How Presidents Test Reality: Decisions on Vietnam, 1954 and 1965

CHAPTER TWO: The Question of Unilateral Intervention: NARRATIVE

CHAPTER TWO The Question of Unilateral Intervention: NARRATIVE IN JANUARY 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower and his foreign policy advisers faced a prospect that Lyndon Johnson and his foreign policy team were to confront eleven years later to the month: America's non-Communist allies in Vietnam, and elsewhere in Indochina, were in imminent peril of defeat by the indigenous Communist forces led by Ho Chi Minh. In World War II American intelligence units had aided Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh (the League for Vietnamese Independence) in their guerilla combat against the Japanese. An American field commander had unofficially assured the Viet Minh of his commitment to support them against French colonialism and to back "the establishment of a national and democratic government in Indochina." President Roosevelt had privately expressed his view that Indochina "should never be simply handed back to the French to be milked by their imperialists." Roosevelt favored putting Indochina under an international trusteeship in order to prepare it for independence. But as the Cold War developed , Washington's perspective shifted from emphasizing decolonization in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation to concern for the balance of power in Europe, and, by exten- The Question of Unilateral Intervention: NARRA I1VE 29 sion, sensitivity to the colonial interests of friendly European powers.1 The United States first sought to remain neutral of the colonial taint of the war between France and the Vietnamese revolutionaries that broke out not long after Japan's defeat. Because the United States provided substantial aid to promote French recovery from World War II, however, it indirectly contributed to the French military action in Indochina. After the Communist victory in China in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, its contribution became direct. The Communist victory in China provided the Viet Minh with a powerful neighboring ally. The bitter recriminations in the United States over "Who lost China?" produced a compelling domestic incentive for the Truman administration to do what it could to prevent a Communist victory in Indochina. In May 1950, a month before the outbreak of hostilities in Korea, Secretary of State Dean Acheson announced the first increment of American aid to the French for the Indochina war. The Korean conflict amplified the concern of American policy makers about Communist advances in Asia, persuading them that "world communism" was bent on dominating that portion of the world. Year by year, American aid to the French Indochina military effort mounted: from $130 million in 1950 to $800 million in 1953. Yet the French remained maddening allies, stubbornly resisting granting independence to the Indochinese. The American policy makers held that if the Indochinese people were not guaranteed independence they would never resist the nationalist appeals of the Viet Minh. Successive French military commanders met defeat by the Viet Minh, which, with readily available Chinese aid provided them after the Korean armistice, quickly became a skilled, modern army. IThe field commander is quoted in R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America's First Intelligence Agency, 318-19 and FDR is quoted in Elliot Roosevelt, As He Saw It, 251. Scholarly accounts include Walter LaFeber, "Roosevelt, Churchill and Indochina, 1942-1945"; Gary R. Hess, "Franklin Roosevelt and Indochina"; and Christopher Thorne, "Indochina and AngloAmerican Relations, 1942-1955." 30 HOW PRESIDENTS TEST REALITY As a consequence of the Korean War the political climate became profoundly antagonistic to further use of American troops on the Asian mainland. Nevertheless, Eisenhower and his associates were as convinced as the Truman administration had been of Indochina's strategic importance. What inhibited the new president from pressing the French to grant independence to the Indochinese was the fear that the war-weary French would simply withdraw, removing the "cork in the bottle," which in the American view prevented Communist forces from spreading throughout Southeast Asia, if not further. Moreover, the French might thwart American policy by failing to ratify the European Defense Community (EDC) Treaty and thus block the administration 's preferred means of bringing about German rearmament. In May 1953, the French government appointed General Henri Navarre commander in Vietnam and charged him with mounting a major new offensive against the Viet Minh. Two months later the new French government of Joseph Laniel promised to "perfect" Vietnamese independence. The Navarre Plan called for a significant infusion of Vietnamese recruits and French regulars into the anti-Communist military force and a change in strategy to...