Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

  “In retrospect,” a rueful Simpson concluded, “I can understand some of the French resentment.”38

  Greene, for his part, departed Saigon somewhat sadly on February 9. “I left Saigon yesterday—with certain regrets. I had one or two good friends there. Especially during this last stay. Perhaps I’ll write the ‘entertainment’ I thought of and go back and film it one day. People have been nice to me.”39

  CHAPTER 13

  THE TURNING POINT THAT DIDN’T TURN

  DETERMINED THOUGH THEY WERE TO MAINTAIN A CORDON SANITAIRE between themselves and the Americans—not just on the Continental’s fabled terrace but everywhere, in figurative as well as literal terms—the French in Indochina in early 1952 understood that they were utterly dependent on U.S. economic and military and diplomatic support. They could work to disrupt the MAAG end-use inspections and thwart all American efforts to cultivate a nationalist, anti-Communist Third Force. They could ignore U.S. recommendations regarding specific military operations and overall strategy, and they could turn a deaf ear to Washington’s persistent call for greater efforts at building up the Vietnamese National Army. At the end of the day, however, they needed the United States, needed what only the Truman administration among the West’s governments could bring: massive monetary and material support, and international legitimacy.

  The lack of leverage went both ways, or so most American officials believed. It didn’t matter that the U.S. presence in the war was now growing seemingly on a daily basis, and that Washington’s contribution to overall French expenditures in Indochina by the middle of 1952 topped 40 percent; American influence was nevertheless frustratingly limited. The reasons had not merely to do with Southeast Asia. In Europe, the administration sought to bring France firmly into the structure of the fledgling European Defense Community (EDC). Proposed by France’s René Pleven in response to Washington’s desire for the rearmament of West Germany, the plan called for a common European army, under joint control, that would help counter the Soviet threat while not re-creating a sovereign German army. U.S. analysts fully understood that the ultimate ratification of the EDC treaty depended inordinately on attitudes in the house of its originator—where Charles de Gaulle, always a force to be reckoned with, immediately denounced it for allowing the dilution of the French army into an intra-European amalgam—and they were loath to do anything in Indochina that could anger Paris officials and journalists and thereby threaten passage.1

  One fear was that France would be unable to meet her obligations to the EDC and to NATO and at the same time fight a war halfway around the world. Early in 1952, Paris planners calculated that, even with projected American assistance of all kinds, the cost to France of meeting these two requirements would likely rise to over $4 billion—roughly $1 billion for Indochina and the remainder for Europe. Had senior U.S. officials cared only or mostly about the EDC and NATO, they would have insisted that France rid herself of the Indochina burden by promising complete and total independence for Vietnam, and by a specific date. But the Truman administration in 1952 still wanted desperately to keep France in the fight against Ho Chi Minh. As French officials well understood, their military effort in Indochina served American interests at least as much as it served theirs. If U.S. advice became too meddlesome, or if the administration sought to tie strings to its aid, what then? Might the Paris government simply withdraw from Indochina entirely?2

  It seemed all too possible. Said one American official in Paris in early 1952: “We’re approaching now the same situation we faced in the spring of 1947 when things got too much for the British and they dumped Greece and Turkey in our laps. The French can barely hold with what they have here now.… If they pull out [of Indochina], the question is put to us.” In the same vein, the British ambassador in Paris cautioned: “I fear we may be near a point where the French may turn round and say to us, ‘Is this war in the interests of the Western powers, as France can no longer maintain it alone as a French war? Unless you can join us, we shall be obliged to pull out.’ ”3

  The possibility of a French withdrawal seemingly grew more real that January, as Paris lawmakers prepared to begin a full-dress debate on Indochina in the National Assembly. De Lattre’s death on January 11, just a few days before the start of the debate, set a somber mood for the proceedings, and it was soon clear that a broad cross section of delegates questioned France’s continued commitment to the war. Views that a year earlier would have been labeled “defeatist,” or “unpatriotic,” were openly expressed, and not merely by the left. How could France afford, many delegates asked, to continue a struggle that in 1952 would consume between one-seventh and one-sixth of the entire budget? Answer: She could not, certainly not if she was also to build up a large army in Europe, which alone would enable her to pull her own weight in the organization of Western defense. “I am asking for a change of policy in Indo-China,” declared Pierre Mendès France of the Radical Party.

  I have never advocated capitulation, but I have asked and am still asking that every avenue be explored for an agreement with the Viet Minh. I am told one cannot negotiate with Communists, with Moscow agents. But what else are the Americans doing in Korea? … [A]s long as we go on losing all these officers and men in Indo-China, as long as we go on spending 500 billion francs a year, we shall have no army in Europe, and only 500 billion francs worth of inflation, poverty, and fuel for Communist propaganda.4

  Influential voices in the French press said in essence the same thing; Le Monde and Le Figaro both noted that, absent dramatically increased U.S. aid, France would soon have to choose between fulfilling her European responsibilities and seeking a rapid diplomatic solution in Vietnam. At the U.S. embassy in Paris, a despondent David Bruce saw French hopes for victory dashed and the public eager for peace. “A snowball has started to form,” the ambassador warned Washington. Absent greater American assistance for the war effort or some kind of “internationalization”—meaning U.S. and British guarantees to defend Indochina militarily—public sentiment for withdrawal would continue to build. The CIA, for its part, said that a full-fledged French reappraisal of Vietnam policy was at hand, with potentially major implications for the United States.5

  Ultimately, the Pleven government prevailed in the debate, and the Assembly approved by a wide margin the appropriation of 326 billion francs for land forces in Indochina during 1952. This sum, however, did not cover the air force or navy, and as in previous years a supplemental allocation would be required before long. Pleven declared that the government had secured a fresh mandate for the vigorous prosecution of the war, and he lauded French forces for their “magnificent” performance in the field; a year or eighteen months hence, he predicted, France could secure a negotiated settlement “from positions of strength.” His words rang hollow. The dominant mood in the Assembly after the vote, observed one journalist, was that “it couldn’t go on like this.” If the appropriation passed, “it was only because the French army in Indo-China could not be left high and dry without money or equipment.”6

  Two other factors no doubt shaped the outcome of the vote. One was the growing nationalist restiveness in North Africa, particularly in Morocco and Tunisia. In Rabat, the French faced growing pressure from the sultan, Mohammad Ben Youssef, to grant independence, while in Tunis negotiations had broken down just a few weeks earlier over nationalist demands for home rule. For some Paris officials, the North African tensions were an added reason for withdrawal from Indochina—in the words of Radical leader Édouard Daladier, so long as 7,000 French officers, 32,000 NCOs, and 134,000 soldiers were “marooned” in Vietnam, France would be hopelessly outnumbered in her North African possessions.7 The alternative view, and the one that won out in the end, was that early disengagement from Vietnam would only intensify nationalist fervor in the Maghreb. (If the Vietnamese can win independence, why can’t we?) For the sake of the empire, then, France had to stay the course in Vietnam. Second, Premier Pleven won political points for his announcement, timed perfectly
in advance of the Assembly vote, that he had secured agreement for a three-power conference on Indochina, involving Britain, the United States, and France, to take place in Washington later in the month. Pleven assured delegates that France would press for a joint Western policy toward the Far East and direct Anglo-American support in the event of a Chinese Communist move into Indochina.

  The prospect of a Chinese military intervention dominated the discussion of Indochina at the tripartite meetings, though there was a divergence of views on the seriousness of the threat. At the start of 1952, the PRC had about two hundred and fifty thousand troops in the provinces bordering Indochina, many of them ready to cross the frontier on short notice. Both the CIA and the Joint Intelligence Committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff rejected the likelihood of an invasion, and so did British intelligence. With the Korean War still ongoing and claiming vast Chinese resources, and with the Viet Minh holding their own against the French, these analysts thought Beijing would almost certainly be content to maintain its current level of support—arms and ammunition, technicians and political officers, and the training of Viet Minh NCOs and officers in military centers in southern China.8 The French, however, insisted on the very real possibility of direct, large-scale Chinese intervention and requested a U.S. commitment to provide air and naval support in that event. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council agreed it was important to decide on a course of action should the Chinese move. But which course?

  The question brought to the fore a crucially important difference of opinion among the three Western powers regarding the Cold War in Asia—and, by extension, the ultimate stakes in Vietnam. At the Washington conference and at other meetings that spring, U.S. officials called for responding to a Chinese invasion with air attacks on communications facilities in China proper and a blockade of the China coast. France and Britain disagreed. Partly they did so on narrow selfish grounds—the French wanted no diversion of resources from Indochina, while the British feared that Beijing might retaliate for such an assault by attacking Hong Kong or placing it under economic pressure. But Paris and London also sought to avoid escalating Cold War tensions or doing anything to antagonize unduly Moscow and Beijing. Winston Churchill, again in the prime minister’s office following a Tory election victory, questioned the military orientation of America’s Cold War strategy and advocated instead a much greater emphasis on East-West negotiations. He and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden made clear they would not allow Britain to be drawn into a new conflict with China.

  For their part, French officials, even as they warned of China’s aggressive intentions in Indochina, hinted that they would be open to negotiations involving both Beijing and the Viet Minh. Already a year earlier, in early 1951, Pleven had approached the Truman administration gingerly about the possibility of a diplomatic initiative that would connect the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts and settle both simultaneously; the Americans had dismissed it out of hand. Now Paris leaders raised the matter again. Mendès France’s implied question—why was it acceptable for the United States to negotiate with Communist adversaries in Korea but not acceptable for France to do the same in Indochina?—began to resound across the French political spectrum. In April, Christian Pineau of the Socialist Party declared, after a parliamentary mission to Vietnam, that there existed no real solution apart from “international negotiations” involving also the Chinese. Jean Monnet, the architect of postwar French economic planning and a powerful establishment voice (“the power behind the throne,” some called him) wanted the war to end because of its impact on France’s economic position and her role in Europe. If he had his way, Monnet candidly said, he “would liquidate whatever now remains of French interests in Indochina.” At the Foreign Ministry too, there was active consideration of an international agreement including China that would be reached, in effect, over the head of Ho Chi Minh. Such a bargain, many analysts speculated, could salvage something out of the Indochina wreckage and was in any event worth pursuing.9

  To the Truman administration, negotiations on Vietnam, in whatever form, were anathema—“the forbidden subject,” in historian Lloyd Gardner’s apt phrase.10 Harry Truman and Dean Acheson had no love for European colonialism, certainly. But better to have the French there than to face the prospect of a Communist victory, which was sure to follow if France withdrew or negotiated a settlement with Ho Chi Minh. The French, Acheson insisted in June, had to seize the initiative militarily and “think victoriously.” Diplomacy should be avoided until such a time as the West could be guaranteed a favorable result.11

  II

  ONE DETECTS SUBTLE BUT IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES HERE IN HOW the French and British on the one hand and the Americans on the other approached the matter of diplomacy with Communist adversaries. Partly the divergence can be chalked up to Washington’s hegemonic position—top dogs are seldom much interested in compromise. But other factors were at work as well. European governments, operating in physical proximity to rival powers of comparable strength, had long since determined that the resultant pressures placed a premium on negotiation and give-and-take. Only too familiar with imperfect outcomes, with solutions that were neither black nor white but various shades of gray, most European statesmen in the post–World War II era presumed that national interests were destined to conflict and saw diplomacy as a means of reconciling them. They were prepared to make the best of a bad bargain, to accept the inevitability of failures as well as successes in international affairs.

  Americans, on the other hand, shielded from predatory powers for much of their history by two vast oceans, and possessing a very different historical tradition, tended to see things in much less equivocal terms. For them, Old World diplomacy, with its ignoble and complex political choices, had to be rejected, and decisions made on the definite plane of moral principle. The United States, that principle taught, represented the ultimate form of civilization, the source of inspiration for humankind. Her policies were uniquely altruistic, her institutions worthy of special emulation. Any hostility to America was, by definition, hostility to progress and righteousness and therefore was, again by definition, illegitimate.12

  Privately, to be sure, American officials sometimes spoke in more subtle, less Manichaean terms, and their deep aversion to negotiating with Communists did not prevent them from pursuing that course in Korea. But the aversion conditioned their approach to the Korean talks and helped shape their hard-line posture, as did the fact that they operated in a highly charged domestic political atmosphere. Moreover, 1952 was a presidential election year. Truman and the Democrats knew all too well that GOP critics were ready to pounce on any diplomatic deal, to equate compromise with “appeasement,” and to revive support for General Douglas MacArthur’s argument that there was “no substitute for victory.” Sure enough, when the election campaign geared up in the spring, Republican spokesmen asserted that the White House had been foolish to agree to negotiations on Korea, and that it was compounding the error by continuing them in the face of incontrovertible evidence that the Communists were using the time to build up their forces there.13

  All of which helps explain Washington’s categorical rejection in 1952 of negotiations—whether bilateral between France and the Viet Minh, or multilateral involving also the great powers—over Indochina. Senior French officials themselves were ambivalent about seeking a political solution, and some, such as Defense Minister Georges Bidault, still spoke only in terms of pursuing a military victory. More and more, however, hawks like Bidault were becoming an endangered species in Paris, and to a great many others, even a disadvantageous deal now looked better than continuing a seemingly endless war against a determined foe backed by China.

  It’s highly revealing in this regard that each time French policy makers inquired to Washington about exploring the possibilities for a diplomatic agreement, they were rebuffed. When Jean Letourneau, the minister for overseas territories who had also taken the job of high commissioner for Indochina, came to Washingt
on in June to discuss a new U.S. aid agreement, he could only offer a gloomy picture of the state of the war. China would never permit the defeat of the Viet Minh, he said publicly, and therefore an armistice should be sought. Negotiations were under way to end the fighting in Korea; why not seek an international agreement for Indochina? The Americans were horrified. They pressured Letourneau to retract his statement, and Acheson assured the National Security Council that the Frenchman had misspoken: He meant to say that France would seek negotiations only after the military situation turned around. The NSC resolved that the United States must “influence the policies of France and the Associated States toward actions consistent with U.S. objectives.” More to the point, Acheson elaborated, Washington must “impress upon the French the folly of giving up the offensive strategy so brilliantly launched and carried out by de Lattre in favor of a mere holding operation.”14

  Thus it can be said of the spring of 1952: It was a turning point that didn’t turn. French attitudes were undergoing a sea change, as countless observers noted. The war had never been popular, but now, for the first time, one could speak of genuine antiwar agitation. In Ambassador Bruce’s words, a snowball had started to form. Yet the Truman administration insisted on pressing forward. De Lattre might be dead, but the example of his “brilliant” offensive strategy lived on and had to be followed. Early negotiations had to be rejected. The French, U.S. policy makers were in effect saying, did not have to choose, did not have to decide between their European and Southeast Asian commitments; they could have both. American assistance would allow it.