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

90. Memorandum From the Counselor and Chairman of the Policy Planning Staff (Rostow) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Bundy)¹

Washington, June 11, 1964.

SUBJECT

• Reflections on Yesterday²

1. The question, from one end of the world to the other, is quite clear: Is the United States prepared to apply force to bring about Hanoi’s compliance with the Accords of 1954³ and 1962 in both Laos and Viet Nam? Behind this is the related question: Are we prepared to face any level of escalation Hanoi and Peiping might mount in response to our actions? Virtually no one doubts that we would react with force if there was an attack on the Mekong Valley or across the seventeenth parallel, initiated by the Communists. Virtually no one doubts that we are prepared to stick it out in Viet Nam and Laos along present lines. What is seen clearly, from Paris through Moscow east to Peiping, Hanoi, Bangkok, etc. is:

a. Communist techniques of erosion in Southeast Asia, based on violation of the 1954 and 1962 Accords, are working well and rendering progressively less viable our present policy; and

b. We have evidently not made up our minds to apply force to bring about Hanoi’s compliance with the Accords of 1954 and 1962.

2. I can understand, of course, that a policy might be built around avoiding or postponing that decision; but if the object of the exercise is to maintain until November such confused anxiety in the Communist camp as to keep Hanoi from launching a big offensive and sufficient hope in Vientiane and Saigon as to avoid a total political collapse then: (a) we should assess and the President should understand fully the risks involved; (b) everyone around the table should be working consciously to the same time-buying conception of the task; and (c) we should be straining within the limits of that conception to do what we can within our operational limitations, and without surrendering our ultimate objectives.

3. What struck me hard yesterday was that there was no common assessment of either our ultimate or our operational objectives. The Forrestal approach⁴ assumed that we were unprepared to apply virtually any force in Southeast Asia; and, in the end, it confronted us with a formal split of Laos, involving an explicit extension of Communist power and implicitly a legalization of the Viet Minh presence in Laos which, given the character of any Lao border in a split, I would regard as a disaster. Secretary Rusk, on the other hand, evidently felt (and I would agree) that the U.S. does have certain diplomatic leverage and, if this is progressively backed at critical stages by a demonstration of our willingness to use force, it might yield some forward movement, while maintaining our ultimate objectives. Secretary McNamara, on the other hand, was asking for greater clarification about how much force we were prepared to use before we started and committed ourselves to our objectives; but he saw little hope that much force would be applied in the coming months. With commendable candor, he insisted that our statement of objectives be geared to our modest prospects, under the circumstances he assumed as realistic.

4. The critical need, as I see it, is to assure ourselves that we are working within a framework which is actually the one which the President desires. This means that he must understand from us: (a) what the risks are of political collapse in Vientiane and/or Saigon; (b) what the consequences are of maintaining a declaratory policy in support of the 1954 and 1962 Accords, without in fact answering the central question. This ambiguity has already cost us a good deal. It will certainly cost us more; but under certain circumstances that cost might be more acceptable to the President at the present time than the risks of a confrontation with Hanoi.

5. The President should also be confronted not merely with our assessment of the possible costs of a time-buying policy but also with a scenario as fully worked out as we can of the type which Secretary Rusk apparently has in mind; that is, one of holding firmly in diplomacy to the 1954 and 1962 Accords while using all the elements of power we have available short of a direct confrontation. I sensed yesterday some tendency to take the view that unless we were prepared to go for a McNamara Option Three (or Rostow) policy, that we should operate pretty passively with minimal defensive objectives with respect to both Vientiane and Saigon. If we strain imaginatively along the lines, say, of Bill Sullivan’s memorandum of yesterday, there may emerge uses of force as a counterpoint to diplomacy which would improve our position somewhat without committing the President to a final confrontation. It is in this area that I think we have to get consensus, assuming that the President is not now ready for the direct confrontation.

6. I say all this while still believing that, as nearly as I can perceive the situation, we are in fact taking risks in not having the confrontation now, which outweigh the risks of the confrontation itself. Moreover, I disagree with the view that a Congressional resolution would be difficult to get if the President made up his mind that he needed it. The Democrats would certainly back him, except for a few mavericks; the Republicans would not oppose him, although they would be prepared to exploit the consequences of failure as in any case they will exploit the Southeast Asian situation during the campaign; and, until we publish the Jorden Report,⁵ we will be conducting diplomacy with at least one hand tied behind our backs. But only the President can make that judgment.

7. In short, I believe we are caught in a vicious circle. Diplomacy can only be truly effective once the President is committed to a confrontation. What I fear now is that the ambiguity of our signals will lead to a situation of desperation—based on the assessment that we are not prepared for a confrontation—and that then (with Goldwater on our flank) we shall be forced to act convulsively and with vastly more bloodshed than if we had acted sooner.

8. As one who has been merely reading newspapers and cables on Southeast Asia in recent weeks, I can only say that we have been conducting propaganda as defined by F.M. Cornford: “that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies.”

1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Vol. III, Memos B, 6/64–8/64. Top Secret.
2. See Document 88.
3. The Geneva Agreements of July 20 and 21, 1954, are printed in Foreign Relations, 1952–1954, vol. XVI, pp. 1505–1546.
4. Apparent reference to Document 87.
5. The Jorden Report, formally known as “Aggression From the North: The Record of North Viet-Nam’s Campaign to Conquer South Viet-Nam,” was released in February 1965 as Department of State publication 7839.