The March of Folly

by Barbara Tuchman

  Now, with an American Ambassador and full-scale Embassy in Saigon, and with proliferating advisers and agencies in addition to MAAG, United States policy injected itself more purposefully than ever, taking as its first task the training of an effective and, it was to be hoped, loyal and motivated Vietnamese army. MAAG wanted to do it alone without participation by the French, on the theory that American influence would thereby be differentiated from the French. That we would inherit the distaste felt for any white intrusion was not contemplated. Americans saw themselves as “different” from the French, to be welcomed as well-wishers of Vietnamese independence, while the fact that it was the United States which had brought back the French and financed their war was mentally swept under the rug. By helping an independent South Vietnam to establish itself, it was thought we could prove our good intentions.

  Requirements for the training program brought out in discussion the reluctance of military policy-makers in Washington to become further involved. But given a mission, the good soldier carries it out without question. General O’Daniel, the MAAG commander, drew up a schedule of procedures and requirements for the training program and pleaded for an enlarged staff to be despatched before the Geneva cut-off for additional personnel.

  With ample reports about the mood and uncertain loyalties of the Vietnamese army, the Joint Chiefs were thoroughly skeptical; they did not want to be held responsible for failure, or worse, in case of a clash, having American troops drawn in to rescue an inadequate force. They concluded in an unambiguous memorandum of August 1954 that it was “absolutely essential” to have “a reasonably strong stable civil government in control,” and that it was “hopeless to expect a United States training mission to achieve success” unless the nation concerned could effectively perform all functions necessary to recruitment and maintenance. They foresaw “a complete military vacuum” if French forces were withdrawn and, if the United States took over, an unwanted American “responsibility for any failure of the program,” and they judged in conclusion that the United States “should not participate.” They hastened to add, with the care of government advisers never to be too definitive, that if “political considerations are overriding” they would “agree to the assignment of a training mission.” In official process, advice tends to be flexible because it is afraid of closed options.

  Strenuous arguing ensued about the force levels to be trained, the cost of maintaining the French army in place—$100 million for 1955, $193 million for 1956—and the timing of phased French withdrawals, while the Joint Chiefs’ doubts of success grew all the while stronger. In November 1954, given the chaotic internal political situation in Vietnam, they found “no assurance … of loyal and effective support for the Diem Government” or of “political and military stability within South Vietnam.” Unless the Vietnamese themselves showed the will to resist Communism, “no amount of external pressure and assistance can long delay complete Communist victory in South Vietnam.” With hindsight, it is impossible to avoid asking why the American government ignored the advice of the persons appointed to give it.

  Harassed by internal opponents and rivals, and by incompetence, dissent and corruption, Diem had also to cope with an influx of nearly a million refugees from the North during the 300 days allowed by Geneva for exchange of populations. In response to Catholic propaganda spreading the word that “Christ has moved south” and “the Virgin Mary has moved south,” the mass movement was 85 percent Catholic. It represented nevertheless a significant group who did not want to live under Communism, and by providing Diem with a coherent body of support actually helped to consolidate his rule, although his favoring them in official positions aroused antagonism. The United States assumed much of the burden; the Navy transported 300,000 of the refugees and their resettlement was underwritten by an outpouring of funds raised by Catholic Charities and others.

  “Highly placed officials from Washington,” after visiting Saigon, according to one report, privately indicated their conclusion that “Vietnam probably would have to be written off at a loss.” Assailed by contrary advice, struggling with the problem of how to strengthen and stabilize Diem, of how to retain the French forces while eliminating their interests, of what to decide about training the Vietnamese army, of what degree of investment to make in general, American policy found itself in a morass. The French, who never liked Diem, reported him, in the words of Premier Faure, “not only incapable but mad.” Senator Mansfield, on the other hand, after a second fact-finding trip, reported him to be a genuine nationalist whose survival was essential to American policy. Mansfield’s report to the Senate, however, was more discouraged than in the previous year. He said the situation had “seriously deteriorated” owing to a “consistent underestimating” by everyone of the political and military strength of the Viet-Minh. Because of dissatisfaction with Diem’s policies, there appeared to be “scant hope of achieving our objectives in Indochina in the near future.” If Diem fell, Mansfield believed, his successors would be even less democratic, and in that event the United States “should consider an immediate suspension of all aid to Vietnam and the French Union forces there.” He concluded with a cold dose of common sense: “Unless there is reasonable expectation of fulfilling our objectives, the continued expenditure of the resources of the citizens of the United States is unwarranted and inexcusable.”

  Eisenhower hesitated. He addressed a letter to Diem in October expressing his grave concern for the future of a country “temporarily divided by an artificial military grouping” (not the “international boundary” that his successors liked to claim) but advising that he was ready to work out with Diem “an intelligent program of American aid given directly to your Government,” provided that Diem gave assurance of the “standards of performance” his government would maintain if the aid were supplied. With little confidence in promises, the President sent General J. Lawton Collins, a trusted colleague from World War II, on a special mission to work out relations with the French and the “standards” expected of Diem.

  Collins’ report was negative. He found Diem “unready to assert the type of leadership that can unify this country and give it a chance of competing with the hard, effective, unified control of Ho Chi Minh.” The choices open to American policy, as he saw them, were either to support Diem for a little while longer without commitment or, if he failed to make progress, to bring back Bao Dai, and if that was unacceptable, “I recommend re-evaluation of our plans for assisting Southeast Asia with special attention to earlier proposal,” namely, “the gradual withdrawal of support from Vietnam.” This was “the least desirable [but] in all honesty, and in view of what I have observed here to date, this may be the only solution.”

  Asked to stay on to work out a program of support with General Ely, the French commander, Collins reaffirmed his advice five months later. Vietnam would not be saved from Communism, he reported, unless a sound program of political, economic and military reforms were put into effect based on wholehearted coordination among Vietnamese, Americans and French, and if this were not secured, “in my judgment we should withdraw from Vietnam.”

  Why, in the light of all these doubts and negatives, did the United States not take the opportunity to pull back? It did not because always the argument arose that if American support were withdrawn, South Vietnam would disintegrate and the front against Communism would give way in Indochina just when it faced a new threat elsewhere. The Quemoy-Matsu crisis over the Chinese offshore islands erupted at this time, bringing Dulles to his most paranoid and to the “brink”—in his terms—of war. with Red China. The crisis quelled any impulse to look at Vietnam with realism or to consider General Collins’ alternative.

  Collins himself, though convinced of Diem’s incapacity, was working energetically to make the regime qualify as a client worth American support, and in response to his pressure a program of land reform was drawn up and a provisional assembly appointed to draft a constitution. Washington seized on these signs of progress and, mo
tivated also by desire to frustrate French overtures to Diem’s rivals, officially confirmed American support of his government. At the same time, in February 1955, the decision to undertake the training of a “completely autonomous” Vietnamese army was taken, and with it a deep step into Vietnamese affairs.

  The assumption of American responsibility had already brought with it the creeping companion of all interventions, covert operations. A combat team calling itself the Saigon Military Mission had begun operating in North Vietnam under the direction of General O’Daniel and the command of Colonel Lansdale, an officer of the Air Force and later of the CIA who had led activities against the Huk guerrillas in the Philippines. Conceived and organized before the Geneva Agreement, its operations were conducted for a year after the Geneva provisions made them illegitimate. The Mission’s original assignment was to “undertake paramilitary operations against the enemy”—although technically speaking the United States as a non-belligerent had no “enemy.” Its purpose was modified after Geneva to read “prepare the means” for such operations. To that end the Lansdale Mission engaged in the sabotage of trucks and railroads, undertook the recruiting, training and infiltrating of two covert South Vietnamese “paramilitary” teams, and planted for their use caches of smuggled supplies, arms and ammunition. Since the Geneva Agreement had prohibited the introduction of all war matériel and personnel after 23 July 1954, and the United States had pledged not to “disturb” these provisions, the Mission after that date violated the pledge. While not very heinous per se and normal enough if the nation had been at war, the violation began the series of falsehoods that were to widen until they engulfed the reputation and damaged the self-respect of the United States.

  A feasible alternative to the embracing of an infirm client was possible, and attempted, in fact, by the French. Accommodation with Hanoi was now openly the French aim, not only for the sake of French investments and commercial interests in both North and South, but also to test Mendès-France’s political philosophy of peaceful coexistence. The French government, reported Ambassador Douglas Dillon from Paris, was more and more “disposed to explore and consider … an eventual North-South rapprochement,” and in pursuit of this aim sent a major figure, Jean Sainteny, to Hanoi. A former colonial official and a Free French officer during the war, he had maintained relations with Ho Chi Minh and served during the Indochina war as French Commissioner for the North. Ostensibly his mission in Hanoi was to protect French business interests, but Ambassador Dillon learned that Sainteny had convinced his government that South Vietnam was doomed and that “the only possible means of salvaging anything was to play the Viet-Minh game and woo the Viet-Minh away from Communist ties in the hope of creating a Titoist Vietnam which would cooperate with France and might even adhere to the French Union.”

  While the Titoist solution now seems illusory, it was no more so than the American belief in building a strong capable democratic alternative to Ho Chi Minh in the Diem regime; one scenario could have been tried as easily as the other. The French program did not work out because Mendès-France lost office in 1955 and because French businessmen, unable to realize profits under Communist restrictions, gradually withdrew from the North while the French hold in general was being reduced by the United States.

  Failure, however, does not necessarily mean that the goal was impossible. Ho’s primary object at this time was to gain and maintain Vietnam’s independence of France just as it was Marshal Tito’s to gain Yugoslavia’s independence of Russia. If the United States could aid Tito, why should it have to crush Ho? The answer is that the self-hypnosis had worked: mixed with a vague sense of the Yellow Peril advancing with hordes of now-Communist Chinese, there was felt to be something peculiarly sinister about Communism in Asia. As its agent, North Vietnam remained “the enemy.”

  The client was not doing well. An attempted coup d’état by Diem’s antagonists in April 1955, a Cabinet crisis and the active disloyalty of his Chief of Staff revived American anxiety. According to a New York Times correspondent, his government “has proven inept, inefficient and unpopular,” the “chances of saving it were slim” and “brooding civil war threatens to tear the country apart.” Even Dulles had said to General Collins when Collins left to take up his post that “the chances of our saving the situation there are not more than one in ten.” In the light of Diem’s further troubles, he now concluded that “the only serious problem we have not yet solved is that of indigenous leadership.” The implications of this stunning assessment did not occur to him.

  Washington was in a quandary, vainly seeking an alternative to Diem, anxiously questioning whether to invest more support in a wavering regime. General Collins was re-called for consultation. At a press conference, President Eisenhower allowed an almost painful glimpse of his hesitation: “In Vietnam there have occurred lots of difficulties. People have left the Cabinet and so on … it is a strange and almost inexplicable situation.… What the exact terms of our future policy will be I can’t say.”

  Here was another opportunity for disengagement. Diem’s government had not lived up to the “standards of performance” on which Eisenhower had conditioned American aid. The implications of the French defeat, the refusal of the British to commit themselves to united action, the pallid partnership of the NATO nations—why did not the Eisenhower Administration put it all together and, given the President’s great prestige at home, detach itself from a losing proposition? In the bureaucracy, doubtless no one did put it all together; and besides, the fear of being “soft on Communism” abided.

  Diem’s success in smashing the coup d’état with troops loyal to the source of American largesse gave him a reprieve. He tightened his government by bringing in his three brothers to replace opponents and took on the appearance of a strong man. The United States, relieved of the pain of re-thinking, publicly reaffirmed its support for him, chiefly because it feared the consequences of letting him fall. Donald Heath, the new Ambassador in Saigon, stated the choice: committing “over $300 million plus our national prestige” on the retention of a Free Vietnam was a gamble, but withholding support would be worse by assisting a Communist takeover. The choice, as all too often, was between two undesirables.

  Enforcing the choice was always the fear of domestic outcry. Mansfield, the influential Senator, “believes in Diem,” it was said, and the reaction to be expected from Cardinal Spellman if his protégé were dumped was unpleasant to contemplate. “Alas! for the newly betrayed millions of Indochinese,” he had declared after Geneva, “who must now learn the awful facts of slavery from their eager Communist masters” in repetition of “the agonies and infamies inflicted upon the hapless victims of Red Russia’s bestial tyranny.” Communism had been following a “carefully set-up timetable for the achievement of a world plan.” Red rulers knew what they wanted with “terrible clarity” and pursued it with “violent consistency.” The Cardinal had continued in this vein, rousing a convention of the American Legion to unanimous bristle. In mid-1955, when Eisenhower was preparing to run for a second term, he had no desire to let loose more tirades of this kind.

  Adoption of the client made the United States a sponsor in Diem’s fateful denial of the nationwide elections to be held in 1956 as agreed on at Geneva. The North, with a population of 15 million to South Vietnam’s 12 million, and a general acknowledgment of the greater popularity of the Viet-Minh, had counted on the elections to gain command of the country as a whole. When in July 1955 it invited the South to consult on preparations for the event, Diem refused on the ground that no election under the Hanoi regime would allow a free vote, that enforced results would overwhelm the votes of the South and that in any event he was not bound by the Geneva Accord. While valid, his objection lost something of its force when three months later, in a referendum held in the South to depose the absent Bao Dai as Chief of State and confer the Presidency on Diem, the desired result was achieved by what a foreign observer called “outrageous” methods that delivered 98.8 percent of t
he vote. A free expression of the voters’ will was obviously not to be expected on either side, nor could it have been otherwise in a country devoid of democratic experience. As a solution for Vietnam’s civil conflict, the election—supposed to have been supervised by a powerless International Control Commission—was never more than a charade devised at Geneva as a desperate expedient to allow temporary partition and a cease-fire.

  No one questioned that if the elections were held, as one official reported, “the overwhelming majority of Vietnamese would vote Communist.” In the course of a speech opposing equal status for a Communist regime, Senator John F. Kennedy acknowledged “the popularity and prevalence” of Ho Chi Minh’s party “throughout Indochina”—which seemed to him reason not to allow its participation in a national government. Eisenhower, informed by advisers that Ho would certainly win the election, “refused to agree” (according to General Ridgway) to its taking place. While Diem did not need American advice in the matter, his refusal rested on American support. By 1956 more evidence of harsh measures in the North, including widespread killing of landlords on the Chinese pattern, was at hand. Terrorist tactics in an election could be assumed. In June 1956 the State Department officially announced that “We support President Diem fully in his position that when conditions do not exist that could preclude ‘intimidation or coercion’… there can be no free choice.”

  The consequence was that, failing reunification by election, North Vietnam resorted to other means—the encouragement of insurgency followed by the so-called War of Liberation. No egregious folly may be charged to the United States in this affair except that, by backing Diem’s decision, America seemed to share in what critics of the war were to claim was a brazen suppression of the people’s will, leaving the North no alternative but insurgency. Suppression it was not, because the people’s will would not have found a free voice in any case. The non-holding of the elections was an excuse for, not a cause of, renewed war. “We shall achieve unity,” the North’s Deputy Premier Pham Van Dong had warned at Geneva. “No force in the world, internal or external, can make us deviate from our path.”