Embers of War (122 page)

  
7
The book was never translated, but a useful compendium of Mus’s ideas is McAlister and Mus,
The Vietnamese and Their Revolution
.

  
8
Christopher E. Goscha, “French Lessons from Indochina: Paul Mus and the American Debate over the Legitimacy of the Vietnam War,” unpublished paper in author’s possession.

  
9
Mark Philip Bradley,
Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 148–76; Christopher E. Goscha, “Le contexte asiatique de la guerre franco-vietnamienne: Réseaux, relations et économie,” Ph.D. dissertation, École pratique des hautes études/Sorbonne, 2001, 563–99; Christopher E. Goscha, “Courting Diplomatic Disaster? The Difficult Integration of Vietnam into the Internationalist Communist Movement (1945–1950),”
Journal of Vietnamese Studies
1 (February 2006): 59–103.

10
Bradley,
Imagining Vietnam and America
, 148–50; Tuong Vu, “From Cheering to Volunteering: Vietnamese Communists and the Coming of the Cold War,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds.,
Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 184.

11
Bradley,
Imagining Vietnam and America
, 148–50.

12
Benoît de Tréglodé, “Premiers contacts entre le Vietnam et l’Union soviétique (1947–1948),”
Approches-Asie
, no. 16 (1999): 125–35; Goscha, “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?”

13
Already in January 1947, Pignon began articulating this argument. See his memo quoted in Philippe Devillers,
Paris-Saigon-Hanoi: Les archives de la guerre, 1944–1947
(Paris: Gallimard/Julliard, 1988), 334.

14
Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 397–98; Robert Shaplen,
Lost Revolution
, 62.

15
Lloyd C. Gardner,
Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 77; Martin Windrow,
The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam
(Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 105.

16
For biographical details, see, e.g., Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam
, 61–64; George McTurnan Kahin,
Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 24–26.

17
Ellen J. Hammer,
The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 211–12.

18
Discours prononcé par M. E. Bollaert, September 11, 1947, Record Group 59, 851G.00/9–1147, NARA.

19
Neil L. Jamieson,
Understanding Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 212–13.

20
Christopher E. Goscha, “Intelligence in a Time of Decolonization: The Case of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam at War (1945–1950),”
Intelligence & National Security
, 22 (2007), 13.

21
Yves Gras,
Histoire de la guerre d’Indochine
(Paris: Plon, 1979), 190–97.

22
Bernard Fall,
Street Without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946–1954
(Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1961), 30.

23
Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam: A History
, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1997), 189.

24
Martin Thomas, “French Imperial Reconstruction and the Development of the Indochina War, 1945–1950,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 144–45.

25
Consul General–Hanoi to Saigon, June 7, 1948, FO 959/19, TNA.

26
Shaplen,
Lost Revolution
, 62.

27
Andrew Roth, “French Tactics in Indo-China,”
New Republic
, February 28, 1948.

28
See Odd Arne Westad,
Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946–1950
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), chap. 6.

29
An archive-based study giving close attention to Pignon’s role in Indochina is Daniel Varga, “La politique française en Indochine (1947–1950): Histoire d’une décolonisation manquée,” doctoral thesis, Université Aix-Marseille, July 2004.

30
Mark Atwood Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 203.

31
Hanoi to FO, n.d., FO 371/41723; Windrow,
Last Valley
, 105.

32
“General Report for September,” November 1, 1948, FO 959/21, TNA.

33
Consul General–Hanoi to Saigon, September 20, 1948, FO 959/20, TNA.

34
Lucien Bodard,
The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1967), 125–26.

35
John English,
Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau
(Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2006), 185–86.

36
Gras,
Histoire
, 224–26.

37
One sober-minded British report estimated in October 1948: “Apart from a number of towns and ports and precariously fluid lines of communication held by the French, 80 percent of the country is controlled by the rebels.” “French Indo-China,” October 23, 1948, FO 959/23, TNA. See also William J. Duiker,
U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 68.

38
“General Report for December 1948,” January 2, 1949, FO 959/32, TNA.

39
Philippe Devillers,
Histoire du Viêt-Nam de 1940 à 1952
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1952), 442–43; Joseph Buttinger,
Vietnam: A Political History
(New York: Praeger, 1968), 308.

40
Saigon to FO, n.d., FO 959/45, TNA.

41
Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 194–95; Karnow,
Vietnam
, 191.

42
Robert E. Herzstein,
Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), xiii, 140, 157;
Time
, October 10, 1949. A superb biography of Luce is Alan Brinkley,
The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010). On Luce’s fervent anti-Communism throughout the period, and how it shaped his publications, see ibid., chap. 11–12. On intellectuals in the Luce empire, see the nuanced study by Robert Vanderlan,
Intellectuals Incorporated: Politics, Art, and Ideas Inside Henry Luce’s Media Empire
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010).

CHAPTER 9
:
“The Center of the Cold War”

  
1
Dean Acheson,
Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), 674.

  
2
Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas,
The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 22.

  
3
James Reston,
Deadline: A Memoir
(New York: Random House, 1991), 144; Mark Atwood Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 225.

  
4
Neil Sheehan,
A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam
(New York: Random House, 1988), 169.

  
5
Robert L. Beisner,
Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 268–69; James Chace,
Acheson: The Secretary of State Who
Created the American World
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 264; Robert M. Blum,
Drawing the Line: The Origin of American Containment Policy in East Asia
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), 115.

  
6
Chace,
Acheson
, 266; Lawrence,
Assuming the Burden
, 225.

  
7
Ronald McGlothlen,
Controlling the Waves: Dean Acheson and U.S. Foreign Policy in Asia
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 181.

  
8
Blum,
Drawing the Line
, 120.

  
9
Michael Schaller, “Securing the Great Ascent: Occupied Japan and the Origins of Containment in Southeast Asia,”
Journal of American History
69 (September 1982), 392–413; Andrew J. Rotter,
The Path to Vietnam: Origins of the American Commitment to Southeast Asia
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987); McGlothlen,
Controlling the Waves
, 191–201.

10
The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of Decisionmaking on Vietnam
, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 1:82.

11
George C. Herring,
America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975
, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 16.

12
Chace,
Acheson
, 227–28, 430; Sam Tanenhaus,
Whitaker Chambers: A Biography
(New York: Random House, 1997), 437–38; Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 110.

13
On the thinking of Viet Minh leaders in this period with respect to the Cold War and the DRV’s place within it, see Tuong Vu, “From Cheering to Volunteering: Vietnamese Communists and the Coming of the Cold War,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, eds.,
Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962
(Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2009), 188–93.

14
Translation of captured document dated January 14, 1948, quoted in Christopher E. Goscha, “Courting Diplomatic Disaster? The Difficult Integration of Vietnam into the Internationalist Communist Movement (1945–1950),”
Journal of Vietnamese Studies
1 (February 2006), 83.

15
Ibid. On Ho Chi Minh’s reluctance to tie the Viet Minh to the Communist bloc, see Christoph Giebel,
Imagined Ancestries of Vietnamese Communism: Ton Duc Thang and the Politics of History and Memory
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).

16
János Radványi,
Delusion and Reality: Gambits, Hoaxes, and Diplomatic One-Upmanship in Vietnam
(South Bend, Ind.: Gateway Editions, 1978), 4; Goscha, “Courting Diplomatic Disaster?,” 84; Ilya Gaiduk, “Soviet Cold War Strategy and Prospects of Revolution in South and Southeast Asia,” in Goscha and Ostermann,
Connecting Histories
, 123–36.

17
Chen Jian,
Mao’s China and the Cold War
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 50; Odd Arne Westad, ed.,
Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998), 63.

18
William J. Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh: A Life
(New York: Hyperion, 2000), 418–19; Qiang Zhai, “Transplanting the Chinese Model: Chinese Military Advisers and the First Vietnam War, 1950–1954,”
Journal of Military History
57, no. 4 (October 1993): 689–715.

19
Quoted in Philip Short,
Mao: A Life
(New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 425.

20
Ibid., 424.

21
Vo Nguyen Giap,
Memoirs of War: The Road to Dien Bien Phu
(Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 12–13; Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 421.

22
Chen Jian,
Mao’s China
, 122–23.

23
Qiang Zhai, “Transplanting the Chinese Model,” 695.

24
Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh
, 416; Luu Doan Huynh interview with author, Hanoi, January 2003.

25
Robert J. McMahon,
The Limits of Empire: The United States and Southeast Asia Since World War II
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 40.

26
Paris to Washington, February 13, 1950, File 257, Asie/Indochine, MAE.

27
See the analysis in Pignon to Paris, January 24, 1950, Série XIV, SLOTFOM, no. 16/ps/cab], Fonds Haut-Commissariat de France en Indochine, Dépôt des Archives d’Outre-Mer, Aix-en-Provence. I thank Mark Lawrence for making this document available to me.

28
Ronald H. Spector,
Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 108.

29
NYT
, March 9, 1950; Paris to FO, 5/9/50, FO 959/43, TNA; Spector,
Advice and Support
, 108.