04 - Globalisation of the Cold War - The Vietnam War

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 1 EXTENSION OF THE COLD WAR OUTSIDE EUROPE (THE VIETNAM WAR) ______________________________________________________________________________________________ Why was there a North and South Vietnam?  At the end of the war in 1945, the Vietminh had established control over much of northern and central Vietnam and declared the formation of an independen t Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). While the Americans had lent support to the Vietminh during the war, they now supported the French in restoring their control over Vietnam, convinced that the Vietminh were receiving help from the Soviets and were supported by the Communist China after 1949. After their capitulation at Dien Bien Phu, a conference was held at Geneva to determine the future of Vietnam. Under the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel (though the Vietminh controlled 2/3 of the country) and elections for unification would happen within two years with a view to reuniting Vietnam and creating a multi-party system of government. 1  Under Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese government implemented land reforms to build-up support for the Communist government in the forthcoming free elections. Landlords were pilloried, imprisoned and executed, and their land distributed to the peasantry. A million refugees fled to the South. In addition, from 1960 onwards, guerrilla troops (the National Liberation Front) were trained in the North contrary to the Geneva agreements. These guerrillas, known as the Vietcong, terrorised villages and country districts in the South forcing them to support them with food, shelter, information and recruits. They were supplied by the North via a series of routes through the jungle and over the highlands of neighbouring Laos, known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail. 2 1 Isaacs and Downing, Cold War, pp. 231-232. 2 Ibid., pp. 235-236.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 2  In the south, Ngo Dinh Diem established the Republic of Vietnam, having rigged a referendum which made him the president of the new republic. His principal sources of power were the United States, his family and Catholics, the latter hated by most of the southern Buddhist population becaus e of their religion and northern origin. In 1957, he started a ‘mopping up campaign’, using emergency powers and vague definitions of espionage and treason to carry out arbitrary arrests of communists and non-communist alike. By then, Diem’s state had become a quasi-police state and he had alienated all major sections of the South Vietnamese population – the intellectual elite were rendered politically mute, labour unions impotent, Buddhists distrustful and loyal opposition in the form of organised parties stifled out of existence. 3 What were the Americans thinking? The Truman Administration (1945-1953)  The emerging superpower contest indirectly affected one power vacuum the Pacific War had left behind: the collapse of the European colonial authority in South and Southeast Asia. In Vietnam, the fact that it was Ho Chi Minh who led the nationalist resistance to the French meant that Washington’s enthusiasm for self- determination quickly evaporated. In fact, when Ho declared Vietnamese independence in September 1945, pointedly quoting from the American Declaration of Independence, he received no encouragement from the country whose example he was emulating. The Truman administration on the contrary committed itself to restoring the pre-war position of the French in Indochina. 4 3 Ibid., p. 236. 4 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, p. 58. Lloyd C. Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II t hrough Dienbienphu, pp. 62-66.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 3  Cold War considerations now came into play. In no other region was national liberation as likely to bring social revolution. Ho Chi Minh was the only avowed Marxist dominating an anti-colonial movement with any prospect of immediate success. Vietnam acquired significance as a territory where the Truman administration now sought to design a strategy that would maintain support for nationalism without at the same time advancing the interests of Communism. Setting nationalism against Communism did not appear difficult at first. State Department officials even argued for cooperation with Communists in the Third World where they had nationalist aspirations. Ho Chi Minh himself had worked with the Office of Strategic Services during the war.5  While Dean Acheson saw advantages by aligning the United States with nationalist movements to resist Communism, this was only his general position. Acheso n took a very different view with respect to the situation in Indochina.6 Mao’s impending victory in China enhanced Indochina’s importance as a source of raw materials and potential markets, especially for an emerging Japanese economy cut off from the Asian mainland. Nor could events in Southeast Asia remain separate from those in Europe: a French collapse in Indochina would surely undermine morale in France and thereby weaken NATO. Security in Europe might yet require stability in the Third World. 7 It makes little sense to seek consistency in Acheson’s thinking: it only reflected the ambivalence afflicting the Truman administration at the time. Was it better to help the French suppress the Vietminh, thereby containing Communism while outraging nationalism, an outcome sure to generate future resentment against the United States in Southeast Asia and future opportunities for the Soviet Union and China? Or was it preferable to give the French no help at all, thereby ensuring another victory for Communism in Asia while at the same time humiliating a vital partner in the task of restoring stability to Europe? 8  The solution Acheson and his colleagues settled on turned out to be paradigmatic: Washington would support the French in their efforts to defeat Ho’s insurgency while at the same time pushing them to prepare Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia for eventual independence. The idea therefore was to simultaneously bolster and reform colonial regimes there. 9 In October 1949, Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. Under attack from the Republicans for having ‘lost’ China and fearing further Communist expansion in Asia, Acheson persuaded Truman to give more money to help French forces in Indochina. Washington’s fears of a worldwide Communist offensive seemed justified when Ho (having failed to obtain American recognition in exchange for a prom ise of neutrality in the Cold War) persuaded China and the Soviet Union to recognise his Democratic Republic of Vietnam in January 1950. 10 This allowed French officials to declare that their country was fi ghting a war for Containment, not for colonisation. Despite the history of Chinese-Vietnamese antagonism, Ho and the ICP decided to accept military and economic aid from Beijing as a means of achieving their immediate objective of defeating the French. 11  In addition to seeing a strategic value in helping Fran ce in Vietnam in terms of preserving good relations within the European alliance and checking the spread of Chinese Communist influence in Asia, the United States also had economic reasons to aid France. Mainland Southeast Asia was not a significant market or source of raw materials for the United States, but it was important in those respects to America’s allies Britain an