The memo gave Kennedy support for his resistance to sending troops. During a White House meeting on November 11, 1961, Kennedy put eight questions before eleven advisers, including McNamara, Rusk, Bundy, Taylor, Rostow, Lemnitzer, and Bobby Kennedy. It was the forty-third anniversary of the end of World War I and the horrors of that conflict were never far from Kennedy’s mind. The list was a window into Kennedy’s thinking: Could the Taylor-Rostow program be effective without including the introduction of a U.S. troop task force? He wanted to know how they could turn down a request by Diem for U.S. troops without antagonizing him. What circumstances might compel a reconsideration of not sending troops? Should they go public with their decision to save South Vietnam or keep it secret? Would help to Diem depend on his implementation of requested reforms? The rest of Kennedy’s memo asked about plans for realizing the team’s recommendations.
At the meeting, Kennedy raised additional concerns about the Taylor-Rostow proposals. He warned that Congress would be less than supportive: The chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Georgia senator Richard Russell, and other senators were opposed. Kennedy said, “Troops are a last resort. Should be SEATO forces.” He expected a decision to send U.S. forces to create a domestic problem. He wanted to keep any commitments to rescue Diem and South Vietnam as quiet as possible. Reflecting Kennedy’s wishes, Bobby described the president’s public response to the Taylor mission as an emphatic denial of any major military commitments: “We are not sending combat troops,” Bobby declared. Armed force might be necessary, but the United States and the South Vietnamese needed to rely on SEATO as much as possible. William Bundy came away from the meeting convinced that Kennedy clearly opposed the dispatch of “organized forces” as “a step so grave that it should be avoided if . . . humanly possible.” Nor was Kennedy prepared to support a “categorical commitment to prevent the loss of South Vietnam.”
A fierce argument now erupted over what to do. Harriman weighed in with a political-diplomatic proposal that would forestall heavy military U.S. commitments. He urged discussions with Moscow. He also favored additional U.S. military aid in conjunction with SEATO to avert a Vietnamese collapse while pressing Diem to get on with internal reforms. At the same time, Rusk instructed Nolting not to return to Washington for consultations, in order to be available for delicate negotiations with Diem.
Rostow was outraged at the resistance to bringing U.S. military power to bear against the communists. He thought discussions with Moscow a terrible idea, and sensing Kennedy’s worries about the political fallout from losing Vietnam, he told him: “I submit that it would be unwise and contrary to the lessons of the past and current experience to negotiate with the Communists before we have moved to buy time in Viet-Nam.” Discussions would provoke “a major crisis of nerve in Viet-Nam and throughout Southeast Asia. . . . There will be real panic and disarray.” Rostow was apocalyptic about the consequences of inaction: “The whole world is asking . . . what will the U.S. do . . . ?” The outcome of indecisive U.S. action would be nothing less than the fall of Southeast Asia and a larger war. Schlesinger privately attacked Rostow as a “Chester Bowles with machine guns.”
Rostow wasn’t the only one to raise warnings about appeasement. Stuart Symington, who was Air Force secretary under Truman and at this time a leading Senate Democrat on national security, cautioned that U.S. prestige was on a global decline and required demonstrations of firmness to shift the balance in the Cold War. “Whether it be in Saigon, or Berlin, or some other place,” he told Kennedy on November 10, “I do not believe this nation can afford to bend further.” A policy of “whatever is necessary” was essential to save Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia.
In so heated an environment, it was difficult to chart a reasonable course. But Bundy tried to find a middle ground among the competing opinions. With so many advisers voicing strong judgments on Vietnam, Bundy was reluctant to say anything. But during a midday break at the White House swimming pool, where Kennedy would retreat from the pressures of decision-making, he pressed Bundy to add his voice to the mix. Bundy did not think a loss of Vietnam would resonate all that much globally. But he believed that “a victory . . . would produce great effects all over the world.” And so he recommended that Kennedy agree to send one division when necessary. The troops didn’t need to go now, but such a commitment would signal U.S. determination to save Vietnam. In the meantime, Kennedy should replace Nolting as the chief U.S. representative in Saigon with a military man who would make “a much clearer statement that Diem must take U.S. military counsel on a wholly new basis.” It was the sort of response that gave something to both those urging action and those counseling caution.
Bundy’s advice resonated with Kennedy. Unconvinced that losing Vietnam would be so catastrophic, but unwilling to risk the public outcry that would follow such a collapse, Kennedy responded ambiguously to the pressure for a coherent policy. At a November 15 NSC meeting, “he expressed the fear of becoming involved simultaneously on two fronts on opposite sides of the world. He questioned the wisdom of involvement in Viet Nam since the basis thereof is not completely clear.” U.S. involvement in the conflict seemed likely to provoke “sharp domestic partisan criticism as well as strong objections from other nations. . . . He could even make a rather strong case against intervening in an area 10,000 miles away against 16,000 guerrillas [fighting] a native army of 200,000, where millions have been sent for years with no success.” Sending U.S. troops to Vietnam would mean struggling against “phantom-like” guerrillas.
Taylor challenged the president by saying he was optimistic that the United States could work its will in Vietnam if it took clear-cut actions to defeat the communist guerrillas. McNamara cautioned that this could lead to the need for U.S. troops, planes, and other resources. Kennedy asked McNamara if he favored U.S. action. When he said yes, Kennedy asked for his reasoning. Before he could answer, Lemnitzer stepped in with a reply, offering the familiar argument “that Communist conquest would deal a severe blow to freedom and extend Communism to a great portion of the world.” Kennedy wanted to know how he could justify action in Vietnam while ignoring Cuba. Lemnitzer had a ready answer: Even after the Bay of Pigs, the Joint Chiefs supported going into Cuba.
Kennedy refused to sign on to anything until he had a chance to discuss his options with the vice president. It was a ploy to delay making any decisions: Kennedy was not in the habit of discussing anything of importance with Johnson, a fact that had left LBJ frustrated and angry. At the same time, Kennedy instructed Rusk and McNamara to consider Harriman’s proposals and asked whether they thought he should write to Khrushchev about Vietnam, explaining “how dangerous we thought the situation was.”
Yet for all his skepticism, Kennedy could not resist the pressure for a demonstration of U.S. determination to save Vietnam. He asked McNamara and Rusk to consider Bundy’s proposal to have a four-star general command U.S. operations in Saigon. He also agreed to have the Defense Department plan to send combat forces to Vietnam. Plans, of course, were not the same as action, but they certainly increased the possibility of active military participation, especially after Kennedy ordered the Chiefs to send additional advisers to Vietnam to help with military operations. Nolting was to make an immediate approach to Diem to propose a great increase in U.S.-Vietnamese cooperation, but only if Diem would promise a total mobilization of his own resources. Kennedy wanted a letter drafted in the State Department and signed by Diem stating this commitment.
McNamara later asserted that the pressure on Diem to pledge domestic reforms and all-out mobilization had the ironic effect of drawing the United States into irreversible commitments. The letter described an international partnership for the benefit of the Vietnamese people and a “mutual determination to defend the frontiers of the Free World against Communist aggression. . . . Together we have laid the material foundations of a new and modern Viet-Nam,” Diem was asked to say. “Together we have checked the thrust of Communist tyranny in Southeast Asia.
. . . If we lose this war, our people will be swallowed by the Communist Bloc.” Diem pledged to mobilize all his country’s resources. But because Vietnam lacked the wherewithal to meet the onslaught, “we must have further assistance from the United States.”
At the same time, Kennedy wrote Khrushchev that the United States viewed the threat to Vietnam “with the utmost gravity. . . . Our support for the government of President Ngo Dinh Diem we regard as a serious obligation.” Rusk then told a press conference that the communist attack on Vietnam worried all free nations and represented a threat to the peace. As a result, the United States was increasing its commitment to supplying and training of Vietnamese forces. The full meaning of the U.S. commitment was not lost on the Washington Evening Star, which reported that the White House was pressing Diem “to broaden participation in his Government and has offered him every aid short of combat troops if he does.”
In retrospect, McNamara saw these developments as the beginning of America’s substantial and long-term commitment to save Vietnam. In his later recollections about the war, he anguished over the failure of the Kennedy administration to ask five basic questions before becoming deeply involved: “Was it true that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger the fall of all Southeast Asia? Would that constitute a grave threat to the west’s security? What kind of war—conventional or guerrilla—might develop? Could we win it with U.S. troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese? Should we not know the answers to all these questions before deciding whether to commit troops?” Recalling the terrible consequences of America’s involvement in the conflict, McNamara found it “beyond understanding, incredible, that we did not force ourselves to confront such issues head-on.”
The mistakes he saw were innocence, overconfidence, ignorance about the region, inexperience in dealing with crises, “other pressing international matters [that] clamored for our attention during that first year,” and perhaps most important, problems “for which there were no ready, or good, answers.” All of it generated a tendency “to stick their heads in the sand.”
Writing thirty-five years after the 1961 events, McNamara forgot or overlooked the fact that questions about Vietnam’s importance in heading off communist domination of Southeast Asia and its impact on long-term U.S. national security were very much in the forefront of discussions about Kennedy’s response to the crisis in Saigon. And while it is certainly true that no one could confidently predict the outcome of increased U.S. involvement, and that anticipating a constructive result from American intervention was not without plausibility, the most compelling reason for Kennedy’s decision to expand U.S. commitments in Vietnam was not a conviction that we might lose the Cold War if that country came under communist control. As Kennedy told New York Times columnist Arthur Krock in October 1961, “United States troops should not be involved on the Asian mainland.” Truman’s decision in the 1940s not to send U.S. forces to fight the communists in the Chinese civil war and the stalemate in Korea powerfully resonated with Kennedy.
Kennedy was more concerned about the political ramifications of “losing” Vietnam. He told Galbraith: “There are limits to the number of defeats I can defend in one twelve-month period. I’ve had the Bay of Pigs, and pulling out of Laos, and I can’t accept a third.” In short, a communist takeover of Saigon would raise concerns abroad and at home: The Soviets and Chinese might see him as irresolute or weak and might become more aggressive about ousting the West from Berlin and/or try to subvert other weak governments in Asia; and conservatives or militant anticommunists in the United States, borrowing from Joseph McCarthy in the early fifties, would launch another “Who lost China?” or “Who lost Vietnam?” campaign.
In November 1961, Kennedy hoped to muddle through on Vietnam: Send more military advisers, increase the financial and material support of the Saigon regime, and press Diem into effective reforms that improved his popular standing. And maybe, just maybe, it would fend off a communist victory and keep Diem’s government afloat.
In the meantime, Kennedy believed it essential to keep questions about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam as low-key as possible. George C. McGhee, the State Department counselor and chairman of the Policy Planning Staff, warned against “prolonged involvement of American soldiers in . . . indecisive anti-guerrilla operations.” Recalling the collapse of Truman’s public standing, he worried that “we would be back in the atmosphere of Korea 1950–1953—only more so.” He predicted that a faltering conflict in Vietnam would agitate the public and stimulate demands for more forceful measures to prevent another Korean stalemate. Pressures for escalation could propel us into an “all-out struggle with Peiping.” As increased U.S. involvement became a reality, a principal administration objective became guarding against press leaks about U.S. operations in Vietnam. Rusk cabled the embassy in Saigon: “Do not give other than routine cooperation to correspondents on current military activities in Vietnam. No comment at all on classified activities.” Theodore White’s warning—“a real bastard to solve”—was more evident than ever.
As 1961 came to an end, Kennedy understood what John Steinbeck meant when he said, “We give the President . . . more pressure than a man can bear.” Kennedy described himself as “always on the edge of irritability.” The strains on him were so evident that a reporter asked, “I wonder if you could tell us if you had to do it over again, you would work for the presidency.” Reporters asked Bobby, “Do you think your brother can handle the presidency without harming his health?” Bobby assured them that the pressures on him were no more than what he had dealt with during the presidential campaign. He admitted, however, that “the responsibilities are so great and weigh so heavily on him that it is bound” to affect him. Kennedy was learning what Jefferson meant when he said that the presidency is a splendid misery.
CHAPTER 7
“The Greatest Adventure of Our Century”
At the start of 1962, Kennedy felt pressured to speak forcefully about the country’s domestic challenges. But his heart wasn’t in it. Although he devoted the first half of his State of the Union address to the economy, civil rights, health, and education, Schlesinger complained that “the domestic section . . . had been reduced to a laundry list.” And though Kennedy agreed to add a paragraph Schlesinger wrote giving the program “a philosophical coherence” that related it to the New Frontier, Kennedy remained grudging about having to appease liberals. “What more do the liberals want me to do that is politically possible?” he asked.
In an era before television prompters, Kennedy read the speech haltingly, turning pages and looking down at his text rather than keeping continuous eye contact with his congressional audience. His remarks evoked only occasional applause and less overt enthusiasm than his first State of the Union a year before. While that speech also began with a discussion of the country’s economic travails, it, like the Inaugural Address and the second State of the Union speech, principally focused on foreign affairs.
What they were trying to do at home “gives meaning to our efforts abroad,” Kennedy said. “The successes and the setbacks of the past year remain on our agenda of unfinished business. . . . Yet our basic goal remains the same: a peaceful world community of free and independent states.” He did not see that goal within reach “today or tomorrow. We may not reach it in our own lifetime. But the quest is the greatest adventure of our century.” America “had been granted the role of being the great defender of freedom in its hour of maximum danger.” While hyperbole is not uncommon in presidential annual messages, Kennedy had good reason to worry about threats to the peace.
But he could not escape questions about domestic change, especially about civil rights. In January 1962, when a reporter pressed Kennedy on his administration’s civil rights record, he defensively asserted that his White House had “made more progress in the field of civil rights on a whole variety of fronts than were made in the last 8 years.” Kennedy could point to the fact that the majority of the government’s contractors had agreed
to plans for progress, with compliance now mandatory rather than voluntary, efforts to expand integration in the armed services, seven lawsuits against southern states to compel school integration, seventy-five suits to force southern counties into facilitating black voting, and the nomination of Thurgood Marshall to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals—only the second black to be appointed to that federal court. At the same time, however, a failure to issue a promised order to integrate federally supported public housing, five southern racists appointed to federal judgeships, and a refusal to put a comprehensive civil rights bill before Congress gave resonance to liberal complaints about excessive White House caution in advancing equal rights. As Roy Wilkins told Kennedy, he had not “gained anything [in 1961] by refusing to put a civil rights bill before” Congress. His hope that he could garner southern support for a tax cut, federal aid to education, and medical insurance for seniors by not pressing for desegregation was unfounded.
Kennedy did not dispute the failure to do big things at home. But for the time being, he felt that foreign dangers still had to command his primary attention. And Latin America, where he continued to see communism as an aggressive competitor for regional control, posed a grave potential setback for the United States in the Cold War. He was determined to counter the threat with the Alliance for Progress. True, it was just getting started in improving the southern republics, but Kennedy described the hemisphere as alive with “the quickening of hope” and the Latin republics as committed to “a new and strenuous effort of self-help and self-reform.” Yet “the one unchangeable certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.”
In Kennedy’s view, the greatest danger to Western Hemisphere freedom remained Castro’s hopes of exporting his revolutionary fervor. At a National Security Council meeting on January 18, 1962, Kennedy wanted to make sure that Castro would be isolated at a coming meeting at Punta del Este. But even if they could blunt his influence at the conference, Kennedy expected Castro still to be a very large problem. While he believed that some way would eventually have to be found to deal with the Cuban dilemma, he saw nothing that could be done at once. The next day, when Bobby Kennedy met with CIA and military officials, Bobby explained that the administration had been lying low since the failure at the Bay of Pigs. But because Cuba was so rapidly becoming a communist police state, the ousting of Castro was “the top priority in the United States Government—all else is secondary—no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared.” There could be no misunderstanding on the responsibility of the country’s defense agencies “to carry out this job.” Bobby quoted the president as telling him that “the final chapter on Cuba has not been written,” and Bobby added, with a pugnacity that reflected his combativeness, “it’s going to be done and will be done.”