side in Vietnam.
There are also many unilateral steps that a more self-confident
South Vietnamese government could take with the help of a man like
Bunker.
It may seem queer that there should be room for such political action
when we have said so much about our decent position on so many
occasions. But there are more and busier lawyers among the
doves—worldwide—than among ourselves, so that a strong new statement
of our position—at the right time—could be helpful. Such a new
statement, incidentally, need not contain any soft concessions of
the sort Lodge fears; the fact is that we are—as we should be—ready
to do anything at all that can really lead to free choice in the
South.
A case can be made for a strong new diplomatic effort now. But my
present view is that this effort should wait. I think we got a clear
No in February and should wait a while before we go back to the
well. I also think we ought to wait until after the South Vietnamese
election. The present issue is not “negotiation.” It is
“escalation.” What is undermining national unity now is the prospect
of one more unrewarding debate between the advocates and the
opponents of escalation, each shouting at the other against a
backdrop of worldwide fear of a third war. The most valuable single
step for all of us now would be a clear public demonstration, by a
publicly proclaimed decision, of what the top of the government
knows so well—that the President himself is a man of peace and
determination, restraint and perseverance, who knows what the war is
really about, and how to keep it in bounds while pressing it towards
success. Above all we need a renewed demonstration that the
President is in charge of the war, and not the other way around.
There is one further argument against major escalation in 1967 and
1968 which is worth stating separately, because on the surface it
seems cynically political. It is that Hanoi is going to do
everything it possibly can to keep its position intact until after
our 1968 elections. Given their history, they are bound to hold out
for a possible U. S. shift in 1969—that’s what they did against the
French, and they got most of what they wanted when Mendes took
power. Having held on so long this time, and having nothing much
left to lose—compared to the chance of victory—they are bound to
keep on fighting. Since only [Page 376] atomic bombs could really knock them out (an invasion of North
Vietnam would not do it in two years, and is of course ruled out on
other grounds), they have it in their power to “prove” that military
escalation does not bring peace—at least over the next two years.
They will surely do just that. However much they may be hurting,
they are not going to do us any favors before November 1968. (And
since this was drafted, they have been publicly advised by Walter Lippmann to wait for the
Republicans—as if they needed the advice and as if it was his place
to give it!)
It follows that escalation will not bring visible victory over Hanoi
before the election. Therefore the election will have to be fought
by the Administration on other grounds. I think those other grounds
are clear and important, and that they will be obscured if our
policy is thought to be one of increasing—and ineffective—military
pressure.
If we assume that the war will still be going on in November 1968,
and that Hanoi will not give us the pleasure of consenting to
negotiations sometime before then, what we must plan to offer as a
defense of Administration policy is not victory over Hanoi, but
growing success—and self-reliance—in the South. This we can do, with
luck, and on this side of the parallel the Vietnamese authorities
should be prepared to help us out (though of course the VC will do their damnedest against us.)
Large parts of Westy’s speech (if not quite all of it) were wholly
consistent with this line of argument.5
Moreover, if we can avoid escalation-that-does-not-seem-to-work, we
can focus attention on the great and central achievement of these
last two years: on the defeat we have prevented. The fact that South
Vietnam has not been lost and is not going to be lost is a fact of
truly massive importance in the history of Asia, the Pacific, and
the U. S. An articulate minority of “Eastern intellectuals” (like
Bill Fulbright) may not believe in what they call the domino theory,
but most Americans (along with nearly all Asians) know better. Under
this Administration the United States has already saved the hope of
freedom for hundreds of millions—in this sense, the largest part of
the job is done. This critically important achievement is obscured
by seeming to act as if we have to do much more lest we fail.
At some point—probably not in connection with any decision to limit
the bombing to tactical targets—we ought to get Peace Corps
volunteers into Vietnam. It makes no sense for all these decent and
energetic youngsters to pass by on the other side of the street when
there are literally hundreds of good things for them to do in
Vietnam. This [Page 377] idea has
been explored in the past, and it has always run into bureaucratic
resistance. But what the bureaucrats overlook is the good it would
do at home. Almost all U. S. volunteers in village work in Vietnam
have come home strong supporters of the war. Instead of battering at
the disaffected young, we could begin to convert them with such an
effort in Vietnam.
