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  • Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam by Jessica M. Chapman
  • Pierre Asselin
Jessica M. Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. xiii + 276 pp. $39.95.

Jessica Chapman has produced an excellent study—the best to my knowledge—of the political situation in South Vietnam during the early years of Ngo Dinh Diem’s rule in Saigon. Appointed prime minister of the French-sponsored State of Vietnam (SOVN) in June 1954, Diem became president of his own Republic of Vietnam (RVN) following a controversial referendum in October 1955. Until 1956–1957, his grip over the “wild south” (p. 32) was tenuous at best owing largely to challenges to his authority from non-Communist politico-religious factions. Communists did oppose Diem from the moment he ascended high office, but the weakness and disorganization of their movement below the 17th parallel following the July 1954 signing of the Geneva accords on Indochina made them virtual non-factors during the period covered in this study.

Chapman portrays Diem as a capable but highly intolerant and stubborn leader. His ability to consolidate authority in the period 1954–1956, in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, attested to his resourcefulness. At one point, Chapman writes, “all notable political actors in Saigon,” and even in Washington, “had concluded that Ngo Dinh Diem’s leadership mandate had expired” (p. 106). Not only did Diem survive, however; he established himself as unequivocal vector of power in the South. The “key turning point” in that process was the successful assault on politico-religious factions in spring 1955, which enabled him to secure “uncontested control over South Vietnam” and “full support from Washington” (p. 114). In this sense there was some truth to American media characterizations of Diem as Washington’s “miracle man in Asia.” The referendum that followed the assault, for its part, transformed the South “from a temporary regroupment zone into a distinct, semipermanent political entity” (p. 151) and formalized Saigon’s shift “away from France and toward the United States” (p. 168). A series of faux pas, however, would cost Diem the presidency and his life. He obdurately refused to reconcile with non-Communist political rivals, even to differentiate between them and armed, Hanoi-backed Communists. Most problematic, he continually relied on brute force to suppress opponents and on incompetent relatives to govern. Over time such practices produced an “insular” (p. 175) regime, spawned more enemies than they eliminated, profoundly alienated the United States, and played into Communist hands.

According to Chapman, Washington is partly to blame for Diem’s excesses, which contributed to the onset in 1959 of an uncontainable Communist-led insurgency. The problem was not that U.S. decision-makers actively encouraged Diem’s heavy-handed internal security measures, but that they tolerated and otherwise remained indifferent to those measures and dismissed non-Communist political contenders as variously “venal, inept, immoral” (p. 41) and “incapable of providing effective national leadership” (p. 60). But even Chapman acknowledges there was little the [End Page 129] United States could have done differently insofar as Diem was aware that at least for a while U.S. officials considered him “the best leadership option for noncommunist Vietnam” (p. 85) and needed him more than he needed them.

The book offers truly valuable insights on the consolidation of Diem’s power, but its real strength lies in Chapman’s assessment of the groups and individuals that initially contested his power. Chapman masterfully relates the place of the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen factions and of SOVN General Nguyen Van Hinh in pre-and post-1954 southern political affairs, with an accent on the relationship they shared with the French before Vietnam’s partition and with one another afterward. Although incapable of seizing power, they were nonetheless influential actors in South Vietnamese politics. Diem’s campaign to neutralize them, Chapman argues, shaped his leadership style, which in turn facilitated the rise of the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF, or Viet Cong) and its successful mobilization of southerners of all political persuasions against Saigon...

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