Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
- D. What was the mission of Vietnamese forces?
The mission initially envisioned for the forces of Free Vietnam by the principal advocate of a U.S. role in organizing and training those forces, the Secretary of State, was simply that of providing and maintaining security within the borders of their country,49 and it was on this basis that the decision to assume responsibility for the organization and training of the Vietnamese National Army was taken. This single mission concept was in dispute, however, before, during, and after its pronouncement; the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an attempt logically to trace through the web of U.S. commitments woven largely by the Secretary of State, were on the record in opposition to it;50 and, in fact, by early 1956 a two- or three-fold mission for South Vietnamese forces was considered more or less established by the Chiefs and by others more directly concerned with the organization and training of the Vietnamese forces.51
The evolution of the mission of the Vietnamese forces from that of maintaining internal security to (a) maintaining internal security; (b) resisting external aggression; and (c) contributing to regional defense with other non-Communist countries was affected critically by five factors; the state of U.S. strategic military policy in the mid-1950's; the nature of SEATO and of U.S. views concerning fulfillment of its commitments under that treaty; the withdrawal of the French Expeditionary Corps; pressures exerted by the Diem government; and recent U.S. experiences in Korea.
1. U.S. strategic military policy in the mid-1950's, as has been well documented,52 was both complex and confused, and confusion over the issue of massive retaliation versus local defense was particularly intense. The JCS — among others — were unable ever to resolve the dilemma posed by U.S. policy in this regard with respect to the defense of Southeast Asia.
The JCS had contended, first, that "from the point of view of the United States, with reference to the Far East as a whole, Indochina is devoid of decisive [presumably narrowly defined] military objectives"53 when considering U.S. intervention in the Indochina war, and that the main target of U.S. air and naval forces should be the source of the aggression (i.e., China). But they also contended both during and after the Indochina war that atomic weapons should be used within Vietnam in the local defense of that country — and that if permission to use such weapons were denied (a spectre which appeared constantly to haunt the Chiefs), U.S. force requirements and the time required to achieve victory would soar.5354 Finally, after the French defeat, the Chiefs argued that a ground defense against aggression from North Vietnam by South Vietnamese forces would be necessary to provide time for the U.S. to intervene with ground forces, again using atomic weapons for local defense.55
