Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, East Asia and the Pacific, Volume VI

751G.00/11–2050

The Deputy Director of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (Ohly) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Rusk)

top secret
personal

Washington, November 20, 1950.

Dear Dean: Attached for your personal review and consideration is a memorandum to the Secretary which raises what I believe are some of the key questions with respect to Indochina. While it is long, I would appreciate your reading it and studying it carefully—and then, passing it on as soon as possible to the Secretary for his personal attention, with, if you feel it is appropriate, any comments of your own. I am personally holding all other copies for the time being, since the document is not one which should be floating around, although I believe it would be of interest to both Perkins and Nitze.¹

As I state in the memorandum, I do not know the answers to a large number of the questions raised, nor do I believe that any single person does. If I had to make a judgment, I would say that our present policy was wrong, but I would not feel sure of that judgment.

John H. Ohly

[Enclosure]

Memorandum by the Deputy Director of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (Ohly) to the Secretary of State ²

[Extracts]

top secret

Washington, November 20, 1950.

Subject: Reappraisal of U.S. Policy with respect to Indochina

I. This memorandum is designed to stress the urgent necessity for an immediate, thorough and realistic re-examination of our policy with respect to Indochina, From the standpoint of the Mutual Defense Assistance Program, such a re-examination is imperative, because the continuance of the present policy of substantial aid may, without achieving its intended purpose, make impossible the fulfillment of mutual defense objectives elsewhere in the world. Such a re-examination may well lead to a reaffirmation of this policy without significant change, but in my opinion, and in the light of the considerations set forth below, it would be the height of folly to pursue such policy further in the absence of a far more searching analysis than has heretofore been made of its possibilities of success and its global consequences. Even if the need for such an approach was not urgent before (and I believe it was), it has certainly been made so by the direct Chinese Communist intervention in Korea which (1) places large additional operating demands upon the limited materiel resources available for both U.S. requirements and all foreign military assistance programs and (2) indicates that the Kremlin may be prepared to accept the risks inherent in the actual commitment of Chinese troops to assist Ho Chi Minh, a step which would, as subsequently indicated, completely transform the character of the military problem in Indochina.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

(3) Assuming that enough equipment and effective manpower can be provided, will there be the will, the morale and the kind of leadership necessary effectively to handle the military situation? The military observers who have been to Indochina, including General Erskine and the members of his group, have uniformly commented on the lack of offensive spirit among the French forces, the faultiness of French tactics, the poor use made of certain weapons (particularly artillery), and the poor generalship. These observers have similarly stated that unless some or all of these weaknesses can be removed, the chances of success in Indochina are not particularly good. While the morale of the French Union forces has held up surprisingly well in the face of 5 years of little tangible progress in defeating the Viet Minh and in the face of severe setbacks in Tonkin, the question is naturally presented as to how long this can continue to be the case, particularly if more of the Red River Delta area goes. There is the further question of the ability of the French and Bao Dai, within the political frameworks now existing or likely to be developed in the near future, to obtain the kind of morale and will to fight which is needed to make the nascent national armies effective combat units in warfare against the Viet Minh. What little evidence is available on this particular score is somewhat encouraging.

(4) Will it be possible to prevent a political deterioration that will nullify accomplishments in the military field? The answer to this question depends on a series of factors which can better be developed by other offices of the State Department. It would appear, however, that at least three important subsidiary points must be considered:

(a) the rapidity and extensiveness of further Viet Minh successes and their impact on native attitudes and on key individuals whose loyalties may be wavering;

(b) the capacity of Bao Dai and those around him to assert and exercise effective leadership, utilizing the authority and power in those fields where they already possess them; and

(c) the willingness of the French, both in letter and in spirit, to make those concessions which appear to be necessary if the new native governments are to receive the popular support upon which their continuance depends.

As indicated earlier, this paper does not attempt to provide answers to the foregoing crucial questions, but I would like to call attention to the grave doubts which have repeatedly been expressed in the intelligence evaluations of all of the principal intelligence agencies of the government.…

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

C. What will he the costs and consequences elsewhere of attempting to attain the objective of firm non-Communist control of Indochina?

We will consider this question solely in relation to the internal security objective, since there appears to be little that can be done, short of outright U.S. intervention, to repel a Chinese Communist invasion if attempted. This does not mean, of course, that we must not weigh these costs and these consequences with a view to the possibility that such an invasion may occur and create a situation in which the costs which have theretofore been incurred, and the consequences suffered, have been incurred and suffered, to no avail. These costs fall principally into two categories:

(1) military equipment, largely from U.S. sources, and

(2) manpower otherwise available for French forces in Western Europe.

As to the former, we have already indicated our belief that immediate foreseeable requirements will be in the neighborhood of $500,000,000 and that these requirements will substantially increase. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have indicated that these requirements cannot be met without a substantial impact on the military assistance program for Western Europe. This will be true to an even greater extent in the case of military assistance programs for Greece, Turkey and Iran, which have a lower priority than the programs of North Atlantic Treaty countries. Moreover, as and to the extent that Korean operations consume increasing quantities of available American equipment, the effect in Europe and elsewhere of doing what is needed in Indochina will materially increase. In other words, the development of effective forces in Western Europe which must, for the time being, rely almost exclusively on American equipment, will be substantially delayed; the effort to place Greek forces in a position to resist Bulgarian and/or Albanian invasion may have to be postponed indefinitely; and it will not be possible to carry through measures which are urgently required to make the Turkish army a really effective combat force. While it is true that a time will come, perhaps 12 or 18 months hence, when the mobilization of American industry, as a result of orders now being placed, will eliminate a situation of equipment scarcity and make it possible to catch up, we must accept as a fact, that the mounting of the Indochina program will seriously affect other MDAP programs in the interim.

It is impossible to assess the impact of materially reduced MDAP delivery schedules on the augmentation of forces in the North Atlantic Treaty area and on the North Atlantic Treaty itself. It is clear, however, that apart from any effect on the actual development of combat-ready divisions, there will be an effect, deriving from the lack of training equipment, on the speed of forming units and raising forces. This same problem is affected by the other important cost of pursuing the present policy in Indochina, namely the cost in French manpower. We are counting on the ability of the French to provide 10 divisions by the end of 1951 and some 27 divisions by the beginning of 1954. Apart from equipment, the great bottleneck in meeting these commitments will be the provision of enough qualified and fully trained commissioned and non-commissioned officers to form the cadres for, and to train, these large forces. Every officer and non-commissioned officer diverted to Indochina materially reduces the prospect that the French can even approximate the present objective, since the period of training for technicians, non-com’s, and commissioned officers is measured in years and not in months and, unfortunately, one of the crucial requirements in Indochina is for this same general category of personnel. In addition, of course, the diversion of enlisted personnel to another theater reduces the amount of manpower available for the rank and file for the kind of French army needed in Western Europe just as quickly as it can be formed. In this connection, it should be noted that French casualties in Indochina since 1945, without taking into account the recent debacles, have exceeded 50,000, and that French officers are being lost in this campaign at a faster rate than they are being graduated from officer schools in France.

The present tight equipment situation, and therefore the impact which meeting Indochinese requirements may have, can perhaps best be understood by reference to the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimates concerning the time when equipment might be made available for German units. Short of tapping the Austrian stockpile, the Joint Chiefs of Staff estimate that it will be impossible to provide full TO and E equipment for the first 4 German infantry divisions until at least September 1952, or almost two years hence, and that even training equipment for an additional 11 divisions could not be provided until June of 1952. Moreover, short of full industrial mobilization, and a sufficiently high priority for the allocation of equipment to German units, it will be impossible to equip them with heavy equipment, such as tanks and heavy artillery, until the early part of 1954.

The impacts on other programs may well be such that the Indochina program will have to drop far below a No. I priority, and if this proves to be the case, then of course it affects the answer to A above.³

D. Does our present policy in Indochina make sense when considered in the light of its possibility of success and in terms of its consequences to the accomplishment of U.S. objectives in other areas of strategic importance?

The answer to this question will largely depend upon the answers to A, B,⁴ and C above, plus an appraisal of the relative importance of achieving our objective in Indochina and our objectives elsewhere in the world. Without carefully thought out answers to A, B, and C above, and without making a thorough assessment of the strategic importance of Indochina vis-à-vis the strategic importance of areas whose security will be adversely affected by our present policy in Indochina, the issue posed in this paragraph cannot be intelligently discussed. However, it is believed that the problem involved can be illustrated by the following purely hypothetical questions, each to be considered in relation to two alternative assumptions—first, that our policy in Indochina has a reasonable prospect of success, and second, that the prospects of its success are not very good:

(1) Is it worth a delay of 6 months in the date when North Atlantic Treaty forces will be adequate to resist Soviet aggression, or, put another way, to meet the force and equipment requirements of the Medium Term Plan?

(2) Is it worth a delay of 6 months in the formation, training, and equipping of German units?

(3) Is it worth a delay of 6 months in the time when Greek forces would be capable of withstanding Bulgarian and/or Albanian invasion?

(4) Is it worth a delay of 6 months in the time when Turkish forces can be placed in a position to offer maximum resistance to Russian forces or, alternatively, in the event of a global war, to tie down the maximum amount of Soviet forces?

IV. Recommendations

I strongly recommend that before any further substantial commitments of equipment, prestige or forces are made in Indochina, the kind of assessment suggested in the preceding pages be undertaken. I suggest that this be done by a special task force under the auspices of the National Security Council, because it is so urgent that it cannot and should not be pursued through slower channels. We have reached a point where the United States, because of limitations in resources, can no longer simultaneously pursue all of its objectives in all parts of the world and must realistically face the fact that certain objectives, even though they may be extremely valuable and important ones, may have to be abandoned if others of even greater value and importance are to be attained. The situation is not unlike that which faced the United States in the early days of the last war, when a choice had to be made between pursuing the offensive in either the West or the East and not in both places at once.

As an afterthought, and by way of additional caveat, I would like to point out that the demands on the U.S. for Indochina are increasing almost daily and that, sometimes imperceptibly, by one step after another, we are gradually increasing our stake in the outcome of the struggle there, We are, moreover, slowly (and not too slowly) getting ourselves into a position where our responsibilities tend to supplant rather than complement those of the French, and where failures are attributed to us as though we were the primary party at fault and in interest. We may be on the road to being a scapegoat, and we are certainly dangerously close to the point of being so deeply committed that we may find ourselves completely committed even to direct intervention. These situations, unfortunately, have a way of snowballing.

John H. Ohly

1. Paul H. Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff.
2. The source text is 42 pages in length.
3. Section A is titled “Do we have a reasonable chance of attaining the objective of firm non-Communist control of Indochina against internal threats?”
4. Section B is titled “Do we have a reasonable chance of attaining the objective of firm non-Communist control of China [sic] against external threats?”