America's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (review)

In America's Miracle Man in Vietnam, Seth Jacobs examines the racial and religious attitudes that contributed to American support for Ngo Dinh Diem in the 1950s. Jacobs's goal is to "arrive at a fuller understanding of the origins of America's longest and most divisive war" (p. 20). He draws on the records of policy makers and religious figures, as well as cultural products of the 1950s, including the films The Ten Commandments, The King and I, and the writings of James Michener. He concludes that "a particular body of ideas about religion and race helped cement the Eisenhower administration's alliance with Diem" and precluded policy makers from considering alternative courses of action (p. 5).

During the 1950s, American religious zeal motivated the country's foreign policy. John Foster Dulles, "the most unapologetically religious man to superintend American foreign policy since Woodrow Wilson" (p. 71), believed that Christians like Ngo Dinh Diem were America's best allies in the struggle against Communism. Because Americans viewed "Asia" as "an ignorant, heathen place, peopled, figuratively and literally, by children" (p. 96), Dulles and others felt that if the United States did not provide tutelage and assistance for Asians, the Soviets would "adopt" the region as its own (p. 117).

Among the high-ranking officials in the Eisenhower administration, only J. Lawton Collins doubted Diem's suitability to lead South Vietnam. With Diem's victory over the sects in 1955, however, Collins's opinion was effectively marginalized. Several prominent figures drew attention to Vietnam and convinced Americans that Diem was an able statesman. Colonel Edward Lansdale encouraged Vietnamese to move south after the Geneva Convention and Tom Dooley, a doctor in the U.S. Navy, publicized the plight of the refugees. Press coverage of the refugee crisis, according to Jacobs, rendered "the Vietnamese civil war . . . as a battle between communists and Catholics" (p. 137; emphasis in original). The American Friends of Vietnam, a lobbying group that included journalist Joseph Buttinger, former OSS director "Iron Mike" O'Daniel, Mike Mansfield, and John F. Kennedy, mounted a public relations campaign to ensure that Diem, by the time of his 1957 state visit to Washington, would be viewed as "one of the great figures of the twentieth century" (p. 259).

Jacobs criticizes prominent Americans for failing to give Asians "agency or independent thought" (p. 142), and for dismissing the Vietnamese populace as a "faceless horde" (p. 268). Jacobs, however, also fails to fully account for the actions of Vietnamese. Jacobs claims that "[i]t was in the United States that Diem won his post" as Prime Minister of South Vietnam (p. 25), that "Diem's government was an American creation" (p. 26), and that "Diem would never have been named premier had he not been Washington's candidate" (p. 53). While Jacobs may be correct in his argument that Americans' Orientalism and religiosity encouraged support for Diem, this does not mean that American attitudes and policies are enough to explain Diem's ascension to power, his policies, and his fall from power. Much like the people about whom he writes, Jacobs comes to his conclusions without fully exploring the context in Vietnam.