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THOMPSON, Robert : No Exit from Vietnam. VERY IMPORTANT SIGNED ASSOCIATION COPY WITH A.L.s

Chatto and Windus, London 1969

First edition. DW. Signed, "With all best wishes, Robert Thompson. March, 1969." Loosely inserted, on headed writing-paper, dated 2 April 1969, is a three page hand-written letter from the author to Lord Caccia, the British Ambassador to the US from 1956 to 1961. This is a very important letter and starts, "My Lord, Many thanks for your kind letter about the book. It was not easy to write and even now I feel that I may have overdone it in being over critical.....My fear is that Nixon will tend to bumble along and lose it unintentionally, because he will not be prepared to come out with a constructive policy which must take time...." He goes on to predict with some accuracy what the conclusion to the Vietnam war will be. Thompson, who signs himself here as "Bob", is sincere in trying to find the most effective way to influence the White House. History has shown us that he failed in that. A unique copy and a historically important item for anyone interested in the long-standing debate on the complexity of the Vietnam War. VG+ in wrapper that is rubbed and nicked along edges. Background: ...one British intelligence operative who played a vital role in convincing the Johnson administration to launch the Vietnam adventure was Sir Robert Grainger Ker Thompson, who was touted in Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report during the mid-1960s as the world's pre-eminent expert in guerrilla warfare. Born in 1916, Thompson held a history degree from Cambridge and was fluent in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese. During World War II, Thompson had been a member of Gen. Orde Wingate's Chindits, a proto­type of later special forces. He later commanded "Ferret Force," a British anti-guerrilla unit in Malaya, where he devised the strategic hamlet program that was later to fail miserably in Vietnam. By 1961, Thompson was Secretary for the Defense of Malaya. In this year, Thompson was invited to South Vietnam by President Diem; he became the chief of the British Advisory Mission and a key adviser and counterinsurgency "idea man " to Diem. Thompson never concealed his contempt for the United States. His favorite slur on the ungrateful colonials was, "The trouble with you Americans is that whenever you double the effort you somehow manage to square the error." In 1959, (after Malayan independence), Thompson became permanent secretary for defence for Tun Abdul Razak (who later became Malayan prime minister). In response to a request from President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, Tunku Abdul Rahman, the Malayan prime minister sent a team to South Vietnam to advise Diem on how to counter his insurgency problems. Thompson headed that team which so impressed Diem that he asked the British to second Thompson to the government South Vietnam as an advisor.In September 1961 the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan appointed him head of the newly established BRIAM (British Advisory Mission) to South Vietnam - and by extension Washington. Thompson conceived of an initiative he called the Delta Plan but when he saw the effects of the strategic hamlets initiative, begun in February 1962 he became an enthusiastic backer, telling President Kennedy in 1963 that he felt the war could be won. Under Thompson's leadership BRIAM put economic pressure on the South Vietnamese government that Thompson described as a "straight invitation to a coup".Kennedy was receptive to Thompson's ideas but the American military establishment were extremely reluctant to implement them. His warning not to bomb villages went unheeded and his dismissal of American air supremacy was ignored. "The war [will] be won by brains and on foot", he told Kennedy but competing interests in Washington and Saigon acted to marginalise Thompson and ultimately his strategies had no real effect on the conflict. He stepped down from BRIAM in 1965 and the organisation, deprived of the man who was essentially its raison d'être, folded up around him.Despite his relatively acrimonious criticism of United States policy in Vietnam, Thompson returned to a post assisting the American government in 1969 when he became a special advisor on "pacification" to President Nixon.

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