On May 7, 1954, Giap’s forces overran the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. The following day, an international conference already in session in Geneva began to discuss a basis for a ceasefire in the war. Although the conflict was approaching its climax and Vietminh leaders vowed to continue fighting until they won a definitive victory, there was reason to hope that a negotiated settlement might be possible. France was plainly losing the will to continue a war that many of its leaders doubted could be won. Many NATO powers wanted Paris to cut its losses in Southeast Asia to concentrate its attention instead on pressing matters close to home, such as the proposed European Defense Community. Neutralist Asian states likewise wanted an end to the fighting, which they saw as retarding the development of newly independent countries in South and Southeast Asia. Most important, both China and the Soviet Union saw, for different reasons, much to gain fTom a political settlement. Moscow leaders worried that a prolongation of the fighting would only increase Chinese and American influence in the region, while officials in Beijing saw in the Geneva Conference a chance to demonstrate simultaneously their great power credentials and avoid indefinitely matching in Indochina the stepped-up pace of US military aid, with the attendant risk of a general war.
The Vietminh and the Americans were less enthusiastic participants. Hanoi leaders were reluctant to agree to a compromise settlement when military victory seemed within reach but were persuaded by Moscow and Beijing to accept a settlement that left them in control of only a part of the country. Take one half of the loaf now, the Communist powers in effect told them, and count on getting the other in the not-too-distant future. The senior American representative at Geneva, Secretary of State Dulles, meanwhile had grave misgivings about the negotiations, and he encouraged the French to continue the struggle in Indochina in the interest of the "free world." The French refused, and after ten weeks a peace settlement was signed. Vietnam was partitioned at the seventeenth parallel pending nationwide elections in 1956. The Vietminh took control north of the parallel, while the southern portion came under the control of the Catholic nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem, who had the backing of the United States.
And with that, the struggle for Indochina entered a kind of interregnum; a war had ended but what replaced it was not quite peace. In the North, the DRV leadership set about consolidating its control, while Diem sought to do the same in the South. The Eisenhower administration, meanwhile, tried to salvage what it could fTom what senior officials considered a major Cold War setback for the United States. Accordingly, in September, it took the lead role in the formation of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a largely toothless anti-Communist alliance intended to signal resolve to Beijing and Moscow. The other members were France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand,
20. French prisoners of war and their Vietnamese captors, July 1954. Losing the battle of Dien Bien Phu made France withdraw from Indochina.
Pakistan, and, as the only Southeast Asian representatives, Thailand and the Philippines. In South Vietnam, the administration moved swiftly to supplant French influence with American dollars, advisers, and materiel. All too aware that Ho Chi Minh would likely win a nationwide election, the administration supported Diem’s refusal in 1955 to hold even the consultations with the DRV that had been envisioned in the Geneva Accords.
Diem’s truculence caused consternation in the other major world capitals, but none of these governments were willing to push the matter. The new Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did not want a fracas over elections in Vietnam to interfere with his policy of “peaceful coexistence" with the West. Chinese officials also stayed largely silent, content to issue tepid protests. Britain, with the Soviet Union the sponsor of the Geneva Conference, initially worked to ensure the implementation of the accords, but backed off when Washington made its position clear. Prime Minister Anthony Eden griped that his government was being “treated like Australia" by the Americans, but he was not willing to risk a serious falling out with his powerful ally on account of Indochina.389 The July 1956 deadline for national elections in Vietnam came and went with no balloting taking place.
The Saigon leader and his American patrons had what they wanted, and for a time it looked like the young Republic of (South) Vietnam would become a stable and prosperous entity. The other world powers seemed content to keep the country divided indefinitely, with the Soviets in 1957 even floating the idea of admitting both Vietnams into the United Nations. (The Western powers, fearful of the implications for Germany, said no thanks.) As American aid dollars, technical know-how, and products poured into the South in the second half of the 1950s, some US officials spoke hopefully about a "Diem miracle,” about South Vietnam being a "showcase” for America’s foreign aid program.
Appearances deceived. US aid, necessary though it was, inevitably fostered a dependent relationship, which undercut the Saigon government’s legitimacy with the southern populace. Though a man of principle and personal courage, Diem had a limited concept ofpolitical leadership and was inflexible and despotic. His policies - which favored the Catholic minority and showed little sensitivity to the needs of the Vietnamese people - alienated many. He demonstrated limited interest in enacting meaningful political reform. From time to time, American officials pushed him in that direction, but usually they got nowhere. Contrary to many historical accounts, it was Diem, not the United States, who was the dominant voice in South Vietnamese politics. Washington never had as much influence over Vietnamese affairs after 1955 as the French had before.
Slowly, beginning in 1957, a guerrilla insurgency arose in the South to challenge Diem’s rule. The fighters included former Vietminh who had remained in the South after partition, but also included new recruits, nonCommunists alienated by Diem’s repressive actions. The insurgency was not imposed by Hanoi; on the contrary, the DRV leadership went through a wrenching series of deliberations about whether to support it, with some Politburo members arguing for the need to focus exclusively on building a socialist state in the North. Precisely when Hanoi leaders gave their approval for armed struggle in the South remains a matter of debate (many accounts point to the 15th Plenum of the Party Central Committee in early 1959), but give it they did, although through the end of 1960 Hanoi still emphasized the political over the military struggle. Only inJanuary 1961 did the Politburo assert that "the revolution in the South is moving along the path toward a general insurrection with new characteristics, and the possibility of a peaceful development of the revolution is now almost nonexistent.”390 Henceforth, military struggle should thus be placed on equal footing with political struggle.
World History
