If Ho Chi Minh’s Communist orientation mattered significantly in any major world capital in this early period, it was in Washington. Soviet-American relations had deteriorated sharply in 1946 and early 1947, as Moscow and Washington clashed over a range of issues: over European reconstruction, over the division of Germany, over Iran, and over the civil war in Greece. By spring 1947, Soviet hostility was a staple of both American policy documents and much journalistic reporting. Equally important in historical terms was the fact that, by then, there was no mistaking the growing salience of apocalyptic anti-Communism in American political discourse. French leaders, always keen to find favor in Washington, shifted their public diplomacy on Indochina in response to this emerging US-Soviet confrontation and this changing American mood. In Vietnam, Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu, the French high commissioner, early in the year moved what was then still a localized and strictly Franco-Vietnamese conflict to the highest international level, that of East versus West. He insisted before all comers that Ho and the Vietminh were mere pawns in Stalin’s struggle for world supremacy, and that Indochina was where the West must make a stand. 384
That basic message, articulated also by other French officials - including some who didn’t believe in it, who thought anti-Communism would be a useless weapon against a nationalist uprising - found a receptive audience in
Washington. Despite the fact that the State Department found no evidence of mass popular support for Communism within Vietnam, and further that it was not ideology but a desire for independence and a hatred of the French that drove the unrest, the principals in US decisionmaking proceeded on the basis of worst-case assumptions. Losing Indochina to Communism, senior planners worried, could upset the strategic balance in Southeast Asia, particularly if, as these officials anticipated, other countries in the area were to succumb as well. It would also harm the economic recovery of Japan and other key allies, who were dependent on maintaining commercial ties with the primary producing areas of Southeast Asia.
American strategists also feared the effects in France itself of a French defeat in Indochina. Might a loss cause Western-oriented moderates to lose their grip on power in Paris and enhance the prestige of the Soviet-supported French Communist Party (FCP), maybe even bring that party to power? The thought made US officials shudder, and made them reluctant to quibble with Paris over its pursuit of a military solution. True, these men acknowledged, Stalin showed only modest interest in fomenting revolution in France and, indeed, kept the FCP at arm’s length, but this was only because he sought to avoid an international crisis while the future of Germany remained an open question; once that issue was resolved, he would surely turn his focus to France.
Yet senior officials were loath to simply throw US support behind the French war effort. It was too much a colonial affair. Harry Truman’s team ruled out direct assistance to the military campaign and told Paris planners that any attempt to retake Vietnam by force of arms would be wrongheaded. At the same time, the administration knew full well that a sizable chunk of the unrestricted US economic assistance to France ($1.9 billion between July 1945 and July 1948) was being used to pay war costs. In this way, though American leaders declared themselves to be neutral in the conflict, theirs was a neutrality that tilted toward the European ally. French messages were always answered, while those from Ho Chi Minh - who had modeled his declaration of independence on the American version of 1776, and several times in 1945-46 pleaded for US help - were ignored.
And so, the Vietminh fought alone, largely isolated in non-Asian world opinion. The French had a massive superiority in weapons and could take and hold any area they really wanted. But they were fighting far fTom home and could never deploy sufficient numbers of troops to secure effective control. The war quickly reached a stalemate. The French dominated the cities and towns but were unable to extend their control to the villages and countryside, where most Vietnamese lived and where the Vietminh had broad popular support. It soon became clear that the French would have difficulty achieving victory by conventional military means. Far-reaching political concessions to a Vietnamese government - involving the transfer of genuine executive and legislative authority - would be essential to achieving early pacification, yet successive French governments were unwilling to grant such concessions.
In June 1948, the French did go partway, facilitating the creation of the first central government for Vietnam in opposition to Ho Chi Minh’s DRV. Rightly seen by most Vietnamese as largely a French creation, it marshaled little national support. In March 1949, the French struck another deal, this time with Bao Dai, the former Vietnam emperor who had abdicated in 1945. Under this deal, Vietnam was brought into the French Union without reference to the wishes ofHo Chi Minh. Real power, however, remained in French hands. The same was true in Laos and Cambodia, whose monarchs agreed in 1948 to bring their respective countries into the French Union. Together, the three formed the Associated States of Indochina (les Etats Associes de l’Indochine).
World History
