What Would He Have Done?

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What Would He Have Done? What Would He Have Done? JFK AND VIETNAM Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power. By John M. Newman. Illustrated. 506 pp. New York: Warner Books. $22.95. By Arthur Schlesinger Jr. OULD President John F. Kennedy have finally sent in combat units and thereby Americanized the war in Vietnam? Or was he planning to withdraw the 16,000 United W ments. I should add, however, that though Oliver Stone States military advisers he had sent to the South Viet- namese armed forces? These questions, long debated helped find Mr. Newman a publisher, and though some- both by scholars and by former members of the Ken- one (the publisher?) has added a sensational subtitle, nedy and Johnson Administrations, have now been "Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power," Mr. thrust into public controversy by Oliver Stone's cine- Newman rigorously avoids conspiracy theorizing about matic fantasy "J.F.K." In recent weeks, for example, Kennedy's murder. two former Government officials deeply involved in • • • • Vietnam policy, Roger Hilsman, the Assistant Secre- tary of State for Far Eastern Affairs in 1963-64, and His book's thesis is that Kennedy "would never Walt W. Rostow, then head of the State Department's have placed American combat troops in Vietnam" and Policy Planning Council and later President Lyndon B. that he was preparing for the withdrawal of the mili- Johnson's national security adviser, have given the tary advisers by the end of 1965. The Joint Chiefs of questions diametrically opposed answers in forceful Staff began urging the commitment of combat units, letters to The New York Times. Mr. Newman shows, as early as three months after Both Mr. Hilsman, who thinks Kennedy would have Kennedy's inauguration. The Chiefs' wretched per- withdrawn from Vietnam, and Mr. Rostow, who feels formance in endorsing the Bay of Pigs invasion and in Kennedy would have expanded American involvement, proposing military intervention in Laos had fortunately agree, I believe, that it is impossible to say with assur- disillusioned the President, and he rejected this advice ance what a President might have done about problems then and thereafter. In the autumn of 1961, when Gen. that perhaps took new shape and intensity after his Maxwell Taylor, a White House military adviser, and death.. It is hard enough, Heaven knows, to tell what Walt Rostow returned from Vietnam recommending a living Presidents are likely to do about anything. More- over, astute Presidents are careful not to make critical Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a former special assistant decisions until they absolutely have to. Prudence calls, to President John F. Kennedy, is a writer and historian. in the bureaucratic phrase, for "keeping options open." His most recent book is "The Disuniting of America." Still, conceding all the above, I think it is of more than academic interest to speculate whether, had Kennedy lived, American history might have taken a different course. "JFK and Vietnam" is the most solid contribution yet to such speculation. Its author is John M. Newman, a retired Army officer with years of service in East Asia, now teaching East Asian history at the University of Maryland. His book is based on a meticulous and exhaustive examination of documents, many •newly declassified — internal memorandums, cables, tran- scripts of phone conversations, minutes of meetings, intelligence reports — supplemented by oral histories in Presidential libraries and by interviews with people involved with Vietnam policy at the time. The narrative is straightforward and workmanlike, rather military in organization, tone and style. The analysis is occasional- ly oversubtle, sometimes reading a little too much into the hasty drafting and redrafting of Government docu- U47E0141E53 IN,ERNAllONAL An American military adviser giving bayonet training in South Vietnam in 1962. General MacArthur, then I'll be convinced.' " Kenne- commitment of 8,000 combat troops, Kennedy again dy's private remarks to Senator Mike Mansfield, the rejected the proposal. As Mr. Newman writes: "There majority leader, to Senator Wayne Morse, to Roger Kennedy drew the line. He would not go beyond it at any Hilsman, to Michael Forrestal, the National Security time during the rest of his Presidency." Council man on Vietnam, to Kenneth O'Donnell, his I must declare an interest in this argument. I well appointments secretary, and to Lester Pearson, the remember the President's reaction to the Taylor-Ros- Canadian Prime Minister, further confirm his desire to tow report. "They want a force of American troops," he withdraw. told me. "The troops will march in; the bands will play; For all the rhetoric of his inaugural address about the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will paying any price, bearing any burden, meeting any have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in hardship, Kennedy was an eminently rational man, not more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears inclined to heavy investments in lost causes. He was off and you have to take another." prepared to be as tough as necessary when vital inter- Mr. Newman is, I think, essentially right about ests were involved, but he was no war lover. His foreign Kennedy. Whether Kennedy was right is a question Mr. Newman does not face. Would the outcome have been better had the President sent an American expedition- ary force in 1961? I doubt it — for reasons much on policy displayed a characteristic capacity to refuse Kennedy's mind. Mr. Newman does not mention Kenne- escalation when it made no sense — as in Laos, the Bay dy's reaction, when he visited Vietnam as a young of Pigs, the Berlin wall confrontation, the missile crisis. Congressman in 1951, to the French colonial army; but He believed from the start that the United States this was crucial in his skepticism about American was, as he often said (privately), "overcommitted" in military intervention. The war in Vietnam, he used to Indochina. As Mr. Newman reports, on April 6, 1962, he say, could be won only so long as it was a Vietnamese told Averell Harriman, then Assistant Secretary for war. If we converted it into a white man's war, we Far Eastern Affairs, and Michael Forrestal to be pre- would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier. pared to "seize upon any favorable moment to reduce (This is not latter-day recollection; I wrote it all nearly our commitment." But the Joint Chiefs kept up their 30 years ago in "A Thousand Days.") clamor for military intervention. In a hysterical Janu- Nor does Mr. Newman mention Kennedy's relish in ary 1962 memorandum cited by Mr. Newman, they citing Gen. Douglas MacArthur's statement to him that predicted that "the fall of South Vietnam to Communist it would be "a mistake" to fight in Southeast Asia. control would mean the eventual Communist domina- tion of all of the Southeast Asian mainland" and that Kennedy recorded this statement in an aide-memoire, something he rarely did, and, as General Taylor later most of Asia would capitulate to what the military still recalled, "whenever he'd get this military advice from stubbornly called the "Sino-Soviet Bloc." Secretary of the Joint Chiefs or from me or anyone else, he'd say, Defense Robert McNamara declined to endorse this 'Well, now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince extravagance, and such hyperbole confirmed Kenne- dy's low opinion of the military. NNEDY made concessions about advisers, but he held the line against troops. The com- mitment of combat units, he observed in March 1962 with a deference to the Constitu- tion not notable among his successors, "calls for a constitutional decision, [and] of course I would go to the Congress." In July 1962 he directed the Pentagon to come up with a plan for the withdrawal of the advisers by the end of .1965. The plan was approved in May 1963, with the first 1,000 men to be returned at the end of that year. But the military clamor persisted; the situation in coup but did not order or contem- South Vietnam continued to deteriorate; the number of plate the assassination of Diem. advisers sent to Vietnam increased; their participation "JFK and Vietnam" is by no in combat, especially in the air, increased too. The first means, however, an apologia for American fatalities, Mr. Newman tells us, created a new Kennedy. Beyond demonstrating problem. Kennedy wanted to play down American in- that Kennedy was opposed at ev- volvement, and the military collaborated enthusiastical- ery point to the dispatch of corn- ly in the production of cover stories, false claims of bat units, Mr. Newman is contin- battlefield success and other forms of press control. But ually critical of him for his lack what started as deception of the press the military soon of "clear understanding of the extended to deception of its civilian Masters — the nature of the Vietnamese soci- Secretary of Defense and the President. "Deception ety," for his failure to undertake within the deception," Mr. Newman calls it, and he a systematic examination of fun- impressively documents the effort by top commanders damental questions, for the con- — not by officers in the field — to persuade Kennedy and,.- sequent corruption of policy by McNamara through phony estimates of enemy strength, competing bureaucracies in Continued on page 31 Washington and Saigon, and for a : policy he describes as haphaz- ar ard, nearsighted, incoherent, THE NEW Y9RK TIMES BOOK REVIEW 3 t :. "more of a reaction against us- ing combat troops than a well- a A-0 0 coordinated political, economic v and social response to the prob- lems in Vietnam." Continued from page 3 In extenuation, Mr.
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