ABSTRACT
The flourishing Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam raised concern late in 1961 in Washington. The new president realized he had to do more than merely rely on the counterinsurgency plan drafted in the previous administration. The John F. Kennedy administration envisioned counterinsurgency as a way to assist its allies in defeating wars of national liberation and sought to cultivate greater proficiency in counterinsurgency within the Unites States (US) Army. President Kennedy set up new organizations to deal with insurgency and dispatched army advisers to South Vietnam, but the army seemed reluctant to embrace counterinsurgency. Army chief of staff, General George Decker, allegedly told President Kennedy that "any good soldier can handle guerrillas." Like much of the army staff, Decker was unenthusiastic about specialized training for guerrilla warfare, favoring the development of balanced US Army forces that could meet a range of threats rather than specialists trained in one kind of warfare.
