American Military History, Volume 2 by Richard W. Stewart

Soon after John F. Kennedy became President in 1961, he sharply increased military and economic aid to South Vietnam to help Diem defeat the growing insurgency. For Kennedy, insurgencies (or "wars of national liberation" in the parlance of Communist leaders) challenged international security every bit as seriously as nuclear war. The adminis- tration's approach to both extremes of conflict rested on the precepts of the flexible response. Regarded as a form of "sub-limited," or small war, insurgency was treated largely as a military problem-conventional war writ small-and hence susceptible to resolution by timely and appro- priate military action. Kennedy's success in applying calculated military pressures to compel the Soviet Union to remove its offensive missiles from Cuba in 1962 reinforced the administration's disposition to deal with other international crises, including the conflict in Vietnam, in a similar manner.

Kennedy's policy, though commendable in its degree of flexibility, also had limitations. Long-term strategic planning typically yielded to short-term crisis management. Planners tended to assume that all belligerents were rational and that the foe subscribed as they did to the seductive logic of the flexible response. Hoping to give the South Vietnamese a margin for success, Kennedy periodically authorized additional military aid and support between 1961 and November 1963, when he was assassinated. But the absence of a coherent operational strategy for the conduct of counterinsurgency and chronic military and political shortcomings on the part of the South Vietnamese nullified potential benefits.