With these ends in mind, in April 1955 DRVN representatives attended the conference of Afro-Asian nations in Bandung, Indonesia, where the Cold War–era nonaligned movement originated. There, prime minister Pham Van Dong spoke with “studied moderation” of his government’s commitment to the Geneva accords and to the peaceful reunification of his country promised by those accords.99 A few weeks later, Ho himself led a DRVN delegation to the Soviet Union and China. There, he recycled some of the rhetoric Dong had used in Bandung to obtain pledges for not just moral backing but also “valuable” material advances toward the realization of the DRVN’s political and economic objectives.100 It was the success of such initiatives that the party leadership would assiduously seek to replicate thereafter, on a global scale.
CONFRONTING DIEM
As Hanoi concentrated on convincing southern communists to embrace the Geneva accords, on developing the northern economy, and on containing the United States, Diem slowly but effectively consolidated his authority in the SOVN. Having solved his most critical problems with his armed forces, he immediately targeted the rebel armies of the Hoa Hao, an eccentric Buddhist sect, and the Cao Dai, a more eclectic religious denomination, and the forces of the Binh Xuyen criminal syndicate. Collectively, these factions, not communists, represented the most serious internal challenge to Saigon after the DRVN entered into the Geneva accords and started regrouping the bulk of its forces to the North.
In the spring of 1955, SOVN military and security forces began moving systematically against the factions and their armies. Diem “embarked on a campaign of repression and widespread propaganda for the establishment of a hard authoritarian regime, employing ruthless . . . methods to root out rebels and establish authority,” western observers noted.101 The campaign was a resounding success. According to historian Jessica Chapman, the outcome of the “sect crisis” was a “key turning point” for Diem. His regime had begun the conflict with the factions “on the brink of collapse,” but emerged “with what seemed uncontested control over South Vietnam” and “full support from Washington.”102 If that was not ominous enough for the VWP, in April the deadline for beginning consultations between representative authorities of northern and southern Vietnam to set the terms for the 1956 elections passed with no indication that Saigon or even France intended to respect that crucial provision of the Geneva accords. The French Foreign Ministry itself admitted later that it was a “spectacular violation” of the accords.103 Suspending military struggle and banking on political struggle and the scheduled elections to prevail in the South now looked more and more like a mistake by DRVN leaders.
Despite these alarming developments and to the consternation of southern militants, the “principal aspirations” of leaders in Hanoi nonetheless remained to fulfill the terms of the Geneva accords and await the promised elections. According to Nhan dan, the effort to implement the Geneva accords entered in the summer of 1955 a new phase, in which the party and the people had to struggle even harder “against the reappearance of new hostilities and realize the 1956 elections.”104 In secret dispatches to its agents in the South, the Party Secretariat reiterated that the plan of action for the South remained political, not armed, struggle. In light of Saigon’s growing belligerence and disregard for the terms of the Geneva accords, however, the Secretariat authorized limited indirect support to noncommunist factions fighting Diem’s forces.105 That summer, Hanoi instructed Le Duan to seek a pact on behalf of the VWP with other organizations opposed to Diem in Nam Bo. As previously noted, the Politburo member doubled as head of COSVN, renamed the Nam Bo Executive Committee (Xu uy Nam Bo) in September, and in that capacity directed the activities of three interzonal subcommittees, each responsible for guarding the interests of the revolution in five to seven provinces.106 In October, Le Duan met with noncommunist rebel leaders, including Nam Lua and Ba Cut of the Hoa Hao. Despite doctrinal differences, the three men agreed to form the Southern Committee of the Patriotic Front, which eventually encompassed surviving members of not just the Hoa Hao but the Cao Dai and Binh Xuyen rebel armies as well. Given its professed commitment to peace and to the Geneva accords, the VWP’s ties to the new front remained secret.107
While acquiescing in such collaborations, Hanoi publicly followed an accommodationist course vis-à-vis Saigon. It had laid the foundation for this earlier in the year, when it openly called for normalizing relations between the two zones, a process it proposed should begin with talks on restoring postal communications.108 The approach was sensible and not altogether unpromising. Constructive engagement of the southern regime might improve bilateral relations, save the Geneva accords, and improve the chances for peaceful reunification. At this time, Hanoi considered France, the other signatory to the Geneva agreement on Vietnam, officially responsible for implementing the accords, and therefore for arranging the general elections in the southern half of the country. However, it also understood that its “real interlocutor” in this matter must be the “competent representative authorities” in the South, that is, appropriate officials of the Diem regime, with whom it still hoped soon to begin pre-election consultations.109 In January Pham Van Dong had confided to a western journalist that Hanoi was “prepared to make large concessions for the sake of reaching agreement” on such talks.110 Toward that end, DRVN authorities refrained from using the familiar labels of “criminal” and “traitor” in public references to the SOVN regime.111
“There is no doubt in my mind,” the British consul commented in a revealing cable to London in June, “that [DRVN leaders] are sincere in saying, as they have all along, that they really desire nation-wide elections; I consider that the achievement of this aim has first priority among their political objectives.” National reunification “has always been one of their basic slogans,” the consul continued, “and the fact that they are ready to work for this through the medium of elections reflects their confidence in the result of the polls.” The leaders were “sufficiently sure of their own position in the North, and confident of a sizeable number of votes from the South,” the consul believed, “to feel that they can afford to be flexible in their approach to the question and possibly to make certain concessions to democratic practice in electoral procedure.” The consul thought it “likely” that DRVN leaders were preparing to come to the conference table for talks on elections “in an apparently conciliatory spirit and to make every effort to avoid a breakdown of the talks.”112 The Canadian ICSC commissioner concurred with that assessment. “Given the dominant role which they exert throughout the whole of the Democratic Republic territory [i.e., North Vietnam], and the strong position which their sympathies occupy in various areas in the South,” he felt, “there is little doubt that the mood of [DRVN leaders] is one of confidence.” “For this reason, the North is likely to be prepared, at least on paper, and possibly also in fact, to accept electoral arrangements which may surprise the world in their apparent liberality.” The DRVN leaders’ “most likely tactic,” the commissioner concluded, “will be either to prepare or to agree to arrangements for all Vietnam elections, which will incorporate what they hope will be conditions acceptable to and defensible before free world opinion.”113
During the summer of 1955, the DRVN Foreign Ministry developed “several alternative plans” for holding elections in Vietnam. Pham Van Dong told a Canadian diplomat that Hanoi thought it “inconceivable” that it should not be able to find some common ground, “some basis of agreement,” with the South. It became especially important to placate Diem after he announced on 16 July that as a nonsignatory to the Geneva accords, the SOVN was “not bound in any way by those Agreements signed [between military representatives of France and the DRVN] against the will of the Vietnamese people,” and his government would in fact refuse to participate in any political process designed to reunify Vietnam “if proof is not given us that [Hanoi] put the superior interests of the National Community above those of communism.”114
Another calculation behind Hanoi’s pursuit
of rapprochement with Saigon despite Diem’s intractableness was that any such endeavor might antagonize Washington or render it uneasy over the prospect of elections or any other cooperative process between the two Vietnamese governments. Aid from Washington sustained the Saigon regime, and anything that might pry the two apart was worth trying.115 Admittedly, any effort to divorce Saigon from Washington by now had little chance of success, as DRVN leaders understood. But that they made the effort anyway attested to their eagerness to save the Geneva accords and keep alive their flickering hope for peaceful reunification.
Having for all intents and purposes eradicated the main threats to his authority —namely, the rebel armies of the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen—Diem was completely unresponsive to Hanoi’s overtures and in fact moved to annihilate what remained of the communist presence in the South starting that summer. On 20 July, one day before the first anniversary of the Geneva accords, he launched a vigorous, violent campaign called “Denounce the Communists” (To Cong) to root out communists and “pro-Communist attitudes” among the population in the South.116 Soon thereafter his government gave carte blanche to SOVN military and security forces to incarcerate or exterminate all known or suspected communists below the seventeenth parallel. The resulting campaign dealt a crushing blow to the southern communist movement, already enfeebled by repatriations to the North. It severely damaged most remaining party organizations and “succeeded in inducing a considerable proportion of the population to view that the authority of the [SOVN] Government had come to stay.”117 Diem’s security initiatives in 1955, historian Mark Moyar writes, “created far more problems for the stay-behind Communists than Hanoi had anticipated.”118 Yet the sheer ruthlessness of the campaign may have had some collateral benefits for the revolutionary movement, as political scientist David Elliott maintains, for it alienated many nationalists from Diem’s government and produced a pool of new recruits.119
In a desperate effort to encourage rapprochement with the SOVN, DRVN authorities developed a plan calling for a modus vivendi between Saigon and Hanoi, leading to a normalization of relations between the two governments as a prelude to reunification. According to the plan, following consultative talks between the two sides, a weak central government would be established, making Vietnam a confederation of two “zonal” governments. From there, each zone would organize its own “amalgamation” into a unitary central government.120 “The problem of unification should be solved by electing two separate chambers of an all-Viet Nam National Assembly, one each for the North and the South,” a revised draft of the plan urged. All political parties and organizations would be free to present candidates. After the elections, the two chambers would work together to elect a “joint Government.” Although formally united under that government, “North and South would [each] retain a large measure of autonomy.” The armed forces of the two zones would remain separate and independent until fused into one army by negotiation.121 The Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF), a broad-based organization formed in September 1955 in the North, circulated and publicized the first complete draft of the plan. The new organization’s mandate was to promote national reconciliation according to popular shibboleths of independence, unity, and democracy, and to demonstrate the DRVN’s repudiation of violence as a means of unifying the country.122 Western observers cynically saw the VFF as essentially “a step designed to provide a policy to meet M. Diem’s refusal to accept the Geneva Settlement.”123
Unsurprisingly, Saigon promptly rejected the plan. In fact, none of Hanoi’s efforts to mollify Diem bore fruit in the end, as he obdurately refused to cooperate with any of them and insisted that South Vietnam would have nothing to do with the 1956 elections. In October, Diem actually held a referendum of his own asking the southern population to elect him head of state as well as chief of government in a new, democratic, and fully sovereign Vietnamese state.124 Officially, 98.2 percent of the resulting vote favored him.125 Despite claims that the result was rigged, the referendum enhanced Diem’s legitimacy as well as that of his regime, as it in effect abolished the French-sponsored SOVN and paved the way for creation of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). Unlike its previous incarnation, the new state had no colonial past, no ties to France, and therefore even less reason to honor the terms of the Geneva accords.126 The “obvious purpose” of the referendum, thought Pham Van Dong, was “creating a separate state in the Southern part of Vietnam, in stark contradiction with both the letter and spirit of the Geneva Agreements.”127 On the other hand, a western observer believed, “the success of the plebiscite was a measure of the success of the policies pursued by the [Saigon] Government and the extent to which the people had been successfully conditioned not merely to reject [Bao Dai, the ousted head of the SOVN,] but to accept M. Diem as leader.” To be sure, “the methods employed undoubtedly increased the opposition and particularly intellectual opposition to M. Diem in South Vietnam,” this observer noted, “but they also secured for the time being at least that that opposition was ineffective.”128
DRVN leaders had grossly underestimated Diem, it seemed, and overplayed their hand by opting to pursue their revolutionary objectives politically and diplomatically while suspending military operations. To Le Duan and other VWP militants, developments in the South since the Geneva accords reinforced the conviction that the moderates in the Politburo had erred in assuming that they could meet the main goals of the Vietnamese revolution without armed struggle. “As they had done in 1946, during the negotiations that preceded the outbreak of [the Indochina War],” Fredrik Logevall writes, Ho and like-minded leaders had “overestimated the power of what they like[d] to call ‘democratic elements’” in enemy circles.129 For all its heavy-handedness, Diem’s rule in the South had quelled dissidence and established him as the sole vector of power there. As Diem’s success continued unabated, many in the VWP came to see that the revolutionary movement in the South was in dire straits, as the “old-style French colonial society” there was transformed into “a new-style American colonial society,” with Diem at its helm.130
SUSTAINING PEACEFUL STRUGGLE
In 1956 Hanoi openly acknowledged for the first time that the prospects for peaceful national reunification were dim and the struggle for reunification would probably be longer and more difficult than anticipated.131 But because the moderate consensus prevailed in the Politburo and the Central Committee, the communist revolutionary strategy remained unchanged. Instead of arming and fighting, Hanoi advised its followers in the South to continue infiltrating the Saigon regime and subverting it from within. It also urged them to broaden their popular support by earning the trust and sympathy of “neutral” or indifferent southerners, to infiltrate labor unions, women’s and youth organizations, and other such groups, and to try to integrate large numbers of rural and urban youths into mass-based revolutionary organizations similar to the VFF in the North. The party also initiated a major effort in both halves of the country to silence detractors of its revolutionary line inside and outside the VWP, and to “make cadres and the masses believe in the line of political struggle of the party at present,” to convince them that that was “the most effective means” of achieving national reunification.132
DRVN decision-makers stuck to the current line for various reasons. Ideologically, Ho, Giap, and other leaders still strongly objected to a military solution; realistically, the success of Diem’s “Denounce the Communists” campaign had “render[ed] very doubtful the issue of a recourse to force, at least in the short term.”133 Owing to the decimation of communist forces and their sympathizers in the South, Hanoi could not at that time launch an effective guerrilla struggle, even if it wanted to.134 The PAVN, for its part, was unprepared for war. In 1955 Hanoi had initiated, at Giap’s urging, a five-year plan to modernize the northern armed forces. But since then the government had reduced defense spending in the interests of the North’s socialist transformation.135 To that end, thousands of experienced soldiers had been demobilized and assigned to nonmili
tary units and duties.136 In June 1956 the government began demobilizing no less than eighty thousand additional soldiers to “strengthen the labor potential.”137 Also, the PAVN still had no armored units and no air force, indispensable assets in the event of a resumption of hostilities with possible American involvement.138
Satisfying allies’ aspirations for peace was another incentive to wage only political struggle in the South. Both Beijing and Moscow opposed resumption of hostilities in Vietnam after the signing of the Geneva accords. Instead of fighting in the South, they advised, Hanoi should concentrate on rehabilitating the economy in the North and wait on events below the seventeenth parallel. Each had been emphatic about its desire to not see war start anew in Indochina; acting against their wishes therefore might jeopardize the aid they provided, a risk Hanoi simply could not afford to take at the time. More than 13 million people lived in the North in 1956. Yet among them were only thirty engineers and technical experts with the kind of training and expertise needed to improve the industrial base, the centerpiece of the economic development the party wanted to achieve.139 Early in the year, the government launched a program of economic modernization centering around consolidation and expansion of the industrial base and production of manufactured goods for export. “Healthy [foreign] trade will stimulate the development of industry and agriculture,” the program’s originators promised, “contribute to raising the standard of living of the people, stabilize commodity prices, stabilize currency, consolidate state finances, [and] make the national economy thrive.”140 Without the support of its two biggest allies, Hanoi would never achieve the goals of the program. In fact, to help its neighbor meet their economic objectives, China dispatched the first of what eventually became thousands of technical and other advisers to North Vietnam.141 To sustain this flow of support, it was necessary for Hanoi to exercise caution in the South and at least pretend to heed the desires of its Soviet and Chinese allies “counseling moderation.”142
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