Vietnam

There may have been a time when American policy in Vietnam was a debatable matter. This time is long past.... The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act. —Noam Chomsky, 1969

A survey of 110 leading American intellectuals in the early 1970s ranked Noam Chomsky by far the most influential intellectual critic of America's war in Vietnam. Chomsky's case against the war was essentially a moral indictment of US policy: it challenged the official justifications American leaders advanced for war and emphasized the devastating impact of US intervention on the people of Vietnam.

America's War in Vietnam: A Synopsis

Japan's wartime occupation of French Indochina laid bare the vulnerability of French colonial rule and spurred the growth of a Vietnamese national independence movement. The nationalists were united in the Viet Minh, a coalition that was broadly representative of Vietnamese society but dominated by the Vietnamese Communists under their charismatic leader, Ho Chi Minh.

THE FIRST VIETNAM WAR

The collapse of the Japanese occupation in late August 1945 enabled the Viet Minh to take control of a significant portion of northern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh followed up quickly with the proclamation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). By the end of 1946 the Viet Minh were in a full-scale war with France for national independence.

US policymakers viewed France's colonial war in Vietnam with ambivalence. On the one hand, the Americans saw European colonialism as an anachronism in the postwar world. On the other, they were focused on the emerging Cold War in Europe and were reluctant to alienate an important European ally over a distant conflict. Besides, a Communist-led regime in Vietnam was clearly not an acceptable outcome to the United States. Accordingly, Washington chose to support France's effort to maintain control of its colony. US concern for the future of Vietnam was heightened by the 1949 Communist victory in China and the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950. Increasingly, US decision makers viewed Vietnam in a Cold War context: a Viet Minh takeover in Vietnam would represent a major victory for international Communism. American financial aid to the French colonial war began in 1950 and escalated exponentially over the next few years, but the Viet Minh resistance continued unabated.

France's will to continue the fight was clearly waning in early 1954 when the French prime minister accepted a Soviet proposal for an international conference on Far Eastern problems. The conference, held in Geneva, Switzerland, beginning in late April, was cochaired by Britain and the Soviet Union, with representatives of France, China and the Viet Minh's Democratic Government of Vietnam participating. The United States attended as an "interested nation," not as "a belligerent or principal in the negotiations." The State of Vietnam, the nominally independent entity set up by France, attended in essentially the same capacity. The Geneva Conference took place against the backdrop of France's most catastrophic defeat in its long war against the Vietnamese resistance, the loss in March of the strategically pivotal military base at Dienbienphu. The decisive Viet Minh victory there put the DRV in an apparently strong bargaining position at Geneva.

The Geneva Conference produced two agreements in late July. The first, between the French and the Viet Minh, set a cease-fire and divided Vietnam roughly at the 17th parallel into two "regroupment zones." The French were required to withdraw all troops from northern Vietnam but retained effective control of the South. The document made clear that the two zones were not separate nations, and that they would be eventually reunited as one nation through free elections held throughout Vietnam. The second agreement was a final declaration by most of the participants—a consensus document not formally signed or voted on—that recognized the Franco-Vietnamese agreement and stipulated that general elections were to be held throughout Vietnam in July 1956 under the supervision of an international commission, with arrangements to be made by consultations between "the competent representative authorities" of the two regroupment zones.

The Viet Minh were somewhat disappointed at Geneva. They had naturally hoped that they would be rewarded for their military triumph with control of a united Vietnam. In agreeing to a compromise, they yielded to pressure from their Chinese and Soviet allies, who were interested in exploring accommodation with the West.6 They also had excellent reason to expect that their broad popular support would bring them victory in the promised nationwide elections.

The United States, as a somewhat reluctant observer rather than a principal in the Geneva negotiations, did not sign any document. The US representative, Bedell Smith, did however pledge that the United States would not threaten or use force to "disturb" the agreements. He also asserted support for the unity of divided states through free elections, and said the United States would view any violation of the agreements as a threat to international peace and security. But US secretary of state John Foster Dulles had other ideas. A unified Vietnam would almost surely be a Communist Vietnam. The day after the end of the conference, Dulles told a National Security Council meeting that "the great problem from here on out [is] whether we [can] salvage" southern Vietnam.

THE CREATION OF SOUTH VIETNAM

The Vietnamese point man in that salvage operation was to be Ngo Dinh Diem, an anti-Communist nationalist appointed prime minister during the Geneva Conference by Bao Dai, the figurehead emperor who "ruled" Vietnam on behalf of the French. Diem had an extensive network of politically influential contacts in the United States, where he had lived for a couple of years earlier in the decade. Diem became the focus of a strong and ultimately successful push by the United States to supplant French with American influence in the southern regroupment zone, enabling Washington to become effectively the Western sponsor of a new State of Vietnam.

Diem was rather incongruous in the role of postcolonial leader of a new nation. He had not been a leader of the armed struggle against the French. He was attached to no political party or movement and had no mass base. A devout Catholic, he was a member of a religious minority whose special privileges had long aroused widespread resentment among the overwhelmingly non-Catholic majority. His government was very much a family affair. Three of the six members of Diem's first cabinet were family members. In addition, his father was ambassador to the United States and his youngest brother ambassador to Great Britain. His brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, in the special office of presidential counselor, was believed by some to be as powerful as Diem himself.

A critical issue dividing the French from the Americans and Diem was the Geneva...