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CHAPTER 1 Vietnam There may have been a time when American policy in Vietnam was a debatable matter. This time is long past. . . . The war is simply an obscenity, a depraved act. —Noam Chomsky, 1969 A survey of 110 leading American intellectuals in the early 1970s ranked Noam Chomsky by far the most influential intellectual critic of America’s war in Vietnam .1 Chomsky’s case against the war was essentially a moral indictment of US policy: it challenged the official justifications American leaders advanced for war and emphasized the devastating impact of US intervention on the people of Vietnam. America’s War in Vietnam: A Synopsis Japan’s wartime occupation of French Indochina laid bare the vulnerability of French colonial rule and spurred the growth of a Vietnamese national independence movement.2 The nationalists were united in the Viet Minh, a coalition that was broadly representative of Vietnamese society but dominated by the Vietnamese Communists under their charismatic leader, Ho Chi Minh. The First Vietnam War The collapse of the Japanese occupation in late August 1945 enabled the Viet Minh to take control of a significant portion of northern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh followed up quickly with the proclamation of an independent Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). By the end of 1946 the Viet Minh were in a full-scale war with France for national independence. US policymakers viewed France’s colonial war in Vietnam with ambivalence. On the one hand, the Americans saw European colonialism as an anachronism in the postwar world. On the other, they were focused on the emerging Cold War in Europe and were reluctant to alienate an important European ally over a distant conflict. Besides, a Communist-led regime in Vietnam was clearly not an acceptable outcome to the United States. Accordingly, Washington chose to support France’s effort to maintain control of its colony. US concern for the future of Vietnam was heightened by the 1949 Communist victory in China and the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950. Increasingly, US decision makers viewed Vietnam in a Cold War context: a Viet Minh takeover in Vietnam would represent a major 5 victory for international Communism. American financial aid to the French colonial war began in 1950 and escalated exponentially over the next few years, but the Viet Minh resistance continued unabated. France’s will to continue the fight was clearly waning in early 1954 when the French prime minister accepted a Soviet proposal for an international conference on Far Eastern problems. The conference, held in Geneva, Switzerland, beginning in late April, was cochaired by Britain and the Soviet Union, with representatives of France, China and the Viet Minh’s Democratic Government of Vietnam participating. The United States attended as an “interested nation,” not as “a belligerent or principal in the negotiations.”3 The State of Vietnam, the nominally independent entity set up by France, attended in essentially the same capacity. The Geneva Conference took place against the backdrop of France’s most catastrophic defeat in its long war against the Vietnamese resistance, the loss in March of the strategically pivotal military base at Dienbienphu. The decisive Viet Minh victory there put the DRV in an apparently strong bargaining position at Geneva. The Geneva Conference produced two agreements in late July. The first, between the French and the Viet Minh, set a cease-fire and divided Vietnam roughly at the 17th parallel into two “regroupment zones.”4 The French were required to withdraw all troops from northern Vietnam but retained effective control of the South. The document made clear that the two zones were not separate nations, and that they would be eventually reunited as one nation through free elections held throughout Vietnam. The second agreement was a final declaration by most of the participants—a consensus document not formally signed or voted on—that recognized the Franco-Vietnamese agreement and stipulated that general elections were to be held throughout Vietnam in July 1956 under the supervision of an international commission, with arrangements to be made by consultations between “the competent representative authorities” of the two regroupment zones.5 The Viet Minh were somewhat disappointed at Geneva. They had naturally hoped that they would be rewarded for their military triumph with control of a united Vietnam. In agreeing to a compromise, they yielded to pressure from their Chinese and Soviet allies, who were interested in exploring accommodation with the West.6 They also had excellent reason to expect that their broad popular support...

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