NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
simultaneously, to broaden U.S. participation in the hope of bringing about necessary reforms in Diem's regime. The President's emissary rejected the alternatives of a military takeover which would make the generals dominant in all fields. He rejected, too, the alternative of replacing Diem with a weaker figure who would be willing to delegate authority to both military and civil leaders. 22/ The first course would emphasize the solution to only one set of problems while slighting others; the second would permit action, but not coordinated action.
B. "Limited Partnership"
In order to move in a coordinated way on the intermingled military, political, economic, and social problems facing South Vietnam, General Taylor recommended that the U.S. initiate a "limited partnership" which would stop short of direct U.S. action but would also, through persuasion at many levels judiciously mixed with U.S. leverage, "…force the Vietnamese to get their house in order in one area after another." 23/ Increased material assistance from the U.S. would be accompanied with increased U.S. participation at all levels of government in which the American advisors must "…as friends and partners -- not as arms-length advisors -- show them how the job might be done -- not tell them or do it for them." If strongly motivated, tactful Americans were assigned primarily outside Saigon, thus avoiding the establishment of large headquarters not actually engaged in operational tasks, Taylor thought that this increased U.S. participation would not be "counter-productive"; e.g., lend substance to claims of U.S. imperialism and dominance of the Diem Government. 24/
Thus, Taylor consciously opted for a U.S. course of action in which the major thrust of effort would be to induce Diem to do the things that the U.S. thought should be done: to draw the disaffected into the national effort and to organize and equip so that effective action would be possible. General Taylor did not argue explicitly that success would follow automatically if Diem's practices could be reformed and his operational capabilities upgraded, but he implied this outcome. The question of an overall strategy to defeat the insurgency came very close to being regarded as a problem in the organization and management of resources. Since GVN had no national plan, efforts were concentrated on inducing them to produce one. There was much less concern about the substance of the non-existent GVN plan. It was almost as though there had to be something to endorse or to criticize before substantive issues could be treated as relevant.
C. U.S.-Proposed National Plans
This priority of business is reflected in the U.S. plans which were proposed to GVN for adoption by the latter. In late 196O the U.S. Country Team in Saigon produced an agreed "Counterinsurgency Plan for Viet-Nam" (CIP). The plan was an attempt to specify roles and relationships within GVN in the counter insurgency effort, to persuade Diem to abandon his bilineal chain of command in favor of a single command line with integrated effort at all levels within the government, and to create the governmental machinery for coordinated national planning. 25/ It
