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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011

The anti-guerrilla effort should be accompanied and followed up by economic and political consolidation. A broad range of community development activities both in the political and economic field should be pressed forward. Not only should roads, wells, schools, etc., be pushed forward, but village political councils should be created and an imaginative communications system should be established, geared to bring the rural people of Vietnam into the body politic.

It is doubtful whether the Vietnamese government could weather the pressure which would be generated if Laos were lost, without prompt and dramatic support for its security from the U.S. Similarly, the extent to which the remainder of the S.E. Asian countries would be prepared to go "in resisting Bloc pressures or in withstanding local Communist threats would depend on whether they still assessed that the U.S. could stem further Communist expansion in the area. Although they would be disillusioned regarding U.S. resolution after the loss or division of Laos, they would nonetheless welcome demonstrations of U.S. firmness, and might, in response, modify their appraisal of their own future in due course." (NIE of March 28, Outlook in Mainland S:E. Asia). Thus to futher strengthen and improve the internal and external political Rh