Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965

by Asselin, Pierre

  As Hanoi began to prepare for a war it did not want, southern revolutionary leaders braced for the more active struggle they craved. The Interzone V Executive Committee instructed cadres under its command to “develop the ability to wage war” even as they sustained the political struggle for the time being. In response to continued attacks by forces of the Diem regime, revolutionaries in central and southwestern South Vietnam began to form armed units starting in October 1957.16 By the end of the year, there were thirty-seven such units, and by mid-1958 they had engaged in a number of limited “actions” against RVN forces, with some success. Whether Hanoi authorized any of this is unknown. More likely than not, it did, though Lien-Hang Nguyen has suggested otherwise.17

  Having recently obtained sanction from the Central Committee to eliminate “traitors,” over the course of 1957, southern revolutionaries murdered, kidnapped, or enticed into their ranks 452 RVN officials, most of them village chiefs.18 Meanwhile, encouraging news came from the Soviet Union: at a meeting of world communist parties in Moscow in November, the CPSU acknowledged under pressure from the Chinese that under certain circumstances episodes of world revolution—that is, transitions from nonsocialist to socialist polities and societies—might not always be peaceful. However, in the final declaration of the meeting in which that acknowledgment was made, the language on permissible forms of “nonpeaceful” struggle was vague to the point of opaqueness. And even that came at the cost of “acute conflict” between Beijing and Moscow over just what kinds of transition to socialism were and were not possible.19

  As 1957 gave way to 1958, Hanoi continued its diplomatic advances toward Diem’s regime, hoping to salvage what it could of the Geneva accords. During a visit to Burma in February, Ho Chi Minh repeated the DRVN’s willingness to participate in talks with Saigon to discuss reunification elections.20 Subsequently, via various cultural organs, DRVN authorities invited southern painters to exhibit their works in Hanoi, asked southern intellectuals to speak out publicly in support of reunification, proposed that an “all-Vietnamese” national education curriculum be adopted in both halves of the country, and suggested again that the postal services of the two Vietnams cooperate to permit the circulation of personal mail throughout the divided country.21 Most notably, on 7 March Pham Van Dong wrote to Ngo Dinh Diem proposing a meeting of “the competent authorities of the two zones” to discuss bilateral reductions of armed forces and resumption of commercial exchanges.22 Predictably, Dong’s proposal elicited no response, but even that served the purposes of the political struggle, which may well have been the intent all along. According to the French Embassy in Saigon, southerners “closely followed” the affair of Dong’s proposal, and “seem[ed] disappointed by the negativity manifest in the intransigence of the response of their Government.”23

  Consistent with the “North-first” policy, the National Assembly focused almost entirely on domestic matters during its spring 1958 session.24 Meeting later that year, the Central Committee paid no heed to the situation in the South, addressing instead economic conditions in the North. The land reform campaign, it affirmed, had been an overall success “despite some errors.”25 Most importantly, it adopted a three-year plan (1958–60) for economic nationalization and modernization, including collectivization in agriculture. A year earlier, the committee had announced that for the first time overall production levels had exceeded those for 1939, the last year of peace, and the country was ready to move toward socialist transformation. The new three-year plan was intended to do just that.26 This initiative coincided, not unintentionally, with China’s Great Leap Forward.27 “The China of today is the Vietnam of tomorrow,” Hanoi officials proclaimed.28 Collectivization was to be the final stage in the socialist transformation of the North Vietnamese countryside.29 The three-year plan reaffirmed—and extended—Hanoi’s commitment to the “North-first” policy and to moderation in the South.

  As they collectivized the countryside, DRVN authorities sought to revamp the urban and industrial sectors of the economy along similar lines. The industrial sector was still notably underdeveloped, a result not only of French calculations during the colonial era but of the subsequent wars against Japan and France. Factories had been damaged, destroyed, or gutted, and those still operating were largely privately owned. Handicraft production still accounted for 59 percent of total nonagricultural production, much too large a share for a would-be modern economy in a self-professed socialist state.30 That began to change as the DRVN expropriated private enterprises and began to build new ones of its own. In 1958, state-owned and -operated enterprises accounted for nearly half of all manufacturing, and the government was in the process of acquiring substantial control of retail trade and transportation.31 Because of a shortage of investment capital and technical and managerial expertise, Hanoi allowed some bourgeois capitalists to retain control of their enterprises and encouraged others to develop new ones. Such actions were consistent with Lenin’s endorsement of collaboration with capitalists where necessary to facilitate development and modernization of the industrial sector. Later that year, chairman of the State Planning Commission Nguyen Duy Trinh told the National Assembly that the socialist transformation of the economy, to be completed by the end of 1960, must be assiduously pursued because it would solve the food problem and improve “the people’s life” in the North.32

  THE ONSET OF THE SINO-SOVIET DISPUTE

  In October 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched the Sputnik satellite into space. That plus Soviet claims of missile superiority over the United States a month later validated the very real concerns of the Eisenhower administration about a growing missile gap between the two superpowers. The second Berlin crisis of 1958 further hampered bilateral relations. Yet, in spite of these developments, Moscow remained committed to peaceful coexistence, and Soviet-American relations improved over time. The Soviet Union manifested its commitment to peaceful coexistence by offering to host the American National Exhibition in Moscow and Vice President Nixon in 1959, and even agreed to a visit to the United States by Premier Khrushchev.

  Meanwhile, Beijing’s domestic and foreign policy underwent a process of radicalization, largely the product of Mao’s commitment to “continuous revolution,” to pushing the Chinese revolution forward through successive mass mobilization campaigns. In 1958, Mao and the CCP launched the Great Leap Forward, an ambitious program of accelerated industrialization and communization. In August, they provoked the second Taiwan Strait crisis by resuming sustained bombardment of islands controlled by the Nationalist Chinese regime of Jiang Jieshi in Taipei.

  China’s “left” turn as the Soviet Union continued steering “right” strained relations between the two countries. Increasingly by this time, Mao openly objected to the Soviet foreign policy course set by Khrushchev. In April 1958, Moscow approached Beijing with a proposal to construct a long-wave radio transmission center and receiving station on Hainan Island to facilitate Soviet naval communications. Shortly thereafter it made another proposal, this one for setting up a joint submarine flotilla. Both proposals offended Mao, who thought they were part of a larger Soviet plan to gain more influence in the PRC, even to control it. According to historian Chen Jian, Mao’s reaction was likely conditioned by “China’s humiliating modern experiences,” which encouraged Chinese leaders to “suspect the behavior of any foreign country as being driven by ulterior, or even evil, intentions.”33 Beijing soon accused Moscow of practicing “big-power chauvinism” and began taking its distance. The rift between the two became public for the first time shortly thereafter. When the PRC and India began to clash over their border, a conflict that intensified after Delhi granted asylum to the Dalai Lama, Moscow refused to side with Beijing in the dispute. For Mao and the CCP, the refusal was tantamount to supporting Delhi and betraying an ally.

  The Sino-Soviet dispute was potentially devastating for the future of the Vietnamese revolution. Over the years, Hanoi had established proven, intimate ties with both countries. E
ach had supported its revolution politically and materially, helping to deter Washington from intervening militarily in Vietnam. The dispute between Moscow and Beijing was thus dismaying and dangerous. It was dismaying because Hanoi could find no obvious way to deal with the problem to its entire advantage, and because it threatened to compromise the world revolution and the special role DRVN leaders already envisioned for themselves in that revolution. It was dangerous because there might come a time when Hanoi would have to choose between its ideological and material benefactors—to pick a side in their dispute and thus risk vital losses.

  As VWP members lamented the deterioration of Sino-Soviet relations, they also developed an affinity with either Moscow or Beijing. Party leaders did their best to preclude this taking of sides, since it risked undermining the unity of their organization, but even they succumbed. Militants, including Le Duan, who had been deeply disturbed by Khrushchev’s call for peaceful coexistence, were quick to side with China, whose boldness they respected and even came to admire. After all, boldness was what they thought the leadership in Hanoi needed to show more of if Vietnam was ever going to be reunified. Moreover, militants considered China’s recent historical experience more relevant than the Soviet Union’s to Vietnam’s present circumstances and their own purposes. They felt an “automatic identification” with China because it remained engaged in some of the same tasks confronting the Vietnamese, including completion of national liberation and reunification. Indeed, American support of rival governments on Chinese and Vietnamese soil drew together Vietnamese militants and Chinese hard-liners, and made both implacably hostile to the United States.34 Vietnamese militants also remembered that during the recent war with France the DRVN had received far less assistance from the Soviet Union than from the PRC.35

  Ho, Giap, and other moderates, on the other hand, tended to be more supportive of the Soviet Union. Despite their reservations, the policy of peaceful coexistence vindicated the current revolutionary line in both halves of Vietnam for which they were responsible. Like Moscow, they embraced moderation and flexibility in decision-making, had no desire to be involved in a major confrontation with the United States, and preferred to concentrate instead on strengthening the domestic economy. Moreover, leading moderates had a fondness for the Soviet Union, having studied or spent time there or otherwise admiring the accomplishments of the country, its leaders, and its people since the October Revolution. To them, the Soviets were the undisputed champions of the socialist cause. “At least sentimentally,” moderates were “apt to be partial to the Soviet Union.”36 Conversely, the “Chinese element” appeared to most of them to “essentially be an element of instability, turmoil, even adventure.”37

  The Sino-Soviet dispute thus amplified cleavages within the VWP between militants and moderates, between advocates of armed struggle in the South and exponents of peaceful reunification and the “North-first” policy. Over time militants identified more closely with “radicals” in Beijing, as moderates did with “pacifists” in Moscow. As these tendencies continued and polarized the party, its militant wing became identified as “pro-Chinese” and the moderate wing as “pro-Soviet,” although neither actually answered to foreign patrons.

  THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE’S FIFTEENTH PLENUM

  In January 1959, the VWP Central Committee met to “discuss the situation inside the country since the signing of the Geneva accords of 1954 and bring forward the revolutionary line for the entire country and the southern revolution.”38 To get a clear picture of the state of affairs in the South, the committee invited leading southern revolutionaries to describe the situation there and recommend policies for dealing with it. Those invited included Phan Van Dang, Hai Xo, Tran Luong, and Vo Chi Cong, all regional party heads. Le Duan, who had been shuttling between North and South since his appointment as acting general secretary of the party, also addressed the committee on what he called the “real situation and the struggle experiences of the southern compatriots over the last several years.” Predictably, he presented a bleak picture. In addition to reiterating the substance of what he had reported to the Central Committee in December 1956, he now more urgently pressed the case for complementing political struggle with military struggle in the South. He movingly described the growing despair among revolutionaries there over the losses they had endured and the deteriorating conditions they faced. There was an urgent necessity, he insisted, to respond in kind to the mounting aggressiveness of Saigon’s military and security forces, emboldened by increasing American aid and their successes over a virtually impotent communist resistance. It was time for communist and allied forces to fight back, or the cause of the revolution in the South would be lost.39 Already, rogue, unsanctioned cadres were joining other dissidents in retaliatory violence, while other disaffected cadres had abandoned the party to protest its pusillanimity in responding to Diem’s outrages. The widening credibility gap between Hanoi and the southern militants was threatening to compromise the party’s integrity and the revolution itself. Hanoi had to respond radically, Le Duan insisted, and to do so before it was too late.40

  The effectiveness of Le Duan’s testimony and that of the other southern leaders, who echoed his sentiments, was electric. Politburo spokesmen acknowledged that organ’s similar concerns over the growing successes of the Diem regime in the wake of increasing American assistance.41 The regime’s success was now much greater than Hanoi had anticipated it ever would be. “In the provinces and the districts,” the Politburo reported to the Central Committee, Diem’s regime had “increased the reactionary quality of the [political and security] organs” at its disposal. At every level in these organs, “the majority of old bureaucrats [are being] replaced by new people, some chosen from among local Catholic reactionaries, among [recent] immigrants [from the North], some from the armed forces, the police, and some were old government employees who had submitted to Diem.” Even at the village level, Diem was “consolidating organs . . . more than before.” The “U.S.-Diem clique” was thus now on the verge of “achieving a dictatorial fascist regime,” the “most fundamental policy” of which was annihilation of all resistance, including the communist movement, in the South in the furtherance of American “imperialist” objectives.

  The growing capabilities of Diem’s military, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), were an alarming and immediate threat. His armed forces were significantly better trained, led, and equipped than before. The resulting effectiveness enabled them to “terrorize” revolutionaries and civilians alike. According to Politburo calculations, Washington had provided Saigon with more than $965 million in assistance between 1955 and 1958, two-thirds of it military. That assistance financed the significant increases in the strength of Diem’s forces, which the Politburo estimated in 1959 at 150,000 regular and more than 50,000 irregular troops. All indications were that Washington intended to maintain or increase its present level of support, which meant that Saigon’s armed forces would continue improving in quality and growing in size.

  Economically, revolutionary prospects in the South were similarly parlous. By now the Americans had entirely supplanted the French there, the Politburo felt, because of their greater economic might: “The American imperialists have more money than the French, can pay more” and thus “buy” more allegiance. Those thus “bought” in turn became “the hand puppets of the Americans.” This sustained an increasingly large “reactionary” class that would surely hinder the transition to socialism in the South following reunification, as would the growing “commercialization” of the southern economy. Only “a small part of [American] foreign aid has been in the form of foreign currency, while the large part . . . has taken the form of goods.” That ratio would likely change, the Politburo believed, for Washington’s goal was to make the South Vietnamese people not only militarily but also economically dependent on the United States. As this transformation progressed, the South would become an outpost of American capitalism as well as American imperialism. The more the eco
nomy integrated into global capitalism, the wider the divide between northern and southern societies would become, and the more difficult reunification would be. The American project in the South amounted to “nation-building” and would have to be confronted as such.

  In view of this gloomy assessment, the Politburo candidly acknowledged that the results of its policy of favoring political struggle almost exclusively had indeed been misguided: “We used the political strength of the masses; the enemy used force.” Unfortunately, “our political strength has not yet been able to translate into material strength [sufficient even] to fight back,” much less to “topple” the Saigon regime. As a result, the “U.S.-Diem clique” had not only endured but now occupied a “dominant position” in the South. The Americans were “richer,” “more ruthless,” “more fascist,” “more expansionist,” and “stronger” than the French had ever been. The contradictions between “our people” and the “imperialists and feudalists” could only be “solved by revolution.” To that end, the nation had to “increase its unity” and “elevate even more its revolutionary will” for the sake of “socialist revolution” in the North and consolidation of the “people’s democratic revolution” in the South.

  RESOLUTION 15

  In response to these assessments and recommendations, the Central Committee adopted what came to be known as “Resolution 15.”42 This was one of the pivotal policy statements in the course of events that propelled Hanoi into the Vietnam War, the most meaningful revision of strategic policy since September 1954. The new resolution reiterated the priority of socialist transformation in the DRVN, remarking that “if we do not strive to consolidate the North and actively guide the North to socialism, then we will not have a firm base” to bring about Vietnamese reunification. But more significant for the eventual outbreak of hostilities was the acknowledgment in the same document that the conduct of the struggle in the South had been too restrained. “Resolving the problem of ‘who defeats whom’ between socialism and capitalism,” it read, “is the objective requirement of northern society in its phase of development; at the same time, it is also the objective reality of the revolution in the entire country.”