IV

Choosing among Imperfect Alternatives

The war in Vietnam is acquiring a momentum of its own that must be stopped.

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to the President, May 19, 1967.

On May 19 General Westmoreland renewed his request for an additional 200,000 troops (100,000 ASAP, the rest by 1968) plus 13 tactical air squadrons. The request ignited another fire of dissent within the Pentagon. John McNaughton, assistant secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, reflecting the prevailing views within the Defense Department, wrote to Secretary McNamara in opposition to any additional troop deployments “unless the situation changes substantially for the worse.” McNaughton’s premise was that the United States currently had “enough troops to do the job we should be doing.” Moreover, the enemy could avoid contact when necessary and “his intention is a stalemate; he can get it at whatever level we choose to deploy.”¹

Secretary McNamara then wrote to the president that General Westmoreland’s new request proved that “there appears to be no attractive course of action.” Hanoi had decided not to negotiate until the American election in November 1968. “Continuation of our present moderate policy, while avoiding a larger war, will not change Hanoi’s mind, so it is not enough to satisfy the American people; increased force levels and actions against the North are likewise unlikely to change Hanoi’s mind, and are likely to get us in even deeper in Southeast Asia and into a serious confrontation, if not war, with China and Russia; and we are not willing to yield. So we must choose among imperfect alternatives.”

McNamara voiced serious reservations on Westmoreland’s request. How could LBJ possibly justify a program which required congressional action authorizing a call-up of the Reserves, the addition of approximately 500,000 men to the military force, and an increase of approximately $10 billion for the 1968 Defense budget? Moreover, once this threshold was crossed, there would be irresistible pressures for ground actions against sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos; for intensification of the air campaign against North Vietnam; for the blockage of rail, road, and sea imports into North Vietnam; and ultimately for the invasion of North Vietnam. These actions might then cause the Soviet Union and Red China to apply military pressure against the United States in other parts of the world, such as in Korea or Western Europe. McNamara explained to the president that “the new request would increase the total of US forces in Vietnam to 670,000 and the total in the area to 770,000.”

Someone had to plug the faucet. “The Vietnam war is unpopular in this country. It is becoming increasingly unpopular as it escalates—causing more American casualties, more fear of its growing into a wider war, more privation of the domestic sector, and more distress at the amount of suffering being visited on the non-combatants in Vietnam, South and North. Most Americans do not know how we got where we are, and most, without knowing why, but taking advantage of the hindsight, are convinced that somehow we should not have gotten this deeply in. All want the war ended and expect their President to end it. Successfully. Or else.”

In his letter McNamara quoted from General Westmoreland’s taped remarks at Guam that “‘in the final analysis we are fighting a war of attrition. The VC/NVA 287,000-men order of battle is leveling off,’ and General Westmoreland believes that, as of March, we ‘reached the cross-over point’—we began attriting more men than Hanoi can recruit or infiltrate each month.” So why were more troops being requested? fylcNamara asked the president. If the enemy was really losing between 1500 and 2000 killed-in-action a week, while U.S. and South Vietnamese losses were 175 and 250, respectively, why weren’t we doing any better?

McNamara then focused on “the other war”—pacification in South Vietnam—which had also been a failure; corruption in the South Vietnamese government was widespread and real government control was confined to enclaves. “There is rot in the fabric. Our efforts to enliven the moribund political infrastructure have been matched by VC efforts—more now through coercion than was formerly the case.” The enemy believed that the United States could not translate military success in the “big war” into the desired “end products”—namely, broken enemy morale and political achievements by the Republic of Vietnam.

Secretary McNamara’s opposition to escalation was yet another warning based on his growing doubts about the war situation. In December 1965, when the United States had 175,000 men in Vietnam, he had reported to LBJ that “the odds are even that, even with the recommended deployments, we will be faced in early 1967 with a military standoff at a much higher level. ...” Again in October 1966, when U.S. deployments had reached 325,000, McNamara had said, “I see no reasonable way to bring the war to an end soon,” and now in May 1967, McNamara believed “that remains true today. ... This is because the enemy has us ‘stalemated’ and has the capability to tailor his actions to his supplies and manpower and, by hit-and-run terror, to make government and pacification very difficult in large parts of the country almost without regard to the size of US forces there; and . . . the enemy can and almost certainly will maintain the military ‘stalemate’ by matching our added deployments as necessary.”

McNamara also believed that the addition of the 200,000 men, involving a call-up of Reserves and an addition of 500,000 to the military strength, would almost certainly set off bitter congressional debate and irresistible domestic pressures. “Cries would go up—much louder than they already have—to ‘take the wraps off the men in the field.’” President Johnson might find himself forced into accepting around-the-clock bombing of military targets as well as such strategic targets as locks and dikes, and mining of the harbors against Soviet and other ships. Associated actions might involve major ground actions into Laos and Cambodia, and probably into North Vietnam. Finally, “the use of tactical nuclear and area-denial radiological-bacteriological chemical weapons would probably be suggested at some point if the Chinese entered the war in Vietnam or Korea or if US losses were running high while conventional efforts were not producing desired results.”²

Johnson now confronted two imperfect alternatives. He could grant Westmoreland’s request and intensify military actions outside the South, especially against the North. This would involve adding a minimum of 200,000 men in 1968 and another 100,000 in 1969. Or, the president could limit the force increases to no more than 30,000 and stabilize the commitment at 500,000.

McNamara threw his weight behind the latter. The momentum of endless escalation needed to be stopped. Dramatic increases in U.S. troop deployments were not the answer. The enemy could absorb and counter them, “bogging us down further and risking even more serious escalation of the war.” To choose the first option would “lead to a major national disaster; it would not win the Vietnam war, but only submerge it into a larger one.” The second course “will not win the Vietnam war in a military sense in a short time; it does avoid the larger war ...”

As if these imperfect alternatives were not enough, the Joint Chiefs used the stalemate argument to press for an immediate expansion of air and sea campaigns against North Vietnam. In a detailed report to the president the chiefs endorsed attacks on all airfields and port complexes, all land and sea lines of communication in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, and mining the coastal harbors and coastal waters. The Chiefs also recommended the immediate selective call-up of Reserves and the extension of tours of service for twelve months. The JCS paper, “Worldwide US Military Posture,” focused on measures that would enable the United States “to regain the strategic initiative in Southeast Asia, and to achieve a worldwide military posture.” The United States had lost the strategic initiative in Southeast Asia and the chiefs blamed civilian leadership in the Pentagon. “Application of US power in Southeast Asia, incrementally and with restraint, has inhibited the effective exploitation of the superiority of US military forces and allowed the enemy to accommodate to the military measures taken. This has contributed to the extension of the war.”

This report shows that the chiefs had spoken up against the president’s policy, but they took their protest no further than chronicling their dissatisfaction with target system limitations, rules of engagement, and force curtailments which combined to militateagainst widening the gap between the total Free-World-force capability and the capability of the enemy to generate, deploy, and sustain his forces. Haiphong and other ports in North Vietnam remained active seaports, and rail lines from Communist China remained open. The North Vietnamese Air Force had become increasingly active and aggressive. Cambodia provided a haven and an avenue of infiltration for North Vietnamese/Viet Cong forces and supplies, and the Laos Panhandle supply routes were effectively controlled by North Vietnam. “The rate at which US power has been applied has permitted North Vietnamese and Viet Cong reinforcements and force posture improvements to keep pace with the graduated increases in US military actions. It is fundamental to the successful conduct of warfare that every reasonable measure be taken to widen the differential between the capabilities of the opposing forces.”

The chiefs then raised a chilling spectre of falling dominoes. Mobilization was necessary because during the past several months, there had been a marked increase in deliberately flagrant North Korean activities. “Korea provides an attractive place for the communist Chinese to stage a diversionary effort. In the event of a major CHI-COM/North Korean attack on South Korea, the US strategic reserve might not be capable of adequate, timely reinforcement. Under these circumstances, the prompt use of nuclear weapons, coupled with air and naval operations against bases and LOCs [lines of communication] in Manchuria, would probably become necessary to preserve the integrity of South Korea.” Moreover, a Chinese attack on Thailand could trigger the use of nuclear weapons against lines of communication and supply bases in southern China. Similarly, should the Chinese intervene overtly with major combat forces in Vietnam, “it might be necessary to establish a strategic defense in South Vietnam and use tactical nuclear weapons against bases and LOCs in South China.”³

The alternatives as outlined by McNamara’s letter and the JCS report, were not pleasant ones. As usual, the president sought Rostow’s counsel. Rostow wrote directly to LBJ that McNamara’s May ig memorandum “appears a reaction against the JCS position as he understands it and projects it—a reaction that goes a bit too far.” Rostow’s intermediate strategy involved mobilizing the Reserves in order to “seriously impress Hanoi that the jig was up.” Rostow had long favored “the shallow invasion of North Viet Nam” and again endorsed such an action as necessary and advisable.

Rostow identified fundamental differences between his position and Secretary McNamara’s: “Like him, I do not wish to see progressive and mindless escalation of the bombing in the Hanoi-Haiphong area; but I am anxious that we not take the heat off that area without an adequate return and would, therefore, like to see continuance of a selective attack based on an examination of what we have achieved thus far and a reexamination of targets.” Rostow also favored deploying more troops in Vietnam to be used in rooting out “the provincial VC battalions, permitting the South Vietnamese to begin to put pressure on and even mop up guerrillas at the local level.”

With respect to a Reserve call-up by summer; “I think it would be unwise,” wrote Rostow, “for us to go into the 1967–68 shooting season without some forces in reserve.” But having effective forces in the field took time and training of the Reserves now. “If you want Reserves in 1968, you must decide soon.” Rostow advised Johnson that “those thoroughly professional men in Hanoi would, I believe, be profoundly impressed by a call-up. They would know that even if you did not use much of that call-up immediately, you were in a position to deal with whatever manpower requirements emerged. For all these reasons, then, I have a feeling that it would be wise to have some sort of Reserve call-up this summer if you judge it politically possible.”⁴

It was now evident to Johnson that Westmoreland’s request for another 200,000 men would not make the difference between victory and defeat, but rather the difference between victory in three, five, or some indefinite number of years. The United States was in this for the long haul.

Bombing had become an emotional as well as a technical issue within the Johnson administration. “There are dangerously strong feelings in your official family which tend to overwhelm the strictly military factors,” Rostow wrote to the president. Secretaries Rusk and McNamara felt that the domestic and diplomatic risks of bombing Hanoi-Haiphong were not cost-effective, if its effectiveness was measured against Communist operations in the South. General Wheeler felt “a withdrawal from Hanoi-Haiphong bombing would stir deep resentment at home, among our troops, and be regarded by the Communists as an aerial Dien Bien Phu.”*

The issue of internal disagreement threatened to derail the administration. Rostow phrased the issue as finding what “kind of scenario can hold our family together in ways that look after the nation’s interests and make military sense?” Rostow recommended one final attack at Hanoi power plants to be followed by a radical cut-back on attacks in the Hanoi-Haiphong area. During that time McNamara and Wheeler would visit Vietnam in order to assess manpower needs for the coming year. “We could then reexamine our future bombing policy in the light of the total policy you then adopt towards the next phase of the war in Viet Nam.” This scenario would give Rusk and McNamara “a break in what they feel is a dangerous pattern of progressive bombing escalation; Rusk and the State Department a chance to prove if they can buy anything important to us through diplomacy at this time. General Wheeler would get a temporary rather than a permanent change of bombing pattern, with the opportunity to refine his case and make it to you in, say, a month’s time.”⁵

Special National Intelligence Estimate 14.3-87

While debate on the bombing program was gaining momentum, the dispute on the size of enemy strength continued to simmer between bureaucratic agencies. By mid-June a draft of a new Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) had been completed by the CIA. This detailed study sought to estimate the capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for prosecuting the war in South Vietnam over the next two years. (The final SNIE, titled “Capabilities of the Vietnamese Communists for Fighting in South Vietnam,” would not be published until November.) This first draft estimated enemy strength at between 460,000 and 570,000, and concluded, “We tend to believe that the higher figure is closer to the actual total communist strength in South Vietnam.” A comparison of the MACV and CIA figures is presented below:

The draft SNIE had a disquieting effect on all of the principals. Admiral Sharp cabled General Westmoreland registering concern regarding revised strength estimates of Viet Cong Irregular Forces. “Continued close coordination would be essential in order to avoid public disclosure of this sensitive and potentially explosive subject.”⁶

Was MACV keeping their official Order of Battle below 300,000 in order to show progress in the war of attrition? In order to accomplish this arithmetically, it was necessary to drop the self-defense and secret-self-defense categories from the official Order of Battle. General Westmoreland did not believe these categories constituted a military threat. CIA analysts viewed self defense and secret defense militia as important components of the enemy’s overall military strength and a source of manpower for main forces. Yet, the CIA was to confront intense opposition. In early June 1967, following a trip to South Vietnam, Robert Komer, wrote to the president that a month in-country had reinforced his view that “we are gaining momentum and that by the end of next winter it will be clear for all to see that we have gained the upper hand. In other words, while the war is not being ‘won’ we will clearly be winning it. The real question is not whether we need more US troops to ‘win’ the war in the south, but rather how fast we want to win it.” Komer envisioned a 50–50 chance of a “clear upper hand” by mid-1968 without major U.S. add-ons—“if everything else breaks our way. By then the deterioration of the VC should be amply evident.”

McNamara Responds to the Chiefs

On June 12, 1967, (5 days before commissioning the “Pentagon Papers”) McNamara forwarded a revised draft presidential memorandum, titled “Alternative Military Actions Against North Vietnam,” to the president. McNamara continued his battle against the Joint Chiefs’ recommendation for intensified attacks on the Hanoi-Haiphong logistical base as well as bombing and mining of the ports close to Hanoi and Haiphong. Such escalatory actions would not substantially reduce the flow of men and supplies to the South nor pressure Hanoi into settlement, McNamara asserted. “The real damage, however, rests in the inexorable pressure towards further escalation and in the serious risk of enlarging the war into one with the Soviet Union and China,” argued the secretary of defense.

McNamara’s analysis reiterated the questions the Defense Department had raised in May. Combat operations in South Vietnam had reached a high level of intensity with only slow progress by friendly forces, “a situation which it is within the power of the enemy to perpetuate.” The pacification program was stalled and the South Vietnamese government “is still largely corrupt, incompetent and unresponsive to the needs and wishes of the people.”

Seeing little progress from Vietnam, McNamara asked where would it all stop? “Implicit in the [JCS] recommendation is a conviction that nothing short of toppling the Hanoi regime will pressure North Vietnam to settle so long as they believe they have a chance to win the war of attrition’ in the south.” McNamara argued that major entities of the U.S. government could no longer agree on U.S. goals much less strategy and that American public opinion was moving towards rejecting the war. The rising U.S. casualty rate and the increasing proportion of losses being suffered by U.S. forces, would result in substantial disfavor with the public.

The U.S. objective in Vietnam had always been a limited one, and in McNamara’s opinion the policy decisions required narrowing, not broadening, the level of commitment. “The limited over-all US objective, in terms of the narrow US commitment and not of wider US preferences, is to take action (so long as they continue to help themselves) to see that the people of South Vietnam are permitted to determine their own future. Our commitment is to stop (or generously to offset when we cannot stop) North Vietnamese military intervention in the South, so that ‘the board will not be tilted’ against Saigon in an internal South Vietnamese contest for control.”

In other words, the U.S. goal in Vietnam was to build democracy and stability in the South, not pulverize the North. Besides, pulverizing hadn’t worked with respect to the limited U.S. objective, McNamara wrote. Hanoi had already decided to hold out so long as a prospect of winning the war of attrition in the South existed. Moreover, nothing “short of destruction of the regime or occupation of North Vietnamese territory, will with high confidence reduce the flow of men and material below the relatively small amount needed by enemy forces to continue the war in the South.”

How had the North Vietnamese withstood the psychological, physical, and economic pressures of air attacks? McNamara pointed out that the North Vietnamese economy was essentially agrarian, at a comparatively primitive stage of development; the people had simple needs, most of which were satisfied locally; the economy provided little direct input, other than manpower, for the war in the South. The flow of economic and military aid into North Vietnam from Russia and China far surpassed the total damage resulting from air attacks and provided the overwhelming bulk of materials necessary to continue the war. Finally, the North Vietnamese had devised and implemented an elaborate and highly successful system of counter-measures that negated most of the impact of air attacks on the flow of men and supplies in the South.

Cleverly turning the JCS recommendation around, McNamara asked, “Why not escalate the bombing and mine the harbors and perhaps occupy southern North Vietnam—on the gamble that it would constrict the flow, meaningfully limiting enemy action in the South, and that it would bend Hanoi?” Because American lives would be the ante for such a policy, and public opinion would reject the American actions, he then answered. “There may be a limit beyond which many Americans and much of the world will not permit the United States to go. The picture of the world’s greatest super-power killing or injuring more than 2,000 non-combatants a month while trying to pound a tiny backward nation into submission on an issue whose merits are hotly disputed, is not a pretty one. It could conceivably produce a costly distortion in the American national consciousness and in the world image of the United States—especially if we increase the damage to North Vietnam greatly in an effort to achieve their capitulation.”

McNamara favored a program that would concentrate bombing on infiltration routes in the southern neck of North Vietnam south of the twentieth parallel. The plan reflected the secretary’s belief that the outcome of the war hinged on what happened in the South, and it was necessary to start improving the negotiating environment. The secretary warned President Johnson that in the eyes of the world the bombing was not only unproductive, it was morally repugnant. Mining the ports would be unproductive and costly in domestic and world support, and faced with the frustrations of stalemate, the United States would have no choice but to escalate further.

With Westmoreland’s request still pending and doubts beginning to emerge on the viability of the U.S. commitment, Secretary McNamara and General Wheeler now headed to Vietnam for a firsthand appraisal of the military situation. Ambassador Bunker was buoyed by McNamara’s impending visit, cabling the president, “It gives all of us here new encouragement and enthusiasm in our determination to bring to a successful conclusion the policies and goals you have set for us. We are making progress. We are deeply conscious of the heavy burdens you bear. Please be assured you can count on us.’”⁷

*Dien Bien Phu was the site of the last great battle between the French and Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces in 1954. French forces surrendered following the 56-day seige by the Viet Minh, ending French power in Indochina. Dien Bien Phu became analogous to defeat and surrender in the view of U.S. military pursuing the war.