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December 30, 2023 - January 21, 2024
More than any other presidential adviser, arguably more than President Truman himself, Acheson shaped the nation’s postwar role on the world stage.
The question, he said some weeks later, of whether Ho Chi Minh was as much a “nationalist as a Commie is irrelevant. All Stalinists in colonial areas are nationalists.” Ho, he said, was an “outright Commie.”
It was far easier to see these leaders as mere pawns of a hyperpowerful superstate emanating from the Kremlin—regardless of what the evidence showed.
The maintenance of a pro-Western Southeast Asia, they and other government analysts argued, would provide the markets and resources necessary for Japan’s economic revival—and help the recovery of Western Europe (by then well under way, but showing signs of a slowdown) as well. According to Rusk, the importation of rice from Indochina, for example, could be a terrific boon in securing Japan’s revitalization.
In August, the Soviet Union for the first time detonated an atomic device; and in September, Mao Zedong’s forces completed their rout of Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang.
The colonial-nationalist conflict provides a fertile field for subversive Communist movements, and it is now clear that Southeast Asia is the target for a coordinated offensive directed by the Kremlin.”10 There was in fact no such coordinated offensive.
domino theory.
For the next twenty-five years, high U.S. officials, on both the civilian and the military sides, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, linked the outcome in Vietnam to a chain reaction of regional and global effects, arguing that defeat in Vietnam would have calamitous consequences not merely for that country but for the rest of Southeast Asia and perhaps beyond.
Apocalyptic anti-Communism was the order of the day,
the decision to aid France in Vietnam cannot be understood without consideration of the charged domestic political milieu out of which it emerged. Especially with the defeat in China, Acheson and Truman felt compelled to show America’s mettle somewhere, especially in that region, in part to insulate the administration against Republican charges that it was too soft on Moscow—and now Beijing too. Southeast Asia was the logical place.
In 1948, the ICP reminded party functionaries to refrain from criticizing Washington in their pronouncements and to adopt a neutral line:
At Mao’s urging, Stalin agreed to meet with Ho Chi Minh. Still focused on European concerns and still distrustful of Ho, the Soviet leader affirmed his government’s recognition of the DRV but ruled out direct Soviet involvement in the war against the French.
on February 7, while Ho had still been en route to the Soviet capital, Dean Acheson had announced formal U.S. recognition of the Bao Dai government and its sister regimes in Laos and Cambodia. As neither security, democracy, nor independence could exist in any area “dominated by Soviet imperialism,” the United States, Acheson had declared, would extend economic and military aid to France and her allied governments in Indochina.
Paris officials had made the sale: They had brought the Cold War to Vietnam.
French colonial power was no longer the only thing at stake in Indochina,
In March, Secretary of State Acheson, with customary candor, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “We do not want to get into a position where the French say, ‘You take over; we aren’t able to go ahead with this.’ We want the French to stay there.… The French have got to carry [the burden] in Indochina, and we are willing to help, but not to substitute for them.” Acheson cautioned the lawmakers that “the thing we want to be careful about is that we do not press the French to the point where they say, ‘All right, take over the damned country. We don’t want it,’ and put their soldiers on
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To keep these new formations fighting in the field required complex logistical planning. For example, senior Viet Minh planners determined that maintaining an infantry division in action away from its base required the use of roughly fifty thousand local peasants as porters, each carrying about forty-five pounds in supplies.
a porter was not to be away from home for more than two weeks, meaning that he would spend “seven carrying days” with the army unit and then could commence the return journey to his village. Fresh porters would be conscripted as the division continued its journey.
The pivotal U.S. decision to provide aid to the French military effort had preceded the outbreak of fighting in Korea, but the war there shaped the nature of the U.S. aid program in key ways. On the first day of the North Korean attack, June 25, 1950, President Truman ordered that assistance to Indochina be increased and accelerated; on the thirtieth, the day U.S. troops were committed to combat in Korea (as part of a UN force), eight C-47 transport planes arrived in Saigon with the first shipments of American matériel for the French.
To oversee the delivery of this expanded American assistance, and to “evaluate French tactical efficiency in the use of U.S. equipment,” the administration created the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), whose first contingent of officers and enlisted men arrived in Saigon in September,
Significantly, the French ruled out any kind of training role for MAAG and made clear they would allow no American interference in the conduct of the war.
Franco-American tensions remained considerable, but Harry Truman and his top aides bought the general’s argument that Korea and Indochina were the same struggle. Of de Lattre’s fifty-five weeks as commander in chief, none were more important than the two he spent in the United States. By January 1952 he was gone, but the Americans were more firmly committed to his cause than ever before.
Greene returned to the scene in The Quiet American
Greene was not at this point pro-Communist, but the talent and fierce dedication of the Viet Minh impressed him. In his article for Life, he acknowledged that many of Ho Chi Minh’s supporters were motivated by idealism and were not part of any monolithic Stalinist movement. Even worse from the editors’ perspective, Greene saw little chance of stopping Communism in Indochina. The article urged France to prepare herself for retreat from the region and warned Washington that not all social-political problems could be overcome with force.
How, he wondered, could a people be at once so smugly self-righteous in their conviction that the American way was best for everyone and so obsessively fearful of the Red menace?
It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we should be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.”
In his mind, there are no limits to what the United States can achieve; he is willing—to use the later Vietnam-era phrase—to destroy a village in order to save it. It’s Pyle’s very innocence, that is to say, that makes him dangerous.
The United States, that principle taught, represented the ultimate form of civilization, the source of inspiration for humankind. Her policies were uniquely altruistic, her institutions worthy of special emulation. Any hostility to America was, by definition, hostility to progress and righteousness and therefore was, again by definition, illegitimate.
A major U.S. policy document, NSC-124, approved by Truman on June 25, summarized the administration’s position. The United States, it declared, would oppose negotiations leading to a French withdrawal. Should Paris nevertheless prefer such a course, the United States would seek maximum support from her allies for collective action, including the possibility of air and naval support for the defense of Indochina. Should China intervene, her lines of communication should be interdicted and a naval blockade of the Chinese coast imposed. If these “minimum” measures proved insufficient, the United
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THE FRENCH stayed in, and the Chinese did not invade.
An ardent believer in American internationalism, Dulles was also deeply anti-Communist and pro-business, and he thought Republicans more trustworthy than Democrats—they were more wealthy, after all, and therefore understood better how the world worked.
As he took the oath of office, Eisenhower’s first policy priority was to make good on his campaign promise to end the Korean War as quickly as possible. But his very willingness to discuss peace terms with the North Koreans and the Chinese made him all the more determined to show firmness toward Communism elsewhere in Asia. From the start, he and Dulles sought at all costs to keep France from following their Korea example by negotiating with Ho Chi Minh.
more than 139,000 metric tons of U.S. equipment had been delivered to the French, including some 900 combat vehicles, 15,000 other vehicles, 2,500 artillery pieces, 24,000 automatic weapons, 75,000 small arms, and almost 9,000 radios. In addition, the French had received 160 F-6F and F-8F fighter planes, 41 B-26 light bombers, and 28 C-47 transports plus 155 aircraft engines and 93,000 bombs.
Before 1953
The American spokesman, an assistant secretary of state, restated the American proposition, emphasizing our willingness to provide the means if the French simply provided us with a viable plan for victory. Letourneau, in turn, restated his position, noting that it was “not the policy of his government” to seek a military victory in Indochina, that indeed victory probably was unattainable because of the likelihood that the Chinese would intervene in Indochina to prevent such an outcome, just as they had done in Korea.
core of the plan involved deploying newly raised, U.S.-financed “light” battalions (that is, six hundred men) that would occupy pacified areas in central and southern Vietnam, permitting groupes mobiles to be concentrated in Tonkin. Then, in 1955, Franco-Vietnamese forces would take the offensive against the main Viet Minh units and destroy them.
Trying to clear rear areas before destroying the main Viet Minh forces, Admiral Arthur W. Radford said, would be like “trying to mop up water without turning off the faucet.”
both Ambassador Heath and MAAG chief General Thomas J. H. Trapnell defended the Letourneau Plan as the best that could be achieved in the circumstances. For want of anything better, Washington officials signed off in April, not expecting much in the way of results.22
the Americans in effect called the shots. Any unilateral move to withdraw from Indochina could lead to an immediate end of U.S. aid, which would expose the Expeditionary Corps and the colon community to grave dangers, forcing decolonization. It could also complicate Franco-American relations concerning German rearmament and other issues.
American pressure contributed to another important decision by the Mayer government that spring: the devaluation of the Indochinese piaster on May 10. The move came in response to increased reports of profiteering in the currency as a result of the artificial maintenance of the exchange rate.
Bidault’s personal stake in a successful outcome in Indochina went deeper than anyone else’s, since he had been right there at the center when the crucial early moves were made,
in view of the dizzying turnover of governments in the Fourth Republic, that Bidault was seemingly always there, putting his stamp on the policy, pushing forward, ruling out compromise. This was Bidault’s war if it was anyone’s.
justify the immense sacrifices the Expeditionary Corps had already made—to date, the fighting had killed 3 generals, 8 colonels, 18 lieutenant colonels, 69 majors, 341 captains, 1,140 lieutenants, 3,683 NCOs, and 6,008 soldiers of French nationality; 12,019 legionnaires and Africans; and 14,093 Indochinese troops. These numbers did not include the missing or wounded—about 20,000 and 100,000 respectively.
Former prime minister René Mayer was blunt: “It seems evident that among French businessmen and civil servants who know Indochina well, nobody believes any more that it is possible to beat the Viet Minh militarily. Nevertheless, in order to induce Washington to grant France sizable direct assistance, the notion has been propagated that additional efforts might yield decisive results.”
Why, critics asked, did Washington reserve for itself a course of action—negotiations, leading to a political solution—it denied to its allies? And why, some asked (especially on the right), did these self-righteous Americans feel free to lecture France on how to treat dependent peoples, given their discrimination against Negroes within America’s own borders?
This seemingly innocuous action would trigger a series of moves and countermoves in several world capitals and ultimately bring the war to its climax. The post bore the unlikely name of “Big Frontier Administrative Center,” or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu.
History offered many examples of commanders who, when faced with an untenable situation, chose to retreat and were praised for their wisdom, despite fervent initial opposition to the action.
Examples here would be welcomed.
The fact is that Giap’s forces were not yet prepared for the immense task at hand; an attack on January 25 or 26 could easily have ended in disaster. From this perspective, neither Navarre’s original conception regarding Operation Castor nor de Castries’s and Piroth’s confidence before Jacquet and Dejean on the twenty-fifth seems so absurd. The People’s Army came much closer to military failure at Dien Bien Phu than is generally believed.
the president ordered the creation of a smaller, top-secret Special Committee on Indochina, chaired by Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith, whose task was to “come up with a plan in specific terms, covering who does what and which and to whom” in Indochina and the surrounding region.5 Late in the month the Smith committee recommended, and Eisenhower approved, the dispatch of two hundred uniformed U.S. Air Force mechanics to Indochina to service American-supplied aircraft, including the new B-26s, on the understanding that “they would be used at bases where they would be secure from
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the White House had refused to countenance any action that might be construed as even tacit recognition of the PRC’s legitimacy,
His own Republican Party, as we have seen, had made China the partisan shibboleth of American politics with its attacks four years earlier on Truman and Acheson for allegedly “losing” the country to Mao and his Communists.
