The Best and the Brightest

by David Halberstam

  Despite all these warnings, the request for combat troops came as something of a surprise to the U.S. government. It was different from what Diem had been saying before, and there was some suspicion that perhaps it was a trial balloon on the part of Ngo Dinh Nhu. Nevertheless, when Taylor and Rostow went, they were specifically assigned the job of investigating the possibility of employment of combat troops. There were three specific strategies they were to look into. One was the use of up to three divisions of American troops to defeat the Vietcong. The second was fewer combat troops, not so much to engage in combat as for the purpose of making a symbolic gesture and getting an American foot in the door. And the third, a step short of combat troops, was an acceleration of U.S. assistance and support to the Vietnamese, more equipment, particularly helicopters and light aircraft, to make the ARVN more mobile.

  The fact that Taylor had been instructed to investigate the possibility of combat troops was known in Washington; there had been increasing speculation and gossip in preceding weeks. Despite the pressure of the men around him, the President himself did not like the idea. He had a sense of being cornered. If it was clear that Taylor’s main concern was to determine whether combat troops should be sent or not, then it followed that in a few weeks, after Taylor’s return, it would be John F. Kennedy who either sent or did not send troops. The issue of combat troops had been deliberately clouded in the pre-trip briefings, and a New York Times story of the period, coming from high White House sources, stated that the military leaders were reluctant to send troops, which was not true, and that the idea of combat troops was at the bottom of the list of things which Taylor was to consider, which was equally untrue. What was true was that the President was uneasy with the pressure he was already feeling from the men around him.

  After the fact-finding mission left Vietnam, they went to the Philippines, where Taylor worked on the central part of the report. What Taylor wrote is doubly important, not just because it reflected his feelings about action as early as 1961, but as an insight into his own attitudes about Vietnam as the crisis deepened. In 1954 Ridgway, Taylor’s predecessor in the Airborne club and as Chief of Staff, had struggled brilliantly to keep American troops out of Indochina. Kennedy had appointed Taylor partly because he wanted someone like Ridgway, but it would be apparent by this trip alone that Ridgway and Taylor were different men.

  Because the Taylor-Rostow mission profoundly changed and escalated the American commitment to Vietnam, and because all news reports at the time said that Taylor had recommended against combat troops, it is easy to underestimate the report. The fact is that Taylor, the dominant figure of the trip—he wrote the crucial report to Kennedy himself—did recommend combat troops. He recommended that up to 8,000 be sent, that more be sent if necessary, and most important, that the job could not be done without them. The recommendations shocked Kennedy to such an extent that Taylor’s report was closely guarded and in some cases called back (even people as directly concerned with the decision making as Walter McConaughy, the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, did not know that Taylor had recommended troops). What was made public was part of the report, the recommendations for the advisory and support part of the mission, and the recommendations for reform and broadening of Diem’s government. In contrast, Taylor’s actual cables barely mentioned reform; they dealt primarily with military problems and were extremely conventional in attitude.

  Taylor talked in his cables of a “crisis of confidence” because of the growing Vietcong military build-up and because of the U.S. neutralization of Laos. (At this point in the Cold War, one thing was made clear: for every step forward in beginning to contain it, there had to be at least one step backward. A soft Laos, a hard Vietnam. A few months before, Ben Cohen, the New Deal lawyer, and one of the first men in Washington to spot the danger of Vietnam, had taken his old friend Averell Harriman aside and said that what was going on in Vietnam was disastrous and exactly opposite to Harriman’s policy in Laos. Harriman, good loyal Administration member, protested that it was not. Five years later Harriman would take Cohen aside at a Georgetown party and say tartly, “You were right about Vietnam, Ben.”) Taylor spelled out clearly the mission of the U.S. troops: it would be a task force largely logistical in make-up whose presence would reassure Diem of the American readiness “to join him in a showdown with the Vietcong or Vietminh.” The Taylor cables also outlined the dangers: our strategic reserve was already weak and we would be engaging U.S. prestige. If the first increment failed, it would be difficult to “resist the pressure to reinforce,” and if the ultimate mission were the closing of the border and the cleaning up of the insurgents, “there is no limit to our possible commitment,” unless “we attacked the source in the North.” It might increase tensions “and risk escalation into a major war in Asia.”

  Yet for all these drawbacks, Taylor reported, nothing would be so reassuring to the government and the people of South Vietnam as the introduction of U.S. troops (a crucial departure, the American assumption here, that the government and the people of South Vietnam were as one, that what Diem wanted was what “the people” wanted; a quick assumption which haunted American policy makers throughout the crisis). It would not have to be a large force, but it must be more than a token. It must be significant. It would help morale because it would show resistance to a Communist takeover. It would conduct operations in support of flood relief (given the instinct for tricks and subterfuge of that era, it is not surprising that there was a good deal of thought given to the introduction of the U.S. units as flood-relief crews, to help combat current flooding in the Mekong Delta. Much humanitarian public relations benefit was foreseen). These troops would not be used to clear the jungles and forests of Vietnam, a task still left to ARVN, but they could fight to protect themselves and the areas in which they lived, and they would give CINCPAC an advance party for SEATO planning (something in there for everybody). As part of the general reserve, they could be employed against main-force VC units, so in effect their use would depend on how eager the other side was to contest our presence.

  Thus Taylor was recommending something that would also be a constant in Vietnam, a gesture, a move on our part that would open-end the war, leaving the other side to decide how wide to make the war. This attitude was based on an underestimation of the seriousness and intent of the other side, and on the assumption that if we showed our determination, Hanoi would not contest us. (We made this last mistake repeatedly, from the Taylor mission right through to the incursion in 1969 in Cambodia and in 1971 in Laos, and we were always wrong; the enemy was always more serious about his own country than we were about it.) Now the suggestion for a show of firmness appeared for the first time in the Taylor cables, and it was coming from the man the Kennedy Administration believed its foremost strategic planner; a cautious man who would understand wars like this. Taylor’s idea was based on the fallacy that in the end the enemy would be less fanatical about the struggle in his own country, which had at that point been going on in various forms for more than two decades. But General Vo Nguyen Giap, the most important military figure in Hanoi and thus Taylor’s opposite number, would not, after all, have to worry about Berlin access, or disarmament, or the level of strength in NATO, or getting the missiles out of Cuba: General Giap would continue to do the same thing after General Taylor left his country that he had been devoting himself to for the last twenty years—the unification of Vietnam under a Communist regime.

  Taylor acknowledged that the risks of backing into a major Asian war were present but (in words that would live longer than he might have wanted) “not impressive.” North Vietnam “is extremely vulnerable to conventional bombing, a weakness which should be exploited diplomatically in convincing Hanoi to lay off South Vietnam” (a vulnerability which, if it existed, Hanoi was less aware of than both Taylor and Rostow). Both Hanoi and Peking, he cabled, faced “severe logistical difficulties in trying to maintain strong forces in the field in Southeast Asia, difficulties w
hich we share, but by no means to the same degree.” The starvation conditions in China, he found, would keep the Chinese from being militarily venturesome. As for the key question of how American troops would fare, Taylor found South Vietnam “not an excessively difficult or unpleasant place to operate.” In perhaps the most significant passage of all, he thought it was comparable to Korea, “where U.S. troops learned to live and work without too much effort. In the High Plateau and in the coastal plain where U.S. troops would probably be stationed, these jungle forest conditions do not exist to any great extent. The most unpleasant feature in the coastal areas would be the heat, and in the Delta, the mud left behind by the flood. The High Plateau offers no particular obstacle to the stationing of U.S. troops.”

  This part of the Taylor cables is perhaps the most revealing insight into the way the American military—even the best of the American military—regarded Vietnam and the war. This was the time when unconventional warfare was a great fad in Washington, and here was Taylor, who was supposed to be an expert on it, making a comparison with Korea: we had the same problems there, and we overcame them. In searching for the parallel war, Taylor singled out Korea but mentioned only the comparable quality of the terrain (actually, Korea is far more open and has, from a military point of view, a much easier terrain, where tanks and air power can be used to great advantage), without considering the crucial difference between Korea and Vietnam: the very nature of the war. The former was a conventional war with a traditional border crossing by a uniformed enemy massing his troops; the latter was a political war conducted by guerrillas and feeding on subversion. There was no uniformed, massed enemy to use power against; the enemy was first and foremost political, which meant that the support of the population made the guerrillas’ way possible. The very presence of Caucasian troops was likely to turn quickly into a political disadvantage, more than canceling out any military benefits. There was a parallel war: the French Indochina war or the Philippine insurrection. But Taylor made the comparison with Korea, and if this general, who was so widely respected, a man who was an intellectual and quoted Thucydides, did not see this crucial nuance, who else would?

  In his summing up on November 3, Taylor said that the advantages of sending American troops outweighed the disadvantages, and that this was imperative to the success of saving South Vietnam (“I do not believe that our program to save South Vietnam will succeed without it,” he reported). Then he asked the same question which Kennedy had posed earlier, whether the suggested program, minus the U.S. combat task force, could stop further deterioration in the South. He answered that it was very doubtful, that there was no substitute for a military presence to raise morale and to convince the other side of the seriousness of our intent, “to sober the enemy and to discourage escalation . . .”

  Taylor then raised the question of when to get the troops out. There were many answers. One was: after obtaining a quick military victory. But a quick victory was unlikely; the Americans would probably have to stay and hold the line while the South Vietnamese built up their forces. For planning purposes, this date could be set at the end of 1962, by which time Diem’s army would comprise 200,000 men.

  All in all, the Taylor-Rostow report is an extraordinary document and provides a great insight into the era. It shows a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the war (there was no discussion of the serious political problems of the war in Taylor’s cables). It was arrogant and contemptuous toward a foe who had a distinguished and impressive record against a previous Western challenger. It was written by a general who had seen the limits of air power in Korea and now said that if things went wrong, air power would handle Hanoi any time we wanted. It assumed that the people and the government of South Vietnam were the same thing; yet it also said that a people allegedly fighting for their survival, already overstocked with American aid and material, needed reassurance, that the problem was not one of political origin, but of confidence. When Ridgway in 1954 investigated the possibility of U.S. troops in Indochina, he maximized the risks and minimized the benefits; now Taylor was maximizing the benefits and minimizing the risks.

  Not everyone on the tour felt the same way. The two State Department officials who had made the trip, Sterling Cottrell and William J. Jorden, were more dubious about the possibility of success. Cottrell, head of the interdepartmental Vietnam task force, was pessimistic about the efficacy of introducing U.S. combat forces. “Since it is an open question whether the government can succeed even with U.S. assistance, it would be a mistake for the U.S. to commit itself irrevocably against the Communists in the South,” he reported. He did recommend moving to the Rostow plan—presumably to punish the North by bombing it if continued U.S. efforts failed. Jorden, a former New York Times correspondent, reported on explosive anti-Diem political feeling and the near paralysis of the government, and warned against the United States’ becoming too closely identified “with a man or a regime.” Most State Department officials shared this skepticism, and the Taylor recommendations were relayed to Secretary Rusk, who was in Japan for a conference. Rusk cabled back his reluctance to see the American commitment enlarged without any reciprocal agreement for reform on the part of Diem. Unless his regime broadened its base and took more non-Communist nationalists into the government, Rusk doubted that a “handful” of American troops could have much effect.

  On the whole, opposition to sending troops was frail. On November 8 Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, reflecting the pressures from his Pentagon constituency, signed on. In an unusually personalized memo (“The Joint Chiefs, Mr. Gilpatric and I have decided . . .”) he said that the fall of South Vietnam would lead to serious deterioration throughout Southeast Asia, and he agreed that we were unlikely to prevent the fall without sending U.S. combat forces. He accepted Taylor’s judgment that anything less would fail to restore Diem’s confidence. However, he noted that even Taylor’s 8,000 men would not necessarily impress the other side with the true seriousness of American intent. Such a conviction would only come with a clear statement that we would use more force if necessary, and that if Hanoi continued to aid the Vietcong, we would take punitive action against the North. This, of course, might mean a long struggle, and looking at the darkest possibility (that Hanoi and Peking might intervene directly), we would have to consider involving six divisions (the limit of aid McNamara felt we could give without disturbing the Berlin requirements). “I believe we can safely assume the maximum U.S. forces required on the ground in Southeast Asia will not exceed six divisions, or about 205,000 men,” he wrote. The basic McNamara summary was in support of the Taylor position.

  There were two important men in Washington who had strong misgivings about sending in combat troops. One was John Kennedy; the other was George Ball, Undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs, who was about to be given Bowles’s job. His star was rising at the time, but it was not always thus. He had almost not made the upper level of the Kennedy team, and bearing the Stevenson taint had not helped. Earlier, in January, as the upper levels of the Kennedy Administration were being systematically filled with Republicans, it became fairly obvious that Ball was one more Democrat about to be by-passed. Then Ball heard that Kennedy and Rusk intended to appoint William C. Foster, another Republican, to the job of Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, and decided to do something about it. He enlisted the aid of Stevenson, who had more power and influence with Kennedy than did Ball. Stevenson called Fulbright, adding his own protest about turning the government over to the Republicans, and Fulbright in turn pressured Kennedy, telling him enough was enough, to ease off this particular Republican appointment.

  With Foster blocked, Ball became the obvious candidate, a Democrat, a lawyer willing to defend victims of McCarthy at the height of the witch hunt, a man whose specialty was economic affairs, a protégé of Jean Monnet’s, a man who had worked long for the European Common Market. He was also a man of considerable pride and ego, the last man in Washington to write his own speeches, and a forceful
ly independent man. He may have entered the government with a Stevenson label, but once in office he turned out to be a classic Europeanist, in that sense at least in the Acheson tradition, though with less dependence on military force.

  The suggestion to use combat troops in Vietnam disturbed him. He had worked closely with the French during the Indochina war, and he had seen it all, the false optimism of the generals, the resiliency and relentlessness of the Vietminh, their capacity to exploit nationalism and to mire down a Western nation, the poisonous domestic effect. He wanted no part of it for America. When he read the Taylor cables calling for a small, oh so small, commitment, 8,000 men only, he immediately told Bundy and McNamara that if they went ahead with the Taylor proposals, the commitment would not stay small. They would have 300,000 men in there within five years (he was slightly off; it was 500,000 men in five-plus years) because sending combat troops would change the nature of the commitment and the nature of the war, and the other side would not let us out easily. Besides, this was exactly what Diem wanted; it would stabilize his regime and we would do his fighting for him. Both Bundy and McNamara argued with Ball; they believed in the capacity of rational men to control irrational commitments, and in the end they decided that even at 300,000, a troop commitment was worth a try. Then, Ball said, they must tell the President that it was worth that much blood and resources, and Bundy and McNamara agreed. When Ball himself made exactly the same point to Kennedy—that he would have 300,000 men there in a few short years—the President laughed and said, “George, you’re crazier than hell.” But it had jarred the President, and had made him even more aware of how long and dark the tunnel might be.

  Not that he needed that much jarring; the President had plenty of doubts of his own. He was conscious of the danger of the recommendations, of the facility with which they had been contrived. “They want a force of American troops,” he told Arthur Schlesinger at the time. “They say it’s necessary in order to restore confidence and maintain morale. But it will be just like Berlin. The troops will march in, the bands will play, the crowds will cheer, and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It’s like taking a drink. The effect wears off and you have to take another.” Instead, he said, it was the Vietnamese’s war, it would have to be won by them. He told others that he was skeptical about the whole thing. He had been there when the French had 300,000 men and could not control the country, and he wondered aloud how we could do it any better than the French. Which angered Miss Marguerite Higgins, another hard-line columnist writing in the seemingly centrist New York Herald Tribune, who, hearing of the President’s doubts, wrote on November 6 that he had “jumped from a false premise to a false conclusion.” The French, she explained, had not lost Indochina, they had given it up in a truce.