Sept. 10, 1964 - The Johnson Administration’s four-day review of the Vietnamese crisis with Ambassador Maxwell Taylor (left) ended today with the conclusion that the Communist Viet Cong insurgency could not be ended by military means in the foreseeable future, officials said.
But high officials said that U.S. believed that the stalemated guerrilla warfare was so expensive to the insurgents, and particularly to North Vietnam, which is directly supporting it, that they may give it up in the end rather than risk suffering heavy losses.
These assessments, expressed after Taylor had conferred at length with the top policymakers in Washington, suggested that the U.S. would contemplate a negotiated settlement of the Vietnamese war only if the Communists were willing to end attacks.
It was made clear that short of such a Communist decision to come to terms with the Saigon regime and the U.S., the Administration would continue — and increase if needed — its economic and military support of the anti-Communist war.
Secretary of State Dean Rusk said at a morning news conference that U.S. commitments to South Vietnam were “flat and very firm,” and that, “I don’t know of any negotiations now going on anywhere, overt or covert, about a settlement in South Vietnam.”
Last October, a White House review conference predicted that the war might end late in 1965 if the political crisis did not affect the military effort.
It was said at that time that about 1,000 U.S. troops could be withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of 1963, and that the bulk of the 14,000 men then serving there could go home late in 1965.
However, the adverse course of the war quickly nullified these predictions. A White House review conference last June decided instead to increase the number of U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam by some 5,000 men. At present, there are 18,000 American advisers in Vietnam, and the figure is expected to reach about 21,000 men when the build-up is completed later this year.
In the light of conclusions reached in Washington this week, there was no further official talk as to when the tide might turn in the Vietnamese war or when U.S. troops might be repatriated.
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