Embers of War (95 page)

No other Vietnamese politician possessed anything like this network of contacts in the United States, or engaged in this kind of lobbying, and some authors have concluded that U.S. officials must have forced Bao Dai’s hand in June 1954 and pushed through their “protégé.” This is going too far. For one thing, the evidence is strong that senior American policy makers in spring 1954 were at best dimly aware of Ngo Dinh Diem’s existence and credentials. (As late as May 22, Dulles told the U.S. delegation at Geneva there was “no immediate substitute” for the current regime.)
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For another, Diem had a power base also in Vietnam, and even before his departure in 1950, he had turned down an offer by Bao Dai to become prime minister. In May 1953, he left American soil and settled at a Benedictine monastery in Belgium, from which he lobbied on his own behalf in the important Vietnamese community in Paris. This effort yielded results, and by the spring of 1954, his anti-French posture put him on every short list of contenders to succeed Buu Loc.
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Yet the American connection mattered enormously in the end. Consider Bao Dai’s own explanation for why he chose Diem as premier. “From my earlier experience with him, I knew that Diem had a difficult character,” he wrote in his memoirs.

I was also aware of his fanaticism and his messianic tendencies. But, in the present situation, there was no better choice. He was well known to the Americans, who appreciated his intransigence. In their eyes, he was the man best suited for the job, and Washington would not be sparing in its support of him. Because of [Diem’s] past and because of the presence of his brother at the head of the “Movement for National Union,” he would have the cooperation of the fiercest nationalists, those who had brought down [Nguyen Van] Tam and then Buu Loc. Finally, because of his intransigence and his fanaticism, he could be counted on to resist communism. Yes, he was truly the right man for the situation.
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Also suggestive is that Bao Dai, who did not attend the Geneva Conference personally, chose Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Luyen to be his representative in communications with the American delegation. Beginning in the third week of May, Luyen pressed U.S. officials in Geneva, including Walter Bedell Smith, for their views about a change of government in general and one headed by Ngo Dinh Diem in particular. Smith and his aides passed along to the State Department their impression that Bao Dai was “obviously trying to find out whether the U.S. is disposed to replace France in Indochina to an extent which would virtually free Bao Dai from the need for taking into account French views.” They concluded that Bao Dai “might well play the Ngo Dinh Diem card if he could be sure we would support him; otherwise not.” A few days later, after Nguyen again asked if Bao Dai could count on American backing if he adopted “an entirely new stand,” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles cabled the U.S. delegation: “In view of role which U.S. may be called upon to play in Indochina, we have given much thought to Bao Dai’s offer.… I believe this offer should be discreetly exploited.”
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A smoking gun? Not quite. But it’s one more piece of evidence that Bao Dai insisted upon—and received—American approval before proceeding with the Diem appointment. Did the appointment also depend on Vietnamese internal politics, on Diem’s powerful backing among Vietnamese Catholics, and on the shrewd maneuverings by him and his aides (notably his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu) in the decisive weeks in May and early June? Unquestionably. The Eisenhower admistration did not
engineer
his appointment, as is often alleged. But its role was nonetheless vital.

Interestingly, many who interacted with Diem in this period seconded Bao Dai’s description of him as a “difficult character” with “messianic tendencies”—and not merely French officials, who were predisposed to view him harshly for his unshakable nationalist convictions. Among leading lights in the Vietnamese community in Paris, he came across as obscurantist and long-winded and utterly humorless. To Douglas Dillon, the U.S. ambassador to France, Diem was a “Yogi-like mystic” who appeared “too unworldly and unsophisticated to be able to cope with the grave problems and unscrupulous people he will find in Saigon,” while to Robert McClintock of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, who was on hand when Diem arrived to assume power in late June, he was a “messiah without a message.” With notable foresight, McClintock saw in Diem “a curious blend of heroism mixed with a narrowness of view and egotism which will make him a difficult man to deal with.”
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Yet these observers also identified more positive attributes in the man. His hostility to Communism was deep and profound, as was his hostility to the French—a terrific one-two punch. Even his detractors acknowledged his personal probity and courage. And there was the simple fact that the competition was weak. Each of the other candidates to succeed Buu Loc had his own shortcomings, some of them more crippling than Diem’s. As for the incumbent and those who came before him, the less said the better. Said Dillon from Paris: The U.S. government should accept the “seemingly ridiculous prospect” that Diem could take on the job if “only because the standard set by his predecessors is so low.”
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To no one’s surprise, Diem was hostile on the issue of partition, even more so than Buu Loc had been. It would be a disaster, he insisted, a reward for international Communist aggression, a betrayal. In Washington, though, attitudes were more mixed. Smith, having returned from Geneva on June 20, argued in favor of accepting the inevitability of a division of Vietnam and the desirability of guaranteeing it, so as to discourage the DRV from trying to violate the agreement. But Pentagon planners reiterated the old view that the Red River Delta was vital to the defense of all of Southeast Asia. A north-south partition, at whatever line south of the delta, would therefore merely be a prelude to the loss of the entire region. This view had support within the Policy Planning Staff—upon learning of the results of the Zhou–Mendès France meeting in Bern, some of its members advocated “busting up” the Geneva Conference in order to “achieve a new climate” more amenable to the continuation of military resistance in Vietnam. At the very least, these analysts maintained, the administration should make unambiguously clear that it would accept no division below the line from Thakhek (in Laos) to Dong Hoi, just south of the eighteenth parallel, and that if necessary, it would send U.S. troops to protect that line.
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Saigon ambassador Donald Heath thought the sentiment in Washington ran almost wholly in this direction. “All the people below the Secretary and Under Secretary are unanimous that we should intervene with or without the French,” he wrote Philip Bonsal, the director of the State Department’s Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs, who was in Geneva. Bonsal answered that the view in Geneva was different. American delegates to the conference doubted that intervention could produce more advantageous results than those to be gained from a negotiated agreement.
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Eisenhower and Dulles in effect split the difference, with enormous long-term implications. Averse though they were to having any compromise agreement of any kind with Communist foes, they also were in no mood to rush in without allied support. The new French leader had made his intentions clear, as had the British. “Personally I think Mendès France, whom I do not know, has made up his mind to clear out on the best terms available,” Churchill wrote Eisenhower on June 21. “If that is so, I think he is right.” The prime minister added that “in no foreseeable circumstances, except possibly a local rescue, could British troops be used in Indochina, and if we were asked our opinion we should advise against US local intervention except for rescue.”
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The only real answer, Eisenhower and Dulles determined, was to accept the likelihood that part of Vietnam would be lost at Geneva and to plan for the defense of the rest of Indochina and Southeast Asia. They had been contemplating this solution for several weeks, as we’ve seen, but only now did they take concrete steps to realize it. On June 24, Dulles told congressional leaders that any Geneva agreement would be “something we would have to gag about,” but he expressed optimism that the United States could “salvage something” in Indochina “free of the taint of French colonialism.” Specifically, Washington would assume responsibility for the defense of Cambodia, Laos, and southern Vietnam, with the first task the drawing of a line the Communists would not cross. Then, the secretary continued, the United States would “hold this area and fight subversion within with all the strength we have,” using economic and military assistance to the non-Communist governments as well as an American-led regional defense grouping modeled in part on NATO.
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It was a monumental decision, as important as any made by an American administration on Indochina, from Franklin Roosevelt’s to Gerald Ford’s. Its true import would become clear only with time, but even on that day the weight of the secretary of state’s words were hard to miss. The United States would thenceforth take responsibility for defending most of Indochina, he told the lawmakers, and without “the taint of French colonialism.”

IV

THE AMERICAN POLICY SHIFT HELPED SMOOTH WHAT OTHERWISE
might have been a fractious Anglo-U.S. “summit” meeting in Washington in the last week of June. Dulles acknowledged on June 26 that partition was less objectionable in Vietnam than early nationwide elections—neither he nor Dwight Eisenhower doubted that Ho Chi Minh would win such a vote, and win handily. Agreement was also reached on the establishment of an Anglo-American study group, to convene in Washington for the purpose of considering, among other things, the necessary steps to create a Southeast Asian security pact (tentatively called the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, or SEATO).

The tangible results of the summit were a joint communiqué, issued by Churchill and Eisenhower on June 28, and a secret list of Seven Points, drawn up the following day by Dulles and Eden. The communiqué was put out partly at the request of Mendès France who, though he had decided to seek a political solution on the best terms he could get, wanted the appearance of allied unity in order to strengthen his bargaining position at Geneva. He asked that the communiqué include a statement that a “serious aggravation” could result if no acceptable settlement was reached at Geneva. He got his wish—the statement warned that if the conference failed, “the international situation will be seriously aggravated.”
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In the Seven Points, meanwhile, Dulles and Eden laid out the minimum terms their two governments would “respect.”
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Notably, an agreement would have to preserve the integrity of Cambodia and Laos and assure the removal of Viet Minh forces; preserve the southern half of Vietnam and, ideally, an enclave in the Red River Delta; include no provisions that would risk the loss of the retained area to Communist control; and include the possibility of ultimate reunification of Vietnam.

The French government saw much to like in both the communiqué and the Seven Points. The former showed the world that France’s allies maintained a strong interest in Indochina and the Geneva Conference, while the latter amounted to an acceptance (privately, at least) by Washington of partition as a solution.
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At the same time, Mendès France was puzzled by some of the ambiguities in the Seven Points. What did Dulles and Eden mean by “respect”? And wasn’t it potentially contradictory to speak of the possibility of national reunification while also ruling out a Communist takeover? What if Ho Chi Minh won the national elections? To Mendès France and Chauvel it seemed clear that Washington was still hedging its bets, still unwilling to fully commit itself to the negotiations. And this was a problem: As Chauvel said, the ultimate success of the conference depended on the Soviets and Chinese applying pressure on the Viet Minh while the United States did the same to Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam. He was not willing to wager money that either would happen.
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CHAPTER 24
“I HAVE SEEN DESTINY BEND TO THAT WILL”

W
HILE THE THREE WESTERN POWERS WERE TRYING TO COORDINATE
strategy, and while the negotiations continued among the second-string officials at Geneva, a different kind of diplomacy was being carried on elsewhere. Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, en route to Beijing, made several stops to woo Asian leaders with talk of “peaceful coexistence.” In New Delhi he assured India’s prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru of Beijing’s nonaggressive intentions in Southeast Asia and its commitment to a compromise settlement in Indochina. The two men agreed that Laos and Cambodia should remain neutral so as to transform them into “a bridge for peace,” and they concurred on the need for Sino-Indian cooperation in forming a nonaligned movement of decolonized Afro-Asian states. With Nehru and then with Burmese leader U Nu in Rangoon, Zhou issued joint public statements pledging mutual support for peaceful coexistence and for the right of countries having different social systems to coexist without interference from outside. “Revolution cannot be exported,” the Sino-Burmese statement said; “at the same time, outside interference with the common will expressed by the people of any nation should not be permitted.”
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The Delhi and Rangoon sessions were the easy ones. Zhou knew he would face a much sterner test in his next encounter, with Ho Chi Minh on July 3–5 in the southern Chinese city of Liuzhou. It worried Zhou that the DRV delegates in Geneva, led by Ta Quang Buu, vice minister of defense and a senior negotiator, had become more belligerent in recent days. On June 26, Buu lashed out at the French for having a top-level meeting with Zhou but not with them; two days later he called for a line of division in Vietnam very far to the south, near the thirteenth parallel, or some three hundred and fifty miles from the French proposal of the eighteenth parallel. French forces should be given only three months to evacuate the north following the armistice, he further demanded, and the Pathet Lao should be granted virtually sovereign rights over the eastern half of Laos. Zhou saw various reasons for this hardening of the Viet Minh’s posture—Mendès France’s seeming desire for peace at any price; the worsening French military position, as demonstrated by the High Command’s evacuation of the entire southern part of the Red River Delta, in Operation Auvergne, launched in late June; and the temporary absence from Geneva of senior statesmen to surround and moderate the Viet Minh demands—but the task now was to get Ho to order a pulling back.
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