Embers of War (96 page)

For the most part he succeeded, as recently released Vietnamese and Chinese documents make clear, though there were testy moments. Much of the first day was devoted to consideration of the military situation and the balance of forces on the ground, with Vo Nguyen Giap sketching out the big picture. Dien Bien Phu had represented a colossal defeat for France, he began, but she was far from defeated. She retained a superiority in numbers—some 470,000 troops, roughly half of them Vietnamese, versus 310,000 on the Viet Minh side—as well as control of Vietnam’s major cities (Hanoi, Saigon, Hue, Tourane [Da Nang]). A fundamental alteration of the balance of forces had thus yet to occur, Giap continued, despite Dien Bien Phu, at which point Wei Guoqing, the chief Chinese military adviser to the Viet Minh, spoke up to say he agreed.

“If the U.S. does not interfere,” Zhou asked, “and assuming France will dispatch more troops, how long will it take for us to seize the whole of Indochina?” In the best-case scenario, Giap replied, full victory could be achieved in two to three years. Worst case? Three to five years.

That afternoon Zhou offered a lengthy exposition on the massive international reach of the Indochina conflict—much greater than the Korean War—and on the imperative of preventing an American intervention in the war. Given Washington’s intense hostility to the Chinese Revolution, and given the ominous words in Vice President Richard Nixon’s April 16 speech, one must assume the current administration would not stand idly by if the Viet Minh sought to win a complete victory. Consequently, “if we ask too much [at Geneva] and if peace is not achieved, it is certain that the U.S. will intervene, providing Cambodia, Laos and Bao Dai with weapons and ammunition, helping them train military personnel, and establishing military bases there.”

Korea provided a sobering lesson: “The key to the Korea issue lay in U.S. intervention. It was completely beyond our expectation that the [American] reinforcement would arrive so quickly.… If there had not been U.S. intervention, the Korean People’s Army would have been able to drive Syngman Rhee’s [troops] into the ocean.” Because of American intervention, “we only achieved a draw at the end of the war, and were unable to win a victory.” The experience must not be repeated in Vietnam. “The central issue,” Zhou told Ho, is “to prevent America’s intervention” and “to achieve a peaceful settlement.” Laos and Cambodia would have to be treated differently and allowed to pursue their own paths, provided they did not join a military alliance or permit foreign bases on their territory. The Mendès France government, having vowed to achieve a negotiated solution, must be supported, lest it fall and be replaced by one committed to continuing the war.
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Ho Chi Minh raised no major objections to any of this, but over the next two days disagreements emerged, mostly concerning what constituted an acceptable line of division between the two regroupment zones. Ho did not insist on the thirteenth parallel, as had Ta Quang Buu in Geneva, but he pressed hard for the sixteenth. Zhou answered: “We will endeavor to execute the will of President Ho but implore President Ho for general permission to permit flexibility.” Zhou noted that Route 9, the only line of transport linking Laos to the sea, ran closer to the seventeenth parallel, and that therefore this might be a suitable boundary. Ho Chi Minh was unmoved, but it seems he did not entirely close the door to a slight adjustment to the demarcation line, above 16 degrees.
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The two men went their separate ways, Zhou making for Beijing and Ho returning to Vietnam. In short order the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Workers Party issued an internal instruction (known as the “Fifth July Document”), the contents of which reflected the agreements between Zhou and Ho at Liuzhou. But the full examination of Viet Minh options occurred a few days later at the party’s Sixth Central Committee Plenum. A remarkable session it was, as Ho Chi Minh and General Secretary Truong Chinh took turns articulating the need for an early political settlement so as to prevent a military intervention by the United States, now the “main and direct enemy” of Vietnam.
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“In the new situation, we cannot follow the old program,” Ho declared. “Before, our motto was, ‘war of resistance until victory.’ Now, in view of the new situation, we should uphold a new motto: ‘peace, unification, independence, and democracy.’ ” A spirit of compromise would be required by both sides to make the negotiations succeed, and there could be no more talk of wiping out and annihilating all the French troops. A demarcation line allowing the temporary regroupment of both sides would be necessary.

The plenum endorsed Ho’s analysis, passing a resolution supporting a compromise settlement to end the fighting. But Ho and Truong Chinh plainly worried that, following such an agreement at Geneva, there would be internal discontent and “leftist deviation” and in particular that analysts would fail to see the complexity of the situation and underestimate the power of the American and French adversaries. They accordingly reminded their colleagues that France would retain control of a large part of the country, and that people living in this area might be confused, alienated, and vulnerable to enemy manipulations. “We have to make it clear to our people,” Ho said, that “in the interest of the whole country, for the sake of long-term interest, [they must] accept this, because it is a glorious thing and the whole country is grateful for that. We must not let people have pessimistic and negative thinking; instead, we must encourage the people to continue the struggle for the withdrawal of French troops and ensure our independence.”
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Ho Chi Minh instructed the DRV delegation in Geneva to move ahead quickly to reach a settlement: “In view of France’s positive attitude … we must use the formula of being positive, aggressive, and pushing [for] an agreement. We must not be passive, sitting back to wait.”
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In Beijing, meanwhile, Zhou Enlai informed the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on July 7 that Liuzhou had gone well and that all efforts should go toward securing a deal at Geneva. Mao Zedong agreed. “For the purpose of uniting with the majority and isolating the few (the United States),” he told the group, “we should make concessions when such concessions are necessary, and should adhere to our own stand when such adherence is possible.”
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For the Chinese as well as the Viet Minh, clearly, one thing mattered most of all: keeping the United States out.
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II

THE FINAL PHASE OF THE GENEVA CONFERENCE BEGAN ON JULY 10
, when Pierre Mendès France arrived to take charge of the French delegation. Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov was already in place, having returned from Moscow on July 8, and Zhou Enlai and British foreign secretary Anthony Eden were soon due as well. This left the Americans, who to this point had resisted strong French and British pressure to have a top official—meaning either Secretary of State John Foster Dulles or Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith—on hand for the climactic sessions. With only ten days to go until his self-imposed deadline, it infuriated Mendès France that Dulles might not come and might not send his top deputy. What message would that send about Western unity? Dulles coolly replied that no “united front in relation to Indochina” existed among the Western allies in any case, and he further maintained that an acceptable settlement would be more likely to result if the other side was kept guessing about Washington’s ultimate intentions. To Ambassador Douglas Dillon in Paris, he said the administration would want no part of an agreement that might superficially resemble the Seven Points but would contain clauses allowing the Communist takeover of all of Indochina within mere months.
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He had another worry too. In the first week of July, the administration faced a drumbeat of domestic criticism for seemingly cooperating in what would amount to a Communist victory parade in Geneva—“another Munich,” a “second Yalta.” California Republican William Knowland’s pronouncements on this theme on the floor of the Senate caused much consternation in the White House. “Immediate problem before us,” Press Secretary James Hagerty wrote in his diary, “is Knowland’s speech and the fear that many of us have that it indicates a growing fear in the country, fanned to life, of course by the isolationists, that it would be better to wash our hands of the whole mess and even get out of the United Nations.” Knowland urged that neither Dulles nor Smith should return to Geneva. Vice President Richard Nixon agreed, as did Senate minority leader Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Texas Democrat, who said “it would be better not to be represented at a high level at Geneva.”
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President Dwight D. Eisenhower understood, as he had always understood, that Geneva had the potential to create all kinds of political problems at home. But he also grasped that staying away presented problems of its own. Hagerty, showing an impressive ability to argue both sides of an issue, spoke in favor of fighting for U.S. aims on the spot in Switzerland, with Dulles or Smith present, lest America look like “a little boy sulking in his tent.” At a cabinet meeting on July 10, the president said he had not yet made up his mind on the matter, but indicated he leaned toward sending one of the two men. Dulles privately recommended against such a course, whereupon Eisenhower agreed to withhold a decision until the nature of the final agreement had been clarified. If it looked like an acceptable settlement was in the offing, Dulles or Smith would head for the airport.
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This was scarcely acceptable to the French government, or to Eden, who continued to apply the pressure for top-level American representation, not later but right away. Eisenhower compromised by dispatching Dulles to Paris to confer with the French and British leaders. He arrived on July 13 and, after dinner at Matignon, proceeded to tell Mendès France and Eden that Washington should remain in the background, as a kind of “wicked partner,” so as to keep the Communists guessing.

“But do you know,” replied Mendès France in English, “that the absence of an American minister in Geneva delights the delegations from the East? Do you know that the mere announcement of your arrival in Paris has sown confusion among them? Your presence in Geneva would strengthen the West’s position.”

Dulles turned to his real objection. “What you sign in Geneva will be bad,” he grumbled. “We do not want, by our presence, to encourage a new Yalta.”

“But we want your presence precisely so that the agreement will not be bad! So that it will conform to your Seven Points of June 29.”
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Dulles had arrived in Paris deeply skeptical that the French in fact would adhere to the Seven Points, but he was impressed by the premier’s assurances. The Viet Minh in recent days had softened their tone in Geneva, Mendès France pointed out; they were now offering (as per Ho Chi Minh’s instruction) a partition line at the sixteenth parallel and gave indications they might budge further. They had also recognized the unity of Laos under the royal government but were holding out for a regroupment zone for the Pathet Lao. They would not accept any U.S. bases or military personnel in Laos, they could live with a French training mission, and they showed a willingness to compromise on the issues of Vietnam elections and the composition of the supervisory commission. France, the premier continued, would press hard for a division at the eighteenth parallel—anything south of the RC9 was unacceptable, he maintained—and would lay preparations for a continuation of the war if the negotiations failed.

Eden, witnessing the scene, marveled that “Mendès France fought his corner brilliantly” while the American “cut a sorry figure” who “kept quoting Yalta.” This last assessment seems harsh, for Dulles showed a keen grasp of the implications of what he heard. After lunch on July 14, Mendès France promised to seek an agreement embodying the Seven Points in exchange for Dulles pledging to send Bedell Smith back to Geneva. Upon his return to Washington, the secretary told colleagues that the administration must avoid any “Yalta business” but also that it must support France. The United States, he now said, could not “withdraw inconspicuously” without generating talk of “too many stiff-necked Presbyterians, of sanctimoniousness, and of invoking lofty moral principles.” He lauded Mendès France for his decisiveness and sincerity.
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With six days to go until the deadline, the French leader felt he had what he needed to land a deal. But the drama was not over. Important disagreements remained. The Paris government had kept Bao Dai’s State of Vietnam largely ignorant of the details of the negotiations, and a big question now was whether the new prime minister, Ngo Dinh Diem, who had made no secret of his steadfast opposition to partition, and to the whole Geneva endeavor, could be persuaded to accept the agreement taking shape—or at least induced to refrain from raising a ruckus against it. On July 12, Donald Heath, the U.S. ambassador in Saigon, gingerly outlined the Seven Points for Diem and said Washington would “respect” a cease-fire that “preserves at least the southern half of Vietnam.” Diem was unimpressed. He instructed his chief negotiator in Geneva, Foreign Minister Tran Van Do, to urge the French not to surrender Hanoi and Haiphong. Do did so in a session with Jean Chauvel the following day, but he struck a moderate tone, perhaps because he was a realist. He seemed prepared to accept a partition deal, Chauvel reported, and, added Mendès France, “did not appear to delude himself greatly regarding the scope of his [Diem’s] demands.” On the fifteenth, Do told Eden that although Diem wanted an enclave in the north, he himself considered the idea naïve in view of the military situation. In restricted session two days later, Do formally rejected the principle of partition—which “takes no account of the unanimous desire for national unity of the Vietnamese people”—but then assured Eden that this was merely for the record.
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