Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume II, Vietnam, January–June 1965

334. Memorandum From Senator Mike Mansfield to President Johnson¹

Washington, June 5, 1965.

SUBJECT

• Viet Nam

Pursuant to Thursday’s Leadership meeting,² I want to stress my support for your resistance to pressures for an irreversible extension of the war in Asia. That is what the bombing of Hanoi-Haiphong could well amount to. I say that because the bombing would be more than just another military measure. It would also be a political act of the first magnitude.

In keeping the lid on these pressures you are on sound historic and realistic grounds in terms of the vital interests of the United States. The word “vital” is used most advisedly because the following is what I believe would result from the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong.

1. The bombing is likely to have no significant value to us in the military situation because the Communists in Hanoi and Peking have long expected it and have undoubtedly made their plans accordingly.

2. The bombing is likely to forestall indefinitely any prospects of discussions with the other side, unconditional or otherwise.

3. The bombing is likely to provide another world-wide impetus to nations to disassociate themselves from the American position and, in Asia, this separation could begin to extend to Japan.

4. The bombing is likely to insure the irreversibility of the Chinese involvement and will act to seal Chinese domination over North Viet Nam.

5. The bombing is likely to freeze Russia into the role, at least, of principal outside supplier of military equipment for North Viet Nam and China.

6. The bombing is likely to bring about an enlargement and acceleration of the ground war in South Viet Nam and, hence, it will compel the rapid injection of more American forces on the ground, even to hold the situation in that region.

7. The bombing is likely to insure that the war eventually will have to be carried, in the search for decision, into North Viet Nam, into other parts of Southeast Asia, and probably into China itself. And who is going to carry the main burden of this extension if not United States ground forces? Secretary McNamara spoke of 300,000 Americans to deal with Giap’s forces if they came south. That is but a beginning. If the expansion goes on to include combat with Chinese forces all over Southeast Asia, we had better start thinking in terms of millions.

These consequences of a bombing of Hanoi-Haiphong would do violence to the vital interests of the United States. For, at the end of the line, even if there is something which could be called a victory, we would be faced with a cost of an occupation and reconstruction in Asia which would dwarf anything which has yet been seen.

Getting in deep on the Asian mainland is a course which has been rejected repeatedly throughout our history and most emphatically by Dwight D. Eisenhower at the other extremity of Asia. As President, the choice was his to make in Korea. He could have pushed the air-war in the search for a clear-cut decision. He chose, instead, to negotiate a cease-fire in Korea, rather than to proceed to deepen the involvement by bombing beyond the Yalu. On the basis of that cease-fire in Korea, we held what was, in fact, already held on the ground and yielded to them what they already held on the ground.

It is clear that our side does not have much on the ground, even in South Viet Nam. But if we are determined to hold that entire region on our terms, it is going to have to be in South Viet Nam and not in the air over North Viet Nam that the ground has to be won. Indeed, the bombing of the North, after the initial sallies, appears to have made the military task in the South more difficult and costly. Certainly, it is related to the rapid expansion of our own ground forces in the South. And it would be my judgment that if we bomb Hanoi-Haiphong it will serve to raise the ante to us on the ground in South Viet Nam once again.

I think it is about time you got an accounting from those who have pressured you in the past to embark on this course and continue to pressure you to stay on it. It is time to ask, not only what immediate advantages it has in a narrow military sense, but where does it lead in the end: What was promised by the initial extension of the war in the air over the North? And what, in fact, has it produced to date?

As I see it, and you know it is a view which I have long held, there are no significant American interests which dictate an essentially massive, unilateral American military effort to control the flow of events in Viet Nam or even on the Southeast Asian mainland as a whole. There is, on the contrary, only a general interest, shared with many other outsiders, in the stability, peace and progress of the region. That is not the kind of interest which we can serve by overwhelming the region with either our military strength or our substance. It is the kind of interest which requires us to do a share, along with the other outsiders whose tangible, political and economic and commercial stake in the region is in some cases much larger than our own. It is the kind of interest which, it would seem to me, calls for the minimum military effort which is necessary to hold the situation in the South from falling apart altogether and a maximum initiative on our part to get this whole sorry business to a conference table as soon as possible.³

1. Source: University of Montana, Mansfield Library, Mansfield Papers, Series 13, Box 69, Vietnam. No classification marking.
2. See Document 326.
3. Mansfield sent a memorandum to President Johnson on June 9 questioning the decision to commit U.S. troops to combat in Vietnam (Document 341) and another memorandum, dated June 14, to the President on June 22 that offered suggestions for settling the Vietnam conflict. (Johnson Library, National Security File, Name File, Vietnam, Mansfield Memo and Reply) On June 27 McGeorge Bundy sent Mansfield a memorandum, approved by the President, responding to Mansfield’s three June memoranda. Bundy noted that the administration valued Mansfield’s advice and agreed with him on the importance of limiting the bombing campaign in the north, focusing on the military situation in the south, and moving the conflict in the direction of an international conference to pursue a negotiated settlement. Bundy added, however, that the administration did not share Mansfield’s pessimistic assessment of the political and military situation in Vietnam, and did not feel that an effective cease-fire would be as easy to arrange and enforce as Mansfield seemed to suggest. (Ibid.)