It is easy to see how these mounting difficulties could have encouraged Hanoi to conclude that neutralizing the South under correct conditions was not an unreasonable option. “The difficulties facing Viet Cong subversion on the military front,” a French assessment noted, had brought DRVN leaders to “a more realist conception of the solution to the South Vietnamese problem.” The leaders knew they “must now make the diplomatic formula prevail,” a position “hardly conceivable a year ago.”84 “Convinced that Viet Cong subversion would suffice to achieve reunification,” another report explained, Hanoi initially “did not accept the formula providing for a South Vietnam transformed into a neutral state.” However, “the obvious results achieved by the Diemist army with material and technical assistance from the Americans now inclines [the leadership] to soften its position [on this issue].” The idea of South Vietnam forming a neutral zone with Cambodia and Laos “is now taking an official character,” this report continued. “The DRVN, doubting the possibility of conquering the South by force, now endeavors to promote the principle that the South Vietnamese problem should be resolved by diplomatic means.”85
But was neutrality ideologically correct, or at least permissible? Decision-makers in Hanoi seemed to think so. Despite supporting Beijing on certain issues, including Albania, Cuba, and the Sino-Indian border conflict, Hanoi at this time still firmly endorsed peaceful coexistence and thus the settling of disputes through negotiations. At this time also, as noted earlier, Beijing preferred that Hanoi act cautiously in the South. Besides, DRVN leaders remained “sufficiently confident of the popularity of their regime and especially of their leader Ho Chi Minh” in the South “to be convinced that given a genuinely independent and popularly elected [neutral] government in South Vietnam it would only be a matter of time before reunification would be freely achieved” under Hanoi’s aegis.86 Why precipitate a military movement for liberation of the South when time was working in Hanoi’s favor? observers asked.87 “Considering themselves as they do, the vanguard of the resistance movement against the French, the victors of Dien Bien Phu and the liberation of Vietnam,” a western assessment affirmed, DRVN leaders “are convinced that only the machinations of the Americans prevented them from taking over the whole of Vietnam by means of free nationwide elections.”88
The need to satisfy Moscow, whose material and political support remained vital, was another reason neutralizing the South was an option worth exploring. Moscow still had no interest in becoming involved in a war over Vietnam. Besides, such a war might increase Chinese influence in Vietnam at the expense of the Soviets. In addition, Moscow was keen on demonstrating that peaceful coexistence was both “desirable and possible.” Therefore, if things came “to a crunch” and war broke out between the DRVN and the United States, Moscow would surely “act to protect the peace,” that is, work toward a prompt diplomatic resolution of the conflict. Khrushchev, for his part, was by now under “powerful pressure” from the “new ‘technical class’” in the Soviet Union, which had “forced him to condemn antiparty activities and Albania” and also “stood for the furtherance of Soviet national interests and consequently for peaceful co-existence.”89 Those were among the factors that had, by Vietnamese account, prompted the Soviets to contribute so “greatly to the success of the conference on Laos.”90 They also made Moscow “perfectly ready” to continue supporting Hanoi “so long as the risk of an internationalization of the war is not immediately apparent.”91
It should be said at this point that Moscow applied no discernible pressure on Hanoi to pursue neutralization.92 Soviet leaders “retained the utmost respect for the Vietnamese leadership.”93 In their eyes, Ho Chi Minh was the architect of Vietnamese independence from France, and he and Pham Van Dong were regarded with “special cordiality” in Moscow.94 At the same time, Soviet leaders had no reason to restrain DRVN leaders, who were seemingly convinced for the time being that neutralizing the South was the best way to keep the reunification process under Vietnamese control. To do so might have encouraged the latter to turn to China for support, something the Soviets were intent on avoiding.95 Hanoi was thus in a position to act independently on matters related to neutralization and reunification, since Moscow and Beijing were jockeying for influence in the DRVN.96 The Vietnamese enjoyed the advantage of being “wooed” by two suitors who just then wanted the same thing they wanted: to avoid widening the war in the South by provoking U.S. intervention while saving the revolutionary movement from annihilation and possibly advancing the cause of peaceful reunification.97
Hanoi’s decision to pursue the neutrality option was thus its own, but it endeared Hanoi to Moscow even as it helped steer a middle course in the Sino-Soviet dispute.98 “More than ever,” the French Delegation reported, “the policy of balancing between Peking and Moscow seems to correspond to the interests of [the DRVN].”99 “Basically, the Vietnamese need both their benefactors—it does not matter which provides more, as the contribution of each is essential—and they cannot afford to alienate one by favoring the other,” a Canadian diplomat noted of Hanoi’s dependence on the Chinese and the Soviets.100 Beijing began supplying large quantities of small arms and munitions to the Vietnamese that year but insisted that Hanoi remain cautious in the South to avoid “open war” with the United States.101 Chinese leaders remained wary of escalation in Indochina, and in fact were still in an “ambiguous truce” and trying to mend fences with Moscow during the spring and summer of 1962.102 To satisfy its concerns about escalation, Beijing, as Ung Van Khiem put it, had assumed “a role that cannot be underestimated” during the conference on Laos.103
The need to temporize in order to mitigate lingering and even widening ideological and other divisions within party ranks appears to have been another reason DRVN leaders seriously considered neutrality for South Vietnam. The diplomacy that entailed took time, and that time could be used to deal with party militants, who were becoming more numerous and vocal, due chiefly to the unfavorable military situation in the South.104 Asia experts in the French Foreign Ministry had surmised in late 1961 that “there has been a considerable swing” toward support for revolutionary militancy in the South among VWP members, but noted that the ruling majority was still “very reluctant to provoke the Russians to the point where the latter [might] cut off economic aid.”105 The Politburo in fact took advantage of the visit to Hanoi of Soviet cosmonaut Herman Titov to “correct any impression that coolness has sprung up” between the two governments. During the visit, Pham Van Dong again hailed the communist camp with “the powerful Soviet Union as its center.”106
It was just about this time that DRVN authorities had to deal with yet another domestic challenge: the resurgence of dissident groups, now consisting largely of members of the “old plundering classes who have not been re-educated, feel profound hatred toward the socialist system, and have exploited every weakness [and] difficulty of ours to act against the revolution.”107 Such “counterrevolutionaries” threatened the “unity among the people” in the same way as corruption, waste, and red tape within the civil service.108 Help from the Soviet Union in dealing with this challenge may have furthered Hanoi’s commitment to dealing with the situation in the South through diplomacy and neutralization.
Manifest willingness to negotiate a settlement of the increasingly dangerous situation in the South might also enhance the possibilities of the political and diplomatic struggles by improving the image of the DRVN domestically and internationally. That image suffered an embarrassing blow in June 1962, when the Canadian-Indian ICSC majority found the DRVN guilty of violating the 1954 Geneva accords by sending military personnel into the South. “There is evidence to show,” read the report, “that armed and unarmed personnel, arms, munitions and other supplies have been sent from the Zone in the North to the Zone in the South with the object of supporting, organizing and carrying out hostile activities, including armed attacks, directed against the Armed Forces and Administration of the Zone in the South.” There was also ev
idence that “the PAVN has allowed the Zone in the North to be used for inciting, encouraging and supporting hostile activities in the Zone in the South, aimed at the overthrow of the Administration in the South.”109 As it wrote that, the ICSC majority merely chastised Saigon for violating the arms import and no-alliances clauses of those accords by receiving American military assistance.
According to Douglas Ross, these tortured findings by the ICSC amounted to convicting the North of aggression against the South.110 For Paris at the time, the June report insinuated that “the actions perpetrated by the North against the South preceded the American intervention” in the form of a substantial increase in the number of advisers in 1961, hence that Hanoi had essentially provoked the Kennedy administration. It thus symbolized “the victory of American and South Vietnamese theses” regarding the party responsible for collapsing the Geneva accords.111 Predictably and futilely, Hanoi raised “a storm of protest,” declaring the findings “in complete contradiction with the truth” as well as “dangerous violation[s] of the Geneva Accords.”112 It also publicly denounced the partiality of the commission, and of the Indian commissioner specifically. Because of the frustrating findings, according to Robert Brigham, neutralization had even more appeal thereafter in DRVN ruling circles. “In [thus] promoting an all-Vietnamese solution to the political and military crisis in South Viet Nam” Hanoi hoped to improve its appeal abroad as well as in both halves of the country, even to “gain converts from Diem’s base of support.”113
The rapid deterioration of Sino-Indian relations during the first half of 1962 was another consequent influence on Hanoi’s favorable attitude toward neutrality for the South. While China was a longtime supporter of the Vietnamese revolution, not only did India sit on the ICSC but Prime Minister Nehru was the most important leader of the nonaligned movement, which sought to influence international affairs through moral and pacifist means and whose blessing Hanoi deeply craved in its struggle against American imperialism. War between India and China would thus complicate things for Hanoi. It would almost certainly compel Hanoi to side with Beijing, thereby compromising its relationship with Delhi, which was already shaky, and perhaps with other nonaligned states as well. “The Sino-Indian border situation [is] very serious,” Ung Van Khiem observed in the autumn of 1962. “The people of Vietnam and the government of the DRVN are very worried about this serious situation.” Both “support the correct position of China” but also “wholeheartedly hope that the Sino-Indian border problem will be solved through negotiations between the two countries.” (Later, in an attempt to co-opt India without alienating China, Hanoi urged reconciliation between the two in accordance not with “the correct position of China” but with “the spirit of Bandung.”)114 “This problem,” Khiem continued, “has special importance” not only for Hanoi’s diplomatic struggle but “for the unity among people of Afro-Asian countries and for the cause of preserving peace in Southeast Asia and the world.”115 While thus pressing for a diplomatic solution to the Sino-Indian dispute, Hanoi could hardly renounce diplomacy in dealing with its own problems below the seventeenth parallel.
For the moment, then, the bargaining table seemed to Hanoi a suitable venue from which to continue the revolution. In that sense, its call for neutralizing the South through negotiations was more than “a clever trick invented by the DRV to deceive the world.” It was instead “a fact of life” forced upon Hanoi by circumstances. “It has become increasingly evident that neither the [NLF] rebels nor the South Vietnamese government (even with large-scale U.S. assistance) are likely to achieve a decisive victory in the foreseeable future,” a western assessment noted at the time. As a result, Hanoi “has shown greater and greater readiness to accept a negotiated settlement even to the extent of agreeing to the neutralization of the South, and the temporary shelving of what has hitherto been the chief aim of her foreign policy, namely the reunification of North and South Vietnam.” Reunification “still has of course great emotional appeal for the North Vietnamese, whether communist or not, and for economic reasons North Vietnam can never have a stable economy until she rejoins the agricultural South.” Nevertheless, the assessment concluded, “it seems to be felt [in Hanoi] that the first step must be to get Diem and the Americans out of South Vietnam and to restore peace, even if this means postponing indefinitely any hope of reunification.”116 The French Delegation echoed these assessments. Hanoi hoped “at all costs,” it reported, to “avoid all pretext for an American military intervention in the North.”117 “Even if it culminated in victory for the communist bloc,” the delegation continued elsewhere, “a conflagration [in Vietnam] would bring about catastrophic destructions in Tonkin [i.e., North Vietnam]. The effort pursued for seventeen years to ‘build up’ the country, which the current Five-Year Plan will—in principle—conclude, would be reduced to nothing.”118 In the same vein, in July Pham Van Dong confided in Bernard Fall, a sympathetic and influential reporter, “We do not want to give pretexts that could lead to an American military intervention in the North.”119
In William Duiker’s judgment, Hanoi was by mid-1962 ready to settle the future of South Vietnam through negotiation, even if that meant accepting a coalition government in Saigon that would defer reunification. Specifically, it was prepared to accept an interim government of individuals of all political persuasions, including those in the Diem administration, but not Diem himself.120 This government would be constituted through negotiations not unlike those that produced the neutralist government in Laos—that is, among the largest political factions in the South under auspices of an international conference involving the great powers. Once constituted, the government would be encouraged by communists within it to begin talks with Hanoi on the political future of the nation. Should that process eventuate in peace and then peaceful unification on anything like terms suitable to the DRVN, it would pay a large dividend on a small investment. Following a meeting with Ho and Dong in late July in which these eventualities were discussed, Bernard Fall surmised that Hanoi would accede to a neutralist regime in Saigon and postponement of reunification for one reason: to preclude further American involvement in Vietnam.121 What Hanoi might do if and when the American presence in the South ended was presumably not discussed by the three men.
LE DUAN PUSHES FOR NEUTRALITY
In an especially revealing statement of just how seriously Hanoi was considering neutrality, Le Duan wrote to COSVN in July 1962 discussing the uncertain future of the revolution in the South and pointing out the “lessons” revolutionaries might learn from the recent neutralization of Laos.122 In words clearly directed at those who saw no merit in neutrality, even as subterfuge, Le Duan praised the reasonableness Pathet Lao leaders had displayed in resolving their difficulties and guarding their interests by refusing to turn “an internal war in Laos” into “a big war between two sides.” After pursuing a moderate but steady course, they were now reaping the benefits. This positive outcome was the result of strategies that contained a prudent mix of political and military struggle. That had entailed “struggling for a Laos independent and neutral [and] creating a coalition government” that was the product of “negotiations” as well as “battle.” Had Pathet Lao leaders failed to judge correctly the balance of forces in their country and to understand the advantages conveyed by balance on diplomatic struggle, “the Laotian revolution would not have won as it did.” “If the struggle had been in excess of the situation, especially an excessive military struggle” without regard to the larger political context, Le Duan wrote with the situation in South Vietnam clearly in mind, “there would have been other reactions by the imperialists” and “all those things would not have brought today’s victory.” Revolutionary restraint, in short, had secured an acceptable agreement that the major powers were pledged to honor and which improved the long-term prospects for victory of the Pathet Lao.
Le Duan acknowledged that differences between Laos and South Vietnam made neutralization of the latter more difficult. Washingt
on assigned much greater importance to South Vietnam than to Laos and was convinced that “any form of relaxation” of its hard-line policies below the seventeenth parallel would eventuate in a “win” for the communists and “complete defeat” for itself. An immediate task of the revolution was to change that perception. One reason for the difficulty was that Laos bordered on China and South Vietnam did not. Hanoi believed that fact had made Washington more flexible in dealing with Laos, more willing to accept neutrality, because the introduction of American forces there could easily lead to a “heated confrontation” between Americans and Chinese, and “this heat might produce results that the Americans cannot completely measure.” American forces in South Vietnam were much less likely to produce such a concern. In addition, the situation in South Vietnam was more overtly directed by the DRVN, at least relative to the situation in Laos. The prospect of war with North Vietnam might be tolerable in Washington, but the prospect of war with China was not.
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