Pentagon Papers

by Neil Sheehan

  With this perspective in mind the DPM went on to reconsider and restate U.S. objectives in the Vietnam contest under the heading “Commitment and Hopes Distinguished”:

  The time has come for us to eliminate the ambiguities from our minimum objectives—our commitments—in Vietnam. Specifically, two principles must be articulated, and policies and actions brought in line with them: (1) Our commitment is only to see that the people of South Vietnam are permitted to determine their own future. (2) This commitment ceases if the country ceases to help itself.

  It follows that no matter how much we might hope for some things, our commitment is not:

  —to expel from South Vietnam regroupees, who are South Vietnamese (thought we do not like them),

  —to ensure that a particular person or group remains in power, nor that the power runs to every corner of the land (though we prefer certain types and we hope their writ will run throughout South Vietnam),

  —to guarantee that the self-chosen government is non-Communist (though we believe and strongly hope it will be), and

  —to insist that the independent South Vietnam remain separate from North Vietnam (though in the short-run, we would prefer it that way).

  (Nor do we have an obligation to pour in effort out of proportion to the effort contributed by the people of South Vietnam or in the face of coups, corruption, apathy or other indications of Saigon failure to cooperate effectively with us.)

  We are committed to stopping or off setting the effect of North Vietnam’s application of force in the South, which denies the people of the South the ability to determine their own future. Even here, however, the line is hard to draw. Propaganda and political advice by Hanoi (or by Washington) is presumably not barred; nor is economic aid or economic advisors. Less clear is the rule to apply to military advisors and war materiel supplied to the contesting factions.

  The importance of nailing down and understanding the implications of our limited objectives cannot be overemphasized. It relates intimately to strategy against the North, to troop requirements and missions in the South, to handling of the Saigon government, to settlement terms, and to US domestic and international opinion as to the justification and the success of our efforts on behalf of Vietnam.

  This articulation of American purposes and commitments in Vietnam pointedly rejected the high blown formulations of U.S. objectives in NSAM 88 [“an independent non-communist South Vietnam,” “defeat the Viet Cong,” etc.], and came forcefully to grips with the old dilemma of the U.S. involvement dating from the Kennedy era: only limited means to achieve excessive ends. Indeed, in the following section of specific recommendations, the DPM urged the President to, “issue a NSAM nailing down U.S. policy as described herein.” The emphasis in this scaled down set of goals, clearly reflecting the frustrations of failure, was South Vietnamese self-determination. The DPM even went so far as to suggest that, “the South will be in position, albeit imperfect, to start the business of producing a full-spectrum government in South Vietnam.” What this amounted to was a recommendation that we accept a compromise outcome. Let there be no mistake these were radical positions for a senior U.S. policy official within the Johnson Administration to take. They would bring the bitter condemnation of the Chiefs and were scarcely designed to flatter the President on the success of his efforts to date. That they represented a more realistic mating of U.S. strategic objectives and capabilities is another matter.

  The scenario for the unfolding of the recommendations in the DPM went like this:

  (4) June: Concentrate the bombing of North Vietnam on physical interdiction of men and materiel. This would mean terminating, except where the interdiction objective clearly dictates otherwise, all bombing north of 20° and improving interdiction as much as possible in the infiltration “funnel” south of 20° by concentration of sorties and by an all-out effort to improve detection devices, denial weapons, and interdiction tactics.

  (5) July: Avoid the explosive Congressional debate and U.S. Reserve call-up implicit in the Westmoreland troop request. Decide that, unless the military situation worsens dramatically, U.S. deployments will be limited to Program 4-plus (which according to General Westmoreland, will not put us in danger of being defeated, but will mean slow progress in the South). Associated with this decision are decisions not to use large numbers of U.S. troops in the Delta and not to use large numbers of them in grassroots pacification work.

  (6) September: Move the newly elected Saigon government well beyond its National Reconciliation program to seek a political settlement with the non-Communist members of the NLF—to explore a cease-fire and to reach an accommodation with the non-Communist South Vietnamese who are under the VC banner; to accept them as members of an opposition political party, and, if necessary, to accept their individual participation in the national government—in sum, a settlement to transform the members of the VC from military opponents to political opponents.

  (7) October: Explain the situation to the Canadians, Indians, British, UN and others, as well as nations now contributing forces, requesting them to contribute border forces to help make the inside-South Vietnam accommodation possible, and—consistent with our desire neither to occupy nor to have bases in Vietnam—offering to remove later an equivalent number of U.S. forces. (This initiative is worth taking despite its slim chance of success.)

  Having made the case for de-escalation and compromise, the DPM ended on a note of candor with a clear statement of its disadvantages and problems:

  The difficulties with this approach are neither few nor small: There will be those who disagree with the circumscription of the U.S. commitment (indeed, at one time or another, one U.S. voice or another has told the Vietnamese, third countries, the U.S. Congress, and the public of “goals” or “objectives” that go beyond the above bare-bones statement of our “commitment”); some will insist that pressure, enough pressure, on the North can pay off or that we will have yielded a blue chip without exacting a price in exchange for our concentrating on interdiction; many will argue that denial of the larger number of troops will prolong the war, risk losing it and increase the casualties of the Americans who are there; some will insist that this course reveals weakness to which Moscow will react with relief, contempt and reduced willingness to help, and to which Hanoi will react by increased demands and truculence; others will point to the difficulty of carrying the Koreans, Filipinos, Australians and New Zealanders with us; and there will be those who point out the possibility that the changed U.S. tone may cause a “rush for the exits” in Thailand, in Laos and especially inside South Vietnam, perhaps threatening cohesion of the government, morale of the army, and loss of support among the people. Not least will be the alleged impact on the reputation of the United States and of its President. Nevertheless, the difficulties of this strategy are fewer and smaller than the difficulties of any other approach.

  # 130

  William Bundy’s May 30 Memo on Reasons for U.S. Involvement

  Excerpts from memorandum from Assistant Secretary of State Bundy, circulated at State and Defense Departments, May 30, 1967, as provided in the body of the Pentagon study. Paragraphs in italics are the study’s paraphrase or explanation.

  William Bundy at State drafted comments on the DPM on May 30 and circulated them at State and Defense. In his rambling and sometimes contradictory memo, Bundy dealt mainly with the nature and scope of the U.S. commitment—as expressed in the DPM and as he saw it. He avoided any detailed analysis of the two military options and focused his attention on the strategic reasons for American involvement; the objectives we were after; and the terms under which we could consider closing down the operation. His memo began with his contention that:

  The gut point can almost be summed up in a pair of sentences. If we can get a reasonably solid GVN political structure and GVN performance at all levels, favorable trends could become really marked over the next 18 months, the war will be won for practical purposes at some point, and the resulting peace will be
secured. On the other hand, if we do not get these results from the GVN and the South Vietnamese people, no amount of U.S. effort will achieve our basic objective in South Viet-Nam—a return to the essential provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1954 and a reasonably stable peace for many years based on these Accords.

  It is the view of the central importance of the South that dominates the remainder of Bundy’s memo. But his own thinking was far from clear about how the U.S. should react to a South Vietnamese failure for at the end of it he wrote:

  None of the above decides one other question clearly implicit in the DOD draft. What happens if “the country ceases to help itself.” If this happens in the literal sense, if South Viet-Nam performs so badly that it simply is not going to be able to govern itself or to resist the slightest internal pressure, then we would agree that we can do nothing to prevent this. But the real underlying question is to what extent we tolerate imperfection, even gross imperfection, by the South Vietnamese while they are still under the present grinding pressure from Hanoi and the NLF.

  This is a tough question. What do we do if there is a military coup this summer and the elections are aborted? There would then be tremendous pressure at home and in Europe to the effect that this negated what we were fighting for, and that we should pull out.

  But against such pressure we must reckon that the stakes in Asia will remain. After all, the military rule, even in peacetime, in Thailand, Indonesia, and Burma. Are we to walk away from the South Vietnamese, at least as a matter of principle, simply because they failed in what was always conceded to be a courageous and extremely difficult effort to become a true democracy during a guerrilla war?

  Bundy took pointed issue with DPM’s reformulation of U.S. objectives. Starting with the DPM’s discussion of U.S. larger interests in Asia, Bundy argued that:

  In Asian eyes, the struggle is a test case, and indeed much more black-and-white than even we ourselves see it. The Asian view bears little resemblance to the breast-beating in Europe or at home. Asians would quite literally be appalled—and this includes India—if we were to pull out from Viet-Nam or if we were to settle for an illusory peace that produced Hanoi control over all Viet-Nam in short order.

  In short, our effort in Viet-Nam in the past two years has not only prevented the catastrophe that would otherwise have unfolded but has laid a foundation for a progress that now appears truly possible and of the greatest historical significance.

  Having disposed of what he saw as a misinterpretation of Asian sentiment and U.S. interests there, Bundy now turned to the DPM’s attempt to minimize the U.S. commitment in Vietnam. He opposed the DPM language because in his view it dealt too heavily with our military commitment to get NVA off the South Vietnamese back, and not enough with the equally important commitment, to assure that “the political board in South Vietnam is not tilted to the advantage of the NLF.” Bundy’s conception of the U.S. commitment was twofold:

  —To prevent any imposed political role for the NLF in South Vietnamese political life, and specifically the coalition demanded by point 3 of Hanoi’s Four Points, or indeed any NLF part in government or political life that is not safe and acceptable voluntarily to the South Vietnamese Government and people.

  —To insist in our negotiating position that “regroupees,” that is, people originally native to South Viet-Nam who went North in 1954 and returned from 1959 onward, should be expelled as a matter of principle in the settlement. Alternatively, such people could remain in South Viet-Nam if, but only if, the South Vietnamese Government itself was prepared to receive them back under a reconciliation concept, which would provide in essence that they must be prepared to accept peaceful political activity under the Constitution (as the reconciliation appeal now does). This latter appears to be the position of the South Vietnamese Government, which—as Tran Van Do has just stated in Geneva—argues that those sympathetic to the Northern system of government should go North, while those prepared to accept the Southern system of government may stay in the South. Legally, the first alternative is sound, in that Southerners who went North in 1954 became for all legal and practical purposes Northern citizens and demonstrated their allegiance. But if the South Vietnamese prefer the second alternative, it is in fact exactly comparable to the regroupment provisions of the 1954 Accords, and can legally be sustained. But in either case the point is that the South Vietnamese are not obliged to accept as citizens people whose total pattern of conduct shows that they would seek to overthrow the structure of government by force and violence.

  The remainder of Bundy’s comments were addressed to importance of this last point. The U.S. could not consider withdrawing its forces until not only the North Vietnamese troops but also the regroupees had returned to the North. Nowhere in his comments does he specifically touch on the merits of the two military options, but his arguments all seem to support the tougher of the two choices (his earlier support of restricting the bombing thus seems paradoxical). He was, it is clear, less concerned with immediate specific decisions on a military phase of the war than with the long term consequences of this major readjustment of American sights in Southeast Asia.

  * Admiral Sharp has recommended a 12/31/67 strength of 570,000. However, I believe both he and General Westmoreland recognize that the danger of inflation will probably force an end 1967 deployment limit of about 470,000.

  ** If this task is assigned to Ambassador Porter, another individual must be sent immediately to Saigon to serve as Ambassador Lodge’s deputy.

  *** Any limitation on the bombing of North Vietnam will cause serious psychological problems among the men who are risking their lives to help achieve our political objectives; among their commanders up to and including the JCS; and among those of our people who cannot understand why we should withhold punishment from the enemy. General Westmoreland, as do the JCS, strongly believes in the military value of the bombing program. Further, Westmoreland reports that the morale of his Air Force personnel may already be showing signs of erosion—an erosion resulting from current operational restrictions.

  * Includes 5,547 spaces required to incorporate MACV Study recommendations.

  Chapter 10

  The Tet Offensive and the Turnaround

  Highlights of the Period: January-April, 1968

  JANUARY–FEBRUARY 1968

  The enemy, on January 31, the Tet holiday, struck at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon and attacked scores of important towns and all the major cities. The Joint Chiefs urged bombing closer to the centers of Hanoi and Haiphong; President Johnson refused.

  Gen. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, asked Gen. Westmoreland to specify his troop needs. Gen. Westmoreland, advised repeatedly that a division and a half was available, requested a force of that size.

  The Joint Chiefs—trying to force the President into mobilization, the study says—insisted that a reserve call-up must precede any deployment. But Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara approved a 10,500-man Vietnam deployment with no call-up.

  Gen. Wheeler visited Saigon in late February, and found that the initiative was held by the enemy. He concluded that Gen. Westmoreland needed 206,756 more men.

  Clark Clifford, now the Secretary-of-Defense-designate, convened a high-level working group for a full policy review. The initial draft policy memorandum found the Saigon forces ineffective, and the enemy likely to match any escalation. It urged a static “population-security” strategy “to buy time” for the Vietnamese to take over their own defense. It opposed any extension of the bombing as “unproductive or worse.”

  MARCH 1968

  A C.I.A. study, bolstering the advocates of de-escalation among the working group, found that the enemy could withstand a war of attrition regardless of U.S. troop increases in the next 10 months.

  Mr. Clifford’s working group debated the drafters’ memorandum and developed a consensus against completely abandoning the initiative. There was intense conflict between the military and the advocates of de-escalation. Gen. Wheeler
argued for the extension of bombing. Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke argued against an extension.

  A revised draft, by Warnke and Assistant Secretary Phil Goulding, went to the White House. It asked for 22,000 more men for Vietnam and favored deferring any decision on further deployments. It asked for a reserve call-up and no new peace initiatives, stating that the planners were unable to reach a consensus on the question of wider bombing.

  Gen. Westmoreland welcomed the 22,000 men but repeated his request for 206,756.

  On March 5, Mr. Clifford asked Gen. Wheeler’s opinion on a Rusk draft favoring a halt in the bombing of most of North Vietnam; the study “infers” that Mr. Clifford favored the Rusk plan. Air Force Secretary Brown pressed for a step-up of the bombing and offered three optional plans for it.

  On March 10, Gen. Westmoreland’s “206,000” request became public in The New York Times, provoking a brisk debate.

  Senator Eugene J. McCarthy, running as a peace candidate, edged out President Johnson in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

  On March 13, the President decided on a 30,000-man Vietnam troop increase, with a reserve call-up of 98,451.

  On March 22, Gen. Westmoreland was recalled from Vietnam to become the Army Chief of Staff—a signal, the study says, that the President had ruled out major escalation. Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, who would later be named to succeed Gen. Westmoreland, visited the White House secretly.

  The “Wise Men”—a council of current and former high officials—met March 25-26 at the President’s request and advised de-escalation.

  On March 31, President Johnson announced: “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party.” He also announced pull-back in bombing to the 20th Parallel.

  APRIL 1968

  On April 3, North Vietnam agreed to talks.