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tion — the Tennessee Valley Authority. President Johnson's expressed 

 hope was that by applying this same regional development concept in 

 Southeast Asia, the United States could (a) demonstrate a construc- 

 tive form of technological leadership congenial to the U.S. electorate, 

 (b) stimulate a concerted effort with the technological resources of 

 the United Nations system directed at regional development, (c) en- 

 list the interest and enthusiasm of the peoples of Southeast Asia in a 

 constructive, pacific, cooperative, technologically-oriented enterprise 

 as an alternative to war, and (d) attract support for this effort from 

 the other nations of the world, regardless of their ideological leanings. 

 The magnitude of the proposed task, moreover, would require — and, 

 it was hoped, receive — so large an effort as to diminish the resources 

 and energy diverted to conflict in the region. These were some of the 

 underlying purposes of the Johns Hopkins proposal of April 7, 1965. 



The Timing of the Johns Hopkins Speech 



The timing of the speech coincided with stepped-up bombing of 

 strategic targets in North Vietnam by U.S. military aircraft, begin- 

 ning with isolated strikes in mid-February, and broadening into a 

 more sustained air offensive in early March. It followed by a week the 

 President's decision, to be disclosed later on, to deploy U.S. troops and 

 undertake ground combat operations in South Vietnam (to an extent 

 that would number 184,314 military personnel in the area by the end 

 of 1965). This decision seems attributable to the threatened collapse 

 of military control in the South; both land and air operations were 

 intended to blunt the assault from the North, neutralize the operations 

 of the Vietcong, and shore up the disorganized government of South 

 Vietnam. 2 



Concern at this time over the enlargement in the conflict was evi- 

 denced by the major powers and by a number of "nonaligned" nations. 

 In the United States, sentiment against U.S. involvement in Vietnam 

 had not yet peaked but was rising rapidly. All of these developments 

 were germane to the several purposes of the President's speech. How- 

 ever, the present study is concerned essentially with that part of it 

 which proposed U.S. support for regional development in Southeast 

 Asia as an alternative to conflict in Vietnam. It was a proposal to 

 apply technology to the development of a multinational region as an 

 alternative to ideological or nationalistic uses of force. 



The question is whether the Mekong proposal amounted to more 

 than a diplomatic maneuver toward a shortrange objective. What was 

 its significance then, and what is it today, as a more basic and evolu- 

 tionary concept of general strategy toward U.S. foreign policy ob- 

 jectives in Southeast Asia ? Does it offer a means toward a more accept- 

 able pattern of diplomatic relationships over the longrange future? 



Regional Development Proposal in the Johns Hopkins Speech 

 Substantively, the speech consisted of three parts: (1) a declaration 



that the United States proposed to continue the bombing raids on 

 North Vietnam with an explanation of why. (2) a definition of U.S. 



•John McNaughton, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Internationa] Security Affairs), 

 cabled Ambassador Maxwell Taylor, April 15, t<> savin part : 



Mij.'h<'st Authority [the President] believes the situation in Smith Vietnam lias 

 been deteriorating ami that, in addition t" actions against the North, something new 

 must he added in the South to achieve victory. (The document is quoted in Neil 

 Sheehan, ilrdrlck Smith. B. W. Kenworthy, Fox Butterfleld, The l'cntaqon Papers 

 (New York ; Bantam Books, Inc., 1971), p. 404.) 



