VIETNAM: WHERE WE ARE AND HOW WE GOT THERE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01720R000600030047-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 31
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 22, 2004
• Sequence Number: 47
• Publication Date: May 1, 1964
• Content Type: PAPER

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VIETNAM: WHERE WE ARE AND HOW WE GOT THERE
Few topics generate as much current interest, debate or emotional
heat as the struggle now being waged in Vietnam. This struggle is a
complex one with deep historical roots. Because of the complexity of
the issues involved, certitude of conviction among those who debate them
often runs in roughly inverse proportion to the debater's factual knowledge.
One simply cannot meaningfully or usefully discuss the present situation
in Vietnam without some understanding and appreciation of the Vietnamese
people's complicated and troubled past. Before I turn to the present or
glance at the future, therefore, let me quickly review certain essential
elements of the historical setting which condition.=Vietnam's present and
will play a major role in shaping its future.
Far from the least:zrf the reasons why the struggle in Vietnam is
so imperfectly understood in the United States is that the very language
we naturally, and unthinkingly, employ in discussing this struggle bears
little relationship to the facts of the case. When we in the West talk about
politics or ware or international affairs, we instinctively utilize words like
"nation" and "state, tr "boundary's and "government, " "aggression" and "Self-
In short, we instinctively employ the political vocabulary
with which we are familiar, using words and concepts comfortably meaningful
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the context of our own political traditions and experience. The
Vietnamese, however, have a history and are shaped by traditions
radically different from ours. Hence our political vocabulary and our
political concepts have little meaningful relevance to the realities of
on.
Though the Vietnamese have over two thousand years of recorded
history as an identifiably separate people and a fierce sense of ethnic
pride in their twenty plus centuries of ethnic traditions, they do not
constitute -- at least in South Vietnam -- a politicized society an we
understand that term. The Vietnamese have no tradition of political.
nor do their current political arrangements or institutions have
any supporting historical or traditional roots. One has to go back to
the sixteenth century before one can find any unbroken threads of political
union among the Vietnamese people. Despite this proud people's two
millenia of recorded history, the territory that comprises modern
Vietnam -- North and South -- did not come under single Vietnamese rule
until 1802, and that unified Vietnamese rule only lasted for sixty years.
Furthermore, nearly a century of French colonial domination effectively
destroyed the binding farce of virtually all past political traditions without
developing any successor traditions or unifying institutions enjoying wide-
spread affection, identification or traditionally-rooted support.
Given this historical background, it was virtually inevitable that
the and of French rule in Vietnam would be followed by a period of political
turmoil. The particular form this turmoil has taken over the past fifteen
years. hAowevver, For es amuc :0a mp r cause thanOthe iistorical 30 complexities
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w
touched on above; for the struggle now actually being waged in Vietnam
is rooted in the political ambitions of the Vietnamese Communist Party --
known as the Lao Dong -- and, above all, in the ambitions of the man who
founded that Party (in 1930) and has always controlled it throughout the
remainder of its, and his, lifetime: a seventy nine year old man who ever
since 1944 has called himself Ho Chi Minh.
"Uncle Ho, t* one of the 20th century's most remarkable political
figures, has been a professional Communist revolutionary for almost fifty
years. The eon of a minor Mandarin, he left Vietnam in 1911 (at the age of
21) as a galley boy on a French merchant vessel. After world travels and
various odd jobs (including that of Escoffier's protege and pastry cook in
the kitchen of London's Carleton Hotel), he wound up in Paris where he
earned a meager living as a photographic retoucher and devoted an ever
increasing amount of time to political activity. A fiery left-wing pamphleteer
vbs adopted the name Nguyen Al Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"), became
a member of the French Socialist Party and, in 1920, a Founding Charter
Member of the French Communist Party. He went to Moscow for training
and indoctrination not long thereafter and embarked on his lifelong vocation
as a Communist "apparatchnik. t' He turned up in Canton in 1925 as
rodia's interpreter and for the next two decades was in charge of the
Coanintern's organizational activity throughout southeast Asia. It was while
acting in this capacity that Ho did the recruiting and organizational work
that paved the way for his formal creation of the Vietnamese Communist
Party in January 19301
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The style and methods employed by Ho during these early
organizational years are illustrative and important, particularly since
they set a pattern Ho's subordinates and associates have consistently
followed ever since: Ho and his Communist. followers have long labored
for an independent Vietnam, but only for a Vietnam under complete
control. Though they have always tried to sail under the
flag of ardent nationalism., in paint of fact the Vietnamese Communists
have always waged savage, no-quarter warfare against all Vietnamese
unwilling to accept Communist domination.
One of the patron saints of modern Vietnamese nationalism was
a scholar and ardent patriot named Phan Boi Chau, who during the two
decades between 1905 and 1925 created the first meaningful anti-French
nationalist movement. By the time Ho came on the scene, Chau was a
legendary figure among the Vietnamese. Ho wanted to exploit Chau's
but disliked his independence. Ho therefore arranged a rendezvous
with Chau in Shanghai to discuss their differences. Ho failed to make the
meeting, but Chau went trustingly to the appointed address (selected by Ho)
of the fact that the site was just inside the French concession. The
Aped-off French police were waiting and Chau spent the rest of his life
in French prisons. Ho thus disposed of a rival whose name he continued
to exploit and pocketed the French reward of 100, 000 piasters which was
usefully employed in funding Ho's Communist organization. Ho and his
burgeoning band of Communist followers repeatedly employed essentially
the same p olvetd ord Be a a DII4!'IUT G I ~~ 1 ~a0 1 ( O e81ate
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twenties. Young Vietnamese nationalists were recruited into the revolu-
tionary cause in Vietnam and sent to China for training. Those willing
to Join the Co
iota were sent back to Vietnam to recruit new
adherents. Those unwilling to accept Communist discipline were also
sent back, but these recalcitrants found the French police waiting at the
gangplank or frontier with copies of their photographs and dossiers.
;ues perfdrmsd the double function of eliminating the
Communists' potential rivals in the nationalist movement and, through the
rewards collected from the French SuY te, providing the Party with a
steady source of revenue.
Tactics such as those outlined above have always been (and remain
today) standard operating procedure for the Vietnamese Communists in
their dealings with fellow Vietnamese reluctant to accept Communist
on -- a fact well known to non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists
and far from the least of the reasons why struggles or even dealings
Communist and non-Communist Vietnamese have always been
marked by ruthlessness, bitterness and reciprocal distrust.
ng World Warn, Nguyen Al Quoc, the Comintern revolutionary,
became Ho Chi Minh. the Vietnamese patriot, and with a considerable
assist from a Chinese Nationalist General, obtained control over a
Chinese-sponsored Vietnamese political movement known as the Viet Minh.
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In the chaotic aftermath of Japan's sodden surrender, Ho's Communist-
controlled Viet Minh slozed power in Hanoi and proclaimed itself the, ruler
of the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam, " This claim was Conte
by the returning French, with whcnn Ho negotiated and stalled for just
over a year while he readied his followers for war.
Not the least of the preparations Ho and his Communist associates
it necessary to complete was the Imposition of total -- though covert --
Communist control over the ostensibly nationalist Viet Minh movement.
The usual tactics of betrayal were employed and armed Viet Minh units
launched savage attacks, sometimes in cooperative alliance with French
troops, on nationalist guerrillas who would not accept Communist
domination, This was a tricky period-, for although Ho was trying to tighten
Communist control over the nationalist movement, he was also simultan-
eously trying to push the "national front" line as hard as possible, and
to project the image of the Viet Minh/DRY as a broadly-based union of
lementa. Hole talents, however, proved equal to the tam:
ice were ingenious. When Ho went to prance in May 1946 to
a Paris. he asked the elderly, non-Communist Interior Minister
to serve as Chief of State, and named Vo Nguyen Giap as "acting"
Interior Minister. As soon as Ho departed, Giap launched a ruthless purge
of the DRV Government and National Assembly. During Giap's reign of
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terror, about 2, 500 non-Communist political figures were murdered.
n He returned, he publicly wept in sorrow at Claps, hot headed
excesses; but by then the physical liquidation of their potential leaders had
eliminated the threat of non-Communist nationalist competition for
political control within the Viet Minh..
IV
The war for which Ho had been preparing broke out on 19 December
1946. It lasted for seven and a half years and, as you all know, ended in
a Viet Minh victory solemnized at the Geneva Conference of 1954. One
of fain its results was the creation of a Communist state ruling that portion
of Vietnam that lies north of the 17th Parallel. Another, was the struggle
being waged in South Vietnam today.
Communist successes in China in 1949 and 1950 gave Ho a common
frontier with a Communist ally and diminished his need for broad support
in Vietnam. The Communist Party -- which had been officially "dissolved"
in 1945 in support of the popular front image -.. re-surfaced in March 1951
under its present name of the Stang Lao Dong (Workers Party). About two
years later, Ho'a party began a systematic purge of Vietnamese society
that made Chap's 1945 psgum pogrom look like child's play. This purge --
called "Land Rent Reduction and Land Reform" - - lasted from 1953 to 1956
and was directed by one of Ho 'a most fanatic disciples, a Politburo member
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who uses the name Truong Chinh and was then the Party's First Secretary,
under Chairman Ho. This purge involved the deliberate murder of between.
80, 000 and 100, 000 Vietnamese for purely doctrinal reasons. It stimulated a
spontaneous peasant revolt in Ho's own home province (Nghe An), ruthlessly
crushed by the Viet Minh "Peoples Army" at about the same time that
Russian troops were snuffing out the 1956 Hungarian rising. This purge
also helped stimulate the mass exodus from North Vietnam of almost a
million Vietnamese, who used the opportunity afforded by the regroupment
provisions of the 1954 Geneva Accords to vote with their feet and flee
a Communist rule to live in a m& non-Co
at South Vietnam.
The Franco-Viet Minh war was a period of particular anguish for
non-Communist Vietnamese nationalists. With the energetic assistance of
Communist propaganda outlets throughout the world, the Vietnamese
Communist Party assiduously propagated the myth That all real Vietnamese
patriots rallied to the cause and ranks of the Viet Minh. This claim has
gained general credence outside of Vietnam, but it has little foundation in
The fact of Communist control over the Viet Minh was well known
to most politically aware Vietnamese as early as 1946 and inescapable by
1951. This fact forced non-Communist nationalists to make unpleasant
choices among unpalatable alternatives. In individual cases, the choice
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made generally hinged on whether the chooser viewed the Communists
or the French as the lesser short run evil. Many nationalists refused to
choose, so many in fact that the widespread posture of fence- sitting
acquired a standard and common name: "tattentieme. 13 Some nationalists
went more or less reluctantly into the ranks of the Viet Minh. Others,
equally patriotic and equally dedicated to the ideal of a free Vietnam
fought with the French against what they regarded as the greater immediate
threat to the kind of Vietnam in which they wished to live. Many of South
Vietnam's present military and civil leaders followed this latter course,
but the fact that they did does not make them any less patriotic or any lees
nalistic than their brothers, friends or cousins who foliowed.a different
V
The Franco-Viet Minh war ended in a Communist victory, but in
the eyes of Ho and his ten colleagues on the Party Politburo, it was an
unsatisfactory, partial victory -- half a loaf, rather than total success.
For a variety of reasons, including Soviet pressure, the Party accepted
egarded as a temporary or interim settlement. that Initially gave
the Party undisputed control over only half of the country. This settlement,
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negotiated at Geneva during the summer of 1954, did however provide for
an almost total withdrawal of the French presence. Furthermore, in a
vague, ambiguously worded (and unsigned) "Final Declaration, " the 1954
Geneva settlement provisions did state that the 17th Parallel military
emarcation line was not to be interpreted as a political or territorial
boundary and that some unspecified form of "general elections" were to
held in July 1956.
In accepting the 1954 Geneva settlement, Ho and his Communist
colleagues were gambling, but at the time it appeared to thorn - - and the
rest of the world -- that they were gambling on an, almost sure thing.
Partition at the 17th Parallel put the majority of the Vietnamese populatio
in the northern -- or Communist -- none. The Communists had every
reason to anticipate that with two years in which to organise the population
consigned to their control, they could deliver 99+ percent of the majority
any mid-1966 electoral contest - - hence they were certain to win,
no matter how the southern minority might vote. Furthermore, the Party
Politburo had every reason to believe -- in 1954 -- that this anticipated
electoral contest was but one of the Party's easy avenues to power In a
onably short time span of not more than two years. At the time of
Geneva, the non-Communist southern cone was tottering on the brink of
anarchy and collapse into political chaos. Every logical analysis and calcu-
lation indicated that Baer Dais government -_ with its new Premier Ngo Dinh
Diem - - would soon unravel, creating a situation where the Communists
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would be the only effective, organised political group and, hence, could
easily take power almost by default.
Given all the factors then involved, including the considerations
ust outlined, the Vietnam,*#* Communist Party opted to gamble and
acquiesced in the Geneva settlement. Ho and his Politburo colleagues
uctantly accepted less than total victory, but they did so in the confident
I fruition of their ambitions was being deferred for
only two years, at most, and hone* the gamble involved was almost riskles
part
tion of the French Military presence in Vietnam.
cularly since the settlement adopted would at least guarantee the early
VII
The Geneva Accords uniformly (if not always clearly) spoke of
t
The 1 54
f
---- -- _____
.
con
erence was actually
attended, however by representatives of two nascent Vietnamese states,
both of which were left at least temporarily in being by the 1954 settlement
provisions. One of these was the Communist-controlled "Democratic
Republic of Vietnam, " whose seat of government was located in Hanoi
with Communist Party Chairman Ho serving as Chief of State. The other
was French-dominated Vietnam, an "Associated State" within the French
Union, whose capital was located in Saigon and whose Chief of State was
the puppet Emperor Bao Dai. Though the de facto jurisdiction of each of
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these two rival governments was soon limited to one of the two "regroup
T
e. to what we now call, respectively, North and South
Vietnam -- both claimed theoretical jurisdiction over the entire country.
The present Saigon Government no longer even pretends to think in
such terms, but the concept of total rule over all of Vietnam is still
very much alive in Hanoi and exerts a strong influence over the current
thinking and policies of Ho's regime.
The actual course of events in South Vietnam in the months and
years following the 1954 Accords confounded all the prophets, including
those who sat in the Communist Party Politburo in Hanoi. The catalytic
agent of change was Ngo Dinh Diem, whom Ban Dat appointed as his Premier
while the Geneva Conference was in session, primarily to defuse non-
Communist nationalist opposition to the impending Geneva settlement.
Diem came into office with unchallengeable credentials as a Vietnamese
patriot. He was an unknown quantity as a national political leader, but
no one could credibly charge him with being a French puppet. Those
who selected Diem to preside over the final collapse of organized
Vietnamese opposition to Communist role, however, seriously mis-
estimated their chosen patsy. Instead, as you kn
Diem deposed
Sao Dat, threw off (and out) all remnants of French political control
over South Vietnam, dissolved his government's tie with the French
Union, and created a still legally existent Republic of Vietnam --
recognized in international law by other countries -- that was as genuinely
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and va y in epee ent as o s rival regime
in anon.
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Whatever be one's judgments on the complex tragedy played out
during Diem's final years in power, it is almost impossible to avoid describing
the achievements of his early years in office as something bordering
on the miraculous. In these early years, Diem provided the leadership
that reversed trends which had seemed inevitably irreversible at the time
of Geneva. South Vietnam did not collapse into anarchy and chaos. Instead,
it eurvivvd and developed as a functioning political entity and began to
record genuine progress in many political, economic and social fields.
I do not mean to suggest for a minute that South Vietnam ever resembled (or
is ever likely to resemble) a Jeffersonian utopia. Diem wasffia fallible
human with a mystical conviction in the rightness of his judgment that
became progresbiveiy more pronounced -- and politically damaging -- as
the years wore on. Even in its 1957-1958 heyday, Diem's government had
obvious flaws easy to catalogue. Its operations were often clumsy and some-
times prompted legitimate grievances among various segments of the South
Vietnamese population. After we acknowledge all of Diem's personal short-
comings and political errors, however, and all the weaknesses of his
fledgling government - - unbuttressed and unsupported by any indigenous
Vietnamese political experience or traditions -- the fact romaine that during
his early years it became progressively clearer that Diem's government was
steadily gaining in strength xk*kak and that Diem was laying the foundations
of a viable, independent non-Communist state.
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The achievements of the Diem government's initial years brought
p focus the ambiguities latent in key provisions of the 1954 Geneva
Accords and the major political problems which the Geneva Conference had
swept under the rug.
clear in retrospect that most of the participants
in that conference were convinced that Ho Ch Min's early acquisition of
complete political control over all of Vietnam was a virtually foreordained
conclusion and, hence, there was little point in delaying the cessation of
hostilities to settle details unlikely to have any practical relevance to the
actual course of events in Vietnam. President Eisenhower himself believed,
publicly stated, that Ho could defeat Bao Dai, even in a free election.
This view of President Eisenhower's is often cited today in current Vietnam
debates, though our late President is generally misquoted as having said
something quite different - - and something he never did say - - namely that
Ho was sure to win a fret election.
The thesis that Ho would have easily won a 1954 electoral contest
with Bao Dai is eminently plausible.11111hether Ho could have won a truly free
electoral contest with Diern in 1956 is a much more debatable proposi
Diem, however, was well aware that a truly free election was effectively
precluded by the facts of life in Vietnam, particularly with a tri-partite
international supervisory commission hamstrung by a unanimity requirement
which catsaeecc gave that commission's Polish Co
effective veto. Applying the same analysis that had led Ho and his Politburo
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colleagues to accept the Geneva settlement (whose election provisions Diem's
government had explicitly refused to accept at the time of the conference),
Diem knew that in any election, Ho's party would record at least 99+ percent
a majority vote. To participate in this type of electoral contest would be
Diem
to commit political suicide, something i was adamantly unwilling to do.
VIII
In the summer of 1956, Ho and his Politburo had to review their
bidding. Diem's success in kW ignoring the Geneva election deadline almost
certainly provided the occasion for this bidding review. What worried Hanoi,
ever, was not Diem's act in itself, but the political strength and progress
of the Saigon Government this act unarguably symbolized. Ho and his Party
colleagues had to acknowledge, at least to themselves, that Diem's govern-
not likely to collapse, that its prospects were bright, and that
the more it gained in strength, the longer the Party would have to defer
attainment of the J?sA Party's prime objective of acquiring pwhWa political
control over all of Vietnam, What Ho and his colleagues had to recognize,
in short, was they had lost the seemingly riskless gamble they took in
accepting the 1954 settlement. Once this fact was recognized, the Party
began making preparations to resume armed struggle.
Among the most important of these Initial preparations was the creation
(in 1956) of an office appended to the Party's Central Committee called the
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"Central Reunification Department, " which was put in charge of a Major
General. I was about to say a "North Vietnamese Major General, " but
here digress a moment to give you a concrete Inc illustration of my
earlier general comment that the very language we instinctively use in talking
about the Vietnam struggle often confuses the issues involved. We
frequently talk about "North Vietnam" and "South Vietnam" in a way that
knputes a geographic orientation and outlook to the participants io in the
struggle which many of the key participants explicitly reject, Nguyen Van
'Minh, the general who was selected to organize the Reunification Department
in 1956, still runs it, and who is not also General Gia
Deputy Chief of Staff,
geographically, a South Vietnamese. He nose through the Communist
leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party thinks of the
anks while fighting in Soh Vietnam during the Franco-Viet Minh
Party as precisely that __ the Vietnamese Communist Party, not the North
Vietnamese Communist Party. The state structure this Party controls thinks
of itself, and speaks of itself, as the "Democratic Republic of Vietnam" --
not North Vietnam. Party Politburo member Le Duan, who is First Secretary
of the Party and runs the Party apparatus, and his Politburo colleague Pham
an Doug, who is Premier of the DRV and runs the state structure, were both
born south of the 17th Parallel. In the eyes of the Party leadership - to cite
a phrase appearing constantly in arty propaganda and policy statements --
"Vietnam is one. " Ho and his senior colleagues have always adamantly
rejected the notion that there can be a political entity called "South Vietnam"
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with any right to political existence independent of Vietnamese Communist
Party control. It is essential to grasp this fundamental outlook of our adversaries
because this outlook shapes and has shaped all of their major decisions,
actions, and attitudes.
What Ho and his Party colleagues saw evolving in that summer of 1956
was precisely what they could not tolerate - - a Vietnamese political structure
the Party did not control, capable of governing a sizeable portion of
Vietnamese territory. To combat this intolerable development, the Party
took steps to prepare for armed struggle. These steps included the establishment
of General Vinh's "Reunification Department, " which was given administrative
control over the 90, 000 odd southern Viet Minh veterans, supporters and their
families who had come north in 1954 under the regroupment provisions of the
Geneva Accords. These "regroupees" constituted a resource pool that figured
prominently in the Politburo's developing plans.
In addition to the "regroupees" overtly taken north in 1954, the Party
o left behind in South Vietnam a covert organization and spparaatus whose
continued presence in the south constituted a clear violation of the Geneva
settlement agreements. In the immediate post-Geneva period, this southern Party
organization's mission was to lie low, await favorable developments, and
agitate covertly in favor of the 1956 elections. This southern apparatus
was the Hanoi Politburo's primary source of information on political developments
south d the 17th Parallel. As Diem solidified his government's position and
extended its effective writ, the Party's southern apparatus found life increasingly
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difficult and saw itself faced with a real threat of being disintegrated and
eliminated. The Communists' southern cadre argued with increasing
Intensity that the struggle had to be resumed before it was too late. Their
ventually prevailed In Hanoi, partly because their case was argued
in the Politburo Itself by a very powerful Politburo rnemberp Le Duan.
The personal Party careers of Le Duan and of his Politburo colleague Le Duc
Tho _- now head of Hanoi's Paris negotiation delegation are important and
d to be understood. These two Party leaders have had a critical influence
on the course of the entire struggle and their *tows help shape Hanoi's
present policy. Their policy views, in turn, are heavily influenced by the
course of their own careers. During the Franco-Viet Minh war, the Politburo
divided Vietnam into three regional commands; North, Center and South.
The southern region -- or Nambo - - comprised, roughly, the southern half
of what we now call South Vietnam. In 1451, the then head of the Nainbo,
Nguyenh, launched a premature general offensive against the French
in the Mekong Delta. The disasterous failure of Binh.'s grandiose effort left
ibo organization shattered and reeling. For his failure, Binh was
recalled and -- on Politburo orders -- executed while en route to Ho's
northern headquarters. In 1452, the Politburo dispatched Le Duan to take over
the southern command and repair the damage. Soon thereafter, Le Due Tho
was dispatched to serve as Le Duan's deputy. Together these two men organized
he: Central Office for South Vietnam, or COSVN -- the Communist
Party command echelon which ran the Viet Minh effort during the latter
years +of,-csRd`l~lg>9A-RIOI~ret
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one La Duan and Le Duc Tho built, runs the Viet Cong effort in South
1954 Geneva Conference, Le Duan remained in Soul
Vietnam as field director of the Party's southern organisation. It was he who
saw at first hand the failure of the Politburo's political gamble on post-
Geneva developments. It was also Le Duan who had to cope with the concrete
;uencee of this failure. When the Party's draconian "Land Reform"
s in the north built up so much resentment that some adjustments had to
be made, ZMM = Truong Chinh was relieved of his duties as Pagty
First Secretary. In late 1956 or early 1957, Le Duan was recalled to Hanoi
to replace Truong Chinh as administrative head of the Party and he has
been the First Secretary ever since. Thus you have at least three key
Politburo members whose Party careers are intimately involved in the fate,
and success, of the southern struggle: Le Duan, the head of the Party's
administrative apparatus; Le Duc Tho, Hanoi's chief negotiator; and Pharr
Hung (another southerner) who today occupies Le Duan's old position as
the head of COSVN.
Ix
In early 1957, what has been called "the second Indochina war" was
begun by a conscious Politburo decision made in Hanoi after much deliberation
and debate. At the outset of the resumed struggle, primary emphasis was
laid on relatively small scale acts of terrorism and subtfersion whose
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collective purpose was to check the political progress of Diem's government,
cerbate the historically rooted divisions and tensions in South Vietnamese
society, and break the Saigon Government's points of contact with South
rural population. Communist Party's objectives were to re-
create the anarchic atmosphere of 1954, build and expand an insurgent
organization kept under tight Party control but enlisting as many dissident
persons and groups as possible into its ranks, and thus put progressively increas-
ing pressure on Diem's fledgling government that would inhibit its effectiveness
ultimately, cause its collapse.
Selective and on brutal. assassination soon became one of the Pa
principal tactics The persons and families of Saigon's best and is worst
officials were the favored targets: the former because they constituted a
political threat, the latter because their elimination enhanced the "Robin
Hood" rage the Party was trying to project. The chosen victims of Party
cluded not only such obvious targets as Saigon provincial administrators,
efs and police officials but also such persons as rural school
teachers, village nurses, even members of li alaria eradicating mosquito
control teams -- anyone, in short, whose activities redounded to the Saigon
Government's political benefit.
This initial Communist campaign complicated the problems of the
Saigon Government and slowed its pace of political progress. The Pa
did not prove sufficient to topple the government, however, or pose
any serious threat to its continued existence. In the early summer of 1959,
the 1aneeii,~~Fgr'1'i~8isl(~ABg@~fi2(69$0Isealate
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into a "war of national liberation. " Soon thereafter the scale
and scope of Communist military activity in the south began to increase
North Vietnamese military operations in Laos
established Communist control over Laotian territory adjacent to the
Vietnamese border and work was begun on developing the logistic support
network through Laos known as the "Ho Chi Minh trail.. " Southern Viet
Minh veterans, or their children, in the regroupee pool were selected,
trained and organized under the direction of General 'Wish's Reunification
Department and dispatched to the south In an. ever increasing stream. These
"returnees" were not sent south to provide raw manpower for the burgeoning,
surgent movement but. rather, to serve as organisers. technicians and
disciplined leaders - trained and trusted cadre, all ethnic southerners,
who would build the movement, lead it, but keep it under tight Communist
Party control.
At the time of President Kennedy's election, Hanoi had dispatched
at least 4, 600 of these returnees to South Vietnam -- (the American military
advisory presence in the south at that time, incidentally, totalled 873 officers
and men)'.` When P resident Johnson took office three years later, Hanoi had
sent south 31, 700 returnees that we know of. The US advisory and assistance
effort had perforce increased, but at the end of 1963 totalled only 16, 263.
In late 1960, to provide a political cover for Its rapidly expanding
insurgent campaign, Hanoi announced the creation of a "National Liberation
Front" in South Vietnam,
allegedly indigenous -- 1. or., southern - - and
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spontaneously formed a coalition of southern political groups opposed to
the Diem government. In point of fact, the NLF was a pure Party creation,
the lineal descendent of earlier Party front groups created for similar
purposes in North Vietnam such as the Lien Viet and the Fatherland Front.
Ever since its creation, the Party has tried to advance the fiction that the
1'3"LF" is an independent political body sympathetically supported by the DRV,
(and, it is sometimes admitted, by the Party) but possessed of a separate
will and existence Of late, particularly since the commencement of negotiations
in Paris, Hanoi has tried to encourage the belief that there is an "NLF
position" on Important Vietnamese issues separate, distinct and i tifferent
from the fRV position.
,t of fact, the Vietnamese Communist Party, as a single
organization, controls both the DRV and the NLF. As to always the case,
there are certainly stresses and differing opinions between the field command
COSVN -- and the Politburo in Hanoi. The debates that
however, are carried on in Party channels, all the major decisions
e made by the Hanoi Politburo, and the command line over both the Party
and the 'ELF" runs through Party channels from Hanoi through COSVN,
Regional Party committees, Provincial Party committees, and District
Party committees to every village in South Vietnam in which there is a
Party cell. The Front's chief negotiator In Paris, Tran Buu Khiern, is a
long time Party member. Hanoi's chief negotiator in Parts is the former
Deputy Director of COSVN.
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During the critical and complex period between 1959 and 1963, the pace
and pressure of the Communist-directed insurgency steadily mounted and
the political life of South Vietnam became progressively more troubled
by dissension and discord within the non-Communist ranks. This discord,
an you know, culminated in Diem's overthrow and assassination in November
1963, The important political point here Is that the Communists had little
or no band in the movement which actually overthrew Diem. In fact,
ost the only point on which Diem's internal opponents were in ggree
was their vA willingness to accept or countenance Communist participation
anti-Diem efforts. The consideration which tipped the scale in
the minds of the military officers who actually overthrew him was their
belief that, by 1963, Diem's style of rule had become one of the Communists'
principal assets and that unless he was overthrown, a Communist victory
would be inevitable.
At the 9th Plen
of the Party's Central Comm
ce, held
tot
December 1963 shortly after Diem's overthrow, the Party made another
basic decision, namely to escalate the struggle to a new level by adding
the ingredient of direct North Vietnamese participation.. The debate was e
and the decision far from unanimous, but the argument which carried the
day was that by striking intensively, Hanoi could eradicate its non-Communist
the south before they brted out their own political problems
and thus, with the added direct northern input, achieve total . victory in a
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short span of time. Hanoi also recognized that if it did not strike while
the moment was opportune, it ran the risk of facing a Saigon Government
possessed of Diem's early strengths and without his regime's later weaknesses.
The first tangible indications of this December 1963 decision for
escalation was a change in the composition of the increasing flow of
infiltrators. Ethnic North. Vietnamese soldiers soon began to show up,
as cadre, technicians or leaders but as strength-augmenting replacements.
By the summer of 1964, line units of the North Vietnamese Army were being
readied for dispatch to the south. By the fall of 1964, the first of these units
were moving through .Laos. By the end of 1964 and the beginning of 1965,
organized North Vietnamese Army units began appearing on South Vietnam's
battlefields.
You almost certainly have heard it argued that this "North Vietnam-
izatton" of the struggle -- which by 1966 was undeniable and unconcealable --
constituted Hanoi's response to America's 065 "escalation. " This argument
to simply not supported by the facts of the case. The policy decision to
add direct North Vietnamese Intervention to the fray was taken in Hanoi over
a year before our bombing campaign began and almost eighteen months
before the first US combat troops were dispatched to cope with the problems
created by this direct northern invasion.
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Hanoi's strategy of direct North Vietnamese intervention came
within a whisker of success. By the spring of 1965, the South Vietnamese
Army was being whipsawed and the Saigon Government was on the verge
of collapse. The smell of defeat was almost tangibly in the air. Had it
been for the dispatch of US combat troopseto counter Hanoi's direct
invasion, the VC flag would probably have been flying over Saigon before
the end of 1965.
th North Vietnam and the US both taking a direct and progressively
or hand in the fighting, the war entered a new stage that lasted from
summer of 1965 through the summer of 1967. Militarily the situation
tabilized, generally in favor of the allies but without either side's securing
a clear cut advantage. A Communist victory was prevented and allied forces
broke the Communists' former monoply hold over the strategic initiative.
Through an intensive manpower and logistic infiltration effort exploiting the
us of Laos and Cambodia, however, Hanoi progressivel
. increased the size of the Communist military force in South Vietnam,
improved its weaponry (thanks of Soviet and Chinese assistance), and
increased the threat that force could pose. Communist mapower losses
high, but in. Hanoi's judgment, supportable.
Politically the picture was also mixed, but the overall political
trend of these two years ran much more in Saigon's favor than Hanoi**.
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The government which came to power as a military junta in May 1965
provided, for all its faults, more stability and effective leadership than
South Vietnam had seen since Diem's overthrow. Of more profound import,
overnment sponsored and directed a constitution writing and electoral
process which can make no claim to perfection but which has created the
institutional outlines of a viable state structure a
former junta into a government whose claims to constitutional legitimacy
and electoral mandate cannot be lightly dismissed.
The September 1967 Presidential elections perhaps constitute the
best benchmark and indicator of the state of South Vietnamese political
development as of that time. Despite the fact that there was almost certainly
some diddling of the returns from some precincts, these elections compared
favorably in terms of honesty and openness with elections held anywhere
else in the world. About 5? percent of South Vietnam's entire adult
population -- Communists, anti-Communists and all in between -- participated
in these elections. Since there were eleven competing tickets (in itself
a symptomatic indication of South Vietnam's ibak of political cohesion), it is
hardly surprising that no single ticket won an absolute majority.. The ticket
of President Thieu and Vice President 1{y won the election by taking 34. 8
percent of the total vote. Thieu'a Prime Minister, Tran Van Huong and his
running mate (now a government Minister) won 10.01 percent of the total
vote. If one thinks of the present Saigon Government as a coalition, which
it is, the aggregate electoral mandate of the government's top leaders
comprises almost 45 percent of the total vote a figure not to be despised.
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One "neutralist" candidate ran in the 1967 elec
ad received
about 17 percent of the total vote. The significant fact here, however, In
not so much his 17 percent but the fact that 83 percent of the vote was
split among ten candidates, all of whom were adamantly opposed to
Communist rule and to any concessions to the Communist side. These
figures reflect with reasonable accuracy several important facts about
South Vietnamese life. The spectrum of those opposed to Communist rule
runs from almost the eatrerzee left over tom: the extreme right. In
aggregate, this spectrum encompasses the overwhelming majority of
politic ed South Vietnamese -- were this not the case, the struggle would
have inevitably ended in a Communist victory years ago. Though the majority
tally conscious Vt tnamese in South Vietnam may agree on not
o live under Communist domination, that is virtually the only thing
many of them do agree on. Furthermore, dislike for the Communists does not
eadily -- and certainly does not necessarily -- translate to positive support
for any particular non-Communist government in Saigon. Thus although
South Vietnam made considerable political progress since the desperate
spring of 1965, the basic problem of division and discord among the non-
Co
ority is still far from solved.
During the summer of 1967, Hanoi took another long, hard look at
the course of the war. After" Party Politburo and Central Committee
level debate that lasted more than two months, Hanoi adopted a now set of
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strategic decisions which are still guiding. Hanoi's actions today. Thi
designed to reverse those military and political trends in the
Hanoi found disquieting and simultaneously enhance what Hanoi
rded as the Communist cause's principal strengths or assets
including the rising level of opposition to the war throughout the world and,
rticulart
tic effort to tip the scales of struggle irrevocably in the Communists'
he United States.
In essence, this strategy involved a massive military, political and
favor during 1968 and 1969. Materially, this new strategy involved the
the period between September 1967 and September 1968 -- more than
ch of an additional 300, 000 North Vietnamese troops to South Vietnam
the entire manpower input B all previous years. Militarily, the keystone
of this plan was the 1968 Tot offensive. Politically and diplomatically, the
major new ingredient was to be the opening of negotiations. The reason
Hanoi replied with such alacrity to President Johnson's 31 March 1968
speech is that, in effect, President Johnson pro-empted Hanoi in a move
the Politburo had already decided to make at a time of its own choosing.
is
Since the course of the past two years events arc certainly much
better known to all of you than the historical background that produced them,
1, will not take the time to discuss these events in detail. Hanoi's new
.terially altered the climate,
cs and format of the
The 1968 Tot offensive had a major impact in Vietnam and,
particularly, abroad. The fact of ongoing negotiations has set now forces
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nd factors: in train that condition the behavior of all participants. The
overall balance sheet on the past two years, however, cannot yet be drawn.
Militarily, the past eighteen-odd months have not been happy ones
for our adversaries. The 1968 Tat offensive wrecked great havoc and
rocked the Saigon Government, but in purely military terms it constituted
an overall Communist defeat. The follow-on offensive* of May and August
even less successful. So far, the current round of Communist activity
that began on the night of 23 February 1969, though noisy at times, ha
been contained and frustrated at every turn. I
also add that it has
been pinpointed and called at every turn by allied intelligence. Our
ant information, including captured documents and prisoner interrogations
suggest that the Communists have abandoned even the hope of military
victory and scaled their military objectives to the more modest goal of
sustaining enough activity to keep US casualties up, demonstrating their
continued presence, and preventing any dramatic allied breakthroughs.
Politically, though the GVN was stunned by the Tet offensive, it
covered enough to make 1968 a year of net achievement and to now
probably stronger and more confident than any Saigon Government has been
ce mid-1957. Many problems of course remain, lesrs Despite
improvements, the ties of union binding our South Vietnaxrese allies are
still very fragile.
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Increasingly effective Vietnamese and allied programs are
beginning to make some inroads into the Communists' political
apparatus -- the so-called infrastructure -- but the structure is still
basically intact and very formidable. Our adversaries are having increasing
problems with morale, discouragement, despondency and desertion or
defection. These problems must be worrisome to Hanoi, but our
information does not indicate that they are yet critical.
Hanoi's current policies reflect an amalgam of all the factors outlined
above. It is interested in seeing If a solution to the war can be negotiated,
but It also sees the negotiations as a vehicle for exacerbating tensions between
the US and South Vietnam and for generating political pressure on the
US Government. Its willingness to negotiate a settlement is also influenced
e Politburo's reluctance to acknowledge the Saigon Government's right
to exist, Furthermore, Hanoi must recognise that Thieu's government in
1969 is stronger in every respect than Diem's was in 1954. .Having gambled
once with ideal odds and lost, Hanoi is patently reluctant to gamble again
when the odds are clearly worse.
At the moment Hanoi seems locked in to a policy of more of the same;
keeping up what pressure it can on the battlefield, conducting all possible
political agitation in South Vietnam and stonewalling at the negotiating table.
This policy rests on the assumption that the end is reasonably near and that
if Hanoi waits patiently but a few months longer, domestic pressures in
the US will force our government to make major concessions that will
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uAb ocic the situation and start events moving rapidly in Hanoi's favor.
therefore little prospect of a dramatic shift in the Vietnam
on until Hanoi's basic policy assumption is either vindicated or
changed.
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