Note:
In this installment, the eighth in the series on the causes of the decline of
the United States as a nation, we explore President John F. Kennedy’s handling
of the crisis in Laos from the Bay of Pigs debacle in April of 1961 to the
Geneva “Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos” in July of 1962. It is important to
keep several things in mind as you read this. First, our premise at the outset
of the series was that JFK’s assassination represented a huge turning point for
the United States as a nation; a shift away from the policies of peaceful
co-existence and ending the Cold War that Kennedy was pursuing, and toward a
policy of confrontation and war as planned by the CIA and its Secret Team of
intelligence, military and corporate alliances otherwise known as the “military
industrial complex”. Second, keep in mind the real question to be answered
regarding Kennedy’s assassination is not if there was a conspiracy involved; the
real question is why was he killed? It is the answer to this question that we
are illuminating with this part of our series and particularly in describing
Kennedy’s handling of Laos. Through his actions JFK prevented Laos from
becoming our first “Vietnam” in Southeast Asia; instead causing it to become
the “Vietnam” that never was…MA
F
|
ollowing the Bay of Pigs, in late April
1961, a wiser and less naïve John F.
Kennedy refocused his attention on the crisis in Laos. He had just
successfully resisted his top military and CIA advisors in refusing to send
U.S. forces to salvage the CIA’s Cuban brigade and now the same men who had
misled him about Cuba were telling him that unless the United States intervened
militarily in Laos that country would be lost to the communists. By the end of
April the Joint Chiefs of Staff was
recommending that JFK commit 140,000 troops to salvage the situation in the
small Southeast Asian country.
With
the Bay of Pigs debacle fresh in his mind, Kennedy was understandably
suspicious. On April 28th, in a meeting with the Chiefs, he asked
them pointed questions about the data they were presenting him, exposing holes
in their logic and conclusions. The Chief of Staff of the United States Navy, Admiral
Arleigh Burke told Kennedy that at
some point in Southeast Asia the U.S. would need to “…throw enough in to win…the
works.” Army general George Decker
agreed with Burke but went even further. Decker said, “If we go in, we should go in to win, and that means bombing Hanoi, China and maybe even using nuclear weapons.” At
another meeting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Lyman Lemnitzer echoed Decker in stating, “If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee
victory.” When Lemnitzer made that statement JFK said nothing and just
looked at him. Then he ended the meeting. His trust in the advice of his top
military advisors was shot. To his aide
Arthur Schlesinger he stated, “If it hadn’t been for Cuba, we might be
about to intervene in Laos…I might
have taken this advice seriously.”
 |
| General Lyman Lemnitzer |
On
May 11th, 1961 the Russians, the Americans and 12 other nations met
in Geneva, Switzerland on the subject of Laos while the civil war was raging in
that small country. This was the international conference Kennedy had called
for in March. As noted in an earlier article (please see “The Crisis in Laos”, the
6th installment of the series) Kennedy had already come out for a
neutralist government in Laos free from the domination of foreign nations. This
decision placed him at direct odds with the CIA which had assisted General Phoumi Nosavan in overthrowing the
neutralist government of Prince Souvanna
Phouma sometime earlier and were
still assisting Nosavan at the time the Geneva Convention on Laos took place.
It was the coup against Phouma which had sparked the latest round of civil war
in Laos with Phouma and his half brother Prince Souphanouvong of the communist Pathet
Lao allied against General Nosavan’s forces assisted by the CIA.
Against
this backdrop of Laotian civil war and the ongoing meetings in Geneva, JFK and
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev
prepared for a summit meeting in Vienna, to be held on June 3rd and
4th, 1961. At the summit Kennedy had to push Khrushchev to get him
to agree on the subject of a neutral government for Laos. Khrushchev pointed
out that Kennedy well knew that “…it had
been the U.S. government that had
overthrown Souvanna Phouma”, in Laos. (You will recall that Phouma’s
government was already neutral) To this Kennedy responded by saying “Speaking frankly, U.S. policy in that
region has not always been wise.” He then reiterated that the desire of the
U.S now was for a neutral and independent Laos. The irony of JFK’s position not
lost on him, Khrushchev pointed out that Kennedy had “…stated the Soviet policy and called it your own.” JFK’s cold
warrior critics in his own government certainly would have agreed with that
assessment and were not happy about it. Nevertheless, having finally established
a point of agreement with the Soviets that Laos should be neutral and
independent, Kennedy contacted Averell
Harriman, the U.S. representative at the Geneva talks, and told him flatly, “…I want a negotiated settlement in Laos. I
don’t want to put troops in.” Twice
in the space of three months, first at the Bay of Pigs and now with Laos,
Kennedy had taken actions directly counter to those his national security
establishment was trying to manipulate him in to.
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| Kennedy and Khrushchev at Vienna |
The
immediate effect of JFK’s Laos neutrality strategy on the military and
intelligence people surrounding him was twofold. First, it deepened the schism
that already existed between them and the President as a result of Kennedy’s
handling of the Bay of Pigs. Second, it caused them to start to shift their
focus and attention to Laos’s neighbor to the east, the divided nation of
Vietnam. Though the CIA would continue to support, train and equip General
Phoumi Nosavan and the military would continue to supply him with advisors, it
was beginning to look like Kennedy would never allow Laos to become the major
Cold War confrontation the Agency and Pentagon wanted it to be. From their
view, due to Kennedy’s neutralist commitment, Laos was on the way to being a
lost cause.
Vietnam
was another matter however. Unlike Laos, which pre-existed U.S. involvement
there, South Vietnam and its President Ngo
Dinh Diem existed and were in
power solely because of CIA and therefore U.S. support. Diem assumed the
Presidency of South Vietnam in 1955 with much assistance from Ed Lansdale and the CIA. The 1956
election called for by the Geneva accords of 1954, when the country was
temporarily divided along the 17th parallel, never could have been
ignored by Diem without this CIA/US support; the superior forces of the
Vietminh simply would have come south, overrun the country and Vietnam would be
united. Because Diem’s administration relied so much on U.S. support, he was
quite taken aback by JFK’s neutralist strategy in Laos and he considered it a
threat to his government. What if Kennedy should decide he wanted a neutral
South Vietnam?
In
an effort to reassure Diem, Kennedy sent Vice President Lyndon Johnson to South Vietnam in May of 1961. On the same trip
Johnson visited a number of other Asian allies such as Nationalist China
(Taiwan), Thailand and Pakistan. His report to Kennedy following the trip
presented a bleak picture of the ripple effect of Kennedy’s neutral policy on
Laos; the regimes of these other nations, according to Johnson, were feeling
the same way Diem was in South Vietnam. In closing his report to the President,
Johnson summed things up this way:
“The fundamental decision required of
the United States—and time is of the greatest importance—is whether we are to
attempt to meet the challenge of Communist expansion now in Southeast Asia by a
major effort in support of the forces of freedom in the area or throw in the
towel.”
 |
| Lyndon Johnson |
Kennedy’s neutral stance on Laos and his
refusal to commit to anything more than CIA and military advisor support to
Laos and South Vietnam was being challenged not just by his intelligence and
military chiefs but by his own Vice President.
Despite
the pressure from his own government, in Kennedy’s mind he and Khrushchev had
resolved the Laotian crisis when they agreed at the June summit on the idea of
a neutral Laos. In reality significant problems remained, however. Throughout
the summer and into the fall of 1961 the negotiations between the various
parties in Geneva dragged on and by August these problems were becoming clearer
to the President. First, the Pathet Lao continued to control things in much of
Laos militarily and were posing a real threat to just win the civil war outright
over the CIA backed Phoumi Nosavan’s forces, which would have obviated the need
for continued negotiations toward a neutral Laos. The second problem was that
the insurgency in South Vietnam was increasing and guerilla attacks becoming
more frequent. A supply and transport route had developed from North Vietnam
through eastern Laos to South Vietnam by which men and equipment were being
transferred to the guerillas in the south. This route was what would become
known as the “Ho Chi Minh Trail”. The
use of this trail by North Vietnam was becoming a sticking point in the Laos
negotiations. In addition the CIA and Joint Chiefs were now demanding JFK send
regular military troops into Vietnam to quell the increasing uprisings there as
well as continuing to demand troops for Laos to support Nosavan so as to
prevent what looked to be likely victory for the Pathet Lao.
 |
| Hi Chi Minh Trail |
Once
again between a rock and the proverbial hard place, JFK was looking at
difficult options no matter which direction he turned. Keep in mind the fact
that Kennedy, like almost all American politicians of the day, had long since
bought the central premise of the Cold War, that it was a battle between the
forces of freedom, represented by the U.S., and the monolithic communist
threat. In late summer of ’61 he had not yet rejected that premise and so found
himself walking a very thin line. Having observed the French and not wanting
that fate for his country he was opposed to committing regular U.S. military
beyond equipment and advisors, yet faced with the threat of losing Laos
outright to the communists as well as potentially Vietnam, he felt he had to do
something. Kennedy responded to this dilemma at the end of August by
backtracking a bit on his “neutral Laos” commitment and raising the total of advisors
approved for Laos to 500 while authorizing the CIA to train and equip 2,000 more
members of the “Hmong” (pronounced “moong’) tribe to assist in the fight
against the communists. (The “Hmongs” were an indigenous people from the Laotian
highlands. Nine thousand of the tribe were already involved in the CIA’s covert
army and the addition now made eleven thousand; eventually the number would
reach 30,000)
Finally,
in October 1961, there was at last a breakthrough in Geneva when the major
Laotian factions represented there agreed to the concept of a neutral,
provisional government with Souvanna
Phouma as its prime minister. The language of the agreement also stipulated
that Laos could not be used by neighboring states for their purposes, which
meant that North Vietnam would not be able to use the “Ho Chi Minh Trail” as
they had been. The Soviet Union agreed to take on the role of policing the
compliance of the communist groups and nations at the conference to the
agreement. The hopeful aspect of this accord to Kennedy was soon compromised by
other factors that arose, however. The Soviets really had no power over North
Vietnam or the Pathet Lao and had no way, really, of enforcing their compliance.
Also, the communist nations insisted on the right to approve the movements of
the International Control Commission
in inspecting compliance to the agreement. (The International Control Commission was set up as an independent group
with 3 members, 1 from communist Poland, 1 from anti-communist Canada and 1
from neutral India as an additional means of inspecting and enforcing
compliance) The Russians, North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao would not compromise
on this point and in the final agreement this effectively eliminated the ICC as
any kind of policing agency.
 |
| Averell Harriman |
Due
to the intractability of the communist nations Kennedy authorized Harriman to
compromise on the ICC point and the negotiations moved forward. It would be another
8 months before, on July 23rd 1962 the United States, the Soviet
Union and 12 other nations all signed the “Declaration
on the Neutrality of Laos” in Geneva, Switzerland. Across those eight
months the CIA with their support of Phoumi Nosavan and their “covert” Hmong
army did their best to ensure that the fragile negotiations would never result
in an agreement. In early 1962 Nosavan tried to provoke an international
incident with the Pathet Lao by reinforcing a garrison called “Nam Tha” that was only 15 miles from
the Chinese border and very close to Pathet Lao held territory. He then tried
to provoke an attack from the Pathet Lao which, while succeeding in causing a
few firefights, did not result in the hoped for attack. Nevertheless the CIA
and Nosavan, pulling an old page from Ed Lansdale’s CIA playbook, staged a
retreat from Nam Tha across the Mekong River into Thailand, claiming they were
under Pathet Lao attack; an attack which did not, in fact, really exist. Their
intention was to once again try and force JFK’s hand in sending troops to Laos
to counter the Pathet Lao threat and thus destroy the negotiations.
The
machinations of the CIA and Nosavan with regard to the Nam Tha ploy were
apparently an open secret to much of the rest of the world. The Times of London reported on the
situation as follows:
“CIA
agents had deliberately opposed the official American objective of trying to
establish a neutral government, had encouraged Phoumi in his reinforcement of
Nam Tha, and had negatived the heavy financial pressure brought by the Kennedy
administration upon Phoumi by subventions from its own budget…The General apparently
was quite outspoken, and made it known that he could disregard the American
embassy and the military advisory group because he was in communication with
other American agencies.”
With the report from the Times as well
as his own reports Kennedy must have understood what the CIA was up to in Laos.
Though he responded to the pressure brought about from the Nam Tha incident by
stationing American troops in the neighboring country of Thailand and having
contingency plans drawn up to intervene in Laos should it become necessary, he
once again stopped short of committing American troops to the civil war torn
nation. His true understanding of what occurred at Nam Tha was indicated by
another action he took on the matter; the transferring of the closest CIA
officer to Phoumi Nosavan, a man named
Jack Hazey.
From
the beginning of his administration through to the Geneva neutrality
declaration on Laos in July of ’62, JFK had negotiated a minefield largely laid
for him by his own CIA with complicity from his own military men designed to
force him to intervene in Laos with regular U.S. forces. Through the actions he took he side stepped them
every step of the way, thus ensuring that Laos did not become the quagmire that Vietnam came to be, and instead became, for the United States, the “Vietnam” that never
was.
Knowing all this now, one is
compelled to wonder…what would have happened in Vietnam had John F. Kennedy
lived?
To be continued…
Copyright
© 2013
By
Mark Arnold
All
Rights Reserved
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