THE HISTORICAL SETTING AND EVOLUTION OF THE INDOCHINA STRUGGLE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP73B00296R000100040026-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 16
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 31, 2002
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: July 27, 1971
• Content Type: MEMO

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27 July 197,1
SUBJECT: The Historical Setting and Evolution of the Indochina
Struggle
The current struggle in Indochina is a complex
one rooted in that area's extremely complicated
history. The major historical events and
developments bearing on the current situation
are sketched below in compressed and summary
form.
L. The Colonial Era Background
The current struggle in Indochina has its roots in the area's colonial
past. French interest in the area began with the missionary activities of
French Catholic priests in the 17th century. In the late 18th century a
French priest protected and became the advisor of a Vietnamese noble
who, with the aid of a force of French mercenaries, won out in a complex
and bloody civil war and united all of what is now known as Vietnam for
the first time in history under one rule -- his. This noble, Nguyen Anh,
was crowned at Hue in 1802 (as Emperor Gia Long). The house of Nguyen
reigned until its last member, Bao Dai, was deposed in 1955.
French territorial conquest, in the sense of open political control,
began with a joint Franco-Spanish punitive expedition (to protect Catholic
missionaries and their Vietnamese converts) in 1856.
By 1862, the French had acquired full sovereignty over the southern
part of Vietnam, then known as Cochin China. They gradually extended
their control northward. In 1883 central and northern Vietnam, then
known as Annam and Tonkin, became French protectorates. Laos and
Cambodia became French protectorates in this same period (Cambodia in
1863, Laos in 1893).
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The period of more or less uncontested French governance of
Indochina lasted for about four decades, during which the French had to
cope with continuing internal unrest but not with external pressure.
In a certain sense, the current struggle in Indochina is a result of
the haphazard, but profound, way in which World War II impacted on this
area. Shortly after France fell in May 1940, the Gaullist Governor General
of Indochina escaped and the French administration in the area came under
control of the Petain/Lavalle government in Vichy. The Japanese, at war
with China since 1937 and preparing for their larger war with the U.S.,
demanded and received the right to move men and supplies through Indo-
china and station troops there to protect these movements. In effect, the
Japanese took over the area in 1940, though they left the pro-Vichy French
administration in nominal charge.
In March 1945, the Japanese threw aside the facade of French
governance and took the area over, interning French troops and authorities
and killing those who resisted. The Japanese then declared Vietnam an
independent country with Emperor Bao Dai as Chief of State.
II. The Communist Party and the Franco-Viet Minh War
The next major set of players on the stage of Vietnamese history
were the leaders of the Vietnamese Communist Party -- now called the
Lao Dong -- organized and run throughout the rest of his lifetime by the
man who after World War II called himself Ho Chi Minh.
After a period of organizational activity in the 1920's, the Indochinese
Communist Party, under the aegis of the Comintern, was formally established
in February 1930 by Ho (a Comintern agent) during a meeting of Vietnamese
revolutionaries in Hong Kong. The Vietnamese Communist Party was
pledged to remove the French colonial administration, but it also called
for the implementation of a Marxist "national democratic revolution" in
Vietnam.
During the 1930's, the Party's fortunes varied with the changes of
government in Paris. In the 1930-36 period, the. Party was severely
repressed, particularly after Party-inspired revolts in the central Vietnamese
provinces of Nghe An and Ha..Tinh in 1931 were put down by the French.
The. Party's ranks were bled white, with its leadership either in jail or
.overseas.
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With the advent of the Popular Front government in Paris in 1936,
the French colonial authorities changed their attitude 'toward the Viet-
namese Communists. Party members and cadres were released from
jail and the Party operated semi-legally in Vietnam. Without forsaking
its revolutionary objectives, the Party took advantage of the prevailing
liberalized conditions to attempt to increase its appeal among the
populace through legal methods and activities and a less openly militant
platform.
By 1939 the Popular Front government in Paris has been replaced
and the French hardened their attitude toward the Vietnamese Communists,
particularly after the Nazi-Soviet pact was signed in August 1939. The-
Party then went underground.
1940-41 was a period of turmoil in Indochina following the fall of
France. In 1941, the Indochinese Communist Party was reorganized and
Ho Chi Minh, who had been directing the movement from overseas as a
Comintern representative, took personal control. At this time, however,
the Party's leadership was in exile in China. In May 1941, the Viet Minh
Independence Front was proclaimed -- ostensibly to unify all Vietnamese
nationalist elements in fighting the Japanese, actually to enable the
Communist Party to gain complete control of the nationalist movement.
During the war years, the Viet Minh did render services for the
Allies, including providing escape routes for downed flyers and providing
intelligence to our OSS teams. However, much of the arms and money
provided by the U. S. and the Chinese Nationalists was squirreled away
for later use against the French and most of the military action under-
taken by the Communists was directed at other Vietnamese nationalist
groups not willing to accept Communist control.
Meanwhile, the Party set about planning its moves, expanding and
preparing its organization. In late 1944 the first element- of the Party's
rnilitary,branch was established and the organizational groundwork laid
for what became the PAVN (i.'e., what we' now call the North Vietnamese
Army).
In August 1945, within days after the Japanese surrender and before
the Allies, including the French, were able to do anything, the Communists
.decided that the situation was ripe for action. The Bao Dai government
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was very weak and the situation unsettled. On August 19, the Viet Minh --
now completely under Communist Party control -- seized Hanoi. The
.Communist revolt soon spread throughout all the main urban centers and
by the end of the month, Vietnam was under the control of the Viet Minh.
On September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh formally proclaimed the establishment
of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) with himself as its President.
The events leading up to the outbreak of the Franco-Viet Minh
conflict were complicated. In general, the French slowly reassumed
control of Vietnam beginning in the fall of 1945 in Cochin China, and they
gradually replaced Chinese and British occupation forces which were
stationed in Vietnam according to the Potsdam agreements.
During this period, the DRY, sensing the inevitable clash with the
French, began negotiating with Paris in the hope of buying time and having
its independence formally sanctioned by Paris. Ho Chi Minh himself
went to France in 1946 in an attempt to reach some sort of agreement with
the French. Despite some paper agreements, this and other negotiating
efforts proved unsuccessful.
The situation reached a head in late 1946 and on December 19, 1946
the Viet Minh formally issued orders for a nation-wide resistance against
the French.
The war lasted nine years. In 1948, the non-Communist nationalists
formed the State of Vietnam, under French aegis, which was formally
recognized by the United States in February 1950.
Thus, by the time of the Geneva Conference on Indochina in 1954
there were two Vietnamese states claiming national authority. The Geneva
Conference began its discussions of the situation in Indochina on May 8,
1954, one day after the fall of the French fortress at Dien Bien Phu.
On July 20-21, 1954, agreements were reached at Geneva which
ended the French phase of the Vietnam story. On July 20, 1954, an agreement
on the cessation of hostilities in Vietnam was signed by representatives
of the DRY and the French Union Forces. Its provisions included: partitioning
Vietnam along the 17th parallel; the regroupment of personnel between the
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North and the South; regulations on foreign military presence and
armaments; the establishment of the International Control Commission;
and reference to reunification by elections.
A day later, on July 21, an unsigned "Final Declaration" of the
Geneva Conference was issued in which the participants noted the provisions
of the French-DRV cease fire agreements and in which there were refer-
ences to elections that were to be held to reunify Vietnam on 20 July 1956.
The U. S. and South Vietnamese delegates disassociated their governments
from the Final Declaration. American delegate Walter Bedell Smith
issued a unilateral statement declaring that the United States (1) "will
refrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb the agreements, "
(2) "would view any renewal of the aggression in violation of the aforesaid
agreements with grave concern and as seriously threatening international
peace and security, " and (3) "shall continue to seek to achieve unity
through free 'elections, supervised by the U. N. to insure that they are
conducted fairly. "
Coincident with the agreements ending hostilities in Vietnam there
were similar agreements for Cambodia and Laos. It is well to keep in
mind the Laos agreements in view of North Vietnam's blatant violation
of its own signed commitments regarding the Laos agreements of 1954 and
1962. In the July 20, 1954 Laotian agreements the DRV pledged that
"with effect from the proclamation of the cease fire the introduction
into Laos of any reinforcements of troops or military from outside Laotian
territory is prohibited. "
In the July 23, 1962 declaration of the Geneva Conference on Laos,
the DRV, together with the other participants, affirmed that it "will not
use the territory of the Kingdom of Laos for interference in the internal
affairs of other countries. " Needless to say, North Vietnam has neither
respected the 1954 nor 1962 agreements on Laos.
IV. The Post-Geneva Interlude
The 1954 Geneva Accords satisfied virtually no one at the time they
were signed. The Vietnamese Communists -- now legitimized as the DRV --
were disappointed in getting only half a loaf: They bought this settlement
partly as a result of Soviet and Chinese pressure and because they
believed (as did virtually everyone else) that the jerry built non-Communist
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political structure south of the 17th parallel would spon collapse. Since
partition at the 17th parallel put the majority of Vietnam's population
under Communist control, the Communist Party leadership felt sure
their acquisition of control over all of Vietnam had been deferred by
at most two years; for if South Vietnam did not collapse before then (as
most observers considered inevitable), in any 1956 election Hanoi would
deliver 99+ percent of a majority of the votes before any southern votes
were counted. Nonetheless the Vietnamese Communists felt cheated at
having to settle, even temporarily, for less than total victory.
The French were not happy either, but by 1954 the Indochina struggle
had become politically unsaleable in France. Thus the Mendes-France
government saw the 1954 Accords as a way to get out of Indochina quickly
without actually surrendering and thus saving a little face.
The Laniel government fell and Mendes-France became Premier
while the 1954 Geneva Conference was in session. When Mendes-France
took office he publicly pledged to settle the Indochina war within thirty
days or resign. Actually; Mendes-France had a private understanding
with the Soviets, who agreed to help him get an Indochina settlement if he
would scuttle the European Defense Communist Treaty, which Mendes-
France subsequently did. His grandstand play to meet his self-imposed
thirty-day deadline, however, had momentous future consequences, for
it led Mendes-France to accept partition at the 17th parallel rather than
holding out for the 18th or even 19th, i. e. , a partition which would have
split the population evenly or put a majority south of the line of Communist
control -- a split that would have made a genuine electoral contest possible
in 1956.
On 7 July 1954, while the Geneva Conference was in progress, the
French government appointed Ngo Dinh Diem Premier of the "Associated
.State of Vietnam" - i. e. , South Vietnam - - under Chief of State Bao Dai.
Diem, a stiff-necked and uncorruptible nationalist, had for years been a
thorn in the side of the French and the Communists, both of whom had on
various occasions attempted to- arrest and/or assassinate him. The French,
not without ironic malice, thought Diem an ideal choice to hold the bag
in presiding over the dissolution of non-Communist Vietnam and going
down to political defeat at Hanoi's hands.
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Theoretically, political arrangements in South Vietnam during
the 1954-1956 (i. e. , post-Conference, pre-plebescite) period were to
be handled in partnership between the Bao Dai/Diem government and the
French. In fact, however, there was increasing' friction between Diem,
on the one hand, and, on the other, both Bao Dai and the French. This
friction, coupled with France's political instability and fiscal weakness,
led to the U. S. assuming an ever larger role.
The SEATO Treaty, signed in September 1954, extended its
protection to Vietnam, and opened moves to strengthen South Vietnam
without the delays, indecision and sabotage occasioned by French participation.
On 24 October 1954, President Eisenhower announced direct
military assistance and economic aid to the Diem government and its
armed forces, cutting out the French as middle-men. In February 1955,
the U. S. assumed responsibility for the training of Vietnamese forces.
These developments marked the beginning of the French disassociation
with Vietnam, and the assumption of an independent role for the U.S.,
In December 1955, Diem terminated all economic and financial agreements
with France and withdrew South Vietnamese representatives from the
French Union Assembly.
On 26 April 1956 the French high command was disestablished,
and by July had completed the withdrawal of French forces.
Thus, the U. S. became the primary guarantor of South Vietnam's
V. The Diem Era: 1954-1963
When Diem took office in 1954, it was universally assumed that
.his government would quickly disintegrate and collapse. Against all the
odds, however, Diem managed to consolidate his power position in the
face of political disunity, , economic chaos, military challenges from the
armed religious sects and persistent efforts to undercut him on the part of
both the French and Bao Dai.
On 28 March 1955, Diem moved against the Binh Xuyen, a gambling
syndicate which controlled the Saigon police. In May 1955, he launched
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a successful campaign against the armies of the Ca(? Dai and Hoa Hao
sects. In October he won a resounding victory in a popular referendum
in which the voters chose between Diem and the French-supported Bao
Dai and by which Diem deposed Bao Dai and took Vietnam out of the French
Union.
Diem then refused to participate in the 1956 elections called for
by the "Final Declaration" of the 1954 Geneva Accords. Diem argued that
its record of performance since 1954 demonstrated that the ICC could not
guarantee a free election in the North, hence -- with the majority of the
population already under Hanoi's control -- a fair electoral contest was
not possible.
Diem also noted that the Geneva Agreements were between the
French and the Viet Minh, that the South Vietnamese had not been consulted,.
did not sign anything, and that he had announced at the time that the South
Vietnamese would not be bound by these agreements to which they were
not a party.
Moreover, the Hanoi regime had already rendered the agreements
inoperative by numerous violations -- bringing in weapons from China,
keeping part of its army, cadre and arms stockpiles in the South,
preventing the movement of civilians from North to South, restricting the
ICC, etc.
In its early phase, i. e., until late 1957 or early 1958, the Diem
government made great progress. Out of anarchy and chaos it created the
beginnings of a potentially viable nation.
Diem's progress peaked, however, and-his government's later years
were marked by progressive deterioration, accelerated by mounting
Communist pressures.
The very qualities which helped Diem survive and succeed in his
early years - - stubborness, ? inflexibility, "tuning out negative advisors,
relying only on a totally loyal circle of relatives and trusted intimates,
and a messianic conviction in the rightness of his' own judgment -- eventually
proved his undoing.
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As Communist pressures rose and the situation began to deteriorate
in the late 1950's, Diem became progressively more stiff-necked, more
reliant on his Catholic co-religionists and his immediate family, partic-
ularly his brothers Ngo Dinh Can (de facto ruler of Central Vietnam),
Ngo Dinh Nhu and the latter's wife. Step by step, Diem managed to
alienate virtually every other group across the non-Communist political
spectrum: the peasantry, the politicians and intellectuals, non-Catholics --
.particularly the Buddhists -- and, finally, the army.
Resentment at Diem and his style of rule crystallized and focused
on the "religious" issue in May 1963 when Buddhist demonstrations in Hue
got out of hand and several people were killed. An ugly situation developed.
It was fanned by agitation and publicity (including public suicides of
Buddhist monks and nuns) and worsened considerably in August 1963 when
troops and police acting on Ngo Dinh Nhu's orders raided a number of
pagodas.
After two more months of agitation and deterioration, the army
stepped in an overthrew Diem's government on 1 November 1963. In the
aftermath of the coup, Diem and Nhu -- who did not formally surrender
to the rebel forces but tried to escape and were captured while in disguise
as Catholic priests -- were executed. The circumstances of their execution
are obscure but it was probably ordered personally, and privately, by
the nominal leader of the coup, General Duong Van Minh.
VI. Origins and Evolution of the Communist Insurgency
The apparently sure-fire gamble the Vietnamese Communist Party
took in accepting the 1954 Geneva settlement did not pay off. South
Vietnam was supposed to collapse. The Communists should have been able to
win the political struggle against the fledgling GVN almost by default and,
in any event, the Party was sure it could come legally to power via the
1956 election contest which it would enter already controlling a majority
of the votes, i. e. , the population north of the 17th parallel.
In fact, things did not work out this way. The Party's hopes and
expectations were frustrated by Diem's early successes in holding the
GVN together and maintaining it as an ongoing, steadily improving concern.
Though they appeared to hold all the cards, the Communists lost the
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political struggle. In the middle 1950's, as Diem's military and civil
apparatus steadily improved, the Party's political fortunes and prospects
in South Vietnam progressively deteriorated.
To check this deterioration, in 1957 the Party began augmenting
political action and subversion with a small scale but rising program of
selective terrorism and assassination. Communist efforts were aided
by a series of major errors the Diem government made in its dealings
with the rural population -- the abolition of village elections in 1956 and
the "agroville!' program of 1958 -- which generated rural grievances the
Communists were quick to exacerbate and exploit. GVN errors and
Communist actions perceptibly slowed the rate of GVN progress in the
late 1950's, but in South Vietnam the Communist Party still considered
itself in a parlous state.
Hanoi's policy changed radically in 1959. A decisive role in this
change was played by a man who, more than any other individual on either
side, is personally responsible for the Indochina war: Le Duan. Born in
Central Vietnam south of the 17th parallel, Le Duan was a charter member
of the Vietnamese Communist Party and has been a member of its Politburo
since the early 1940's. As early as 1952 he was in charge of the Party's
Southern Region (Nambo) Committee. He ran the southern organization
from then through 1956 -- i. e., through the end of the Franco-Viet Minh
struggle, Geneva, and the post-Geneva interlude. He was brought back
to Hanoi in mid- 1957 to replace Truong Chinh as Party First Secretary,
though Le Duan did not get the actual title until 1960. He still holds that
post. Since Ho Is death, Le Duan has emerged as the most senior member
of the Party. Though he certainly does not enjoy Ho's unrivalled primacy,
he controls the Party organization (throughout Vietnam) and none of his
Politburo colleagues is more senior than he. When he assumed the duties
of First Secretary in 1957, he obviously acquired a powerful platform
from which to argue the cause of the southern organization -- which he
had built and until then personally directed.
At the 15th Plenum of the Lao' Dong (Communist) Party's Central
Committee held in Hanoi in January 1959, the Party decided to initiate armed
struggle in the South -- a "war of national liberation" -- to arrest the
Party's decline in the South and launch a major counter-attack against
Diem.
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In mid- 1959, Communist military action in Laos cleared the Ho
Chi Minh trail area and laid the groundwork for systematic infiltration
to the South, first of southern Party members and cadres who regrouped
to the North and were further trained in preparation for the revolutionary
struggle and then (in 1964) of North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars.
The Party's policy of armed struggle was formalized the following
year at the Lao Dong Party's Third National Congress, which met in
Hanoi in September 1960. At this Congress, Le Duan was formally named
as First Secretary of the Central Committee.
In his political report at the Third National Congress Le Duan
called for the establishment of the united national front in the South and
laid down the policy of struggle that Hanoi has pursued ever since. Several
months later on December 20, 1960 the National Front for the Liberation
of South Vietnam (NLF) was announced. The NLF was to be the front under
which the liberation struggle would be waged, while the Lao Dong Party's
actions, controlling hand, and personnel would be concealed.
In 1961, the Lao Dong Party re-established COSVN -- which Le
Duen had set up during the French war -- of the Central Committee to
guide the liberation struggle. It is this organization - - COSVN - - and not
the so-called NLF or the Provisional Revolutionary Government at the
present time that is the controlling authority in the South and which is part
of and responsible to the Central Committee and Politburo.
With these measures the Party's decline in the South was arrested,
inroads were being made against Diem's forces and the Party's control
began widening. According to Communist records, from a mid- 1959 level
of only 5, 000 Party members, by late 1961 the number of Party members
had jumped to 34, 800. Diem's control of the countryside proved to be
"a mile wide but an inch thin" and the Party's military and civil forces
were making inroads into that control.
1962 was ,not a-good year for the Communists. With the presence
of U.S. advisors and the aggressive use of helicopters, government forces
pressed the attack against the enemy. The strategic hamlet program
seemed to be gathering momentum.
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1963 was an indecisive year militarily. Communist forces were
learning how to better cope with and resist ARVN's techniques, but no
one side made significant gains. Momentum on the non-Communist side
was checked, however, by mounting political discord which culminated
in Diem's November 1963 overthrow which, in turn, produced an inevitable
"shake-out" period of great instability. In December 1963 Hanoi decided
to capitalize on this instability by committing NVA regulars to combat
in order to achieve an early victory before the non-Communists in the
South could get themselves reorganized.
The December 1963 decision of the 9th Plenum of the Lao Dong
Party Central Committee to commit NVA forces to the war was imple-
mented in the fall and winter of 1964. Organized
1964 and in early Februaryent
in the northern part of South Vietnam in
1965 NVA regulars attacked Camp Holloway near Pleiku in the highlands
killing a relatively large number of American personnel. This action
led to a U. S. retaliatory air strike against North Vietnam and marked
the start of our air war.
In the meanwhile, the Party Politburo had dispatched to COSVN a
senior general officer and Politburo member to lead the Party's southern
directorate now that the struggle's nature was evolving. In the fall of
1964, General Nguyen Chi Thanh left Hanoi for COSVN which was to be
his duty station until his death in July 196.7. Later in 1967, Politburo
member Pham Hung, a vice Premier in the Hanoi government, was sent
from Hanoi to replace General Thanh.
The presence of Politburo members from Hanoi, as well as several
NVN army generals, was further proof that this insurgency was controlled
and directed from Hanoi.
The 11th and, in particular; the 12th Plenums in August and December
1965, respectively, of the Central Committee proved to be milestone
meetings of the Party. It was decided at the December 1965 12th Plenum
that the Party's course in militarily opposing and meeting the Americans
head speech was to the the correct Plenum policy.
spe hat the Politburo was charged with the respon-
sibility of deciding when to engage in negotiations and that in any event
the strategy was to be one of "fight-talk-fight. "
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During the summer of 1967, there was another strategy review
in Hanoi at which Le Duan again carried the day in arguing for further
escalation. These 1967 debates led to the decision to make a major
military push in 1968 -- launched with the- Tet offensive -- and then
augment military pressure with negotiations.
Current Communist strategy on the battlefield and in' Paris is
still following the basic guidelines laid down in 1965 and reaffirmed in
.the summer of 1967.
VII. The U. S. Role
The U. S. is actually a relative latecomer to the complex struggle
whose evolution and historical background are outlined above. 'The
argument that Hanoi's strategy and actions were all responses to U. S.
"escalation" simply does not square with the historical record.
Unitl well after World War II, America -- and the government in
Washington -- showed little concern for or knowledge of Indochina.
President Roosevelt was reluctant to see Frence re-establish itself as a
colonial power in the area, but the record shows this to have been a
peripheral concern in the context of much larger interests. The OSS in
China did endeavor to use the Viet Minh apparatus for intelligence and
armed action missions against the Japanese, but the Viet Minh leadership
was much more interested in acquiring assets and readying itself for future
political struggle in Vietnam than in wasting assets against the Japanese.
In the aftermath of World War II, Ho Chi Minh did make a play for U. S.
political support in combatting the French, but the thesis that greater
U. S. receptivity to these overtures would have changed Ho's goals or
policies is -- to put it charitably -- oversimplified.
The U. S. continued to show minimal interest in Indochina devel-
opments during the first years of the Franco-Viet Minh struggle. This
was regarded as a Frepch, problem and U. S. interests were centered
on European security.
The U. S. concept of Asia and its interests therein were radically
changed by the Communist take-over of China in 1949 (without which the
Viet Minh could not have defeated the French) and, above all, by the
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Korean War, which was started by the North Korean$ in June 1950 and
in which the Chinese Communists intervened massively in December 1950.
These events in Asia, coupled with what at the time appeared to
be a valid concern that a French defeat in Indochina might lead to a
Communist take-over in France, caused the U. S. Government to take
cognizance of Indochina and what was happening there.
The whole climate of the early 1950's was, of course, quite
different from today's domestic and international climate -- though
(somewhat ironically) today's climate is in many ways the result of steps
taken and policies adopted to cope with the problems of the decade that
followed the end of World War II. Things that are ancient history to the
present generation of students and young professors (forgotten if ever
known, but in any event now deemed "irrelevant") were very much on the
minds and desks of those who set U. S. policy in the late 40's and early
50's: The Soviet imposition of Communist rule throughout Eastern Europe
after World War II, the coup in Czechoslovakia, the Berlin Blockade,
the 1947 Truman Doctrine in Greece and Turkey, the 1948 Marshall Plan
to rebuild a prostrate Europe, the heyday of Stalinism, the first Soviet
nuclear explosions, and -- as noted above -- the Communist conquest of
China and the launching of overt Communist aggression in Korea. If the
policies and attitudes of that period are to be understood in retrospect,
it must be remembered that the Vietnamese Communists' fight against the
French in Indochina was being actively (and indispensably) aided by the
Chinese Communists whose troops were simultaneously fighting against
U. S. forces in Korea.
On 1 May 1950, President Truman took the first real step of U. S.
involvement in Indochina by announcing June 1950, President announced
to the French effort there. On
an acceleration of aid and the dispatch of a military mission.
On 3 August 1950 the lead elements of a U.S. Military Assistance
and Advisory Group were assigned to Indochina to supervise the delivery
of U. S. military materiel. This group originally had 70 men, though by
1954 the size had grown to 342. U. S. aid to Indochina totalled $119
million in FY 1951 and rose steadily to the level of $815 million in 1954.
By the time of the 1954 Geneva. Conference, total U. S. aid to Indochina
amounted to some $2. 6 billion and we were funding approximately 80% of the
French war effort there.
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By the time President Eisenhower took office in 1953, the
French position in Indochina was clearly eroding. "Within his government
and cabinet there were those who advocated direct U. S. military
participation -- particularly at the time of Dien Bien Phu in the spring
of 1954 -- but President Eisenhower rejected these arguments, and
confined the U. S. role to that of giving the French materiel assistance.
The U. U.S. , posture and degree of participation in the '1954 Geneva
Conference has already been discussed. In the course of events after
Geneva, the U. S. dealt progressively less with and/or through the
French and progressively more directly with the new Government of
Vietnam and its Premier, Ngo Dinh Diem.
On 25 October 1954, President Eisenhower sent a message to Diem
offering U. S. aid "to assist Viet-Nam in its present hour of trial,
provided that your Government is prepared to give assurances as to the
standards of performance it would be able to maintain in the event such
aid were supplied. "
On 26 October 1955, the U. S. Government acknowledged the
deposition of Bao Dai and recognized President Diem as Chief of State.
During the late 1950's, the U. S. provided the Diem government
with economic assistance and military aid and advice. The size of the
MAAG rose to 685. The first U. S. military casualties occurred in the
summer of 1959 when two American servicemen were killed in a Commu-
nist attack on the small U. S. advisory team at Bien Hoa.
When President Kennedy took office in 1961, the situation in South
Vietnam was deteriorating under the mounting Communist attack which
the Party, as explained above,, had launched in 1959. During President
Kennedy's tenure in office, the total of U. S. military personnel jumped
frorn.875 to over 16, 000.
In addition, Pres~c At,Kenriedy authorized limited U. S. participation
in the struggle in the shape of helicopter' support, air reconnaissance
operations and assistance to intensified covert paramilitary operations
in Laos and South Vietnas4..
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President Kennedy's death occurred three weeks after Diem's.
President Johnson inherited an Indochina situation that rapidly worsened
because of the instability in the aftermath of Diem's overthrow that
accompanied the inevitable period of political shake-out and because of
Hanoi's December 1963 decision to capitalize on this instability and
.strike for victory by injecting elements of the North Vietnamese Army
directly into the struggle. These regular forces began appearing in the
South in late 1964 and by early 1965 were whipsawing the South Vietnamese
Army.
President Johnson was thus faced with the problems generated by
rapidly mounting North Vietnamese pressure which made a Communist
military conquest of South Vietnam look ever more likely.
The first air strikes against North Vietnam were authorized by
President Johnson in August 1964 as a reprisal for the attacks against
U. S. destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. In October 1964, he authorized the
bombing of the Laotian infiltration routes over which North Vietnamese
-supplies and regular units were moving South. In February 1965 our
sustained bombing program against the North began. By the spring of
1965, ARVN was on the verge of defeat. It was at this point that President
Johnson made the decision to introduce U. S. combat forces. The first
contingent of Marines landed at Danang in March of 1965 to protect the
Danang airfield. They were followed by Army combat units and eventually
U.S. forces in Vietnam reached a maximum of 545, 000.
From this peak of U. S. involvement, U. S. policy changed, first
with President Johnson's call for negotiations in his speech of 31 March
1968. then with President Nixon's policy of Vietnamization and U. S.
disengagement from direct ground force participation in combat.
The record of the past two years does not need to be recited here.
The point that does need to be understood and that the historical record
cited above demonstrates is that U. S. involvement in Indochina was the
consequence, mg.re than,^the' causes' of a complex chain of events stretching
over four decades. The Indochina war di'd not derive from U. S. actions.
Instead it is rooted in the Vietnamese Communists' unswerving drive for
political control over all of Indochina and Hanoi's deliberate post- 1959
strategy of attempting to impose that control by force of arms.
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