Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
The interim Communist goal -- en route to total take-over -- appears to be a neutral Southeast Asia, detached from U.S. protection. This strategy is well on the way to success in Vietnam.
b. In Vietnam (and Southeast Asia) there is a double crisis in confidence: doubt that U.S. is determined to save Southeast Asia; doubt that Diem's methods can frustrate and defeat Communist purposes and methods. The Vietnamese (and Southeast Asians) will undoubtedly draw rightly or wrongly -- definitive conclusions in coming weeks and months concerning the probable outcome and will adjust their behaviour accordingly. What the U.S. does or fails to do will be decisive to the end result.
c. Aside from the morale factor, the Vietnamese Government is caught in interlocking circles of bad tactics and bad administrative arrangements which pin their forces on the defensive in ways which permit a relatively small Viet-Cong force (about one tenth the size of the GVN regulars) to create conditions of frustration and terror certain to lead to a political crisis, if a positive turning point is not soon achieved . The following recommendations are designed to achieve that favorable turn, to avoid further deterioration in the situation in South Vietnam, and eventually to contain and eliminate the threat to its independence.
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