Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXVII, Mainland Southeast Asia; Regional Affairs

295. Letter From the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Bundy) to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs (McNaughton)¹

Washington, May 25, 1965.

Dear John:

In light of Daweeʼs commitment to Secretary McNamara to raise the Project 22 units to 80 percent manning levels, and our common agreement that we should be focussing our MAP program on the Project 22 units, on other units that make a clear contribution to over-all counter-insurgency capabilities, and on joint U.S.-Thai requirements, we have again gone over the proposed add-ons to the FY 65 program and have also reviewed the basic FY 66 program and the additions that have been proposed to it.

The results of our review, and the resulting State Department positions, are stated in the attached memorandum with tabs.²

In essence, what we have done is to review this from the standpoint of basic compliance with the criteria stated by Secretary McNamara, i.e., the necessity for orientation to the counter-insurgency effort and to support of a “balanced” military force.³ This we have done by sorting out each category of expenditure in terms of the recipient unit. You will see in the attached memorandum that each item is stated precisely in terms of the unit that would receive it and of the manning and/or utilization capacity of that unit.

What we really find from this study is that the JUSMAG has in fact been applying a highly selective criterion in the formation of the program, and has in fact been selecting as recipients of program items, in a clearly disproportionate number of cases, units that were in fact meeting the kind of standard the Secretary has in mind. In short, to my own satisfaction, we have been bourgeois gentlemen who have been talking prose without knowing it (at least in Washington).

It remains true, of course, that the over-all manning level of the Thai forces (56 percent of authorized strength) is too low. We have considered whether we should make continuation of the whole MAP program contingent on bringing this over-all level up to some set percentage. Our conclusion is that this would not be practical, for two reasons:

a. A large over-all increase in numerical strength of the armed forces is not an urgent military requirement and would be obviously expensive to the Thai budget itself. Although the budget is perhaps not as high as it should be for a government in the position of Thailand, it is being steadily increased (at the rate of about 9 percent in the next fiscal year commencing in October) and it would be a mistake to divert funds within the budget from economic development purposes to military purposes. The 9 percent increase, assuming the present proportions as between economic and military uses, can be better spent in the modest force increases required to bring the Project 22 units up to the Dawee commitment, and in various other small cost increments.

b. The politics of the Thai army are two-fold. It is the base of the whole regime, and different parts of it are the respective power bases of Messrs. Thanom and Praphat. Both political elements require that somewhat greater numbers of officers be maintained than make military sense. To attempt to correct this situation, in any short term, would run serious risks of disrupting the regime, souring Thanom or Praphat, or both.

Thus, as a practical matter, we are accepting a military structure in Thailand that is not as effective as it should be. However, by carefully selecting the units to which we give equipment support, and by getting Dawee to take the first big step in bringing up the strength of the Project 22 units, we should be setting in motion a train of events that will move fairly rapidly toward a more effective army structure. Meanwhile, we are at least making sense with what we do contribute, although undoubtedly there is some lesser wastage in the handling of operating costs among units that are below appropriate strength levels. This again seems to be the price of the contemporary Thai state of progress.

In all this, I have not sought to refer to the basic politics of increasing our present MAP levels in Thailand, which I went into rather fully in my letter of April 24.⁴ As we see it, we can count on full Thai cooperation in the present ways, although it is obvious that they feel themselves under some pressure and you may have noted that one or two Thai voices have recently spoken out in a neutralist vein. The real point, politically, is that the odds are very heavy that developments in the near future will compel us to ask for even greater Thai support, may tend to increase the existing Thai impression that the U.S. will do things for them, and could conceivably be adverse so as to cause a decline in present levels of Thai confidence in us. To meet all these points, it is our judgment that we should really meet the Thai need under the criteria discussed at the outset of this letter, and that we should therefore adopt the funding plans stated in the attached detailed memorandum and in its tabs.

Sincerely,

William P. Bundy ⁵

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, DEF 19 US–THAI. Secret.
2. Attached but not printed.
3. As stated in Document 294.
4. Document 291.
5. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.