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America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia
America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam rethinks the motivations behind one of the most ruinous foreign-policy decisions of the postwar America’s commitment to preserve an independent South Vietnam under the premiership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The so-called Diem experiment is usually ascribed to U.S. anticommunism and an absence of other candidates for South Vietnam’s highest office. Challenging those explanations, Seth Jacobs utilizes religion and race as categories of analysis to argue that the alliance with Diem cannot be understood apart from America’s mid-century religious revival and policymakers’ perceptions of Asians. Jacobs contends that Diem’s Catholicism and the extent to which he violated American notions of “Oriental” passivity and moral laxity made him a more attractive ally to Washington than many non-Christian South Vietnamese with greater administrative experience and popular support. A diplomatic and cultural history, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam draws on government archives, presidential libraries, private papers, novels, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television and radio broadcasts. Jacobs shows in detail how, in the 1950s, U.S. policymakers conceived of Cold War anticommunism as a crusade in which Americans needed to combine with fellow Judeo-Christians against an adversary dangerous as much for its atheism as for its military might. He describes how racist assumptions that Asians were culturally unready for democratic self-government predisposed Americans to excuse Diem’s dictatorship as necessary in “the Orient.” By focusing attention on the role of American religious and racial ideologies, Jacobs makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the disastrous commitment of the United States to “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.”
392 pages, Paperback
First published March 11, 2004
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 9, 2021
In his book Seth Jacobs argues that America's Diem experiment ended in disaster. On that I agree with him. However, he and I differ sharply on the whys and hows of that tragedy.
According to Jacobs, South Vietnam's Prime Minister had been a dictator from the beginning of his rule, and the qualities that had made him attractive to the Eisenhower administration were his discrimination against non-Catholics, refusal to share power, and quick resort to violence to suppress dissent. "None of these idiosyncrasies ought to have come as a surprise to Eisenhower, his chief advisers, or those molders of American public opinion — the press lords Henry Luce and DeWitt Wallace, Senators Mike Mansfield and John F. Kennedy, ‘‘celebrity saint’’ Tom Dooley, and others — who championed Diem in the 1950s and helped bankroll his despotism. Diem never pretended to be anything other than what he was, and he never changed," the author proclaims.
South Vietnam's Prime Minister has been portrayed as an obtuse, tyrannical reactionary by so many historians it is difficult to argue that he was actually a wise, effective leader. But he was. In 1954 and 1955, with few resources at his disposal, he brought order to a demoralized, disorganized, and divided South Vietnam. Jacobs accuses him of not sharing power. Who was he supposed to share power with? South Vietnam was so divided namely because the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao, and other religious sects, and the criminal organization Binh Xuyen had all been "sharing power," ruling as autonomous states inside a state. If order was to be brought back, the country needed a centralized government. That is why Diem preferred not to "share." Furthermore, he, knowing that the politico-religious sects were an integral part of Vietnam, never deliberately excluded them from his government. He did agree to add their representatives to his administration. It was the sects that refused to participate in it. As Ellen J. Hammer explains in her book A Death In November: America In Vietnam 1963, they all had a substantial number of followers and enjoyed their status of autonomous rulers, seeing no reason to change it.
Accusing Diem of authoritarianism is also unjust, if we stop defining this term through the perspective of the West and become more aware of the situation in South Vietnam. By American standards, South Vietnam's Prime Minister was undoubtedly autocratic, for he refused to devote himself to such democratic values as free speech, free press etc. He ordered searches of suspects without search warrants and expelled American reporters from the country. But South Vietnam was no America! America was a superpower, which had embraced democratic values almost two centuries ago. South Vietnam was a fledgling nation, recently freed from colonialism, small, weak, and fractured, and most importantly – penetrated and harassed by an increasing number of invisible Communist guerrillas. Diem realized that American-style liberalization could only aggravate the already not sunny situation. He could not conduct effective counterinsurgency operations if his barely established authority was constantly undermined by indignant American journalists and officials demanding the same freedoms they were entitled to at home.
Despite what Jacobs asserts, Diem also did not discriminate against non-Catholics, at least not until the Buddhists became Communists. Diem deeply respected Buddhism, the religion of his ancestors, and worked to revive Buddhist practices in the countryside to resurrect many traditions that French colonialism had caused the people to forget. According to Father Piero Gheddo, an Italian Catholic missionary who researched the situation of the Catholic Church in Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia, Diem's regime was characterized by a Buddhist renaissance. South Vietnam's Prime Minister allocated government funds to re-built Buddhist infrastructure. Under his patronage, “the upper schools for bonzes in South Vietnam increased from 4 to 10; of the 4,766 pagodas in the country, 1,275 were built after 1954 and 1,295 were renovated or rebuilt after that year. The Diem government at the same time gave nine million piastres for the building of Buddhist pagodas (about $1,600,000), and President Diem himself gave a major contribution for the reconstruction of the famous Xa Loi pagoda.” As a Roman Catholic, Diem naturally tried to help the Roman Catholic minority in the country, but he never did it by oppressing the Buddhist majority. Furthermore, his American allies took special pains to prevent him from hiring Roman Catholics for jobs in the government, so the accusation that South Vietnam's Prime Minister had allowed an intolerant administration of Roman Catholic family members and friends a minority to rule the majority is simply false.
A good question emerges from all of the aforementioned – where was that religious oppression the Buddhists were demonstrating against? American reporter Marguerite Higgins, who had long been fascinated with Vietnam, its culture and history, was surprised to hear of religious unrest in South Vietnam's cities, for she knew there had not been religious strife in Vietnam in the twentieth century. Diem knew that too.
He understood that the Buddhist crisis of 1963 was a political, not a religious matter. Because South Vietnam's government was holding the upper hand in its struggle against the Communist guerrillas, Hanoi decided to employ a new tactic. It began sending Viet Cong agents posing as Buddhist monks to stir up unrest in South Vietnam's cities. The "Buddhist leaders" were, in fact, neither Buddhist nor leaders. They were Communists who did not represent the Budddhist majority, which lived in the countryside, saw its Buddhist practices encouraged, not suppressed, by the government in Saigon, and was too busy dealing with Viet Cong terror to revolt. When ordering raids on the pagodas (which were performed with unnecessary cruelty thanks to the same generals that would overthrow Diem a few months later) and quenching the street riots in Hue and Saigon, Diem sought to stop Communist infiltration.
The title of Jacobs's book drew my attention to a Diem myth I had missed before. In the initial stages of American support for his regime, Diem was hailed as a "miracle man" by the same those journalists who would libel him afterwards. The "miracle man" myth, created by Justice Douglas and promoted by American news media, demonstrates the great ability of the press to distort. It made up a demigod-like image of Diem, which he could not live up to. He was a good leader, but not omnipotent, and he could not meet the expectations of Americans to whom he was presented as a "miracle man."
Afterwards, when the journalists decided to use him as a scapegoat for South Vietnam's downfall, which actually began after, not before, Diem was assassinated, their power to distort was again so strong they painted a truly convincing picture of South Vietnam's Prime Minister as a dictator with no gift for politics.
AMERICA'S MIRACLE MAN IN VIETNAM is guided by that press-painted picture of Diem and gives a misleading interpretation of Diem's character and actions. I do not recommend this book.
According to Jacobs, South Vietnam's Prime Minister had been a dictator from the beginning of his rule, and the qualities that had made him attractive to the Eisenhower administration were his discrimination against non-Catholics, refusal to share power, and quick resort to violence to suppress dissent. "None of these idiosyncrasies ought to have come as a surprise to Eisenhower, his chief advisers, or those molders of American public opinion — the press lords Henry Luce and DeWitt Wallace, Senators Mike Mansfield and John F. Kennedy, ‘‘celebrity saint’’ Tom Dooley, and others — who championed Diem in the 1950s and helped bankroll his despotism. Diem never pretended to be anything other than what he was, and he never changed," the author proclaims.
South Vietnam's Prime Minister has been portrayed as an obtuse, tyrannical reactionary by so many historians it is difficult to argue that he was actually a wise, effective leader. But he was. In 1954 and 1955, with few resources at his disposal, he brought order to a demoralized, disorganized, and divided South Vietnam. Jacobs accuses him of not sharing power. Who was he supposed to share power with? South Vietnam was so divided namely because the Cao Dai, the Hoa Hao, and other religious sects, and the criminal organization Binh Xuyen had all been "sharing power," ruling as autonomous states inside a state. If order was to be brought back, the country needed a centralized government. That is why Diem preferred not to "share." Furthermore, he, knowing that the politico-religious sects were an integral part of Vietnam, never deliberately excluded them from his government. He did agree to add their representatives to his administration. It was the sects that refused to participate in it. As Ellen J. Hammer explains in her book A Death In November: America In Vietnam 1963, they all had a substantial number of followers and enjoyed their status of autonomous rulers, seeing no reason to change it.
Accusing Diem of authoritarianism is also unjust, if we stop defining this term through the perspective of the West and become more aware of the situation in South Vietnam. By American standards, South Vietnam's Prime Minister was undoubtedly autocratic, for he refused to devote himself to such democratic values as free speech, free press etc. He ordered searches of suspects without search warrants and expelled American reporters from the country. But South Vietnam was no America! America was a superpower, which had embraced democratic values almost two centuries ago. South Vietnam was a fledgling nation, recently freed from colonialism, small, weak, and fractured, and most importantly – penetrated and harassed by an increasing number of invisible Communist guerrillas. Diem realized that American-style liberalization could only aggravate the already not sunny situation. He could not conduct effective counterinsurgency operations if his barely established authority was constantly undermined by indignant American journalists and officials demanding the same freedoms they were entitled to at home.
Despite what Jacobs asserts, Diem also did not discriminate against non-Catholics, at least not until the Buddhists became Communists. Diem deeply respected Buddhism, the religion of his ancestors, and worked to revive Buddhist practices in the countryside to resurrect many traditions that French colonialism had caused the people to forget. According to Father Piero Gheddo, an Italian Catholic missionary who researched the situation of the Catholic Church in Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia, Diem's regime was characterized by a Buddhist renaissance. South Vietnam's Prime Minister allocated government funds to re-built Buddhist infrastructure. Under his patronage, “the upper schools for bonzes in South Vietnam increased from 4 to 10; of the 4,766 pagodas in the country, 1,275 were built after 1954 and 1,295 were renovated or rebuilt after that year. The Diem government at the same time gave nine million piastres for the building of Buddhist pagodas (about $1,600,000), and President Diem himself gave a major contribution for the reconstruction of the famous Xa Loi pagoda.” As a Roman Catholic, Diem naturally tried to help the Roman Catholic minority in the country, but he never did it by oppressing the Buddhist majority. Furthermore, his American allies took special pains to prevent him from hiring Roman Catholics for jobs in the government, so the accusation that South Vietnam's Prime Minister had allowed an intolerant administration of Roman Catholic family members and friends a minority to rule the majority is simply false.
A good question emerges from all of the aforementioned – where was that religious oppression the Buddhists were demonstrating against? American reporter Marguerite Higgins, who had long been fascinated with Vietnam, its culture and history, was surprised to hear of religious unrest in South Vietnam's cities, for she knew there had not been religious strife in Vietnam in the twentieth century. Diem knew that too.
He understood that the Buddhist crisis of 1963 was a political, not a religious matter. Because South Vietnam's government was holding the upper hand in its struggle against the Communist guerrillas, Hanoi decided to employ a new tactic. It began sending Viet Cong agents posing as Buddhist monks to stir up unrest in South Vietnam's cities. The "Buddhist leaders" were, in fact, neither Buddhist nor leaders. They were Communists who did not represent the Budddhist majority, which lived in the countryside, saw its Buddhist practices encouraged, not suppressed, by the government in Saigon, and was too busy dealing with Viet Cong terror to revolt. When ordering raids on the pagodas (which were performed with unnecessary cruelty thanks to the same generals that would overthrow Diem a few months later) and quenching the street riots in Hue and Saigon, Diem sought to stop Communist infiltration.
The title of Jacobs's book drew my attention to a Diem myth I had missed before. In the initial stages of American support for his regime, Diem was hailed as a "miracle man" by the same those journalists who would libel him afterwards. The "miracle man" myth, created by Justice Douglas and promoted by American news media, demonstrates the great ability of the press to distort. It made up a demigod-like image of Diem, which he could not live up to. He was a good leader, but not omnipotent, and he could not meet the expectations of Americans to whom he was presented as a "miracle man."
Afterwards, when the journalists decided to use him as a scapegoat for South Vietnam's downfall, which actually began after, not before, Diem was assassinated, their power to distort was again so strong they painted a truly convincing picture of South Vietnam's Prime Minister as a dictator with no gift for politics.
AMERICA'S MIRACLE MAN IN VIETNAM is guided by that press-painted picture of Diem and gives a misleading interpretation of Diem's character and actions. I do not recommend this book.
December 10, 2021
Was v waffley
August 27, 2007
Bold research and excellent analysis of how religion and race shaped US foreign policy in Asia. All history students, and many others, should read this book.
August 11, 2020
The more I study the Vietnam War the more absurd the whole enterprise of war becomes. Main thesis of the book was religion and racism were main drivers of the US backing an out of touch Catholic autocrat in South Vietnam (heavily majority Buddhist and otherwise complex society). Arguement is well made, and the ignorance of America's "Asia experts" is pathetic but not unexpected. Political and military decis6are not made in vaccuums absent of cultural trends, I think more history should be interpreted and studied this way.
September 26, 2023
Really fascinating second chapter picks through the place of Catholicism in the 50s-this book isn't a history of Diem's regime but is instead a portrait of a particular set of cultural narratives that tries to explain why, against all logic, U.S. military and governmental powers stuck with Diem.
January 2, 2021
Glad I finally read this cover to cover. (I was assigned this twice in college... oops)
Really interesting perspective on the specific figure/issue at hand.
Really interesting perspective on the specific figure/issue at hand.
April 6, 2013
A large part of my research for my new novel involves learning about Vietnam in the late 1950s/early 1960s, in particular the role of the U.S. in the rise of Ngo Dinh Diem to power. From this book I was expecting a history of the man. Instead, I discovered an absolute gem of a study about the significance of religion in politics in the 1950s, and the influence of religion on choosing a leader to back for South Vietnam. I started highlighting passages of interest, and realized I was highlighting nearly the entire book. Jacobs explores pop culture, democracy and foreign affairs, all within the context of religion (particularly, Catholicism) in the 1950s. This book gave me a great understanding (over anything else I've read) of how the U.S. could support a leader so clearly wrong for his country and for democratic change. Although this is a history book, I read it like a novel. Highly recommended for anyone interested in digging deeper into America's involvement in Vietnam.
May 1, 2018
If you are only going to read a single volume on the beginnings of U.S. intervention in South Vietnam, then America's Miracle Man in Vietnam is a great choice. All aspects surrounding America's attempts at nation-building in concert and conflict with President Diệm are laid out in great detail, yet accessible prose. As hinted at by the subtitle, particular attention is given to the biases of early political and religious stakeholders on the American home front, who are, perhaps mercifully, consigned to the footnotes of most Vietnam War histories.
June 28, 2013
I'll write what I wrote about "Descent Into Chaos" -- The U.S. made about every possible blunder and wrong choice in dealing with this region, mostly because of hubris and lack of knowledge of the culture.
April 24, 2012
This is as much an evaluation of the course Professor Jacobs taught as it is the book. Fascinating course at BC and an interesting book that came with it.
August 4, 2011
Interesting and well written.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews