Failure by Choice Richard C

1 Eisenhower and Southeast Asia Part II: Failure by Choice Richard C. Thornton A Shift to the Offensive In mid-March, 1960, President Eisenhower decided upon a major foreign policy shift to the offensive based on another change in the strategic weapons balance favoring the United States. After several years of fits and starts, the U.S. ballistic missile program had begun to show results. On September 1, 1959, Washington had declared the Atlas D ICBM operational at Vandenberg Air Force Base. In mid-September, the Polaris SLBM had successfully test-fired its first missile at full range. In early November, Washington announced plans to deploy one squadron of Jupiter intermediate-range missiles to Turkey and two squadrons to Italy. And in December, Washington had deployed the Thor IRBM to the United Kingdom. At the same time, it became clear to U.S. intelligence that the Soviet missile program was still mired in difficulties with no hope of early ICBM deployment. The conclusion was that the United States would be deploying a broad range of land-based, sea-based, and intermediate-range missiles before the Soviet Union could; and this would give the United States a growing strategic weapons advantage. Ironically, the public perception was precisely the opposite, as the erroneous idea of a missile gap favoring the Soviet Union gained currency during the 1960 presidential election campaign. Based on the emerging actual strategic weapons advantage, Eisenhower decided to adopt a more assertive foreign policy to recoup lost gains. Europe was at the top of the list, with Cuba and Southeast Asia not far below. The United States would strengthen the containment structure and abandon the effort to reach a détente with the Soviet Union. Key to this strategic adjustment was the president’s highly secret and plausibly deniable plan to abort the May 1960 Paris summit, and defeat French President Charles de Gaulle’s scheme to cripple the U.S. position in Western Europe. Eisenhower relates that on March 17 he authorized the CIA to begin training Cuban exiles for the “day when they might return to their homeland.” Related measures concerning Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo seem also to have been taken at this time.1 On the same day, at an NSC meeting, CIA Director Allen Dulles cited “widespread reports” of increased Communist actions in South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. The situation in Laos was of particular concern. “Security enforced by the central government exists fully only in the cities, to a lesser extent in the towns, and not 1 Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace: The White House Years, A Personal Account 1956-1961 (New York: Doubleday, 1965) 533-535. 2 at all in the countryside.”2 It was not clear, he said, what would be the tactics of the Communists (represented by the Pathet Lao political wing, Neo Lao Hak Xat, or NLHX) in the coming election, scheduled for the end of April, but their growing strength was troubling. In the event, as will be discussed below, Communist electoral tactics would pale compared to the differences among Laotian leaders themselves, and the growing strength of the Pathet Lao. The Problem of de Gaulle Indeed, U.S. problems in Laos could be traced back not only to the Moscow- Hanoi decision to escalate the war, but also to the deterioration in U.S. relations with France. The latter began when the United States forced France out of Indochina in 1954. The French sought a neutral Laos—not a bulwark against Communism—as part of a larger strategy of Vietnamese unification. Differences with the United States over Southeast Asia could not be papered over by superficial attempts at cooperation and it is a wonder that the Eisenhower Administration failed to comprehend them.3 The downward spiral in Franco-American relations intensified with Charles de Gaulle’s rise to power in 1958. From the outset he demanded French inclusion in a U.S.- U.K.-France nuclear triumvirate to control nuclear weapons, a proposal that fell on deaf ears, but which he broadened into a demand for a tripartite world strategy. He sought U.S. nuclear technology and material, which was also denied, prompting a decision to acquire an independent nuclear capability. Indeed, De Gaulle was determined to pursue an independent policy, withdrawing the French Mediterranean Fleet from NATO, and seeking to develop a continental European bloc based on Franco-German cooperation. De Gaulle’s plan, as the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research put it, was to raise France to a leading role in global affairs and to the position of “mediator and link between the United States and the Soviet Union.”4 If anything, this analysis underestimated de Gaulle’s ambitious plans to counter what came to be termed by journalist Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber “le défi américain.” Except for acquisition of an independent nuclear capability—France had successfully detonated two atomic devices in February and March of 1960—de Gaulle’s foreign policy had disappointing results primarily because France did not possess the national power to pursue an openly independent policy. Adopting the strategy of the 2 “Memorandum of Discussion at the 437th Meeting of the National Security Council,” March 17, 1960, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1958-1960, East Asia-Pacific Region; Cambodia; Laos, Volume XVI, eds. Edward C. Keefer and David W. Mabon (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1992), Document 333. 3 See the insightful book by Marianna Sullivan, France’s Vietnam Policy: A Study in French-American Relations (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978) especially Chapters 2 and 3. 4 “Intelligence Report Prepared in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research,” December 6, 1960, FRUS, 1958-1960, Western Europe, Volume VII, Part 2, eds. Ronald D. Landa et al. (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1993), Document 201. 3 weak power, de Gaulle began to pursue what was essentially a spoiling strategy of denial against the United States and détente with the Soviet Union, as he sought to build a continental European bloc between the two superpowers. De Gaulle’s strategy would have taken a giant stride forward had the Paris Summit, with its promise of U.S.-Soviet détente, taken place. However, as Eisenhower recounts, the proposed meeting was “the summit that never was,” disrupted by the downing of a U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk, in the USSR.5 The juxtaposition of the U-2 Incident and the Paris Summit has raised questions about the relationship of one with the other. Despite U.S. Government protestations to the contrary, a view has evolved that it was deliberately contrived to prevent the meeting from taking place.6 The main point, however, is whether contrived or not, the effect of the U-2 Incident was not only to disrupt the developing “thaw” in U.S.-Soviet relations, but also to bring crashing down de Gaulle’s scheme for an independent continental Europe. Indeed, de Gaulle recognized instantly that his scheme had failed when, after Khrushchev had stormed out of the summit meeting, he said to the president: “Whatever happens, we are with you.” Eisenhower thought that the “brightest spot in the whole affair” had been de Gaulle’s “loyalty,” surely one of the most ironic tongue-in-cheek reflections of one adversary about another in modern history.7 Without the loss of a single casualty, the United States had restored the integrity of NATO and the American leadership role in it. But, if Eisenhower thought that de Gaulle would meekly fall in line behind American leadership, he would be greatly mistaken. De Gaulle’s first response would be to disrupt U.S. policy in Laos. Quagmire in Laos In Laos, the nation-wide legislative elections of April 24, 1960 had resulted in a resounding victory for the non-Communists over the Communists. Of the fifty-nine seats contested, the conservative Committee for the Defense of National Interests (CDNI) won thirty-two, the neutralist Rassemblement du Peuple Laotien (RPL) twenty-seven, and the Communists zero. The elections were universally recognized as having been rigged, as electoral districts were redrawn to favor non-Communist candidates. The Laotian armed forces, Forces Armées Laotiènnes (FAL) not only provided security for the people against the Communists, who won no seats even in precincts they controlled, but they 5 Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 543. 6 See James Nathan, “A Fragile Détente: The U-2 Incident Re-examined,” Military Affairs (October 1975), 97-104. For an analysis of the mission, see Chris Pocock, “From Peshawar to Bodo—Mission Impossible?” in Sven Lundestad, ed., U-2 Flights and the Cold War in the High North (Bodo: Bodo College Press, 1996) 2-23. 7 Eisenhower, Waging Peace, 556. (emphasis in original) 4 also campaigned against the RPL in favor of the CDNI. CIA agents reportedly also were heavily involved in distributing kip (Laotian currency) to buy votes.8 In a little noted development, former Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma had quietly returned from his stint as ambassador to France to rejoin the RPL. He won an assembly seat representing Luang Prabang and was appointed president of the National Assembly. From that position, within four months, he would move to the center of the political-military vortex that would soon engulf Laotian politics. On the basis of the election results, Phoumi Nosavan sought to claim appointment as prime minister, but once again Washington stepped in to thwart him. Over the course of the following month, Ambassador Horace Smith made repeated demarches to King Savang to deny Phoumi the appointment on the grounds that “he was unduly antagonistic to Communism and that his appointment might result in stirring up the local hostilities in Laos.”9 To reiterate, U.S.

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