NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011 TOP SECRET – Sensitive
has had an impact which is not confined to the war effort, but which extends deeply into the whole Vietnamese way of doing things.
The U.S. advisory effort, however, cannot assure ultimate success. This is a Vietnamese war and the country and the war must in the end be run solely by the Vietnamese, It will impair their independence and development of their initiative if we leave our advisors in place beyond the time they are really needed… 6/ [emphasis supplied]
Policy concerning aid to the Vietnamese may be considered to range between two polar extremes. One extreme would be our doing almost everything difficult for the Vietnamese, and the other would consist of limiting our own actions to provision of no more than material aid and advice while leaving everything important to be done by the Vietnamese themselves. Choice of a policy at any point on this continuum reflects a judgment concerning the basic nature of the problem; i.e. to what extent political and to what extent military; to what extent reasonable by political means and to what extent resolvable by military means even by outsiders. But in this case the choice of policy also reflected confidence that success was being achieved by the kind and, level of effort that had already been devoted to this venture. The policy of NSAM 273 was predicated on such confidence. It constituted by its reference to the 2 October statement an explicit anticipation, with tentative time phases expressly stated, of the assumption by the Vietnamese of direct responsibility for doing all the important things themselves sometime in 1965, the U.S. thereafter providing only material aid and non-participating advice at the end of that period. That optimism was explicit in the report to the President of 2 October wherein the conclusion of the section on "The US Military Advisory and Support Effort consisted of this paragraph:
Acknowledging the progress achieved to date, there still remains the question of when the final victory can be obtained. If, by victory, we mean the reduction of the insurgency to something little more than sporadic banditry in outlying districts, it is the view of the vast majority of military commanders consulted that success may be achieved in the I, II, and III Corps area by the end of CY 1964. Victory in IV Corps will take longer - at least well into 1965. These estimates assume that the political situation does not significantly impede the effort. 7/ [emphasis supplied]
2. First Reappraisals of the Situation in South Vietnam
The caveat given expression in the last sentence of the conclusions cited above offered an escape clause, but it was clearly
