foreign combat troops, but economic assistance, military advisors, civil affairs personnel, and humanitarian aid were requested. A series of State Department messages dating from May 1964 stressed again and again that no foreign combat troops were being sought.
From the time of the earliest deliberations on the question of troop deployments the United States had conceived of military assistance in its broad aspects in multilateral terms. Significantly the question of allied versus unilateral aid to Vietnam seems to have been resolved by the United States in favor of allied aid. The request for allied aid resulted from U.S. initiatives; the government of South Vietnam seems to have acted merely as the agent transmitting the formal request for assistance.
Chester Cooper, former director of Asian affairs for the White House, fittingly summarized the U.S. quest for more flags in his book, The Lost Crusade:
The "More Flags" campaign had gotten off to a slow start in late 1964. It required the application of considerable pressure for Washington to elicit any meaningful commitments. One of the more exasperating aspects of the search for "More Flags" was the lassitude, even disinterest, of the Saigon Government. In part... the South Vietnamese leaders were preoccupied with political jockeying... In addition Saigon appeared to believe that the program was a public relations campaign directed at the American people. As a consequence, it was left to Washington to play the rule of supplicant in the quest for Free World support.
Further, the inexperienced and understaffed foreign service of the Vietnam government simply did not have the resources to carry out such a major diplomatic initiative. With political turmoil and war at home, and representation in only a few countries abroad, the Vietnam government was physically unable to obtain aid alone and perforce have to rely on U.S. assistance to obtain outside help. The usual procedure was to have the American embassies in Europe, Asia, and Latin America discuss the subject of aid for South Vietnam with the host countries. The Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, and the U.S. Operations Mission prepared a list of the kind of aid desired. When a country agreed to provide some assistance, the U.S. government then informed the Vietnam government, which in turn made a formal request for aid from the country.
In January 1965 as the United States became more actively engaged in the war in Vietnam, the search for more flags was intensified and the United States gradually in later months began to seek combat units.
