NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET
-2- 4801 June 14, 5 p.m., from Paris.
wrongly, US would be blamed by French public opinion for having built up French hopes of intervention and then for having failed in the crisis. The result could well be a neutralist government in France that would reduce French military commitments to NATO and would, at the same time, be completely intransigeant on question of German rearmament. Such a government would also, in all probability, make a strong effort to strengthen relations with the Soviet Union and to recreate the wartime Franco-USSR alliance in order to prevent German rearmament.
From this distance, I cannot judge what the effect of such French actions would be on American public opinion and particularly on our Congress, but I suspect that it might lead to an irresistible demand for the recall of some, if not all, of our troops from Europe, which, in effect, would mean the end of the North Atlantic Alliance followed eventually by the isolation of the Western hemisphere.
5. In view of these very serious and grave dangers which we will run if we allow the French to be defeated militarily in the Delta, and if my assumption in paragraph 2 above is correct, I recommend that you give serious consideration to promptly informing the French that because of either (A) the deterioration of the military situation in Indochina or (B) the reluctance of the ANZUS powers to take action, or both, the President is no longer prepared to request military intervention from the Congress even if the French should now fully meet our conditions. While such action on our part would hasten what now appears to be the inevitable loss of Vietnam and might cause a certain additional temporary loss of face for the US, it would put the French on notice that they should promptly accept the Viet Minh armistice terms and thus would save the French Expeditionary Corps from possible military disaster. In the event of a withdrawal from Indochina under such circumstances, I would not foresee any serious or long term repercussions on France's position in the North Atlantic Alliance. If we allow the French to continue to fight in the false hope that in the event of a crisis in the Delta, they may get US military assistance, the best we can hope for is to delay the Communist conquest of Vietnam by a few months, while we risk the very existence of the North Atlantic Alliance.
From my viewpoint here in Paris, the possibility of a few months delay in the Communist takeover of Indochina does not seem at all commensurate with the risk of the possible collapse of the defense of Western Europe.
