NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
The French also recognize the fact that they cannot afford a continued military cost of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in a campaign that has failed and that has no prospects of bringing about a military solution. As ERP aid is subsequently reduced, it will be impossible for the French to carry this expense. Even today, with the help of ERP, domestic plans of the French Government are deeply affected by this drain, which indirectly but powerfully affects the Government’s capacity to deal with labor, social and educational exigencies at home.
The French are also aware, realistically, of the military weakness on the continent due to the maintenance of a military establishment in Indo-China that absorbs half of the regular army and the best cadres for troop training, whose losses are continuous, and whose depletion of French officer strength equals the output of new officers from the French military academies. This, incidentally though importantly, affects the United States position in military assistance to the Continent.
Despite French sentimental aspirations for absorbing colonial areas within the body and spirit of “metropolitan France,” there is no doubt that the French are realistic enough, when not emotionally disturbed, to appreciate the fact that the peoples of Vietnam can no longer be “integrated” in that respect.
Therefore it appears that the time has come that an entirely rational French consideration of this problem must take place, that can be the foundation of policy considerations. It is strictly necessary that this consideration be made now, so that U.S. policy may reasonably and justifiably work in cooperation with the French in attempting to make firm and workable a self-governed Vietnam State conditioned to find it desirable and advantageous to be a part of the French Union.
In short, we must find out what the French expect of Vietnam.
- 3. Decisions and actions necessary to create public respect for the Bao Dai government.
- a. A clear definition of the French Union, its meaning, its responsibilities and guarantees including the guarantee of a method for “evolutionary” treatment of countries accepted as partners within the French Union. These conditions have never been defined, and no one knows what the French Union means.
