So Much to Lose: John F. Kennedy and American Policy in Laos

11. We’re Going to Have to Take Some Action

chapter 11 We’re Going to have to take Some action The uS commitment to Laos entered a new and ambiguous phase in May 1963. The fighting on the Plaine des Jarres, the flight of the nLhS ministers from Vientiane, and the failure of uS diplomacy with the Soviet union meant that the neutral government of national union envisioned by the Geneva agreement was likely finished. in a cable to the State department , ambassador unger observed that in recent years uS policy had moved from an unsuccessful military effort to establish a “pro-western conservative” government to a political “contest” among three factions conducted “under conditions of general peace rather than military action. at this point we are somewhere in between.” anticipating further Pathet Lao encroachment across the country, unger sought “a better understanding ” of uS military objectives in Laos.1 The reply from the State department reflected the Kennedy administration ’s uncertainty about next steps: “role of uS and/or Seato in case [the] Lao situation should deteriorate further is again being studied in Washington along with [a] general updating of contingency plans.” Beyond this vague assertion, the department could “only provide general guidance.” The most basic uS objective was ensuring that the Far and neutralist forces had sufficient military strength to “hold out” against a Pathet Lao offensive—at least long enough for Washington officials “to focus international attention” on the fighting and to decide “what actions to take.”2 in his history of cia support for the hmong, Thomas ahern observed that the department’s reply to Brown “came close to saying that the united States would not know what it wanted until imminent disaster compelled it to act.”3 The fundamental concept for uS military intervention in Laos 218 So Much to Lose remained Seato Plan 5 and its multilateral and unilateral variations. State department and White house officials considered such sizable deployments of uS troops an appropriate response to a large-scale communist offensive but an unimaginative, muscle-bound option for coping with the gradual erosion of neutralist-Far positions. The planning challenge , according to Forrestal and McGeorge Bundy, was devising “a military course of action as a means of making the Pathet Lao and their allies think twice before going any further.”4 in a June 17, 1963, memorandum to the president, rusk and Mcnamara proposed a three-phase program of “graduated increases in uS political and military pressure” to prevent “further expansion of communist control in Laos.” approved by State department officials, Pentagon civilians, and the Joint chiefs of Staff, the paper stressed that the proposed actions were not merely “a contingency response” but “a method of influencing the over-all situation.” a significant document in the history of the Vietnam War, the memorandum foreshadowed not only the military planning in Vietnam during the first year of the Johnson administration but also the flawed analyses that emphasized demonstrations of uS “determination,” threats of “serious consequences” for the drV, and assurances of control over escalation.5 The program’s first phase, characterized as “stretching” the Geneva agreement, included proposals for stepping up the delivery of 105-mm howitzers and other heavy weapons to Kong Le and Phoumi and for “expand[ing] the use of highly mobile South Vietnamese border patrols in Laos.” The stated objective of this phase was the reconstitution of the government of national union, the withdrawal of north Vietnamese forces from Laos, and the restoration of neutralist territory lost since april 1, 1963. although “not sanguine” about achieving these ambitious goals, the memorandum’s authors were prepared to “settle for establishing an informal but stabilized partition under the facade of a neutralist government .” diplomatic and political actions in this phase would convey “the idea that our patience is growing short; if the communists will not cooperate under the Geneva agreements we must take other measures to protect Lao independence and regional peace.”6 The program’s second phase—the need for which was virtually a foregone conclusion—involved “measures overtly outside the Geneva framework.” uS involvement in them, however, would remain clandes- We’re Going to have to take Some action 219 tine. Proposed military actions included the expanded use of Thai Paru units and “other specialist teams”; support for third-country special forces (“primarily SVn and Thai ‘volunteers’”); and an increase in cia “sabotage operations” in Laos and north Vietnam. The objectives of this phase remained the same...