Reassessment of U.S. Objectives in South Vietnam,
1964

The United States’ policy is to prepare immediately to be in a position on 72 hours’ notice to initiate the full range of  Laotian and Cambodian “Border Control actions” . . . and the “Retaliatory Actions” against NorthVietnam, and to be in a position on 30 days’ notice to initiate the program of “Graduated Overt Military Pressure” against North Vietnam….

We seek an independent non-Communist South Vietnam. We do not require that it serve as a Western base or as a member of a Western Alliance.  South Vietnam must be free, however, to accept outside assistance as required to maintain its security. This assistance should be able to take the form not only of economic and social measures but also police and military help to root out and control insurgent elements.

Unless we can achieve this objective in South Vietnam, almost all of Southeast Asia will probably fall under Communist dominance (all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), accommodate to Communism so as to remove effective U.S. and anti-Communist influence (Buena), or fall under the domination of forces not now explicitly Communist but likely then to become so (Indonesia taking over Malaysia). Thailand might hold for a period without help, but would be under grave pressure. Even the Philippines would become shaky, and the threat to India on the West, Australia and New Zealand to the South, and Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to the North and East would be greatly increased.

All of these consequences would probably have been true even if the U.S. had not since 1954, and especially since 1961, become so heavily engaged in South Vietnam. However, that fact accentuates the impact of a Communist South Vietnam not only in Asia but in the rest of the world, where the South Vietnam conflict is regarded as a test case of U.S. capacity to help a nation to meet the Communist “war of liberation.”

Thus, purely in terms of foreign policy, the stakes are high….

We are now trying to help South Vietnam defeat the Viet Cong, supported from the North, by means short of the unqualified use of U.S. combat forces. We are not acting against North Vietnam except by a modest “covert” program operated by South Vietnamese (and a few Chinese Nationalists) – a program so limited that it is unlikely to have any significant effect….

There were and are some sound reasons for the limits imposed by the present policy, the South Vietnamese must win their own fight;  U.S. intervention on a larger scale, and/or GVN actions against the North, would disturb key allies and other nations; etc. In any case, it is vital that we continue to take every reasonable measure to assure success in South Vietnam. The policy choice is not an “either/or” between this course of action and possible pressure against the North; the former is essential and without regard to our decision with respect to the latter. The latter can, at best, only reinforce the former….