NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
NSAM 273 - NSAM 288 - HONOLULU
SUMMARY AND ANALYSIS
During the period from the overthrow of the Diem government in November 1963 until the Honolulu Conference in April 1965, U.S. policymakers were concerned with a continuing, central dilemma in South Vietnam. An agonizing, year-long internal debate took place against the double backdrop of this dilemma and Presidential election year politics. Although the results of this debate could not be clearly seen until mid-19655 the seeds which produced those results are clearly visible in the official files at least a year earlier.
The basic problem in U.S. policy was to generate programs and other means adequate to secure the objectives being pursued. The central dilemma lay in the fact that while U.S. policy objectives were stated in the very most comprehensive terms the means employed were both consciously limited and purposely indirect. That is, the U.S. eschewed employing all of its military might -- or even a substantial portion of it -- in a battle which was viewed in Washington as determinative of the fate of all of Southeast Asia, probably crucial to the future of South Asia, and as the definitive test of U.S. ability to counteract communist support for "wars of national liberation." Moreover, this limited U.S. resource commitment to practically unlimited ends took an indirect form. U.S. efforts were aimed at helping the Government of Vietnam (GVN) to win its own struggle against the insurgents. This meant that the newly established GVN had to somehow mobilize its human and other resources, improve its military performance against the Viet Cong, and shift the tide of the war.
As events in 1964 and 1965 were to demonstrate, the GVN did not succeed in achieving political stability. Its military forces did not stem the pattern of VC successes. Rather, a series of coups produced "revolving door" governments in Saigon. The military pattern showed, particularly by the spring of 1965, a precipitous decline in the fortunes of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Yet there was no serious debate in Washington on the desirability of modifying U.S. objectives. These remained essentially fixed even as the means for their realization -- limited U.S. material support for GVN -- underwent one crisis and disappointment after another.
