III
DULLES HOPED FOR BETTER RESULTS IN PARIS, A CITY HE KNEW well from his days as a student at the Sorbonne. He had always been fond of the French capital, of the lovely boulevards, the graceful architecture, the palpable respect for tradition and history so comparatively lacking in American cities. But his opinion of the French government and the men who led it, never particularly high, had reached a nadir. In London, he had mused with Eden about France’s decline and her “inevitably ceasing to be a Great Power,” and he had urged that the Anglo-American partners give this problem “careful thought.” (Eden, a Francophile since his youth, had withheld comment but had himself told colleagues in the Foreign Office a few days earlier that “the French become daily more helpless and contemptible.”)15 Now he was back in the City of Light, hoping yet again to buck up Joseph Laniel and Georges Bidault, both on Indochina and the European Defense Community, and to persuade them not to set their hopes on Geneva.
The talks were rather less extensive than those in London, and the visit shorter, reflecting the lower importance attached by the administration to the Paris portion of the trip—for United Action and the prospect of potential multilateral military intervention in Indochina, it was the British who mattered most. Dulles tried in vain to get his hosts to grant full sovereignty to the Associated States (Bidault’s response: What would be the point of continuing the struggle if Indochina was no longer tied to France?) and said Britain had agreed to send her ambassador in Washington to participate in an informal Indochina working group that would meet prior to Geneva. In order to get congressional support for an increased American share in the struggle, the secretary of state went on, it was imperative to get the other countries to see that events in Indochina threatened them all. Absent such allied consensus, lawmakers and the general public would almost certainly reject U.S. intervention.
Bidault, convinced that United Action was primarily an effort by the Americans to torpedo the prospects for a diplomatic solution, had no quarrel with Dulles’s emphasis on securing congressional and popular support, but he countered that he had his own public opinion to consider. The imperatives of French domestic politics required that his government seize every opportunity for a negotiated settlement to the war, he insisted, and for this reason the anticipated early start-date of the working group’s deliberations was problematic. Under no circumstances could French policy makers leave themselves open to the charge that they hoped for failure at Geneva, or that they sought a major new expansion of the fighting prior to the conference. Public opinion would not stand for it. Thus there could be no internationalization of the conflict involving a coalition of countries until after the Geneva Conference had clearly failed.16
Bidault was right: His political maneuverability was sharply limited. The French left continued to argue that the war was wicked, refused to acknowledge that its prosecution could serve the country’s interests, and agitated for a negotiated settlement on the best terms that could be obtained. The attitude of the right—that is, of officialdom and the political parties supporting the Laniel government—was more complex, though it too proceeded from the conviction that the war was distasteful and deeply debilitating. Concern for French credibility and prestige internationally, and the lingering hope of rescuing something from the massive French investment in the struggle, prevented leaders and other opinion makers on the right from embracing a policy of abandonment, while at the same time making them suspicious and resentful of Washington’s efforts to deepen U.S. involvement. Might it still be possible, the government and its supporters wondered, to thread the needle at Geneva: to bring an end to the war on terms that could be profitable to French material interests in Indochina and could be made to look honorable?
In London, meanwhile, Eden was starting to feel uneasy about the way the Dulles talks had gone. He feared that the White House might twist the capacious language of the communiqué to serve the cause of military intervention, and he worried about how the talks would be perceived at the Colombo conference of former Asian colonies scheduled to meet in a few days. Britain must not alienate her commonwealth partners before that meeting by seeming to back the wrong side in what most everyone at Colombo would interpret as a colonial war. More than that, in Eden’s view it was vital to have as many Asian states as possible associated with any new security arrangements. India loomed especially large in this regard, and Eden knew that Nehru already thought him too cozy with the Eisenhower administration. Accordingly, the foreign secretary asked underlings for a draft telegram instructing Makins in Washington to reiterate Eden’s views to the U.S. government in unambiguous terms. The key sentence in the final version, sent on April 15 and bearing signs of Eden’s own input—he had a proclivity for the double negative—read: “I am not convinced that no concession could be made to Communists in Indochina without inevitably leading to Communist domination of the whole of South East Asia, particularly if we have the proposed security system.”17
Makins delivered the message as instructed, but to no avail: On April 16, Dulles, now back in Washington, told the ambassador that the administration would call a meeting of the prospective members of the new security organization, namely Australia, Britain, France, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and the Associated States, to occur on April 20 in Washington. Eden was outraged at the news, and it did not help his mood that Makins concluded the cable by stating, “I presume that I can agree to such a proposal.” The cable arrived on April 17, Easter Saturday, when the Foreign Office was largely deserted; with no one around to look over his shoulder, the workaholic Eden that day and the next sent Makins six telegrams, all of which he penned himself. “I cannot possibly accept this,” he declared. No agreement of this kind had been reached in London, and convening such a meeting now, before Geneva, would raise all sorts of suspicions in people’s minds, and rightly so, particularly if it occurred in Washington. “If this enterprise is to have [a] fair chance of success, it must appear as a spontaneous effort by those countries and not as a response to an American crack of [the] whip.”18
“I am not aware that Dulles has any cause for complaint,” he snapped in another cable, his anger still rising. “Americans may think the time past when they need to consider the feelings or difficulties of their Allies. It is the conviction that this tendency becomes more pronounced every week that is creating mounting difficulties for anyone in this country who wants to maintain close Anglo-American relations. We at least have to constantly bear in mind all our Commonwealth partners, even if the United States does not like some of them; and I must ask you to keep close watch on this aspect of our affairs and not to hesitate to press it upon the United States.”19
This last outburst came after Makins requested copies of the British texts concerning the London talks, to compare with the American versions. The ambassador had informed Dulles of Eden’s instruction that he not attend the April 20 session, whereupon Dulles had calmly quoted to him from the American records, which indicated full agreement between him and Eden that there would indeed be consultations in Washington prior to Geneva. Makins’s description of Dulles as sad rather than angry probably only fueled Eden’s irritation, and he was in any event predisposed to question the ambassador’s interpretation of events, finding him to be too often overly sympathetic to the Americans’ point of view. The differing British and American accounts—the former indicates no agreement on pre-Geneva working group talks—make it impossible to determine who was right, though Eden’s overheated reply may indicate he knew he had been outmaneuvered and had, perhaps without fully realizing the implications, given his counterpart the tacit approval he sought. Makins and Denis Allen, certainly, subsequently said they thought the Americans were in the right in their interpretation of what had occurred in London.20
Dulles’s cool demeanor with Makins masked deep resentment. In prohibiting his ambassador from attending the ambassadors’ meeting, “Eden has reversed himself and gone back on our agreement,” Dulles told his siste
r Eleanor in the front hall of his Washington home, after hanging up with the ambassador. “He was visibly disturbed” as he said this, Eleanor recalled.21 British nonparticipation would render the working group notion all but meaningless, the secretary knew, and indeed the agenda of the April 20 session was altered to comprise only routine briefings on the forthcoming Geneva Conference. Dulles suspected that a desire to appease India lay behind Eden’s about-face, but this was only partly true. The Briton did think it important at least to get New Delhi’s acquiescence to any new Asian security pact, but he made little effort to understand Indian attitudes or policy. Knowing Nehru to be a vain man like himself, he thought flattery would be enough to keep the Indian on board in support of British policy, while privately he dismissed him as “blind beyond the end of his nose” and a “miserable little Indian Kerensky.”22
It was in any event a key moment, this “Easter reversal” by Eden. James Cable, then a junior member of the Foreign Office, captured its importance in his unsparing evaluation of the foreign secretary’s actions that weekend. “The replies he fired off were the petulant reaction of a cornered rabbit,” Cable wrote of the six telegrams sent on April 16 and 17. “It was a deplorable performance and it lastingly impaired relations between Eden and Dulles, but it did check the dangerous drift towards a futile war. Although the United States would subsequently return to the charge again and again, Eden’s Easter outburst may reasonably be regarded as the turning point of the April crisis. Henceforth Eden had a personal position to defend.”23
IV
THE SKIRMISH WITH EDEN WAS NOT THE ONLY THING OCCUPYING Dulles’s mind that Easter weekend. He also had to contend with the controversy kicked up by Vice President Nixon on Good Friday, April 16. Speaking before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Nixon, whose hawkishness on the war had lessened not at all since his trip to Indochina six months earlier, and who had been encouraged by organizers to express himself openly on the understanding that he would be identified in press accounts only as a “high administration official,” described the stakes in Indochina in alarmist terms. France seemed to lack “the will to win,” he told the editors, even though the loss of Dien Bien Phu would be an enormous blow. Should the fortress fall, the Paris government would seek at Geneva to “settle in Indochina at any cost.” Such an outcome would be disastrous for America’s interests. A French withdrawal would cause Indochina to become Communist-dominated “within a month,” and the U.S. position in Asia would be gravely imperiled. An editor asked the obvious follow-up: Should American troops be sent to Indochina in the event of such a French withdrawal? “The United States as a leader of the free world cannot afford further retreat in Asia,” Nixon began.
Then came the kicker: “It is hoped the United States will not have to send troops there, but if this government cannot avoid it, the administration must face up to the situation and dispatch forces. Therefore, the United States must go to Geneva and take a positive stand for united action by the free world. Otherwise it will have to take on the problem alone and try to sell it to others.… This country is the only nation politically strong enough at home to take a position that will save Asia.”24
The statement captured headlines all over the world the following day. Many papers attributed it, as per the agreement, to a “high administration official,” but France-Soir identified the speaker as Nixon, as did (in more elliptical language) The Times of London. Soon several American papers followed suit, and Nixon felt compelled to fess up. He insisted, however, that the comments were merely his personal opinion, expressed impromptu in response to a hypothetical question. Many were skeptical, then and later. For one thing, the speech was perfectly timed, coming just as Dulles was bending every effort to win allied backing for United Action. For another, why had Nixon answered this supposedly out-of-the-blue question at such length, and by reading—many of those present could see—from a prepared text? There seemed nothing impromptu about it.
To The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, it was perfectly obvious that Nixon’s answer had been cleared in advance. Yes, agreed Arthur Krock of The New York Times, this was an administration-sanctioned trial balloon, floated to gauge the public’s attitude concerning the dispatch of ground forces to Vietnam.25 Nixon immediately denied these claims, and no evidence has surfaced to show he coordinated his comments with either Eisenhower or Dulles ahead of time. But the vice president also insisted, both then and in later interviews and in his memoirs, that everything he said that day was consistent with U.S. policy, as articulated in Dulles’s New York City speech on March 29 and elsewhere.26 The administration had long declared Indochina to be a vital theater of the Cold War, and all he had done before the editors was affirm that position. This is a wholly plausible claim. The difference, of course, is that whereas the secretary of state’s remarks on March 29 were a study in artful obfuscation, open to wide interpretation, these by Nixon were anything but ambiguous.27
If Dulles and Eisenhower were displeased with Nixon’s choice of words, they didn’t show it. Dulles teased Nixon on the phone about getting his name in the paper and assured him that the president was not disturbed by what he had said. Eisenhower, in a subsequent phone conversation, told Nixon not to worry, he probably would have said the same thing himself. Publicly the president refused to comment on the matter, leading journalists to speculate he approved of the remarks. Nixon, The Wall Street Journal declared, had “expressed a carefully considered administration view.”28
Whether intended as such or not, the statement did serve as a useful trial balloon for American planners, though which direction it drifted was not clear. Many editors who heard the speech in person were favorably impressed, it seems, or at least bought the underlying message. “More than a generation ago Lenin set down the dictum that the conquest of the world for communism lay, first, in the conquest of Asia,” pontificated The New York Times. The dictum had been followed, the paper continued, and much of Asia had since 1945 been lost to the West. The process could not be allowed to continue, for on the outcome at Dien Bien Phu hinged “survival in a free world, for us as well as for the Indochinese. This is the reason that the Vice-President and our Administration take the case seriously and the reason we must do likewise.” The Wall Street Journal announced it would support a decision to send troops and declared: “The premise of this decision, which Mr. Nixon stated with a candor and persuasiveness that does him great credit, is that Indo-China is vital to the security of the United States. Therefore, should it unhappily come to the ultimate choice, the United States must do what must be done.” And America must do it despite the fact—the paper added prophetically—that the “road through Indo-China will be a long one for the United States.”29
Nixon, like most ambitious politicians an assiduous reader of his own press coverage, welcomed these and other expressions of editorial support.30 He was taken aback, however, by the negative response in Congress, where many legislators feared that the Journal’s assessment was all too correct: The war, once entered, would last a long time. Hadn’t they made clear to the White House, moreover, that intervention would have to be multilateral? Why, then, was the vice president implying that the United States might act regardless of allied backing? Democrats voiced these concerns the loudest, but even Republicans acknowledged that the administration still had a job to do to build popular support. In a Gallup poll after Nixon’s speech, 68 percent of those surveyed opposed sending U.S. ground forces to Indochina.31
Whether this mixed response to the speech had any appreciable effect on administration policy that April is hard to say. Probably it didn’t, except perhaps to remind top officials that unilateral intervention involving U.S. ground forces would not be an easy sell at home. Top policy makers were as committed after the speech to implementing United Action as they had been before and as leery of any kind of compromise settlement with the Communists at Geneva. Eisenhower and Dulles were exasperated by the London government’s attitude on both of thes
e matters but had not given up on changing Britain’s policy or, if that failed, finding a way to proceed militarily without her. Both men were furious with France for seeking large-scale American aid while insisting on retaining full authority over war policy, and for refusing to grant full independence to the Associated States; but they still saw no option but to keep the French in the fight until the rainy season brought relief, and to stiffen the Laniel-Bidault team’s backbone in preparation for Geneva. On April 24, more than a week after Nixon’s speech, presidential press secretary James Hagerty would write in his diary that the option of using American airpower “to support French troops at Dien Bien Phu” remained alive.32
Walter Robertson, the assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs and a figure largely lost to history, gave a sense of the administration’s determination in a dinner conversation with an American journalist in Paris on April 22. Robertson was a hawk with a tendency toward hyperbole, but even so his comments are revealing. “We must recognize,” he told C. L. Sulzberger of The New York Times, “that it is impossible for us to lose Southeast Asia—which would follow the loss of Indochina.” America’s “whole civilization would be affected,” and therefore intervention was the only answer. “What is the difference,” Robertson asked, “whether the Communists start a war of aggression or we lose our civilization because we have failed to take a sufficiently powerful stand?” To Sulzberger this was a reiteration of Eisenhower’s domino theory as expressed two weeks earlier, and a recipe for “preventive war,” but the journalist noted that Robertson also said a war—any kind of war—would mean the end of “ ‘our civilization’—even in budgetary terms, quite apart from the destructive power of new weapons. [Robertson] remarked that the national debt was then $275 billion and ‘another war would bankrupt the country.’ ” Still, the United States must go in, and with as much force as necessary. “This is a time,” Robertson warned, “to tighten our belts, a time for unpopular decisions and higher taxes—not for a soft, easy, luxurious life.”
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam Page 57
