Office of the Historian

170. Memorandum From the President’s Deputy Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Rostow) to the President’s Military Representative (Taylor)1

Honolulu, October 16, 1961.

SUBJECT

  • A Plan for CINCPAC to Prepare in the Next Two Weeks
1.
I believe it would be useful if CINCPAC would prepare for our examination on the return of your mission to Honolulu an additional plan. The plan would consist of limited but systematic harassment by U.S. naval and air power of North VietNam. It would not envisage, at our initiative, the landing of U.S. forces north of the 17th parallel for sustained fighting; but it might include hit-and-run naval and air action to place and remove landing parties to destroy key military bases and installations. The plan would be designed to minimize civilian casualties.
2.
The plan would require, and be based on a detailed analysis of North Vietnamese military installations, especially on installations related to the Viet-Cong offensive in the south; and on a detailed analysis of the North Vietnamese economy. It may be that Admiral Felt would like to request the prompt dispatch from Washington of the best transport and economic experts on the North Vietnamese economy from CIA.
3.
The considerations underlying this concept are the following:
a.
It is apparent that it will be difficult to produce a prompt and radical improvement in the tactics, organization, and direction of Diem’s forces. This we must seek to do, but the pace of increased Viet-Cong pressure may outpace the maximum that persuasion and bargaining can bring about soon.
b.
It is apparent that the highest authorities in Washington and Saigon will resist the introduction of new forces on a scale capable of producing a rapid change in the situation. We may find-in air reinforcement-a move which would bring about such a turning point; but we can not be satisfied with such a proposal on the evidence presently available to us.
c.
The underlying situation we confront is that Communist strategy is-as always-working around our main strength (the Seventh Fleet), and exploiting our main weaknesses: Diem; and the political limitations on the role of white men in an Asian guerrilla war. I believe we have a responsibility to see what could be done by exploiting their fundamental weakness, (the vulnerability of the Hanoi-Haiphong complex) and our main strength (naval and air power).
4.
I am, of course, aware of the political problem of creating an international setting in which a substantial part of the international community would regard this action as legitimate. This would have to be carefully checked out; and I am only suggesting that we have in hand a carefully tooled precision plan to match the concept. But I believe the political and diplomatic problem is not insuperable given the Jorden Report;2 given the fact that we would not be setting out to conquer North VietNam, but only to harass until it closed to communicate with supply, and infiltrate its agents in the South [sic]; given the fact that this move could be legitimately presented to the U.N. as a way of stopping a form of international banditry which must be stopped-by the U.N. or some other instrument-if we are to have a world of law.
5.
I am also, of course, aware that the possibilities of escalation would have to be carefully considered. We would have to be prepared for an overt attack across the 17th parallel; a Chinese Communist entrance into the war; a Soviet reaction in Berlin or elsewhere. But I see nothing we can do to save South Viet-Nam and Southeast Asia which does not require measuring these risks; and I think this form of graduated air-naval harassment would be a real puzzler for them-just as guerrilla war is for us. Moreover, there are real inhibitions in Hanoi and Moscow against getting the Chinese Communists into Hanoi; real inhibitions in Moscow against nuclear war.
6.
Finally, it should be clear that this kind of action would be a supplement to-not a substitute for-efforts to aid Diem. It is designed to produce a favorable turning point in the guerrilla war; it would not end it. Therefore, the examination of how Diem’s and our own resources might better be utilized must, of course, go forward.
W.W. Rostow3
  1. Source: National Defense University, Taylor Papers, T-015-69. Secret.↩
  2. See footnote 2, Document 161.↩
  3. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.↩