For example, earlier in the year the director of the External Affairs Bureau of the DRVN Foreign Ministry had asked for a meeting with the British consul. During the meeting, in circuitous language, the director indicated Hanoi’s willingness to “carry on a dialogue” with London with a view to formal talks on the future of the South. “It is difficult to see at present what this could be,” the consul wrote of the initiative, “but I think there are signs—and this approach to us may be one of them—that the D.R.V. Government is prepared to be more flexible in their approach to the South Vietnamese question if they saw any possibility of a solution which would remove from South Vietnam what they consider as American aggression there and a threat to North Vietnam.”134 In this instance, the contact served as a safety valve for Hanoi should problems in the South worsen, just as it created a more positive impression of the DRVN leadership in London.
The more the DRVN seemed committed to peaceful settlement in the South, the easier it was to win battles of public opinion at home and abroad and to secure political and material support from the Soviet Union. But Hanoi had no thought of entering into “peace negotiations” (thuong luong hoa binh), that is, actually to work for a diplomatic solution. “At this stage,” the Canadian Department of External Affairs surmised in July on the basis of the Seaborn-Dong talks, as well as public and private statements by DRVN leaders, there was “no indication” that a constructive dialogue between Hanoi and Washington was even possible.135
Hanoi refused to work toward a diplomatic solution at that point for two main reasons. First, it did not trust Washington’s motives in asking for negotiations. American peace overtures were deceitful delaying tactics to gain time for the regime in Saigon, window dressing to dissimulate the Johnson administration’s true intention of waging war in the South until the liberation movement was annihilated.136 Second, an interlude of negotiations could only soften the now steely resolve of DRVN leaders and other militants in both halves of Vietnam who had long wanted to use force to bring about reunification. When a western diplomat asked in confidence in the summer of 1964 for his reaction to a recent suggestion by Norodom Sihanouk that there be a new Geneva Conference on Indochina, DRVN foreign minister Xuan Thuy replied bluntly that a Geneva agreement “solving” the Vietnamese crisis already existed; it was for the Americans and their Saigon allies to implement that agreement since they were the ones violating it.137
At that juncture Hanoi might have accepted a bilateral agreement with Saigon neutralizing the South on terms similar to those negotiated for Laos in 1962, but the neutrality would be brief, simply a means for Hanoi to achieve its goal furtively. “Bringing about neutrality,” the party then calculated, “will have a very big impact on intermediary classes in the South, undermine capitalist classes, win over socialist and neutral countries, divide the imperialists and isolate to a large degree the American imperialists and their puppets.” In other words, neutrality would serve revolutionary purposes, compelling Washington to withdraw its presence in the South and its aid to the Saigon regime, both necessary preconditions of a neutralization agreement. Neutrality would thus not be nonalignment. On the contrary, the only formula Hanoi would agree to “is to be guided by our party.” Neutrality and the concomitant coalition government that would oversee it “can only occur once our forces in the South are very strong, in a vantage position totally to our advantage,” which would enable Hanoi to steer the neutral government on a “correct” course.138
As this suggests, Hanoi’s nonnegotiable objective was political amalgamation of the area below the seventeenth parallel into the polity created above that line in 1954, under exclusive control of the party. This is what Washington would have to agree to, even agree to facilitate, if it wanted a diplomatic settlement with Hanoi in 1964. That is what it means to say that DRVN leaders sought peace “on their terms.”139 They would agree to stopgap measures on the way to their objective, but only as ploys to expedite American disengagement and only when absolutely necessary. They had nothing to negotiate but the specifics of American disengagement and their takeover of the South. They had negotiated in 1954 in Geneva with humiliating and devastating results. To assume that Le Duan’s regime would repeat that error in 1964 is therefore misguided. To that regime, peace meant independence, prompt national unification, triumphant socialism—in a word, victory.
To appreciate these realities, it is important to remind ourselves of the nature of the men who controlled decision-making in Hanoi in 1964. Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, Nguyen Chi Thanh, Pham Hung, and the regime’s other leading figures were hard-line, invested communists. Their worldview was rooted in battle-hardened experience and lifetimes of sacrifice for the revolution, in the South specifically. Like many who fought there during the Indochina War, they had felt betrayed by the decision to forgo total victory after Dien Bien Phu and negotiate instead. The Geneva fiasco, as they looked back on it, had been an exercise in compromise that reinforced their sense of betrayal. Repatriated to the North at different times before and after that fiasco, they witnessed the near annihilation of the southern revolutionary movement they had fought so hard for because of an old guard’s faith in diplomacy, its renunciation of violence, and its fear of war with the United States.
These personal experiences steeled their thinking and sense of revolutionary purpose, and made any diplomatic arrangement that fell short of their terms unimaginable. There was no realistic chance that such men could have negotiated a settlement acceptable to Washington or Saigon under the circumstances that existed in 1964. William Turley was not entirely incorrect when he wrote that Hanoi may have been willing to negotiate “but not over what it maintained were basic national rights that had been guaranteed by the Geneva Agreements.”140 Nguyen Vu Tung said it better in his assessment of VWP diplomacy: “Opening contacts with the [enemy] during this time was not a priority for the DRV, due to both internal and external factors.”141
Though Hanoi felt no compulsion to negotiate with Saigon, unless of course its maximalist demands were met, some members of the NLF may have secretly contacted RVN authorities to discuss reduction of the scale of hostilities and the possibility of solving their differences diplomatically. In June, the RVN minister of state confessed to the British ambassador in Saigon that “he was in touch with certain Viet Cong elements with the tacit consent of the [RVN] Prime Minister.” The ambassador reported to London that he thought this initiative from Saigon constituted “positive evidence” of a disposition on Saigon’s part to negotiate with the NLF and vice versa. It also confirmed a previous report that General Nguyen Khanh, the RVN prime minister after the 30 January coup, “was contemplating an eventual deal with the insurgents.”142 What sidetracked these contacts is unclear, though they obviously came to nothing. In reality, they would have solved nothing, since core NLF/PLAF leaders answered to Hanoi, and the latter wanted no part of an actual compromise agreement.
PURSUING SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION IN THE NORTH
As the storm gathered in the South, the party continued the socialist transformation of the DRVN. As strongly as he felt about liberating the South, Le Duan never believed that it warranted abandoning the economic transformation of the North. Committed to the goals of communism generally, the first secretary considered both objectives imperative. Despite his sympathies for Chinese revolutionary theses, he respected Soviet successes in transforming the national economy, and in fact considered the Soviet Union a model for Vietnam.143 He especially admired the policies and leadership style of Stalin, who completed the transformation of the Soviet Union in the face of overwhelming difficulties in the 1930s and despite the long and costly resistance against fascist aggression in World War II. In fact, Le Duan may have consciously sought to emulate the Soviet leader’s approach in his own effort to build socialism in the DRVN while combatting American “fascists” in the South.144 If the Soviets could contain and eventually vanquish a powerful invading force in the midst of their country’s socialist transformation, why cou
ld the Vietnamese not do the same? Le Duan’s speeches and writings often stressed the need to replicate in Vietnam the successes of the Soviet transformation under Stalin: industrialization, collectivization, socialism, and the defeat of fascism. The first secretary and other “extremists” had been “in the forefront in pushing the regime’s program of economic self-reliance through the expansion of heavy industry,” an American assessment noted. They had “criticized unnamed other members of the leadership for softness on economic policy,” and proven intolerant of moderate tendencies generally.145 “The most indispensable foundation for socialism is heavy industry,” Le Duan often said, quoting Lenin. “Whoever forgets this is not a Communist.”146
That Le Duan and his regime felt strongly that industrialization was necessary for reunification as well as for socialism needs emphasis. American meddling and the attendant spread of bourgeois ways and values below the seventeenth parallel were bound to complicate reunification. It might take years to re-educate people and reconstitute institutions in the South to the extent necessary to achieve national integration, even after the Americans were gone. Unless the North was economically developed and functionally socialist, the nation would have to depend on foreign aid during this transition. If the dependence was large and long enough, it would threaten the purity of the revolution by limiting the party’s freedom of action. Since its inception, the DRVN had depended on economic and military assistance from its socialist allies, a dependence that had only accrued over time. Once unification was achieved, that would have to change. The Vietnamese revolution was for “national salvation” as well as socialism; its purposes would be lost if the nation remained dependent on foreign largess. As a communist vanguard, the VWP had to lessen the country’s dependence on allies with a view to ultimately achieving autarky. Failure to do so would undermine the party’s legitimacy and credibility, if not soon then later.147 “Reliance on the strength of our own people,” the Politburo declared in February 1964, was “fundamental” to the triumph of the revolution.148 Hanoi accorded “fundamental importance” to economic self-sufficiency in 1964, given the uncertainty of foreign, specifically Soviet, assistance, western observers thought. An article in Hoc tap actually condemned unspecified forms of “premature” international economic cooperation and interdependence within the socialist camp as a “modern revisionist trend.”149
The achievement of autarky demanded improvements in agricultural production and productivity. Early in 1964 the Politburo had declared agricultural output unsatisfactory. “Because [agricultural] production has not yet developed strongly, because mistakes have been made in managing the circulation, distribution, and consumption” of foodstuffs, the Politburo assessed, the rural economy was developing poorly. Despite progress in collectivization, problems remained in the countryside. Some communities still experienced periodic food shortages, while others met their own needs but failed to meet government quotas. Hoarding, waste, avarice, and corruption variously compounded these and other problems in rural areas.150 These, too, threatened to compromise the struggle in the South.
THE GULF OF TONKIN INCIDENT AND 5 AUGUST ATTACK
Soon, economic difficulties seemed less worrying, though certainly still pressing. In late July DRVN authorities reported American attacks on the islands of Hon Ngu and Hon Me, situated approximately three and nine miles, respectively, off the Vietnamese coast.151 On 2 August, American and North Vietnamese naval forces clashed in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the U.S. Navy reported attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on two American destroyers in the same area.152 This “Tonkin Gulf incident” prompted the Johnson administration to order reprisal air strikes against targets in the DRVN on 5 August, and the U.S. Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution on 7 August.153 The resolution authorized the Johnson administration to use all befitting means, including deployment of U.S. combat forces, to protect American interests in Indochina, much as Resolution 9 had given Le Duan’s regime sanction to commit the DRVN and the PAVN to the liberation of the South. Hanoi denied involvement of its armed forces in any incident on 4 August, a denial whose sincerity may be inferred from a statement by the Standing Committee of the National Assembly on 10 August praising the DRVN’s air defense and naval units for their performance in the battles of 2 and 5 August 1964, with no mention of a battle or incident on 4 August.154 A PAVN spokesman told the ICSC shortly thereafter that “in the night of August 4, 1964, the weather was very bad,” and “at one point about 100 kilometers east of Quang Binh coast . . . there were many explosions, flares and noise of aircraft motors as if a [sic] fighting had actually taken place.” Whatever had taken place that night, he said, had not involved PAVN forces.155
The air strikes on 5 August represented an extension of the southern crisis to the North, the first of its kind. Put another way, southerners were “at last able to bring the war home to the North, to begin to allow northerners to feel their vulnerability to U.S. military power—a feeling that had existed south of the 17th parallel for many years.” That development facilitated the rebuilding of the “psychological bridge” between North and South that had been “damaged by the post-Geneva separation of the two Vietnams.”156 The strikes also made northerners “extremely angry,” the British Consulate reported, and precipitated mass demonstrations “as near to spontaneous as such things ever are in communist countries.”157 In more ways than one, the bombing validated the calls for vigilance Hanoi had been issuing since late 1963, particularly those concerned with the imminence of American aggression against the North.
Only recently Hanoi had been worried about northerners’ lack of support for war in the South and the lack of preparedness of northern militias. All that changed after 5 August. The attack helped authorities in the North meet one of the chief aims of the special political conference in March and other recent efforts: rallying the masses fully behind the leadership. DRVN authorities pounced on the opportunity to exploit “to the fullest, at the psychological level,” the bombing and related developments, as they “exalted hatred for the Americans.”158 This not only bolstered popular support for the party and state, as well as for the causes of southern liberation and northern economic transformation, but it also cemented party cohesion and emboldened the armed forces. “The association between need for increased military vigilance and preparedness and the importance of increased production is being strongly emphasized and the civil population urged on to greater efforts and the overfulfillment of production norms,” the Canadian representative in Hanoi wrote of these circumstances.159 The events of early August “were certainly turned to the advantage of the North,” the British Consulate surmised.160 Within hours of the air strikes, new trenches and bomb shelters were being dug around the clock in the Hanoi area. This was accompanied by evacuation to the suburbs and countryside of unnecessary individuals, namely, the elderly, children, and women not gainfully employed.161
The 5 August attack also reverberated internationally, as Hanoi “squeezed” the “last bit of propaganda value” out of it overseas.162 In a prescient assessment made shortly after the event, the British Consulate commented that DRVN leaders more than ever “believe themselves to be engaged in a Communist crusade of liberation directed primarily against the Americans, and will not be intimidated. Nor will they be deflected by bombing.” American attacks against the DRVN and its supply lines in Laos increased their problems, the consulate noted, but would have no real effect on Hanoi. “Roads will be rebuilt, bridges replaced by simple bamboo structures, and supply dumps resupplied.” It was a mistake, the consulate concluded, to think that DRVN leaders “would be forced to call a halt to their resupply operations in the South” or to order the PLAF to suspend its operations because of air strikes. American attacks and other threats to the DRVN “only strengthen their resolution.”163 In hindsight, those were prophetic words.
COMMITTING PAVN UNITS TO THE SOUTH
A few days after the bombing, the Central Committee met to assess its meanin
g and effects and to formulate suitable responses.164 Given—as the bulk of the existing evidence suggests—that there was no attack by their torpedo boats on 4 August, party members in attendance had to understand the next day’s air strikes as essentially unprovoked aggression. Those strikes thus legitimated the views of militant ideologues in the VWP: the imperatives of capitalism had driven the United States to create a pretext to employ force to thwart the Vietnamese revolution and defend its lackeys in Saigon. As Edwin Moïse has pointed out in his comprehensive study of the Tonkin Gulf incident, since there was no PAVN–U.S. Navy confrontation on the night of 4 August, “the logical conclusion” of DRVN leaders in the wake of the 5 August attack “would have been that it was pointless to avoid direct combat actions by North Vietnamese forces in an effort to avoid provoking the United States”; the United States was already provoked.165
Regardless of how one interprets Hanoi’s reaction to the attack, in its aftermath the Central Committee recommended immediate deployment of PAVN units to the South. The wanton nature of the attack made the recommendation sensible, especially since war with American ground forces could still be avoided if communist forces won a quick, decisive victory in the South. While little is known of the Central Committee’s discussion of these matters, it evidently thought it was best under the circumstances to deploy PAVN forces to the South sooner rather than later. The committee also recommended immediately sending an advance unit, the 808th battalion, for reconnaissance purposes.166
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