General Maxwell Taylor brought his cautious proposal for diplomatic and military initiatives in Southeast Asia to a distracted President, whose overriding aim was to send a message to Nikita Khrushchev.
A generation ago, a politician and a soldier met for a fateful discussion. Each was a humane man, with a sensitivity and courage sharpened by the trials great men endure, and each respected the other. The politician carried the ornaments of style and office, the other the laurels and scars of diplomacy and war. In affairs of state, each sought in his own way to separate fancy front experience. They came together upon a strong light, but only one saw the dark shadow it cast. This is the tale of their encounter.
On an evening early in November 1961, President John F. Kennedy emerged from the private quarters of the White House into an adjoining sitting room. General Maxwell D. Taylor rose, resuming his seat after Kennedy settled comfortably in his rocking chair. Smiles and soft greetings began their second private White House meeting following Taylor’s return from Southeast Asia.
Three weeks earlier the President had dispatched Taylor as his military representative, with written instructions to survey the political situation and the state of the insurgency in South Vietnam, then worsening as a result of Hanoi’s covert support for the Vietcong. Taylor was asked to return with recommendations of steps, both military and nonmilitary, that the United States might take to prevent a further deterioration in that country’s security and, eventually, to contain and eliminate the threat to its independence. A second injunction was ambiguous, a sign that Kennedy was of two minds, wanting a way to deal with the problem but to do so by exposing himself to as few hazards as possible. In a letter to Taylor outlining his charge, Kennedy wrote that the leaders and people of South Vietnam had the initial responsibility for maintaining their independence and that U.S. options should be evaluated on that basis. In his pre-departure meeting, Taylor asked the President to clarify the connection between the two injunctions and was given to understand that Kennedy preferred to stand and overcome the insurgency rather than to disengage from South Vietnam.
Nevertheless, before he left for Vietnam, Taylor became aware of differences within the Kennedy administration over the merits of the U.S. Vietnam policy. U.S. interests and presidential pride had been wounded by a succession of setbacks in foreign affairs. Kennedy’s civilian and military advisers were tom between a wish to find an issue on which to succeed and the inconsistency of intervening in Southeast Asia after rejecting President Dwight Eisenhower’s counsel that it was the place to stand against Soviet aspirations in the shaky undeveloped countries. Opinions varied on how to deal with insurgencies that combined subversion, intimidation, and efforts to take advantage of rising popular expectations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff feared that initial caution would invite escalatory responses; they were inclined to want to wage an energetic war with victory the object. Other administration experts, monitoring U.S. strength and global commitments, doubted that the nation was prepared to carry another major burden. Those officials closest to the scene in Southeast Asia differed over the skills and honesty of indigenous leaders. Skeptics in and out of government guessed that Kennedy already had decided to deepen the involvement in Vietnam, his mind set by a desire to restore U.S. influence and his own pride. The Taylor mission was to be the pretext.
Disturbed by the difficulties he foresaw, but trusting feat wisdom would come to the new President with experience, Taylor chose to ignore this gossip and assume feat Kennedy would receive his advice with an open mind.
Taylor was well prepared for his mission. He had direct experience with the Cold War in Europe and Asia and intimate knowledge of the role of force in strategy, having studied the behavior of insurgent movements. Contrary to stereotyped views of “the military mind.” Taylor was not a slave to habit or tradition. He was cautious about what could be gained from conflict, preferring diplomacy to the resort to war. He believed a great standing army, properly supported by other forces, was the best deterrent to war, but he recognized that the nation must be ready to fight on behalf of its interests or allies. He valued the political realism of military officers more than fee pretensions of armchair strategists, who often yielded to glib impressions. To guard against error in his own opinions, he made sure to consult respected civilian Professionals like his good friend, diplomat Alexis Johnson. Inherently, however, Taylor was conscious of the shaping influence of personal experience, wondering aloud "whether anyone could escape his background, an indication that he tried to.
Accordingly, as Taylor reflected on Southeast Asia, he recalled the recent difficulties of disengaging from South Korea and recognized that Vietnam might present worse problems. The difficulty of suppressing guerrilla warfare, the need to cultivate an ardor for justice in order to reform corrupt government and achieve pacification, fee contradictory dependence of pacification on military protection, and the likelihood of divided counsel could all constrain U.S. effectiveness once a decision had been taken to intervene.
To make things worse, there was also the question of whether sufficient military resources were available to make intervention a practical option. The Kennedy program to strengthen conventional arms was just getting parted. Having given way to nuclear forces under Eisenhower, land power was limited and fully committed. In an unbounded conflict, military units deployed in Vietnam could generate additional demands on U.S. resources and lead either Hanoi, Peking, or Moscow to scale up its Support for the Vietcong.
But the difficulty of obtaining regular forces and combat troops was not the only good reason for caution toward involvement in campaigns against “wars of liberation.” Taylor had studied the French Indochina War and fee successful counterinsurgency campaign in Malaysia. These conflicts had distinctive sources and were waged differently, but they presented common implications. Both indicated to Taylor that centralized direction, delegated authority, and close coordination on political and military matters were essential. Absent such careful orchestration, external and indigenous parties would find it hard to combine effectively and to protect and earn the loyalty of the population. Once launched, the campaigns were likely to impose a heavy drain on resources, and success required a readiness to persevere over many years. If a region is to be pacified, moreover, the villagers have to be protected from the insurgents and the insurgents isolated from external support. Since 1959, Hanoi had used the southern panhandle area of Laos to infiltrate men and supplies to the Vietcong.
Emboldened by his inaugural pledges, Kennedy considered introducing troops into Laos early in 1961, but decided not to. The enterprise would have sought to reverse the de facto partition—created by warring Communist and loyalist groups—which opened routes to the south for Hanoi. From outside the White House, Taylor agreed with the President’s restraint, foreseeing a logistics nightmare in any effort to support forces in landlocked Laos. Kennedy also consulted British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who said simply, “Don’t.” The President acceded, instead, to the British plan for an international conference to negotiate a cease-fire.
The conference produced an accord, signed in July 1962, that banned foreign military personnel from Laos. Hanoi ignored it, continuing to support Laotian Communists and to violate the territory of Laos to supply the Vietcong.
The issue of Laos as an avenue for infiltration arose again in connection with U.S. choices in South Vietnam. At Taylor’s request, General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, met with Kennedy to describe the forces required inside Laos to block off Hanoi’s routes to the south. Lemnitzer called for four or five Army divisions to cover the ground and prevent hit-and-run guerrilla attacks that could disperse U.S. troops and expose them to Hanoi’s regular forces. The White House civilian advisors ridiculed this estimate as reckless and obtuse. The implications of the infiltration problem were therefore left unresolved.
With these considerations in mind, Taylor set forth across the Pacific, mindful of Kennedy’s main concern to reverse the decline in U.S. influence. He worried, though, that he faced uncertainties that could confound the chances to set a proper course.
The mission stopped first in Honolulu, where Taylor consulted with Admiral H. D. Felt, commander-in-chief of the Pacific area, and the U.S. military representative in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, which was concerned with collective security in Indochina and Thailand. Taylor asked Felt if he thought it feasible to withdraw some U.S. ground and air forces from South Korea and to compensate for its defense by declaring a readiness to use tactical nuclear missiles to deter attack. Felt opposed the idea, arguing that it would increase the probability of conflict on the Korean peninsula.
In posing the question, Taylor was running through the possibilities of obtaining land forces from a limited inventory to hold in readiness for South Vietnam as a basis for a political decision to persevere there.
Felt’s distaste for Taylor’s nuclear proposal was consistent with his reluctance to see the United States become involved in South Vietnam. He warned that the contending political and military factions in Saigon and the unmanageable problem of infiltration prevented effective counterinsurgency operations. Aside from some logistics help—a possibility Taylor raised—Felt advised him to discourage U.S. involvement.
After the frank exchange with the admiral, Taylor flew on to Saigon. The visit was crucial in forming his opinions, a process best understood by an accounting of what he came to think was of consequence. Taylor’s attention was drawn first to the local analysis of intercepted radio signals. That reliable indicator showed the Vietcong to be well organized and controlled from Hanoi; their strength was increasing too, in part because of support arming from the north.
This information alone, however, could not explain how the Vietcong could move so freely and why the government’s forces relied on fixed defenses. Taylor found that the problem lay with the false information being reported by the province chiefs who directed political and military activities in their areas. They owed their jobs to South Vietnam’s head of state, Ngo Dinh Diem, and they sought to keep them by assuring him that the Vietcong were being defeated. They reported village life sustainable when it was not, military patrols active when misdirected, and intelligence good when misleading. Taylor quickly perceived that these reports, which Saigon was accepting, were fictions derived from self-interest, incompetence, and fear. To create productive political and anti-guerrilla policies, Vietnam’s intelligence efforts had to be reformed, for it was obvious to Taylor that the situation on the ground was anything but improving.
What he learned about the realities of the military conditions reinforced Taylor’s deep worries about the difficulties that would beset any effort to isolate the Vietcong from infiltrated manpower and supplies. A failure would impose a steady inflation in the demands placed on friendly forces inside Vietnam; to prevent infiltration would require drawing presently overtaxed forces away from their operations in the interior. Admiral Felt had asserted that to resolve this dilemma effectively would require placing strong land forces in the Laos panhandle, preferably as a Southeast Asia Treaty Organization operation. Knowledgeable members of Taylor’s mission team were sent out to explore the methods of infiltration and to find ways to interrupt the transfer of men and supplies within South Vietnam. Taylor flew over the frontiers and familiarized himself with the ground where infiltrated support might be collected and distributed.
These efforts were inconclusive. The South Vietnamese leadership claimed that its resources were inadequate to improve the gathering of information and to strengthen troop patrols along the borders. But without the requisite fire to solve the problem, infiltration could not be controlled inside the country. Taylor became convinced, therefore, that finding a feasible approach should be a condition before exposing U.S. interests to further risks.
If the United States agreed to assist in countering the insurgency, Taylor concluded, the several latent demands on its resources were not controllable unless Saigon obtained the cooperation of the populace. Without that, the United States would find itself forced to escalate its involvement or to seek less ambitious diplomatic solutions. Taylor believed that the Vietnamese were good fighters, but the evidence for that surmise rested on respect for the Viet Minh battling the French and the Vietcong waging guerrilla warfare. For their part, he felt, Diem’s forces were performing at no more than 70% of their capability.
With these matters in mind, Taylor examined the political situation in Saigon and beyond, and met with Diem and other authorities. He reached a number of conclusions. Taylor became convinced that the support for Diem was weak and that Diem’s prejudices toward friends and foes gave only conditional hope that he could gain the necessary loyalties and confidence. His reliance on a favored few who did his bidding isolated his opponents but precluded effective counterinsurgency policies. Among the disloyal were the military hierarchy, who were full grievances and disagreed; about how to wage the conflict.
Diem argued that lack of capable mid-level managers and commanders prevented him from relaxing rigid control on appointments and operations. He brushed off a proposal that Americans inserted through the bureaucracy and ranks could advise and train his people, sort out the incompetents, and create the conditions for decentralization and initiative. Instead, he asked for U.S. funds to raise more of his own troops.
Unwilling to give any meaning to a transformation of the counterinsurgency campaign, Diem made comments on the introduction of U.S. forces that were even less excusable. Determined to retain his autocratic rule—a primary source of the difficult situation of which he was oblivious—he insisted on knowing where and how they might be used. For the sake of political benefits, however, he opened the door to U.S. influence by embracing the idea of using noncombat engineers to restore the flooded villages.
Among the authorities in Saigon and the provinces, on the other hand, Taylor found little sensitivity for the anguished existence of the people whose lot—especially in the countryside—was one of sorrow, frustration, and fear. The physical elements needed to counter the insurgency had been examined, but Taylor felt that without an appreciation for what the Vietnamese people were enduring and an effort to bring them into the political process, nothing would come of plans to provide physical protection for the villages. U.S. restraint would be important; Taylor recalled the opinion of a British jungle general that “one civilian killed by us would do more harm than ten killed by the enemy.”
During his talks with Taylor, Diem showed little imagination—his thoughts slow from doubt or deceit, and his long monologues wearisome and ostentatious. Taylor was distrustful of the leader’s word and purpose: he was convinced that Diem would not take the necessary actions on behalf of the people and against the insurgents unless he was forced to do so as the price for U.S. assistance. But the ability the Vietcong already had to exert coercion would probably frustrate even a well-intentioned policy. The interval between policy making and productive results could fall behind the momentum of the insurgency. If security was not to deteriorate during that period, demands would rise for U.S. initiatives; if approved, and the resulting U.S. commitment was to be controlled, supporting actions would have to be kept proportional to Diem’s Performance.
These observations, and the judgments he formed on the ground, laid the base upon which Taylor would present his recommendations to the President. He was confident they would receive a fair hearing, but he knew that the decisions that would be taken in the light of them Would depend heavily on Kennedy’s personal viewpoints and background, not just on the facts in Vietnam or their bearing on U.S. national interests.
As he began to crystallize his findings, Taylor sent tentative ideas as “eyes only” messages for the President. One report described an experiment using U.S. Army engineers to explore the value of combining assistance to villagers with a uniformed military presence. The substance of this report became known to The Washington Post. Its account charged that General Taylor was preparing an outrageous proposal: to Americanize the conflict by placing combat forces in Vietnam. The effect of the revelation, reported as an isolated and unqualified conclusion, was to alarm official Washington, as well as the public, and to compromise the logic of the conclusions developing in Taylor’s mind. This haste to ridicule imprudence that had not occurred hampered Taylor’s mission and led him to fear that the White House might be indifferent to knowledge and unwilling to compare opposite arguments.
When they met in November, therefore, the President was familiar with Taylor’s opinion of the situation in Vietnam. Taylor knew that deficient intelligence had not restrained the White House from drawing false hope from fanciful accounts of the situation. He wanted to give the President a coherent view of how to align U.S. interests with likely Vietnamese performance. He stressed that three conditions would have to be met before the United States would be well-advised to assist South Vietnam further.
First, President Diem would have to accept a personal envoy of the U.S. President, someone who was empowered to coordinate their joint responsibilities to repair deteriorating internal security. The two would consult on Vietnam’s national policies and work together to implement agreed courses.
Second, U.S. advisors or military units should be committed only when the United States was confident that it had the necessary quality of cooperation from Diem; once committed, they should be brought in at a pace and strength founded on the timeliness of Diem’s achievements. South Vietnam would have to improve its intelligence operations sufficiently for U.S. authorities to know what was happening politically and militarily. If the Vietnamese did not perform as expected, the President’s prerogative to change an initial decision or, subsequently, to make contingent choices—including withdrawal—would have been protected.
And, last, a plan would have to be worked out to interrupt the overland and seaborne transport of supplies from the north for the Vietcong in order to limit the resources required of a U.S. commitment to help safeguard the population.
Once Diem agreed to these conditions, Taylor suggested that the value of a limited U.S. military initiative could be explored in a manageable situation. By placing a battalion of Army engineers in the badly flooded Mekong Delta, the President could evaluate the effect of a greater U.S. presence on the insurgent activity, on Hanoi’s willingness to continue support for the Vietcong, and on public morale and attitudes. The noncombat battalion would assist the villagers to recover from flood damage and make constructive preparations to control flooding in the future. After a few weeks, as the waters receded and the work was completed, the engineers could depart from the country.
Kennedy was not moved. He accepted neither Taylor’s conditions nor his proposal to test the productive boundaries of the first U.S. initiatives. Instead, within the month—and on a basis entirely different from the one proposed by Taylor—the President expanded the U.S. role, presence, and liability in besieged South Vietnam, contracting a joint enterprise with Saigon. Letters requesting and agreeing to U.S. assistance to lift the threat from Vietnam were arranged and executed by Diem and Kennedy, respectively.
A poorly mixed compound of what good was supposed to be accomplished and what evil avoided, these letters raised the U.S. shield without obliging Saigon to prepare the ground. Diem made reluctant and imprecise concessions for action that did not include a presidential envoy at his side as Taylor proposed.
To make it appear that Diem’s fragmentary gestures conformed to Taylor’s recommendations, Kennedy picked out particular proposals from the larger arrangement Taylor had called for. Instead of adopting Taylor’s carefully balanced and integrated plan, Kennedy made piecemeal efforts to increase social and economic aid, add military advisors, and improve logistical support.
Taylor had deliberately separated his personal policy recommendations from the report of the mission, which incorporated the thinking of the government experts who accompanied him to Southeast Asia, though he joined in the general views and detailed program recommendations of the report. As the personal representative of the President in Southeast Asia, he felt a responsibility to counsel Kennedy privately with the knowledge he acquired of subjects of uncertain conjecture in the White House.
Having decided that Taylor’s logic was too strong or not germane for his purposes, Kennedy took his bearings by piecing together in his own fashion the uneven opinions of his key appointees in the State and Defense departments.
Secretaries Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara recommended that the United States commit itself to prevent the fall of South Vietnam, a policy set forth in a presidential memorandum earlier in the year. With a degree of zeal, they recommended the economic assistance and the insertion of military advisors and logistical units with the Vietnamese forces, which Kennedy was to approve. But, in a contradictory show of caution, they advised Kennedy not to send combat units; they hoped, erroneously as it turned out, that restraint would be rewarded in the Geneva negotiations on Laos and in producing support from possible allies. Finally, having stinted in recommending the means required for the objective they recommended, Rusk and McNamara sought to strike a balance. They insisted the government recognize that its commitment might require the introduction of U.S. and other Southeast Asia Treaty Organization forces, particularly if infiltrated supplies should prevent the counterinsurgency war from being won.
In further deliberations, after Taylor’s return, positions changed among the two key cabinet members. Rusk decided to urge a ban on the use of force; McNamara contrived to retain military agreement by calling for contingency plans to prepare for the consequences of the contract with Saigon. Seizing the common meaning of these views. Kennedy’s decisions stopped short of making a commitment to the defense of Vietnam. In moving to assist Diem, but only halfheartedly, and without a plan for future contingencies, he upset whatever coherence there was in the policy Rusk and McNamara were struggling to achieve.
The introduction of combat advisors and logistical forces was to have been justified by the recognition of ultimate danger and the need to act immediately to prevent the situation from deteriorating further (though the restraint on readying combat arms belied such urgency). That reasoning would override Taylor’s advice that an incremental military presence be made dependent on intelligence being improved and a way found to halt infiltration. Lost with these conditions was Taylor’s purpose of testing the productive boundaries of U.S. involvement and of aligning U.S. engagement with Vietnamese performance, thereby protecting the choices available to the President. Kennedy compromised the rationale of Rusk and McNamara by deciding not to recognize the objective or the risks they had assumed. In so doing, the President did not substitute reasons of his own for avoiding the preparations Taylor proposed.
Whether out of vanity or fancy, Kennedy had the United States take responsibility for South Vietnam’s independence without taking full account of the consequences. His precipitate decisions prevented the Joint Chiefs front first taking the measure of contingencies and bypassed Taylor’s provisions to hold off or limit those military liabilities. Kennedy committed U.S. interests and resources, but permitted Diem to refuse to concede to Washington a political authority commensurate with the stakes the United States was engaging. By neglecting that vital condition, which would have imposed order and purpose on the U.S. policy, he missed the chance to compel Diem to democratize his rule, and by so doing to enable the United States to assert credibly that we were protecting democracy from despotic aggressors.
What meaning then, did the President’s decisions have?
Essentially, Kennedy separated the policies of the United States from the conduct of the conflict against the insurgents. He wanted the fruits of victory without fighting for them. He chose the immediately less painful course of expecting the South Vietnamese to conquer the evils in their country. Despite the understandings Taylor conveyed, he overrated what Diem would do and underrated what Hanoi would be free to do. The acuity of his Policy was foreordained less by the lessons of the Bay of Pigs and Malaysia than by the meaning of the simplistic outrage The Washington Post had been allowed to raise in its account of the leaked Taylor message.
Paradoxically, the way may have been paved for the President’s illogical approach by his decision to make Taylor his military representative in the White House. Kennedy appointed Taylor in July 1961 because he admired the breadth of his thinking, the loyalty he showed in awaiting retirement before opposing the Eisenhower nuclear defense strategy, and his articulate arguments for a flexible defense strategy.
But the President also wanted to obtain political and military counsel independent of the Joint Chiefs, whose judgments he and his advisors disparaged. He may have bought that by selecting Taylor as his military representative, he could neutralize the Joint Chiefs. As a result, he took a course that avoided the high-energy approach of the Joint Chiefs, but neglected the need for laying a prior Political and military groundwork justified by Taylor. He had exploited the differences between Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs of Staff to ignore military views entirely.
During his two meetings with Taylor, Kennedy did not reveal any predisposition. He listened carefully, showed no emotion, voiced no objections, and interposed no other perspective. This may have been the Kennedy way, as others have said, or a sign that he had no critical knowledge or that his mind was already made up.
In any case, the outcome of the Taylor mission—his report, his private meetings with Kennedy, reviews within the hierarchies of government, and the President’s resulting decisions—were compressed within November 1961, a fateful period for U S. foreign policy. In the personal encounter between a politician and a soldier, America’s entanglement with the curious images of Southeast Asia was set. Nothing would so much seduce reason from vigilance as the shadows compassed round that region.
Despite the dark shadows Taylor saw and proposed that the United States take care to avoid, Kennedy was blinded by the strong light of opportunity to oppose Soviet ambitions. Not even retrospection and charity can give meaning to the course he took. If he acted on hope, its inherent exaggerations were certain to cause pain, for they required that the knowledge Taylor brought back somehow be made irrelevant. If it was expectation raised not by reason but by his own personal ambitions, the American people were ill served.
There remains the question of why Taylor did not resign when the President ignored his advice. Taylor’s forbearance is best explained by his background. As a soldier, he felt a keen sense of loyalty to the commander- in-chief who had appointed him and for whom he had a heartfelt affection. He put his case with respect and served with loyalty, but nothing he could do to implement Kennedy’s mistaken and halfhearted policies could cure their subjective weakness. Devoting himself to it for the next eight years, this great soldier would not permit himself to admit that he could never by perseverance alone make a wrong policy right.
During the events described in this article, Worth Bagley was a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, a member of General Taylor’s small White House staff, and was present at two private meetings between President Kennedy and Taylor upon the latter’s return from his mission to Saigon. Bagley assisted Taylor in 1961 and 1962 in reviewing the situation and options in Southeast Asia, accompanying him on the mission in October/November 1961 and on this trip through the Far East and Vietnam the following year. Then-Lieutenant Bagley had served in the American Embassy, Saigon, in 1951 through 1953. He observed countless French naval, air, and amphibious operations from Tonkin to Cochin, China, and in the waterways of the Mekong Delta. He traveled frequently throughout Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand and became familiar with the attitudes within the population toward the Viet Minh and the French.