A Sense of the Enemy: The High Stakes History of Reading Your Rival's Mind (20 page)

A palpable tension existed between the southern communists’ belief that armed struggle against the South was necessary on the one hand and the Central Committee’s policy of peaceful political struggle under the framework of the Geneva accords on the other. As the official military command history of the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) reveals, its armed squads were restricted from engaging in military operations in order to comply with Hanoi’s instructions.
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In December of 1956, the Cochin China Party Committee convened an enlarged session to discuss its strategy. Le Duan, as a Politburo member, presided, along with Nguyen Van Linh, the acting committee secretary. The group resolved that the time was not yet right to launch guerilla warfare. Instead, it would pursue armed propaganda. The purpose of propaganda units would be to encourage hatred of the enemy, suppress spies, win over the masses to their cause, and avoid combat that could reveal their forces to the enemy.
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In other words, the Cochin China
branch of the Party, under Le Duan’s direction, determined to further the revolution by all means short of outright guerilla war.
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Militancy alone could not account for Le Duan’s rapid rise within the Party. His elevation is a testament to his shrewd political skills and his manipulation of factional rivalries. By 1951 he was already a leading figure among the southern communists. In late 1956, Le Duan was reassigned to the North, signifying his rising status within the Party leadership. Following his journey with the delegation to the Moscow conference of communist parties in November 1957, he publicly emerged as the most important Party official after Ho Chi Minh. During these years, he continued to agitate for an armed struggle in the South, while his prominence within the Party grew.

In 1960, Le Duan ascended to the post of Party First Secretary, placing him in a powerful, though not unchallenged, position of influence over the Vietnamese Communist movement, both in the North and the South. As Le Duan’s power base expanded, he applied increasingly harsh tactics to ensure that his own policies would be adopted and his opponents sidelined. On September 15, he succeeded in passing a Party statute that dramatically expanded the authority of the Secretariat, the government organ of which he was the head. Subsequently, Le Duan wielded enormous influence over government branches as varied as foreign affairs, finance, science, agriculture, propaganda, and beyond. More than this, Le Duan controlled the Ministry of Public Security, through which he could employ the harshest tactics of a modern state against his presumed opponents. It was a weapon he did not hesitate to use. DRV citizens, from Party intellectuals to political rivals, all felt the brunt of police state rule.
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Le Duan’s opponents had good reason to fear his extensive reach, for in the wake of the Sino–Soviet split, the Party fractured along the lines of those partial to the Soviet Union (adhering to Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence with the West) and those who favored closer ties to China (backing Chairman Mao’s wish to support armed struggles against perceived neocolonialism). Le Duan and Le Duc Tho belonged to the pro-China faction. Those Vietnamese who had studied in the Soviet Union and now supported revisionism were especially vulnerable to Le Duan’s and Le Duc Tho’s attacks. A second, related rift emerged between those like Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, who advocated a
south-first policy of war, and those who preferred a north-first approach focused on economic development of the DRV. Still a third important fissure developed within Party circles, with those who favored guerilla warfare in the South opposing those who advocated larger, conventional units being sent to fight alongside the southerners. Each of these swirling currents buffeted wartime strategy and policy, and Le Duan stood at the maelstrom’s center.

In December of 1963, for example, subsequent to the Diem assassination, Le Duan pressed the Politburo to increase infiltration of the South and attempt to overthrow the southern regime, against the wishes of both Khrushchev and others within the DRV. Some of those opposed to his plans were arrested and removed from positions of influence.
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In 1964, he moved to exert greater control over the southern communist forces by placing his own man, General Nguyen Chi Thanh, as head of the Central Office of the South Vietnamese Communist Party. By elevating General Thanh, Le Duan hoped to undercut the influence of the revered General Võ Nguyên Giáp, hero of the war against the French. Nguyen Chi Thanh was himself a Politburo member and seemed poised to rise even higher, but he died in 1967 under mysterious circumstances.
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Some believe he was murdered by those loyal to General Giáp. Others claim he had a heart attack after a night of heavy drinking.
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Whatever the case, Le Duan’s appointment of Nguyen Chi Thanh to oversee COSVN reflects the First Secretary’s intention to control the southern revolution. As for Le Duan’s more heavy-handed efforts to influence events, Sophie Quinn-Judge has argued that during a Party purge in 1967 (the so-called anti-Party affair), Le Duan was again responsible for having opponents arrested and removed from power.
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Judging Le Duan’s character is not as simple as it may seem. The evidence suggests a man driven to achieve his ends regardless of the costs to others. On the other hand, as a revolutionary leader, he clearly inspired many, whether as a teacher of Marxism-Leninism to other prison inmates or through his speeches and letters to the Party faithful.
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Yet many of his contemporaries viewed him as deceptive and manipulative. According to Pierre Asselin, the General Secretary “found enemies almost everywhere.” His paranoia and deceitfulness, Asselin observed, alienated many supporters of the revolution. More recently some of Le
Duan’s colleagues have sought to defend his reputation through their reminiscences, though this has not shifted opinion in Western historiography.
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His complex character aside, there is no doubt that as First Secretary of the VWP, Le Duan wielded enormous power over all organs of the state, including the military.
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From such a formidable position, he was able to influence Hanoi’s wartime strategy against America.

Le Duan and the Protracted War Strategy

Le Duan steadily advocated a dual approach: large conventional warfare when possible and protracted guerilla war when necessary. By bogging the Americans down in a war involving high numbers of casualties, Le Duan believed that domestic opposition within the United States would force Washington to withdraw from Vietnam if face-saving measures could be provided. Naturally, he would have been eager to achieve a quick victory if it had been possible, but even the general offensives of 1968 and 1972 did not produce a rapid triumph. Both methods—large-scale military offensives and long-term guerilla warfare—were employed to sap the Americans’ will. While some scholars have highlighted Le Duan’s interest in a rapid victory, this is only half of the story.
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Le Duan frequently spoke and wrote, both in public pronouncements and private correspondence, of the need to wear the enemy down over a prolonged period. From his writings, we can see that he did not simply apply the same strategy against America that had been successful against the French. Instead, we find careful reasoning about the range of American strengths and weaknesses, from its nuclear capacity to its costly global commitments, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. In short, Le Duan thought in geostrategic terms, fully aware of the underdog’s necessities and the overdog’s constraints.

The First Secretary articulated the policy of protracted war to the southern communists in numerous letters. In April 1961, for example, he outlined Hanoi’s guidance on southern strategy and tactics, along with a spirited urging to steep all Party members and the masses in the notion of a protracted war. Only by stressing the need for a long, arduous fight, he insisted, could they be certain of victory. President Kennedy, he claimed, had said that the United States would need ten years to snuff out the revolution in Vietnam. If the enemy was planning
on a long war, then how could they fail to meet the challenge by doing the same, Le Duan asked rhetorically.
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Despite his reputation for militancy and advocacy of armed resistance, the Party First Secretary remained sensitive to strategic necessities. In a letter to COSVN in July 1962, Le Duan cautioned his comrades not to attack the cities at that time. Even though there were vulnerable areas, an attack would not be advantageous because it could incite the Americans to increase their intervention and expand the war.
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Admonitions such as these demonstrated that Le Duan understood that provoking the Americans while COSVN forces were still weak was strategically unwise and potentially counterproductive. That recognition stemmed from an understanding of the balance of forces at the time. His critical assessment led to caution. This raises the question of why communist forces provoked America in 1964 at Tonkin and again in 1965 at Pleiku—a question to which we will soon return. Overall, the First Secretary observed that protracted wars must be fought in both the political and military arenas, and he pointed to the recent experiences of Laotians and Algerians in defeating their adversaries on the political front.

In this same letter, Le Duan clearly enunciated how he viewed America’s greatest weakness and how Hanoi intended to exploit it. The movement, Le Duan explained, could not at that time destroy American forces. The enemy was too strong, both in military and financial resources. Instead, the aim was to attack portions of the Diem regime’s forces, the “puppet army,” and thereby cause the Americans to “sink deeper and deeper into the mire of a protracted war with no way out.” This in turn would cause the Americans to become increasingly isolated domestically and globally, which would impel them to negotiate with Hanoi.
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Hanoi would then call for the formation of a neutral South Vietnamese regime. Le Duan believed that the Americans would be willing to accept defeat provided that Hanoi advanced limited demands at a level that would not cause the enemy to lose too much face.
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The overall plan was to weaken the Americans in phases, gradually pushing back the perceived expansion of neo-imperialist aims.

By 1963, the South Vietnamese regime was in deep turmoil. President Ngo Dinh Diem had pushed through turbulent land reform policies of his own, engendering resentment over forced resettlement programs. Diem’s repressive policies fomented conflicts with communist units as
well as with Buddhist and other religious minorities. Dissatisfaction with Diem’s rule culminated in a coup on November 2, 1963, in which President Diem was assassinated.
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Resentment at Diem’s harsh rule had been brewing for several years, and although Hanoi recognized Saigon’s instability as an opportunity, it was unable to capitalize on the situation. Following the coup, the key question facing Party leaders was whether the United States would increase its counterrevolutionary efforts in Vietnam. Would it expand the war? The month following the Diem coup, Hanoi analyzed the situation in a lengthy document.

In December of 1963, the VWP’s Central Committee issued its Resolution from the Ninth Plenum. One section of this resolution covered issues surrounding America’s intentions and capabilities. Hanoi’s strategy seemed contradictory. It called for both a quick victory over the South and a protracted war. We know that Hanoi’s leaders were flexible insofar as they were willing to adopt measures that worked. In this respect they were opportunistic, adapting their methods as circumstances dictated. But the apparent policy contradiction also likely reflected a compromise between competing factions within the Party. Internal Party disagreements were never aired openly, yet we know that various factions existed over time. One notable split existed between a more dovish branch favoring compromise and negotiation with the Americans and a more hawkish group, led by Le Duan, favoring all-out war.

The Resolution of December 1963 articulated some key elements in Hanoi’s thinking about America. Given Le Duan’s position atop the Party, it is certain that he influenced the resolution’s final form and its treatment of the United States. The document was intended to spell out the likely prospects for the South Vietnamese revolutionary movement as well as outlining guidelines and responsibilities for victory. It asserted the standard and consistent line that the world revolutionary movement was in the ascendance and the global situation was increasingly unfavorable for the imperialists. It declared that Marxism-Leninism afforded the Party “a scientific foundation for our policy guidelines, formulas, and procedures for fighting the Americans” and that this could give the Party members great confidence in the Party leadership.
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Sandwiched between layers of Marxist historical analysis lay Hanoi’s assessment of several specific challenges facing America. The first of these, a recurrent subtheme throughout the
Van Kien Dang
, involved
the dispersal of U.S. forces. The Resolution observed that America’s strength was spread around the world, making it difficult for the U.S. to concentrate sufficient force on any one region and allowing an opening for insurgencies to capitalize on this weakness. It argued that America had launched ten wars of aggression in the previous eighteen years but that it continued to be defeated, specifically in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cuba. Naturally, such comments might merely represent Hanoi’s wishful thinking—attempts to spin its situation in a positive light. But since at other times Party leaders pointed to America’s strengths and counseled caution, it is entirely possible that at least some Party leaders believed the above assessment of America. It suggests that they viewed the United States as weaker than its military and economic power would indicate.