NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
facts, we need 2 to 3 months to get any sort of government going which has any chance of being able to maintain order in the cities and to continue the pacification efforts of past levels. There is no present urge to march north…the leadership is exhausted and frustrated…and not anxious to take on any new problems or obligations. Hence, there is no need to hasten our plans to satisfy an impatience to close with the enemy… 127/
On 4 September the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Peter Solbert, forwarded to the Secretary of Defense a memorandum including a set of summary recommendations for a program of overall social development called "stability for the GVN." Copies of this memorandum were seen by both Vance and McNamara, but there is no documentary evidence that it was given serious consideration. The program was based on a longer RAND study by C. J. Zwick, and it proposed a series of measures to broaden popular support of the Government of Vietnam. The measures were divided into an Urban Program and a Rural Program. Summarily, under the Urban Program, there were six major areas of development:
1. a reduction of consumer prices for selected commodities;
2. an increase in government salaries;
3. mass low cost public housing;
4. urban public works;
5. expanded educational programs; and
6. an improved business climate to foster private business.
Under the proposed Rural Program there were four items:
1. an elimination of corvée labor and provision for paid public works;
2. subsidized credit to peasants under GVN control;
3. an increase in military pay and benefits; and
4. educational assistance to rural youths.
This memorandum further suggested that involving in the program the leaders of the various political factions in Vietnam who were currently causing trouble would indirectly enlist them in what amounted to stabilizing efforts, and the current plague of factionalism might be reduced. 128/
