Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume I, Vietnam, 1964

9. Memorandum From the Chairman of the Policy Planning Council (Rostow) to the Secretary of State¹

Washington, January 10, 1964.

SUBJECT

• Southeast Asia and China

Three forces are converging which might well produce the greatest setback to US interests on the world scene in many years.

1. The rise in South Vietnam of a popular mood, spreading into the bureaucracy and the armed forces, that neither the South Vietnam government nor the US has a viable concept for winning the war and that a neutralized South Vietnam is the only way out.

2. A spread of neutralist thought and feeling in Thailand as well as Cambodia; and the growing judgment in Indonesia that we shall fail in South Vietnam and that the National Liberation Front, supported by Hanoi, will win.

3. De Gaulle’s campaign both to encourage neutralist feeling in Southeast Asia and to bring about the Chinese Communist entrance into the UN.

Many of these despairing neutralist elements were also present in the wake of Dienbienphu and the outcome of the Geneva Conference of 1954. They were reversed by vigorous US diplomatic action, including the negotiation of the Manila Pact, the creation of SEATO and a strengthening of the position in South Vietnam itself.

It may be that actions now taken within South Vietnam itself, military and political, can retrieve the present situation or hold it short of a definitive crisis through the calendar year 1964; but from such evidence as is available to me, this appears doubtful. I return, therefore, to the concept of a direct political-military showdown with Hanoi over the question of its direct operation of the war in South Vietnam including infiltration of men and supplies.²

If we succeed in forcing Hanoi to respect the provisions of the Geneva Accords of 1962 this would have profound psychological and political effects throughout Asia; and we might then be able to deal with the gathering forces designed to put Communist China into the UN from a position of poise. But until it is demonstrated that the game of “Wars of National Liberation” is not viable and that the borders of China and North Vietnam are firm, the acceptance of Communist China within the world community and in the UN could be a major disaster. The present combination of circumstances, if not reversed, would signal to those on the spot that we have granted Chinese Communist hegemony in Southeast Asia.

1. Source: Department of State, S/P Files: Lot 70 D 199, Southeast Asia. Secret. Copies were also sent to Ball, Harriman, and U. Alexis Johnson. Rusk’s initials appear on the source text. Also published in Declassified Documents, 1977, 147C.
2. Rostow was referring to memoranda which he sent Rusk on November 28, 1962, and November 1, 1963. In these memoranda, both of which Rusk saw, Rostow argued that the United States should confront Hanoi with the choice of ceasing to direct and support the war in the South or accepting retaliatory military damage in the North. Neither is printed.