Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVIII, Laos

87. Draft Paper Prepared for a White House Meeting¹

Washington, June 10, 1964.

DE-FUZING LAOS

The following are our objectives in Laos:

1. Preserve Souvanna Phouma as the Head of a Government of National Union, or at least as the Head of a government composed of the Neutralists and the Right Wing, leaving a door open to Communist participation.

2. Discourage further Pathet Lao grabs of territory.

3. Accomplish the above two objectives in such a way as to avoid dangerously demoralizing the South Vietnamese and the Thai.

Period of the Polish Conference

Our most immediate problem is probably not further Pathet Lao military grabs, but rather the preservation of Souvanna Phouma. Today he announced that he had asked the U.S. to cease reconnaissance activities over the Plain of Jars. This will probably further expose him to the risk of an overthrow by the Right Wing forces of Siho and Kouprasith.

Recommendation:

Unger should seek out Phoumi, Siho and Kouprasith immediately and leave them in no doubt that we still support Souvanna and would take the most drastic measures against the Right Wing in the event they attempted to overthrow him.

Souvanna’s military and political position is probably now very weak and we therefore need to do what can be done, independently of any international negotiations, to shore it up.

Recommendation:

We try to re-establish Kong Le in some other territorial base, perhaps Luang Prabang, using air if necessary as part of a refugee operation.

We increase our economic, as well as military, aid to him and his supporters and encourage as intense cooperation as possible between Kong Le and the Meo under the leadership of Vang Pao.

Before the beginning of the Polish conference, either we bring the Canadians and the British here, or we send briefing teams to London and Ottawa in order to explain to them and persuade them that our primary objective is to reduce tension in Laos. To do this we need to have the Polish discussions go on as long as possible. During these discussions we would not expect to secure a withdrawal of the PL from the Plain of Jars, although this would be an initial demand. We should concentrate on using the Polish forum as a way of pressuring the PL and the Right Wing into an agreement to preserve the Government of National Union. During this period Souvanna will become even more vulnerable to Right Wing attack; so we must devise every means of neutralizing Siho and Kouprasith, while at the same time bolstering Souvanna.

Recommendation:

Explore the possibility of providing funds and goods directly to Souvanna and his allies in substantial quantities.

Reduce, if necessary, our support of the Right Wing in Vientiane, taking into account the risk of a violent reaction by Siho.

[1 paragraph (1–1/2 lines of source text) not declassified]

It must be expected that the Polish discussions will fail to achieve any of these objectives and will result only in a call for a 14-nation Geneva conference. Souvanna might well be persuaded to attend, if the Right Wing did not assassinate him beforehand.

We would then have two choices: we might tell the Right Wing that unless they cooperated with us, we would be forced ourselves to attend the Geneva conference; but that if they did cooperate, we would refuse to attend and continue our support to them. We might also agree with the Thais and the South Vietnamese that we would not attend a Geneva conference.

If the conference should then take place, without our participation, our objective would be, with the help of our British and Canadian friends and of Souvanna, to drag it on as long as possible. At the same time, or perhaps prior to this, we would take (or would have taken) certain actions designed to discourage the Pathet Lao, at least temporarily, from further territorial encroachment. We should also consider high-level reconnaissance of the trail networks in Laos, both to keep track of PL-VM deployments and also for use by the British and Canadians at Geneva.

If the Geneva conference should fail to assemble because of our refusal to attend, we should consider resorting to some of the pre-Geneva 1962 measures, which we abandoned then. Among these would be heavily increased supply of money, weapons and goods to Souvanna and Kong Le; maintenance of our level of supplies to Phoumi’s forces; possible re-introduction of some American advisory presence in the form of a small MAAG and/or White Star teams; U.S.-led GVN combat intelligence operations in the panhandle; and a beefing up of American operated air transport facilities within Laos.

The objective of the above would be to improve the bargaining position of Souvanna Phouma when and if the Geneva conference might occur. Ideally, we would at least go back to another Geneva conference in about the same position we were in May 1962. A second objective of these actions would be to reassure the Vietnamese and the Thai that we would not negotiate in Geneva from a position of complete impotence.

Another alternative would be to agree to attend a Geneva conference, but only after we made it clear that we intended to return to the status quo ante-May 1962 in Laos. The only difference between this alternative and the previous one is that we would go to a Geneva conference before we had completed the actions described above. If we took this route, it would probably be essential to take somewhat stronger action in the form of military deployments and cross border activities in order to convince the South Vietnamese and the Thai that we were not throwing in the towel.

If it is possible to keep the South Vietnamese, the Thai, and the Right Wing in Vientiane in hand, the actions described above might carry us through the early part of 1965, i.e. until the normal time for the Pathet Lao to attempt another bite.

If Souvanna Phouma gives up or is liquidated during the course of the above scenario, we should consider the formal partition of Laos. In any such partition all international restraints on our efforts to support the Right Wing would have to be eliminated. If Souvanna were lost during an international conference, we would press for formal recognition of a divided Laos, insisting, of course, on Right Wing control of the panhandle at least from Paksane south. The negotiation of any such solution would obviously be very long drawn out and involve many such thorny questions such as what to do about the Meo and the demarcation of the partition lines in the North.

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Memos to the President, McGeorge Bundy, Vol. V. Top Secret. No drafter is indicated on the source text, but at the White House meeting (see Document 88) Forrestal summarized the paper and explained its rationale.