North Vietnamese Diplomatic Posture during the Vietnam War

According to Oriana Skylar Mastro, her book The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime "is designed to provide the first comprehensive framework for understanding when and how states incorporate talking with the enemy into their war-fighting strategies" (p. 6). The framework of analysis aims to explain "how states calculate the costs of conversation throughout a war" (p. 126). This framework is important, she argues, because the existing theoretical literature does not explain how and why adversaries transition from war or pure fighting to "talking while fighting" (p. 1) and "either ignores or gives a shallow treatment as to how states approach talking to the enemy" (p. 5). As a consequence, "states currently lack a framework for understanding an opponent's approach to wartime diplomacy and how to best shape it" (p. 1). The book argues that diplomacy and warfighting are integral and interactive parts of a state's wartime strategy rather than two separate behaviors (p. 3).

Mastro develops several concepts in her analysis—diplomatic posture, strategic costs, and strategic capacity. It is necessary to provide a brief description of each concept in order to fully understand her thesis. Diplomatic posture is defined as a "belligerent's willingness to engage in direct talks with its enemy at a given point in a war" (p. 6). A state's diplomatic posture can be "either open or closed with the enemy at a given time" (p. 6) and can shift during war. According to Mastro, "when costs are considered high, [states] will choose a closed diplomatic posture. If a belligerent deems the costs low enough, it will shift to an open diplomatic posture" (p. 14). Strategic cost is defined as "the likelihood an adversary will infer weakness in the form of reduced war aims, degraded ability to fight, or waning resolve from an open diplomatic posture," and strategic capacity is understood as "the ability of the enemy to respond to such an inference by escalating, intensifying or prolonging the fighting" (p. 126).

Mastro applies her framework to four case studies: Chinese diplomatic posture in the Korean War, Chinese diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, Indian diplomatic posture in the Sino-Indian War, and North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This review focuses on the fourth case study, North Vietnamese diplomatic posture in the Vietnam War. This case study is copiously sourced, with reference to over two hundred Vietnamese Communist Party and government documents that the United States captured and translated during the war as well as interviews with party, diplomatic, and military officials in Hanoi (p. 103). These primary sources are supplemented with memoirs and the extant academic literature. The case study is confined to the three-year period from March 1965, when the United States commenced bombing North Vietnam and introduced ground troops in South Vietnam, to April 1968, when North Vietnam responded positively to President Lyndon Johnson's offer to seek a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War.

Almost immediately after the United States entered the Vietnam War in 1965, it adopted an open diplomatic posture toward North Vietnam. According to Mastro, the United States supported over two thousand attempts to open talks with North Vietnam without preconditions during the three-year period under review (p. 101). Washington adopted this open diplomatic posture because the costs of conversation were low and U.S. strategic capacity was immense. Indeed, the United States increased combat troop levels progressively from several thousand in late 1963 to 400,000 by 1966. It also expanded the air war over North Vietnam, flying over twice as many sorties and dropping more than two-and-half times the ordnance in 1966 than in the previous year. The United States targeted North Vietnam's petroleum, oil, and lubricant storage sites and bombed closer to urban areas than before.

By contrast, throughout the three-year period, North Vietnam adopted a closed diplomatic posture and steadfastly rebuffed all U.S. and third-party efforts to open direct bilateral discussions without preconditions. The country signaled its diplomatic posture when it released its "Four Points" in April 1965 after the...