53. “Report of the Activities of the International Commission in Vietnam, August 1963,” 21-13-VIET-ICSC-8 [FP.1], Vol. 10125, RG 25; LAC, 1. On the 1963 Buddhist crisis, see Howard Jones, Death of a Generation: How the Assassinations of Diem and JFK Prolonged the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013), chapters 8–9.
54. On Sino-Vietnamese relations to that point, see Ang Cheng Guan, Vietnamese Communists’ Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conflict, 1956–1962 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997).
55. Xiaoming Zhang, “The Vietnam War, 1964–1969: A Chinese Perspective,” Journal of Military History 60, no. 4 (October 1996): 734–35, 746.
56. Lorenz Lüthi, “The Vietnam War and China’s Third-Line Defense Planning before the Cultural Revolution, 1964–1966,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 48. On the further radicalization of Chinese foreign policy at this time, see also Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 210–11.
57. Xiaoming Zhang, “Vietnam War,” 734–35, 746. See also Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 117–18.
58. Lüthi, “The Vietnam War and China’s Third-Line Defense,” 48.
59. On Chinese perceptions of the Soviet Union and its relationship to the United States at the time, see Chun-tu Hsueh and Robert C. North, “China and the Superpowers: Perception and Policy,” in Chun-tu Hsueh, ed., China’s Foreign Relations: New Perspectives (New York: Praeger, 1982), 20. For a more recent perspective and an assessment of new Chinese sources on the topic, see Michael H. Hunt and Odd Arne Westad, “The Chinese Communist Party and International Affairs: A Field Report on New Historical Sources and Old Research Problems,” China Quarterly, no. 122 (June 1990): 258–72. While the Chinese would denounce Khrushchev openly and by name, the VWP never did so. See King C. Chen, ed., China and the Three Worlds: A Foreign Policy Reader (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1979), 20.
60. Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 173.
61. Min Chen, The Strategic Triangle and Regional Conflict: Lessons from the Indochina Wars (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1992), 22.
62. Balazs Szalontai, Kim Il Sung in the Khrushchev Era—DPRK Relations and the Roots of North Korean Despotism, 1953–1964 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), 187–88. Khiem stepped down as foreign minister, according to one version of events, because he was behind a pro-Soviet communiqué issued at the conclusion of a visit to Hanoi by Czechoslovak president Antonin Novotny in January (Martin Grossheim, “‘Revisionism’ in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam,” Cold War History 5, no. 4 [November–December 2005]: 453). According to British diplomats, Xuan Thuy was “much less approachable than his predecessor” and insisted on speaking Vietnamese or Chinese but not French with western diplomats despite a thorough grasp of the latter (BCGH to SEAD, 18 August 1964, FO 371/175486, NAUK, 1). The substitution of foreign ministers became a good indicator during this period of the attitude of VWP leaders toward the situation in the South and, by extension, the Sino-Soviet dispute. Ung Van Khiem personified the prevailing consensus within the VWP leadership until spring 1963, as he was very much pro-Soviet and distrustful of Beijing and the revolutionary line it peddled. Xuan Thuy, his ideological nemesis, replaced him just as the VWP’s position on the southern revolution hardened and Hanoi moved closer to Beijing. Thuy himself was replaced by the more “middle-of-the-road” Nguyen Duy Trinh in April 1965, days after Moscow pledged substantial political and material, including military, support for the DRVN, and just before the commencement of war with the United States mandated rapprochement with Moscow.
63. Excerpts from Liu’s speeches are quoted in BCGH to SEAD, 20 May 1963, FO 371/170105, NAUK, 2.
64. FGDH to MFA, 18 May 1963, #38, AO: VN, ADF, 9.
65. BCGH to SEAD, 20 May 1963, 1, 4.
66. William E. Griffith, The Sino-Soviet Rift (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1964), 192–93.
67. Hoang Van Chi, From Colonialism to Communism: A Case History of North Vietnam (New York: Pall Mall Press, 1964), 71.
68. FGDH to MFA, 1 June 1963, #74, AO: VN, ADF, 2; “Monthly Review of Events in North Vietnam, June–July 1963,” 20-VIET N-2-1, Vol. 10067 [Part 1], RG 25, LAC, 1.
69. BCGH to SEAD, 20 May 1963, FO 371/170105, NAUK, 1, 4.
70. Ho’s comments are reported in “‘The World Situation and Our Party’s International Mission’: As Seen from Hanoi, 1960–1964,” September 1971, Document no. 98, Vietnam Documents and Research Notes, Box 2, Folder 03, Viet-Nam Documents and Research Notes Collection, VATTU, 55–67.
71. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 135–36.
72. Gareth Porter, “Hanoi’s Strategic Perspective and the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict,” Pacific Affairs 57, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 8.
73. By December 1963, North Vietnamese personnel in Laos included 11,600 main-line, “volunteer” troops, 337 military specialists, 364 political specialists, and 100 other specialists and technicians (“Summary of Vietnamese Aid to the Lao Revolution [1945–1975],” Science Section of the General Department of Rear Services, People’s Army of Vietnam, 7 [document in Christopher Goscha’s possession]).
74. “Bao cao cua Chinh phu do TT Pham Van Dong trinh bay, 29.4.1963,” 105.
75. Francis X. Winters, The Year of the Hare: America in Vietnam, January 25, 1963–February 15, 1964 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997); Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 6–12; Mieczyslaw Maneli, War of the Vanquished (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 121–29, 187–91, 198–208; Donald S. Zagoria, Vietnam Triangle: Moscow, Peking, Hanoi (New York: Pegasus, 1967), 108; and Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 530–35.
76. Logevall, Choosing War, 12.
77. Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November: America in Vietnam, 1963 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 223–24.
78. According to historian Pierre Journoud, Roger Lalouette, the French ambassador in Saigon, was responsible for the “origination” of this “point of contact [prise de contact]” between Hanoi and Saigon in 1963. Earlier that year, Lalouette had shared with Maneli the details of a three-phase plan he had devised. The plan called for the opening of a dialogue between Hanoi and Saigon, followed by coordination of economic and cultural exchanges, and culminating in the beginning of negotiations on substantive political issues. “Seduced by the qualities of the French diplomat as much as by the audacity of his plan,” Journoud writes, “Maneli decided to transmit the message to Hanoi.” See Pierre Journoud, De Gaulle et le Vietnam, 1945–1969: La réconciliation [De Gaulle and Vietnam, 1945–1969: The Reconciliation] (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2011), 113.
79. “Note: Conversation avec M. de La Boissière” [Note: Conversation with M. de La Boissière], 25 September 1963, #38, AO: VN, ADF, 2–3. Possibly, Nhu’s interlocutor was DRVN minister of health Dr. Pham Ngoc Thach. According to French records, “One day [Thach] had drunk a fair amount during a reception” in Hanoi and “he intimated to the director of the French school [there] that he ‘travel[s] regularly to South Vietnam,’” presumably to negotiate with authorities there.
80. Saigon’s position on the talks differed. In October 1963, a State Department official confided in a Canadian counterpart that “Nhu seemed to have [the] feeling that he might be able to do a deal with North Vietnam, perhaps in [the] next few months, whereby he could obtain [a] ceasefire in [the] South in return for a) withdrawal of U
SA military personnel, and b) permission for North-South trade to remedy [the] North’s difficult economic position.” But Nhu and his brother had no intention of surrendering to Hanoi. “Nhu was apparently confident,” the American official added, “that after the ceasefire he would be quite capable of worsting the communists ideologically in the South with his own peasant programme and his own type of corporate state.” See Washington to Ottawa, 4 October 1963, 20-VIET S-1-4, Vol. 9001 [Part 1], RG 25, LAC, 2–4.
81. Margaret K. Gnoinska, “Poland and Vietnam, 1963: New Evidence on Secret Communist Diplomacy and the ‘Maneli Affair,’” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 45, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., 2005, 1–6.
82. On de Gaulle’s call for neutralization, see Journoud, De Gaulle et le Vietnam, 117–31; Marianna P. Sullivan, France’s Vietnam Policy: A Study in Franco-American Relations (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), 62–83; and Charles G. Cogan, “‘How Fuzzy Can One Be?’: The American Reaction to De Gaulle’s Proposal for the Neutralization of (South) Vietnam,” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., The Search for Peace in Vietnam, 1964–1968 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 144–61.
83. British Embassy, Paris, to Foreign Office, London [hereafter FO], 30 August 1963 [shared with Ottawa], 20-VIET-S-1-4, Vol. 9001, RG 25, LAC; and “Report of Activities of the International Commission in Vietnam, September 1963, 21-13-VIET-ICSC-8, Vol. 10125 [FP 1], RG 25, LAC, 1.
84. Quoted in “Notes: Réactions dans le monde à la déclaration du Général de Gaulle” [Notes: World Reaction to the Statement by General de Gaulle], 18 September 1963, #162, AO: Vietnam Conflit, ADF, 2.
85. Gareth Porter, “Coercive Diplomacy in Vietnam: The Tonkin Gulf Crisis Reconsidered,” in Jayne Werner and David Hunt, eds., The American War in Vietnam (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1993), 18–20.
86. Gareth Porter, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 108–26.
87. Dommen, Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans, 495.
88. Miller, Misalliance, 304.
89. Douglas Pike, “The Impact of the Sino-Soviet Dispute on Southeast Asia,” in Herbert J. Ellison, ed., The Sino-Soviet Conflict: A Global Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 189.
90. “Monthly Review of Events in North Vietnam, June–July 1963,” 1–2; “Comments on ‘Report on the Visit of Liu Shao Chi and Chen Yi to Hanoi,’” by P. Roberts, 28 June 1963, FO 371/170105, NAUK, 3.
91. BCGH to SEAD, 2 September 1963, FO 371/170098, NAUK, 2–3.
92. BCGH to SEAD, 1 June 1963, FO 371/170098, NAUK, 1; “Summary of Events in North Vietnam, July 1963,” undated, FO 371/170098, NAUK, 2.
93. John Donnell and Melvin Gurtov, North Vietnam: Left of Moscow, Right of Peking (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1968), 33. One of the most revealing articles was Nguyen Chi Thanh’s “Ai se thang ai o mien Nam Viet Nam?” [Who Will Defeat Whom in Vietnam?], Hoc tap, no. 7 (July 1963): 18–21, translated as “Qui vaincra au Sud Vietnam?” Études Vietnamiennes, no. 1 (1964): 13–22.
94. “The Renegade Tito Again Spits Out the Poison of Revisionism,” Hoc tap, no. 7 (July 1963): 16; quoted in Ken Post, Revolution, Socialism and Nationalism in Viet Nam, Volume 3: Socialism in Half a Country (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1989), 162.
95. “Raise High the Banner of the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and Direct the Spearhead of the Struggle against U.S. Imperialism,” Hoc tap, no. 9 (September 1963): 15; quoted in Post, Revolution, Socialism and Nationalism, 163.
96. Hong Chuong, “Peace or Violence,” Hoc tap, no. 9 (September 1963). Reproduced and translated in Folder 01, Box 03, DPC: Unit 01—Assessment and Strategy, VATTU, 1–17.
97. “Monthly Review of Events in North Vietnam, September–October 1963”; 20-VIET N-2-1; Vol. 10067 [Part 1]; RG 25; LAC, 3 (emphasis in original).
98. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 124; Joachim Glaubitz, “Relations between Communist China and North Vietnam,” in Robert A. Rupen and Robert Farrell, eds., Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet Dispute (New York: Praeger, 1967), 63.
99. The article is translated and reproduced in FGDH to MFA, 30 September 1963, #36, AO: VN, ADF. The quote is from page 4 of the reproduction.
100. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 124.
101. Nhan dan, 4 August 1963, 8.
102. Quoted in Post, Revolution, Socialism and Nationalism, 163.
103. FGDH to MFA, 12 August 1963, #36, AO: VN, ADF, 2.
104. BCGH to SEAD, 19 November 1963, FO 371/170099, NAUK, 2.
105. FGDH to MFA, 9 October 1963, #75, AO: VN, ADF, B3.
106. BCGH to SEAD, 2 September 1963, FO 371/170098, NAUK, 2.
107. FGDH to MFA, 30 September 1963, 4.
108. Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1966), 102.
109. Mission in Charge of Relations with the ICSC, Saigon, to Secretariat General of the ICSC, Saigon, 10 December 1963, 21-13-VIET-ICSC-8, Vol. 10125 [FP 1], RG 25, LAC, 1.
110. Canadian Delegation [ICSC], Saigon, to Under Secretary of State for External Affairs, Ottawa, 19 January 1966, 20-22-VIET S-1, Vol. 9387 [Part 3], RG 25, LAC, 1.
111. FO to Canada House, London, 23 October 1963, FO 371/170103, NAUK, 1.
112. Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of the Communist Party of Vietnam: A Study in Communist Tactics (New York: Crane Russak, 1989), 128.
113. Quoted in FGDH to MFA, 9 October 1963, #36, AO: VN, ADF, 2.
114. Ibid.
115. “Monthly Review of Events in North Vietnam for November 1963,” 20-VIET N-2-1, Vol. 10067 [Part 1], RG 25, LAC, 1.
116. BCGH to SEAD, 19 November 1963, FO 371/170099, NAUK, 4.
117. According to Le Cuong, Washington “secretly” decided to “change horses mid-stream” immediately following the battle of Ap Bac. See Le Cuong, “Phong trao Phat giao mien Nam Viet Nam nam 1963 voi cuoc dao chinh lat do che do Ngo Dinh Diem (01–11–1963)” [The 1963 Buddhist Movement in Southern Vietnam and the Overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem], paper presented at the Second International Conference on Vietnamese Studies, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 14–16 July 2004, 4.
118. Ibid.; Ha Van Lau, “Kennodi phai Mac Namara va Taylo sang Viet Nam de lam gi?” [Kennedy Sent MacNamara and Taylor to Vietnam to What End?], Hoc tap, no. 11 (November 1963): 60.
119. “Du thao de cuong gio thieu ve tinh hinh va duong loi cach mang mien Nam, so 226 T/TM” [Draft Program Introducing the Situation and Direction of the Southern Revolution, no. 226T/TM], undated (1962), Ho so 252: Du thao de cuong ve tinh hinh va duong loi cach mang Mien Nam, 1962-, Phong Uy ban Thong nhat Chinh phu, VNAC3, 16; Bo Quoc phong—Vien Lich su quan su Viet Nam, Lich su quan su Viet Nam, Tap 11, 149. A history of the period by an American scholar suggests that the Vietnamese were not completely wrong in assuming the United States was primarily responsible. According to Mark Moyar, “ultimate responsibility” for Diem’s fate “belonged to [U.S. ambassador to RVN] Henry Cabot Lodge, to the President who appointed and refused to fire Lodge, and to the individuals who were giving Lodge information and advice on the political situation” in South Vietnam (Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, 273).
120. “Diem was a ‘modern nationalist,’” one source contends, and “it was his determination to push ahead with his own nation-building agenda that was a major source of the tensions in U.S.-Vietnamese relations.” See Phillip E. Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002), 2; and Miller, Misalliance, chapter 9.
121. Robert S. McNamara, James Blight, and Robert Brigham, Argument without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy (New York: Public Affairs, 1999), 200.
122. A 1967 Hanoi publication referred to “a military dictatorship” replacing the “nepotic [sic] and feudal” regime of Ngo Dinh Di
em. See Tran Cong Tuong and Pham Thanh Vinh, The N.L.F.: Symbol of Independence, Democracy and Peace in South Vietnam (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1967), 15.
123. Le Cuong, “Phong trao Phat giao mien Nam,” 5.
124. Philippe Franchini, Les guerres d’Indochine, Vol. 2: De la bataille de Dien Bien Phu à la chute de Saïgon [The Indochina Wars, Vol. 2: From the Battle of Dien Bien Phu to the Fall of Saigon] (Paris: Éditions Pygmalion / Gérard Watelet, 1988), 266.
125. Quoted in McNamara, Blight, and Brigham, Argument without End, 201. According to Nguyen Vu Tung, “This situation . . . increased the danger of a U.S. direct military intervention” (Nguyen Vu Tung, “The 1961–1962 Geneva Conference: Neutralization of Laos and Policy Implications for Vietnam,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Karine Laplante, eds., L’échec de la paix en Indochine / The Failure of Peace in Indochina [1954–1962] [Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2010], 251).
126. Bo Quoc phong—Vien Lich su quan su Viet Nam, Lich su quan su Viet Nam, Tap 11, 150.
127. Dommen, Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans, 572.
128. BCGH to SEAD, 11 January 1964 [shared with Ottawa], 3.
129. BCGH to SEAD, 19 November 1963, FO 371/170099, NAUK, 4.
130. Moyar, Triumph Forsaken, 286; “Political Bureau Resolution,” November 1963, Folder 02, Box 1, DPC: Unit 06—Democratic Republic of Vietnam, VATTU.
131. Jeffrey Race, “The Origins of the Second Indochina War,” Asian Survey, no. 5 (May 1970): 360–63.
132. George K. Tanham, Communist Revolutionary Warfare: From the Vietminh to the Viet Cong (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Security International, 2006), 70, 72. See also Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012), 683.
133. Report of Activities of the International Commission in Vietnam, December 1963, 21-13-VIET-ICSC-8, Vol. 10125 [FP 1], RG 25, LAC, 1.
134. Pham Huy Duong and Pham Ba Toan, Ba muoi nam chien tranh giai phong: Nhung tran danh di vao lich su [Thirty Years of Liberation War: Historical Battles] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Cong an nhan dan, 2005), 328.
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