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

by Fredrik Logevall

  A watershed moment had come. By the start of May 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem had obtained what he had long sought, namely full power in Saigon and firm American backing for his government. Just days earlier he had appeared politically finished; now he was more entrenched than ever. That the underlying problems with his government had not gone away was either forgotten or pushed aside by his U.S. backers, who were focused on the here and now at the expense of longer-term strategic considerations. Lightning Joe Collins had raised profound questions about the Diem experiment’s viability; these were now filed away and were not to be articulated by a high-level official again for a very long time.

  On May 6, the U.S. government, relieved of the pain of reorienting the policy, reaffirmed its commitment to the regime: “The United States has great sympathy for a nationalist cause that is free and effective. For this reason we have been and are continuing to support the legal government of Ngo Dinh Diem.”65

  By this expression of support Eisenhower narrowed the options on Vietnam—for himself and for his successors. Diem’s government had not lived up to the “standards of performance” on which the administration conditioned U.S. aid, but now the president backed him anyway, increasing America’s stake by supplanting the French, in the face of repeated objections from Eisenhower’s “personal representative” on the scene. The White House found it far preferable to stand firm, chiefly because it feared the implications of letting Diem fall. His demise would deliver a blow to American credibility on the world stage, while at home it would embolden the administration’s critics and cause furor among Diem’s growing band of influential supporters. As so often in U.S. policy making on Vietnam, staying the course proved the easiest bet in the short term.

  But Eisenhower might have chosen differently. He might have accepted Collins’s argument that using Diem to build a strong, capable democratic alternative to Ho Chi Minh’s DRV was in all likelihood illusory; at a minimum, it required using America’s leverage to force far-reaching changes in how Diem governed, or more ambitiously, it involved working with the French to bring in a new leader, one more likely to win broad-based popular support. Or he might have been bolder and pursued a “Titoist” solution for Vietnam. Ho’s primary concern, in this line of reasoning, was to gain and maintain Vietnam’s independence from France, just as it was Marshal Tito’s to gain Yugoslavia’s independence from the Soviet Union. If the United States could aid Tito, as she had been doing for several years, why should she have to vanquish Ho? Why indeed. Paul Kattenburg, a discerning State Department intelligence analyst who was in Saigon at the time and who would later pen a penetrating account of America’s Vietnam adventure, remarked to a colleague, in the winter of 1954–55, that the most profitable U.S. course would be to offer Hanoi $500 million in grant aid for the reconstruction of war damage. Ho could not refuse such an offer, Kattenburg maintained, since it would afford a means for him to maintain independence from Soviet and Chinese domination. The sum of money was considerable, but it was lower than what Washington seemed to be committing itself to spending on behalf of Ngo Dinh Diem.66

  For France, the outcome of the Battle of Saigon was a bitter blow, a stunning demonstration of her waning influence in South Vietnam. For many colonists and a goodly number of French officers, the revolt of the sects had been a last-ditch chance to maintain some authority on the ground. That hope was now gone, replaced by resentment and rancor. Franco-American antagonism in Saigon grew markedly in May, poisoning even the professional relationships between journalists from the two countries. “Some French officers I had known and worked with passed me on the rue Catinat without a sign of recognition,” the USIA’s Howard Simpson later wrote. “If the murderous looks of the old French colons on the Continental’s terrace had been knife blades, I would have died a hundred times over.”67

  At the highest levels, the tension level was a notch or two lower but still palpable. In a dramatic confrontation in Paris in the second week of May, Prime Minister Edgar Faure (who had succeeded Pierre Mendès France in February) argued forcefully that Diem was “not only incapable but mad” and that France could “no longer take risks with him.” If Washington persisted in its support, France would have to disengage from Vietnam. Dulles was unmoved. The United States would henceforth frame her policies independently, he said, and would not feel bound to consult with Paris before acting. Diem might represent a “gamble,” but he should nevertheless get unreserved support. Having thus established the bottom line—and made clear the power relationship—the secretary appealed for France to stay in Vietnam and support Diem until the Vietnamese could decide their own fate through elections. Faure nodded sullenly. He knew he had no real cards to play.

  He knew, that is to say, what every other serious observer now knew, including not least Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues in Hanoi: The French were Out in South Vietnam, and the Americans were In.

  CHAPTER 26

  MIRACLE MAN

  THE IMPORT OF THE MOMENT WAS NOT LOST ON LEADERS IN HANOI. They understood only too well that with his victory over the sects in early May 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem had achieved his long-sought objective: the consolidation of power in Saigon as well as staunch American backing for his government. French military and political influence in South Vietnam, meanwhile, had suffered a blow from which it would almost certainly never recover.

  For Ho Chi Minh and his colleagues in the north, it was a stinging setback. Once again they had miscalculated, wrongly assuming that France would maintain a strong presence in the south through the elections for reunification scheduled for July 1956—elections that virtually all informed observers thought Ho would win—and thereby keep the United States from becoming more heavily entrenched. “It was with you, the French, that we signed the Geneva agreements, and it is up to you to see that they are respected,” Pham Van Dong, soon to be named DRV premier, had told a visiting French official on New Year’s Day 1955.1 On the first day of the year, it was still possible for Pham Van Dong to believe that France would follow through in that way; now, four months later, the hope seemed forever dashed. As they had done in 1946, during the negotiations that preceded the outbreak of major fighting, DRV leaders had overestimated the power of what they liked to call “democratic elements” in Paris to tilt French policy in Hanoi’s direction, or at least to ensure compliance among all concerned with the elections provision of the accords. In reality, few in French officialdom were so committed. With events in North Africa increasingly clamoring for attention, Indochina receded from view, and moreover there was the ever-present need to maintain smooth relations with Washington. Try though local French commanders might to assist the sects in their battle with Diem, they never had the full backing of authorities in the metropole.

  And so, seemingly overnight, French political and military influence in South Vietnam withered. On May 20, 1955, French forces withdrew from the Saigon area and assembled in a coastal enclave. From there, their numbers steadily dwindled, until on April 28, 1956, the last French soldier departed Vietnam—signifying the symbolic end, some said, of France’s century in the Far East. Earlier in the month, on April 10, there occurred the last parade of French troops in Saigon. Foreign legionnaires in sparkling white kepis, paratroopers in camouflage uniforms and dark red berets, and bearded Moroccans with tan turbans marched by, their flags rippling in the breeze. In the crowd were Vietnamese who wore medals they had won in the service of France. Some could be seen wiping away tears as the troops disappeared out of view, bound for their waiting ships.2

  FRENCH TROOPS ON PARADE FOR THE LAST TIME IN SAIGON, APRIL 10, 1956. (photo credit 26.1)

  That month Paris also shut down the Ministry for the Associated States and moved its functions to the Foreign Ministry. And to fully sever the old colonial connection, France withdrew her high commissioner from Vietnam (to be replaced by an ambassador, who was not appointed for more than a year).3

  Gone now was the authority of the only great power that was both bound by the Geneva Accord
s and—up until that moment—capable of action in the south, in view of the politico-military means still at her disposal there. DRV leaders, well aware of Diem’s hostile view of the accords, grasped immediately that the odds that the 1956 elections would take place had just gotten much longer. And indeed, barely had the shooting stopped in the streets of Saigon when Diem launched a propaganda campaign to condemn the Geneva Accords in general and the elections provision in particular. He refused to enter into preparatory consultations with Hanoi on the matter of the elections (according to paragraph 7 of the Final Declaration, these consultations were to begin by July 20, 1955), on the grounds that the State of (South) Vietnam was neither a signatory at Geneva nor a party to the Final Declaration, and moreover that only a duly elected representative body for the south could authorize the Saigon government to take a position on the subject.

  For good measure, Diem and his American supporters claimed that the accords had declared “fundamental freedoms and democratic institutions” as prerequisites for any election (rather than as anticipated consequences, as article 14A actually specified). Since—according to the time-honored American line—no one could ever vote for a Communist regime of his own free will (Communism being wholly divorced from the mainstream of normal human beliefs), these conditions must not yet exist in Vietnam. Ergo, it would be impossible for a legitimate election to take place, even if supervised by the International Control Commission, as Geneva provided.

  The claims were dubious at best. “When France signed the Geneva Agreement,” one exasperated British official remarked, “it signed also on behalf of the southern part of Vietnam. The Geneva Agreement also clearly stipulates that the signatories of the agreement and their successors in their functions shall be responsible for ensuring the observance and enforcement of the terms and provisions thereof.”4 The United States, this and other British analysts maintained, had openly declared that she would not disturb the implementation of the accords and could not therefore now legitimately support Diem in his refusal to even enter consultations with Hanoi. French officials argued likewise, as did those from the ICC member nations India, Canada, and Poland. As for the “freedom and democracy” claim, the critics were derisive. “Unfortunately,” another British observer acidly remarked, “there seems little doubt that the freer the elections in Vietnam—at present, at least—the greater will be the Viet Minh majority.”5

  American officials heard these counterarguments and were sensitive to them. Though determined to keep the 1956 elections from actually taking place—Ho Chi Minh, they acknowledged in private moments, would in all likelihood win handsomely—they couldn’t be seen as actively working toward that end. For appearances’ sake, Diem should go through the motions of consulting with the North Vietnamese on the plans and conduct of the elections. If he didn’t, how could he legitimately claim that they would not be fair? “The over-all United States position in the world would be harmed by U.S. identification with a policy which appeared to be directed towards of avoidance of elections,” the National Security Council concluded, and “world opinion, and for that matter domestic U.S. opinion, would have difficulty in understanding why the U.S. should oppose in Vietnam the democratic procedures which the U.S. had advocated in Korea, Austria, and Germany.”6

  But U.S. planners were not willing to act on the basis of this analysis and pressure Diem to participate in the preparatory consultations. The bottom-line American objective had not changed: to maintain a separate, non-Communist bastion in southern Vietnam. More than ever, Washington policy makers saw Diem as the vehicle for executing that policy. Doubts about him remained in some circles, to be sure, but in mid-1955 virtually no one in official Washington was prepared to use American leverage to try to move him from his intransigence. The leverage was indeed fast disappearing, for by backing Diem through the darkest days of the sect crisis and not enforcing the conditions set down by President Eisenhower the previous fall, the administration had in effect locked itself into a defense of the south. No longer could it blame the situation in Vietnam on French colonialism and wash its hands of the entire mess. A dynamic took hold that would persist right through the end of the Diem years: As U.S. involvement steadily grew, so did the stakes for policy makers who faced the unpalatable choice of either abandoning the commitment or acquiescing to the Saigon leader’s actions or lack thereof. In a dependent relationship, these men learned, the protégé can often control the benefactor by threatening to collapse.7

  II

  TO COMPOUND HANOI’S SENSE OF ISOLATION, NO OTHER PARTICIPANT at Geneva was prepared to work hard to compel Diem to accept the elections provision of the accords. Britain and France valued relations with the United States far too much to defy her over Indochina, and neither the Soviet Union nor China would force the issue. The Soviets, as co-chairs (with Britain) of the Geneva Conference, could have threatened to bring the players back to Geneva, thereby allowing Hanoi to make its case before world opinion. But the Moscow leadership under Nikita Khrushchev did not wish to jeopardize a recent calming in East-West relations for what Soviet leaders had always considered a minor sideshow in the Cold War; as a result, the Kremlin was content to pass the buck to France, arguing that Paris was primarily responsible for ensuring that the political provisions of Geneva were implemented. The Chinese government too refused to risk broader policy objectives elsewhere in the world—including a resolution of the conflict over Taiwan—for the sake of rigidly backing the North Vietnamese position.8

  Once again the DRV was getting the diplomatic cold shoulder from her closest international allies. In the summer of 1955, when Ho Chi Minh, in the company of General Secretary Truong Chinh and other senior officials, visited first Beijing and then Moscow, he received polite expressions of diplomatic support as well as pledges of increased financial aid ($200 million from China and $100 million from the USSR), but no assurances that either Communist giant would bring its pressure to bear on the Western powers regarding national elections for Vietnam. The Soviets even questioned Ho’s Marxist-Leninist bona fides, as they had done for three decades. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov did agree to approach the British about reconvening the Geneva Conference, but the effort was halfhearted at best—when London refused, Molotov quickly dropped the matter.9

  What to do? The apparent failure of the Geneva program forced the DRV to recalibrate. Any shred of hope that reunification with the south would happen quickly or easily had been dashed. At the Central Committee’s Eighth Plenum in August, a subdued Ho remarked on the curious fact that while the world situation had become appreciably calmer in recent months, the situation in Southeast Asia was, if anything, more tense, due especially to America’s growing commitment to thwarting revolution in the region. Yet if the diplomatic route to reunification was looking more and more impassable, the military option appeared chancy at best. For the foreseeable future, the Diem regime, with its U.S. backing, would in all likelihood be too strong to overtake by force, and moreover the DRV still faced huge tasks in the area of reconstruction and the creation of a socialist society. As well, North Vietnam’s public insistence on the fulfillment of the Geneva Accords precluded too open a breach of it by herself.10

  Accordingly, Ho’s government vowed again to unify the country by peaceful means through general elections. At the same time, a new concern permeated the deliberations in Hanoi: What if Diem actually succeeded in building up popular support in the south? Then the hope for early reunification, already dimming, might be gone forever. To win support among southerners and create the impression that they were sacrificing some of their objectives in order to achieve a national agreement, Hanoi leaders in September announced the creation of the Fatherland Front. While emphasizing the essential unity of Vietnam, this program said that reunification would happen slowly and would not involve (at least immediately) the communization of the southern half. Moderation was the watchword. The front’s purpose, Ho Chi Minh announced at the founding congress, was “to unite with all pat
riots whatever their political tendencies, religions, etc.,” who rejected the nefarious U.S.-Diem plot to divide the country in perpetuity.11

  The program was a hard sell. The emphasis on moderation rang hollow alongside the recent mass exodus of refugees to South Vietnam and with the proliferation of reports concerning the DRV’s brutal land reform campaign. Diem’s propaganda machine publicized and embellished these reports far and wide in the south, to considerable effect. The Saigon premier also launched a campaign of repression, under the slogan “Denounce the Communists,” which summoned the population into mass meetings to denounce Viet Minh members and sympathizers; the South Vietnamese army and police arrested thousands of suspected subversives and sent them to detention camps. The regime escalated the effort in January 1956 by issuing Ordinance No. 6, which gave officials almost unlimited powers in combating political opponents. Henceforth, the edict read, anyone considered a danger “to the defense of the state and public order” was to be thrown in jail or placed under house arrest until “order and security” had been achieved—however deep into the future that might be. Hundreds of executions occurred, some of them by beheading or disembowelment. The harsh methods were not without effect. Gradually, through 1956 and 1957, clandestine Viet Minh organizations in the south were decimated.12

  To solidify his hold on power, Diem also moved cleverly to remove any lingering threat posed by Bao Dai by calling a referendum to decide whether to maintain the monarchy or to establish a republic with himself as president. To ensure the right outcome, the government prohibited campaigning for the emperor, stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated voters, and showered urban and rural areas with anti–Bao Dai propaganda. On voting day, October 23, 1955, Diem claimed he won 98.2 percent of the ballots, having spurned Pentagon suggestions that he aim for a more credible 60 to 70 percent. (His 605,025 votes in Saigon were one-third more than the city’s registered voters.)13