Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVII, Mainland Southeast Asia; Regional Affairs

313. Information Memorandum From the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Bundy) to Secretary of State Rusk¹

Washington, May 16, 1966.

SUBJECT

• Basic Policy Choices Concerning Thailand

1. The attached memorandum (Tab A) was prepared jointly with John McNaughtonʼs office to provide a basis for your discussion of this subject with Secretary McNamara at 5:00 p.m. today.² It indicates a considerable measure of agreement on the key factors affecting our policy choices and the choices themselves. There are, however, some important differences and these are noted in the text.

2. The differences are largely of emphasis, e.g., how much, rather than whether, Thai MAP should be increased in future years. The one disagreement requiring decision now relates to the provision of additional U.S.-manned helicopters to provide lift for Thai troops and police engaged in counterinsurgency operations. We consider, and Defense agrees, that there is a clear need for additional helicopter lift. We believe further that a refusal of this assistance would probably be read by the Thai as a lack of resolve on our part and a beginning of disengagement and could lead rather quickly to a sharp deterioration of Thai support and cooperation. For example, the Thai could withdraw approval for the introduction of three additional U.S. tactical fighter squadrons, an approval which was apparently granted by the Prime Minister in expectation of favorable U.S. action on the Thai request for helicopter support. Ambassador Martin foresees much more far-reaching repercussions: stalling on all future requests for deployments; pressure for a status-of-forces agreement and/or a bilateral defense treaty; insistence on full prior consultation on use of Thai bases including target selection; possibly restrictions on certain Laos operations mounted from Thailand. Martinʼs most recent message on the subject (Embtel 2399)³ is attached (Tab B; Sec saw).

3. Defense, on the other hand, argues that the provision of U.S.-manned helicopters will not prove to be temporary, will cause the Thais to do less themselves, will get us more deeply involved in “fighting Thailandʼs battle for her”, and will lead to a situation in which the U.S. pilots cannot be withdrawn without causing a major political crisis.

Tab A

Memorandum for Secretary of State Rusk and Secretary of Defense McNamara

SUBJECT

• Basic Policy Choices Concerning Thailand

We confront a series of action decisions on Thailand, notably (a) whether to authorize additional US-manned helicopters to assist the Thais in counterinsurgency operations; (b) whether to accept substantial increases in the Thai MAP for FY 1967 (AID FY 66 contingency funds might be available for early funding of increases in this program); (c) whether to authorize further major increases in the already very large military construction program in Thailand. Affirmative decisions have already been taken with respect (d) to the 10 FY 66 helicopters and (e) to FY 66 CONUS training for Thai helicopter pilots. The more we look at the issues, the more we all feel that the time has come to draw back and assess our total policy toward Thailand, particularly against possible adverse developments in the Vietnam situation.

Principal Elements of the Situation

1. Our Present Degree of Involvement with Thailand. The SEATO Treaty and the Rusk/Thanat communique (at Tab C)⁴ have created a firm bilateral commitment to assist in the defense of Thailand against overt aggression. Since February 1965 we have deployed major US military forces to Thailand, principally air, and are now operating eight US squadrons from Thai bases, which account for all, or virtually all, US land-based strikes against North Vietnam. Deployment of three more squadrons has been approved by the RTG, and will arrive in Thailand over the coming 10–12 weeks. We have authorized and cleared with the Thai Government a major construction program to build a large new port and airbase complex at Sattahip, to enlarge airfields and other installations, and to build extensive road, rail, and pipeline connections—all premised in large part on needs for operations related to Vietnam but to some extent also on possible contingencies for the defense of Thailand and Southeast Asia generally. This construction is now well underway. On the military planning side, as a result of a basic commitment in the summer of 1964, we have confirmed with the Thais, in mid-1965, the so-called “Project 22” planning and force designation arrangements calling for joint limited US/Thai military action to meet a conventional threat in the Mekong Valley. In terms of material support, we have provided, in addition to a continuing MAP program recently on the order of $40 million, substantial AID inputs which will run this year to roughly $30–35 million. US personnel are advising the Thai military, police, and intelligence forces at all levels.

2. Thai Attitudes Towards Involvement with the US. Ambassador Martin has been successful in getting the Thai oligarchy (for practical purposes, Thanom, Praphat, Dawee, Thanat and Pote Sarasin) to go along willingly, though with some minor frictions, with all that we have asked. It is important to note that this consent rests today on a very personal and politically fragile basis. Permission is secured directly from the Premier or Vice-Premier, without consultation with the Foreign Office, and does not involve any inhibiting status of forces or operational mission clearance agreements. The Thais are well aware that these are unusually permissive arrangements. This is not to say that they have acted altruistically, because these same leaders do recognize their own vital stake, as well as the substantial economic benefit to the country, e.g., from the construction program. Moreover, the Thai leaders have recognized their special and direct concern for the Communist threat in Laos—to them a much more immediate problem than Vietnam—by their significant artillery and air contributions to the defense of Laos. Within the last few days, they have publicly announced their direct contributions in Vietnam: An LST, a PGM patrol craft and two C–123 transport aircraft, all operational under the Thai flag. (Both Peking and the clandestine “Voice of the Thai People” have attacked the RTG very heavily for this latest action.)

Nonetheless, despite all the realities of self-interest involved in the Thai actions, we must recognize that the Thai leaders have gone much further than Thailand has ever done in its history to align itself with one of the major contending forces in the area. Significant elements within Thailand have been grumbling at this degree of commitment, and the Thai leaders are sensitive to this. The historic Thai tradition of not becoming this deeply involved is a fact, and we must recognize that it exists.

More specifically, Thai military leaders—and more vehemently the Thai military below the top—feel that we have been grudging and even inadequate in our assistance to the Thai military and, harking back to their disillusionment with our Lao policy in 1961–62, question whether we are in fact a dependable ally in a crunch. They are particularly sensitive to the point that US operations from Thailand have been importantly responsible for the increased insurgency in the Northeast as well as to the increased threat of overt aggression. They feel the US should recognize this and respond accordingly. Thus, there are important elements in the second-echelon Thai military who especially question the degree of commitment the RTG leadership has accepted; this attitude could become a serious danger.

3. Thai Response to the Increased Threat to Their Security. The Thais have been late and slow in their response to the increased threat to their security posed by developments in Laos and Vietnam. Beginning last fall, however, when their insurgency problem in the Northeast became increasingly apparent, the Thais reacted with new determination and vigor to meet this situation. Moreover, the US acceptance in mid-1965 of the Project 22 plan, and our increased in-country construction which the Thais regard as partially conceived to meet threats to Thailand, have spurred the Thais to increased efforts to improve their capability to resist conventional aggression. The country team is in agreement that a new spirit and will are evident in Thailand.

Probably the greatest weakness of the Thai Government in the face of the threat of subversion and insurgency is the inadequacy of its direct links with the villager. This applies both to its provision of security and of government services. Fortunately, the Thai leadership sees this flaw and is taking steps to correct it. Programs to improve and augment the police and to make their presence felt at lower levels in the administrative hierarchy are already underway. In the more critical areas, the police are being supplemented quite ably by the Army, particularly by Thai Special Forces teams and an airborne company which has been deployed to the Phu Phan Mountain area. Strides have been made in the collection, collation and exploitation of intelligence with the establishment of regional Joint Security Centers where Provincial Police, Border Patrol Police, Special Branch, Army, Air Force, and Marine Police contribute to and share in the intelligence take. Since December of last year, the Counter Subversion Operations Center in Bangkok has provided a central repository and backstop for these regional centers and has also brought about a great improvement in the coordination of countersubversion operations generally.

In the field of better government services and government presence at the village level, the MDUs have continued to do good work and new ones have recently been established so that thirteen now are in operation. The Accelerated Rural Development program continues its drive to enable developmental projects to be carried out at the Provincial and District level, and the Developing Democracy Program is reviving the township councils so that there will be village and township-level participation in the process of planning and implementing ARD projects.

The steps taken so far have been small but, in spite of the intensified Communist effort, there is good reason to hope that the Thai will have some success in overcoming the weaknesses of the traditional over-centralized administrative system.

In the field of military preparations more narrowly defined, the Thais have not in the past done an adequate job. Their basic policy of devoting 60–70% of their national budget to economic development has appeared to us sound, and we still strongly support it. But the unfortunate fact is that the Thais have not chosen until recently to start to raise the over-all level of the budget sufficiently to make adequate funds available for defense purposes, nor to increase the percentage of manning in the RTA units and improve training and utilization of equipment in the Armed Forces generally. The result has been persistent weaknesses in these respects, which led to an adverse GAO report in 1964 that criticized their performance. However, the current budget items for defense and police now have been increased 27% over the previous year and a new extension and expansion of the draft is expected to raise manpower levels in the Army from the present 83,860 to 96,540 by June 30 and 102,365 by the end of CY 1966. Pursuit of the joint evaluatory effort which MACTHAI has initiated will give us good leverage in those areas where the Thai effort still falls short.

4. Thai Reaction to Developments in Vietnam. This is perhaps the key question in relation to future policy. Last June, when we were deliberating our major force commitment in Vietnam, it was the conclusion that the Thai simply would not stand up to the combined Chicom and North Vietnamese threat that would exist if South Vietnam fell. We made a similar informal judgment in assessing our Vietnam policy recently, and specifically concluded that the Thai reaction to failure in Vietnam would not be significantly different even under circumstances where the US had made every possible effort militarily and the situation fell apart because of internal political divisions.

In the event Vietnam goes bad, there will undoubtedly be many elements in Thailand which will take the view that, if the alternative to accommodation is a conflict on Thai soil, such as that now being fought in Vietnam, then accommodation is to be preferred. They will also reflect the feeling that if the US effort has failed in Vietnam, it will in the end fail in Thailand, too, despite the rather different circumstances which apply in Thailand.

However, as a result of all we have done, the Thais would be more likely than we previously believed to stand firm or at least attempt to. The present leaders have almost burned their bridges, particularly with the recent announcement of overt assistance to South Vietnam. There are many other factors which might lead them to conclude that they could avoid the political disintegration which poses the greatest danger to the effort in Vietnam. The King is popular, the government is generally responsive to and accepted by the people, and the economic situation has been steadily improving with the conscious effort being made to expand the rural share in this improvement, although this is still inadequate in the Northeast. Further, the Thai leadership would fear the effects of accommodation with Communist China on their 3–4 million overseas Chinese who would be extremely difficult to control once a Chinese Communist Embassy were established in Bangkok.

In short, there is at least the chance that even if South Vietnam went bad, Thailand would persist at least for some time to try to maintain its relationship with the US. This would be true, however, only if the US somehow managed to come through the Vietnam experience without vitally damaging the credibility of its commitment to assist in the defense of Thailand.

Nevertheless, we believe that if Vietnam goes bad it remains more likely than not that the Thais will seek an accommodation with the Chinese Communists and that the minimum price for this would be Thai disengagement from their treaties with the US, the removal of US operational military units and the reduction of US military assistance to a minimum basis if not its total elimination. We do not believe it necessarily would follow that Thailand would be subjugated by the Communists.

Broader Policy Considerations

5. Thailand in Relation to the Area. If Vietnam goes bad, Cambodia will almost certainly become for all practical purposes a Chinese Communist ally, and in Laos there may remain at best only a tenuous and shaky hold on the Mekong Areas. Communist Chinaʼs stock would rise automatically, and the effect on the attitudes of the overseas Chinese in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore would be electric. Confidence in the US would be shaken throughout the Far East. If Thailand decides to accommodate, it would then seem likely that, if they had not already done so, Malaysia, Singapore and Burma would change their orientation in the direction of Communist China, and would in a period of time become for practical purposes areas of Communist Chinese influence or possibly domination. Indonesia, now so thoroughly aroused against the Communist Chinese, might maintain true independence, but would be threatened over a period of time by a recurrence of political forces prepared to accommodate in some fashion. In any case, all of mainland Southeast Asia would be subject to Communist influence and we would face a very grim strategic and psychological aftermath.

In short, while the situation is again less fatalistic than a year ago, particularly with respect to Indonesia, the over-all consequences of Thailand falling or even accommodating would still be extremely serious and would have major disruptive effects in India, and in East Asia as a whole.

6. Consequences of Another US Failure in Southeast Asia. As the previous analysis indicates, any major US effort to support Thailand, assuming the worst in Vietnam, would confront basic Thai attitudes, as well as concrete problems, that add up to a substantial chance that the effort would again fail, as in Vietnam, whatever we did. Failure in Vietnam alone would have created a major shock to US prestige and credit world-wide, and it may well be asked whether we should head into another situation fraught with possibilities of failure, or whether we might then seek to cut our losses. We may well wonder, also, whether the American people would support a “second effort” in Thailand, and one can already hear the voices of protest attacking the non-democratic and unattractive aspects of Thailand, while on the other hand major voices would be heard demanding that we deal with the threat by military measures involving a major risk of large-scale conflict with Communist China. The prospect is less than appetizing.

U.S. Policy Options

7. The Theoretical Options. There would seem to be four basic postures we could adopt at the present juncture.

A. One restricted posture would be that we do those things, and only those things, necessary to maintain essential US operations from Thailand in connection with Vietnam. This posture may, of course, require elements of Postures B–D below to be successful.

B. Another restricted posture would be that we largely ignore the quid pro quo aspects of our assistance above and provide aid only for programs designed to help Thailand achieve an ability to deal successfully with their subversion and insurgency problems. This posture would involve a side-tracking of the Project 22 efforts.

C. A less restrictive posture would be that we go beyond Posture B above by as much as necessary to assist Thailand to attain a conventional warfare capability such that Thai forces alone might be a credible deterrent against small-scale overt aggression, and such that Thai forces could complement US forces to some extent in the event of major conventional war in the area. (This posture would include providing additional equipment for Thai forces and might also include some further construction in order to improve our ability to respond to overt aggression and to make our commitment to do so more credible without requiring repositioning of US forces.)

D. A posture of all-out assistance to Thailand, which would include the elements of Postures A–C above, but would go further—including a construction program that would make provision for and contemplate making major troop deployments, involving a military assistance program that would meet every useful purpose conceivable, and implying readiness to participate in the Thai counterinsurgency operation on “1962–65 Vietnam” lines.

8. Analysis of These Theoretical Options. In assessing our options, we must recognize that our position already includes certain elements that are largely irreversible. This is true of our treaty commitment, the Project 22 arrangements, and such small but significant actions as our establishing facilities for limited numbers American troops and headquarters in Thailand (which we have already done or authorized) and our participating in joint headquarters with the Thais on a skeleton basis for Project 22. Nonetheless, we should as a matter of principle seek to stop short of actions that would be interpreted by the Thais to commit us to actions beyond the countering of overt aggression in some form. This permits us to reject option D, and we would recommend that it be rejected.

• Option A would seek to achieve only the continued unrestricted use of bases in Thailand for operations in connection with Vietnam. Even in pursuing this minimum policy objective, unless we provide significant added assistance, the State Department believes that the Thais may well read our actions as the beginning of disengagement and withhold or withdraw the kind of operating rights and privileges we seek to maintain; that any attempt to put our aid largely in the context of getting our necessary operating rights could seriously impair our whole relationship and give the Thais the feeling that we would not stand by them in any case; and that psychological effect could stimulate the very “give up” mentality that we seek now to avoid. Moreover, assistance given under option A might well not be sufficient to accomplish a prime current objective of US policy towards Thailand, namely helping them become sufficiently capable and strong to have an option of remaining independent from China, without direct US involvement, if Vietnam goes bad. The Defense Department adds the thought that defense of the area is of joint US-Thai concern and that the principle of “giving the Thais aid in order to persuade them to let the US protect them” should be rejected where possible. The arguments emerging from the foregoing analysis militate against A.

• Option B likewise fails because it excludes attention to the conventional role of Thai forces, because it is inconsistent with our commitments associated with Project 22, and because the political facts of life in Thailand require that the military side receive attention if CI is to receive attention.

  It is our conclusion that option C best serves current US aims in Thailand—although there are differences between State and Defense as to how generously option C should be interpreted. If handled properly, (1) it will serve our present desire to have the full support of the Thais for US operations from bases there, (2) it will give enough to the Thai military forces to create a worthwhile deterrent to overt aggression against Thailand and a worthwhile complementary force to fight alongside us if need be, (3) it will keep the (Army-oriented) oligarchy reasonably pacified in the face of a build-up of countersubversion (police) capabilities, and (4) it will go furthest toward fulfilling our desire to have the Thais capable of resisting on their own the current internal and external attempts to undermine their independence, which we believe would be sharply stepped-up if Vietnam goes bad.

• Option C has implications regarding current policy choices.

  (1.) The instructions guiding the make-up of FY 67–72 MAP should place priority emphasis upon development of CI capabilities and to a lesser extent on Project 22 needs. Progress on these fields should be carefully checked and the Defense Department believes that MAP funds should be conditioned upon reasonable progress being made. With respect to conventional capabilities, particular attention should be paid to building Thai forces to a level of manpower, equipment and budget support which they could essentially maintain without substantial continuing US support.

  (2.) Funded and unfunded construction for FY 66, FY 67 and later years should be reviewed in terms of its contribution to the Thai capability to meet limited overt attack and to deal with insurgency, as well as to making credible the US commitment of intervention against massive overt attack, and the over-all requirements for US strategic posture in broader regional terms. Particular attention must be given to minimizing for the Thais the social and economic effect of the US presence in their country; and the value of the construction program to Thailand—the port, roads, pipelines, airfields, etc.—from the peacetime point of view should be analyzed and noted.

9. Certain undesirable involvements of US personnel may be necessary even to achieve option A. The following is the firm judgment of the State Department and of the in-country team in this connection: That such an action is a positive response to the Thai request for increased participation by US-manned helicopters in support of Thai CI operations; that it is unquestionably true that the Thais desire to carry out increased CI operations now and it is agreed opinion of all on the scene that they should do so; that it is true also that if the Thais are to train now in-country and in CONUS enough pilots to later carry out these operations alone, they will not have enough qualified crews or available craft to do these operations today using their own people only; and that to fill this gap, which will last until the summer of 1967, the Thais have asked specifically for the introduction of an increased number of US-manned helicopters. The Defense Department view is that past performance of the Thais has been bad with respect to provision of manpower, to budget support, to usage of equipment and to attention to the problem of countersubversion and counterinsurgency; that the “lift gap” exists and will continue to exist long beyond 1967; and that despite protestations to the contrary, provision of US-manned helicopters (1) will cause the Thais to do less themselves, (2) will get us deeper involved in fighting Thailandʼs battle for her, and (3) will lead to a situation in which the US pilots cannot be withdrawn without causing a major political crisis.

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, POL THAI–US. Secret;Nodis. Drafted by Trueheart on May 16. The memorandum is hand dated May 16.
2. The phrase, “at 5:00 p.m. today,” is handwritten. Ruskʼs meeting with McNamara, McNaughton, Vance, U. Alexis Johnson, and William Bundy, was at 5 p.m., May 17. (Johnson Library, Rusk Appointment Book) On Bundyʼs copy of this memorandum the meeting with McNamara was “on May 17,” suggesting that this memorandum, dated May 16, was given to Rusk on May 17. No other record of the 5 p.m., May 17 meeting has been found.
3. Telegram 2399, May 9, attached, but not printed. A note on the source text indicates that Rusk saw telegram 2399.
4. Attached, but not printed. The Rusk-Thanat communiqué is printed in American Foreign Policy: Current Documents, 1962, pp. 1091–1093.