In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

854 The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans 10. The Party Center Triumphant 1973–2000 “War in Peace” THE PARTY TAKES STOCK In October 1972, when the party center had expected rapid signature of the draft agreement and an imminent cease-fire in South Vietnam, a COSVN directive had evaluated the situation that would follow: During this period we will have new advantages, new conditions, and new capabilities which never prevailed before, while the enemy contradictions and basic vulnerabilities will become more serious than ever before. This period will be a great opportunity for revolutionary violence, for gaining power in South Viet-Nam, for troop and enemy proselytizing, and for making great leaps in the balance of forces.1 In late 1972, COSVN moved back into South Vietnam from its sanctuary in Cambodia. On October 17, the NLF Central Committee moved out of Kratie, retracing the path of its retreat two years before, and, having forded the Vam Co Dong, was once again on South Vietnamese soil.2 The party center met again to review the new situation in January 1973. It had not quite managed to get the Americans to dismantle the Republic of Vietnam, but they had left it gravely weakened. One more push would be needed to topple it. The PRG’s action in the coming period was focused on two objectives: progressively demoralizing the ARVN and provoking a new domestic crisis for the Saigon government. The party center continued to emphasize revolutionary violence, however. Directive 2/73 from COSVN, dated January 19, 1973, ordered military forces to assist political efforts through accelerated attacks on Saigon government outposts, increased assassinations and abductions of government officials, and intensified interdiction of lines of communication. Directive 3/73, issued at the end of March, was less upbeat and called for building and refitting and less fighting.3 At its twenty-first plenum in March, the party ended this vacillation and reaffirmed that the path to victory was the path of revolutionary violence. In midOctober , the party central committee recognized that “the revolution in the South The Party Center Triumphant 855 can only triumph by means of continuous revolutionary violence” and approved COSVN’s plans to extend operations into areas controlled by Saigon.4 Kaysone Phomvihan’s speech on the occasion of the anniversary of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party was an orthodox Marxist-Leninist exhortation to the party faithful, claiming brilliant victories and a heavy but glorious task. “We live in an era of revolution,” he said, using the word revolution at least two dozen times in the lengthy speech. “We must contribute to the world revolution by attentively attacking imperialism in general and U.S. imperialism, which is the last resort of imperialism, in particular, further enabling the revolutionary forces throughout the world to grow stronger and bigger with fruitful lessons,” Kaysone said.5 Kaysone also revealed that a “special relationship” existed between the Laotian party and the Vietnam Workers’ Party. The party center’s “special relationship” with its creation in South Vietnam also received bolstering. On July 1, 1973, diplomats of seven Communist countries and Mauritania traveled from Hanoi and crossed the DMZ to present their credentials to Chairman Huynh Tan Phat beneath a portrait of Ho and then returned to Hanoi. It was a strategy of political advance backed by the threat of military force. The Marxist-Leninists of the party center intended purely and simply to fall back on the plan of action they had used in Cochinchina in 1946 to prepare for the referendum foreseen in the March 6 preliminary convention. Although the PRG had taken the place of the Viet Minh, some of the same people were still around to resume their former roles in this charade. Tran Buu Kiem, for one, had been a member of the Committee for the Application in Cooperation with France of the Preliminary Convention of March 6 and of the Modus Vivendi. In his seminal history, Philippe Devillers gives a description of how the plan of action worked in 1946 against a background of terror spread by the armed bands of Nguyên Binh: “disorganization and dismantling of the FrancoCochinchinese administrative structures, flight of the notables, desertions among the civil guards, civil servants and partisans with their arms and baggage, generalization of uncertainty.”6 All this occurred after a cease-fire had been proclaimed , “restoring peace,” as it was said, but while the soldiers on both sides retained their arms and their areas of control...

Share