John T. McNaughton and Vietnam: The Early Years as ... - Viet-studies

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BENJAMIN T. HARRISON AND CHRISTOPHER L. MOSHER 507 and harder to pull out’ and the more difficult it becomes to end the disaster. 60 On 2 March 1965, McNaughton wrote a memorandum saying: ‘I am concerned that we not rush in and take over the conduct of the war from the Vietnamese. I think that it would be a political and psychological mistake to change our past position that this is a Vietnamese war in which we are helping’. 61 Rush to make that very mistake the United States did, much against McNaughton’s better judgement. McNaughton was sent to Saigon for a week in the spring of 1965 in order to see first hand how the war was going and he drafted another memo during that time which suggested that, by introducing ground troops, the United States was making the mistake which could lead to ‘undesirable escalation or defeat’. He believed the United States should be prepared to accept a negotiated settlement and cut its losses. 62 In a redraft of that memo, dated 24 March, McNaughton introduced his famous equation of US Aims in Vietnam: 70% – to avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor) 20% – to keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands 10% – to permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. 63 The United States was not in Vietnam mainly for democracy but more so for its own perceived credibility. McNaughton had already argued that the United States’ global reputation was hurt more by being in Vietnam than by withdrawing. He seemed to suggest that the stakes in Vietnam were not laid in concrete and that the United States could exit without serious consequences. He added that it was important to emerge from the Vietnam conflict ‘without unacceptable taint from methods used’. It pained him that a superpower was crushing a small, primitive country with incredible force. He concluded that the United States was ‘NOT’ in Vietnam ‘to help a friend, although it would be hard to stay in if asked out’. 64 He would have loved the GVN to ask for US withdrawal and speculated that an incompetent Saigon government could provide the excuse for a US exit with a request that Americans leave Vietnam. In his view, the country’s reputation and credibility would be kept intact because the United States had assisted the fight against communism and been asked to leave. The scholars narrating the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers said that at the time ‘no one put it as starkly as Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton’. 65 That included George Ball. 60 Halberstam, Best and Brightest, p. 368. 61 FRUS, 1964–1968, Vietnam, ii. 390–2. 62 JTM Papers, Box 1, File IV, 20 March 1965, LBJL; FRUS, 1964–1968 Vietnam, ii. 193, drafted memo dated 9–10 March 1965. 63 NYTPP, pp. 432–40. 64 Ibid. 65 GPP, iv. 22. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.
508 JOHN T. MCNAUGHTON AND VIETNAM Ironically, on the same day as that powerful memo of McNaughton’s, he was recommended as the new US ambassador to Saigon by none other than Johnson’s National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy. In a memo, dated 24 March 1965, Bundy wrote to the President: The one thing we have never had out there is a fully coordinated U.S. effort under the leadership of an ambassador who understood the essentially political nature of the problem . . . I have a feeling that if this war could be given an operational Chief of Staff like John McNaughton . . . we might have the right team. If McNaughton went in the capacity, moreover, we might easily convert Bob McNamara . . . 66 This memo is very important not only because McNaughton was held in such high regard by key figures in the Johnson administration (next year he would also be recommended for the same post by the Head of Pacification Program on Vietnam, Robert W. Komer) but it was significant that Bundy perceived McNaughton as favouring a political rather than a military solution. Bombs and troops were not going to determine the outcome of a war for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Vietnamese. No one understood that better than McNaughton, and as Bundy implies, McNamara could eventually be won over to that point of view. However, Bundy failed to convert the President and McNaughton would later bemoan Bundy’s exit from government. Of course, the fact that Bundy was McNaughton’s ‘next door neighbor and tennis doubles partner’ only added to his sense of loss. 67 However, it has been observed that Johnson always favoured McNamara over Bundy because the former was a self-made man and not from inherited wealth. Furthermore, it was also noted that the defense secretary was ‘the more adroit courtier, quicker at deducing Johnson’s inclinations, smoother at advancing the president’s ideas as his own’. 68 Developments in Vietnam would not change McNaughton’s point of view on Vietnam even though McNamara disagreed. He had a conversation about Vietnam with the distinguished British military expert Robert G. K. Thompson and concluded, ‘there is no cause for optimism’. 69 A week later he said the situation in South Vietnam ‘was deteriorating’. 70 He went even further on 25 April 1965, writing that ‘the bombing policy is bankrupt and always has been’ and indeed ‘it has really strengthened their [DRV/VC] will’ and ‘alienated world opinion’. 71 At the time McNamara and McNaughton both agreed that ‘bombing alone was not 66 Papers of William Conrad Gibbons, Box 6, McGeorge Bundy to Lyndon B. Johnson, 6, 24, 31 March 1965, LBJL; see also William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships (4 vols., Princeton, J, 1986–95), iii. 153, 191, 196. 67 Oral Interview of John McNaughton conducted by Larry McQuade, Nov. 1964 at the Pentagon, p. 27, John F. Kennedy Library. 68 Langguth, Our Vietnam, p. 277. 69 JTM Papers, Box 1, File IV, #65, LBJL. 70 GPP, iii. 409. 71 JTM Papers, Box 7, File 1, #17, June 1965, LBJL. © 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.
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