The March of Folly_ From Troy to Vietnam - Barbara Wertheim Tuchman [164]
At the same time Dulles was grasping for the conditions that would permit American armed intervention in the event of French collapse. He summoned eight members of Congress, including the Majority and Minority leaders of the Senate, William Knowland and Lyndon Johnson, to a secret conference and asked them for a Joint Resolution by Congress to permit the use of air and naval power in Indochina. Radford, who was present, explained the nature of the emergency and proposed an air strike by 200 planes from the aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. Dulles at high voltage expounded his vision of encirclement if Indochina should be lost. Discovering that Radford’s plan did not have the approval of the other Joint Chiefs and that Dulles did not have allies lined up for united action, the Congressmen would go no further than to say that they could probably obtain the resolution if allies were found and the French promised to stay in the field and “accelerate” independence.
In Paris the French Cabinet summoned Ambassador Douglas Dillon to an emergency Sunday meeting to ask for “immediate armed intervention of United States carrier aircraft.” They said the fate of Southeast Asia and of the forthcoming Geneva Conference “now rested on Dien Bien Phu.” Meeting with Dulles and Radford, Eisenhower remained adamant on his conditions for intervention. His firmness had two foundations: an innate respect for the constitutional processes of government and a recognition that air and naval action would draw in ground forces, whose employment he opposed. He told a press conference in March that “There is going to be no involvement of America in war unless it is the result of the constitutional process that is placed upon Congress to declare it. Now let us have that clear; and that is the answer.” Further he agreed with the military conclusion that air and naval action without ground forces could not gain the American objective, and he did not believe ground forces should again be committed, as in Korea, without prospect of decisive result.
In the military discussions, the resolute opponent of ground combat was the Army Chief of Staff, General Matthew B. Ridgway, who had saved the situation in Korea. Sent to take over the command from MacArthur, he had pulled the 8th Army out of disarray and led it to a fight that frustrated North Korea’s attempt to take over the country. If not victory, the outcome had at least restored the status quo ante and contained Communism. Ridgway’s views were emphatic and subsequently confirmed by a survey team he sent to Indochina in June when the issue of United States intervention became critical. Headed by General James Gavin, Chief of Plans and Development, the team reported that American ground combat would take “heavy casualties” and require five divisions at the outset and ten when fully involved. The area was “practically devoid of those facilities which modern forces such as ours find essential to the waging of war. Its telecommunications, highways, railroads, all the things that make possible the operations of a modern force on land, were almost nonexistent.” To create these facilities would require “tremendous engineering and logistical efforts” at tremendous cost, and in the team’s opinion “this ought not to be done.”
Eisenhower agreed, and not only for military reasons. He believed unilateral United States intervention would be politically disastrous. “The United States should in no event undertake alone to support French colonialism,” he said to an associate. “Unilateral action by the United States in cases of this kind would destroy us.” The principle of united action should apply too, he emphasized, in case of overt Chinese aggression.
The threat of a settlement with Communism threw Dulles into a fury af activity to round up allies, especially the British, for united action, to keep the French in combat, to scare the Chinese