Office of the Historian

170. Memorandum From the President’s Military Representative (Taylor) to President Kennedy2

Washington, August 29, 1961.

SUBJECT

  • Meeting on Southeast Asia Planning, August 29, 1961
1.
At the coming meeting3 Mr. Alexis Johnson will explain to you the status of the Southeast Asia planning. In general terms, the current plan4 provides for two parallel courses of action: the first consisting of an “honest try” to carry forward the Geneva negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion; the second, concurrent preparations in anticipation of failure at Geneva.
2.
Depending upon the situation which develops after the failure of negotiations, the second course of action is broken down into two parts. If a cease-fire continues in an ambiguous military situation which the Communists exploit covertly, our reaction would be to feed in small Thai and South Vietnamese units into Laos to assist the Laotian Army in controlling the Communist guerrillas. At about the same time, a SEATO military exercise would be organized and executed to Thailand, after which a SEATO command headquarters would be left behind to coordinate subsequent SEATO rotational training and to be prepared for military operations. During this period SEATO forces (except for those involved in the exercise) would be alerted but not moved into Southeast Asia.
3.
If failure at Geneva is followed by a clear resumption of fighting, the response would be the execution of the SEATO 5 Plan, presumably augmented by a maximum use of Thai and South Vietnamese forces. It is important to verify the intention to use these local forces as the point was under debate at the Task Force meeting yesterday.
4.
In any circumstance, we would start at once to stiffen the Royal Laotian Army with additional U.S. and Thai advisory personnel. Also, it would be necessary to begin talking to our SEATO Allies at once in order to obtain their cooperation.
5.
In the course of the coming meeting you may wish to raise some of the following questions:
a.
How much is this plan likely to cost the United States in terms of military manpower and economic assistance? What do we stand to gain from it?
b.
How can we verify the political and military feasibility of this plan without committing ourselves prematurely to this course of action?
c.
If we adopt this plan, can we withhold a decision to implement if the world situation at the time so requires?
d.
In adopting it, would we accept a political commitment beyond that presently implicit in our SEATO undertakings?
e.
What actions need to be approved for implementation at this time?
Maxwell D. Taylor
  1. Source: Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Regional Security Series, Southeast Asia: General, 8/29/61–8/31/61. Secret.↩
  2. See Document 172.↩
  3. See footnote 1, Document 171.↩