In his statement’s most revealing section, Le Duan explained that “the revolutionary task of our country at present is to protect and secure peace in the North to build socialism and liberate the South in order to arrive at the peaceful unification of the Fatherland.” This, he insisted, compelled the party to “have a correct approach to our activities in each region for the entire country generally.” A war in the North “would create complex difficulties in the entire country,” difficulties that might threaten the revolution itself. The party could “win” in the South as comrades won in Laos, Le Duan wrote, but only if “we know how to control the revolution.” That meant the party must adjust its actions and goals to the realities created by the present balance of forces.
The purpose of neutrality was not to settle the fate of South Vietnam once and for all, Le Duan intimated; it was instead to bring about a gradual reduction and then complete withdrawal of American forces, and after that a diminishment of their assistance to the Saigon government. Neutrality was, in short, a “method” to dismantle the puppet regime and replace it with one that would be “independent” (Le Duan’s emphasis). At a minimum, Le Duan suggested, pursuing neutralization of the South would buy time for revolutionary forces there.
Le Duan’s letter suggests that Hanoi now thought the Geneva Agreement on Laos not only workable but a promising model for a diplomatic settlement in South Vietnam. It suggests just as strongly that DRVN leaders would accept a coalition government in Saigon while the details of reunification were worked out. These, in Le Duan’s words to COSVN, were the “moderate requirements” of the Vietnamese revolution at this juncture. Adroitly pursued, those requirements might produce in South Vietnam the kind of advance-through-compromise communists had just won in Laos and, incidentally, might avert further deterioration of the military situation in the South and war with the United States.
Southern revolutionaries would be understandably skeptical of this reasoning. To allay that skepticism, Le Duan tried to assure them that his and the party’s proposal would appeal to war-weary southerners and thereby enhance the legitimacy of communism in the South. It was also, he said with equal assurance, compatible with the aims of the diplomatic struggle. Revolutionary struggle, he argued metaphorically, was like wielding a sword to fend off an enemy swordsman: it was much easier with a shield. The legitimacy provided by mass support for the struggle in the South would function as such a shield. That support was now lacking. “If one only uses the sword and does not have a shield,” Le Duan concluded didactically, “surely he will find himself at the mercy of . . . the enemy.”123
On 19 July, a day after Le Duan communicated these thoughts to COSVN, the NLF took the first step toward implementing them. Specifically, it proposed in a public statement to end the conflict in the South and resolve the political problem there by instituting a cease-fire, which would be followed by the withdrawal of American military personnel; forming a provisional government of national concord representing all parties, political groupings, and persuasions pending free elections under the terms of the 1954 Geneva accords; neutralizing South Vietnam from the rivalries of the Cold War; and guaranteeing that neutrality by international treaty as part of a neutral zone in Southeast Asia that included Cambodia and Laos.124
An Australian assessment of this proposal stands up quite well in hindsight. Hanoi and its allies in China and the Soviet Union “have recently stepped up efforts to gain international support for the convening of a Geneva-type conference on south Vietnam,” the assessment began. Their aim was to “exploit the precedent of the Laotian settlement and the favorable atmosphere resulting from it to obtain international support for a similar type settlement in south Vietnam” and thus secure the withdrawal of American military personnel from South Vietnam, just as the earlier settlement had called for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Laos. Hanoi “might expect that the further deterioration of the situation in south Vietnam would increase international and domestic pressures on the United States Government to accept a negotiated settlement,” while helping the NLF become “a party at any international conference which might eventuate” from the effort to produce that settlement. “In taking up proposals for the neutralization of south Vietnam,” DRVN leaders were “playing down their parallel objective of achieving reunification of the south with the north on their own terms.” “They might well expect,” the assessment surmised, “that if they could obtain the withdrawal of United States forces and the replacement of the Diem Government by a regime amenable to communist pressure, a unified communist Vietnam would be the almost certain outcome in the long run.” But since Diem was “unlikely in any circumstances to agree to internal negotiations for the withdrawal of United States military aid and the neutralization of south Vietnam,” Hanoi had nothing to lose and much to gain domestically and internationally by at least appearing to be open to negotiations on those issues.125
THE CHALLENGES OF NEUTRALIZATION
As they prepared to negotiate the future of the South, DRVN leaders considered recognizing the NLF as a provisional revolutionary government. The Front already had a national flag and a national anthem, and regularly addressed messages to sovereign states and the UN in the name of the South Vietnamese people.126 But though North Vietnamese propaganda portrayed it as having the attributes of a shadow government, DRVN leaders had always balked at calling it or treating it as a provisional government.127 The British Consulate thought that a decision to do so now or in the future hinged partly on the outcome of “political bargaining between the constituent parties in the Front and partly on the [outcome of the evolving] military situation” in the South. “If the Front were to look like [it was] winning without further assistance from outside, the D.R.V. would probably prefer to avoid setting up a Government until the communist party was in a position to take over according to the North Vietnamese model,” the consulate noted. “If however the Viet Cong were to reach an impasse or even be pushed back by the Diem Government,” creation of a provisional revolutionary government would become “essential” to “obtain larger scale aid from outside” and to “have a locus standi in the event of an international conference.” In either case, the consulate concluded, the new provisional government would “call for international recognition and presumably receive it from the communist countries” and perhaps some nonaligned states. It might then ask for material and diplomatic support from friendly governments, including the DRVN, which might use the request to justify increased involvement in southern affairs.128
In the end Hanoi decided against the move. The NLF had no defined territorial base, and if such a base was proclaimed, it would surely be attacked and destroyed by Diem’s forces. Furthermore, establishing a rebel government in the South would likely complicate relations with Moscow, which would have to decide whether to recognize the new entity. To do so would presumably commit Moscow to the struggle in the South to a degree it had never been willing to make. To refuse to do so would compromise the new government and jeopardize Soviet-DRVN relations.129 But most importantly, Hanoi refused to recognize the NLF as a provisional government because that would have radically raised the stakes in the struggle below the seventeenth parallel. The international community might interpret the gesture as a violation of the Geneva accords, which would taint the image of the revolution abroad and undermine the diplomatic struggle. Also, Hanoi could not be sure that the new government would remain under its control.130 Placing known communists or northerners at its helm was out of the question, for that would “shatter the deception of non-involvement by the D.R.V.” “Relative nonentities,” on the other hand, however reliable, would deprive the government of credibility. To have legitimacy, the new government would have to include independent nationalists and other noncommunists with their own political bases over whom Hanoi would have no influence.131 Such individuals could very well hijack the foreign policy of the new government, with potentially disastrous implications for the reunification struggle and the revolu
tion more broadly. In fact, even treating the NLF as a de facto government was problematic because it encouraged independent thinking on the part of its members and risked compromising Hanoi’s already tenuous control of the liberation movement below the seventeenth parallel.132
In October 1962, the new British consul general, J. K. Blackwell, produced a particularly trenchant analysis of Hanoi’s refusal to transform the NLF into a revolutionary government. On the basis of information he credited to undisclosed and presumably communist sources, Blackwell surmised that the “common policy” on Vietnamese reunification of the NLF and Hanoi “may only be a façade to cover up a serious disagreement of principle” between the two. In negotiating a common stance on this issue, the NLF had “tried to insist on their proposal that South Vietnam together with Cambodia and Laos should form a group of neutral Southeast Asian states whose independence and neutrality would be guaranteed by an International Conference.” But that solution had not appealed to DRVN leaders, who feared it would “put off reunification of Vietnam indefinitely and make it much more difficult for them to subvert and take over South Vietnam.” From this disagreement, Blackwell surmised that the NLF “is more independent” of Hanoi “than has so far been generally assumed.” It was also “likely” that “such independent views (if indeed they do exist) will be firmly suppressed by the DRV Government.”133
Blackwell may have been right about the existence of a rift between Hanoi and the NLF. To be sure, southern communist leaders had never had any qualms about manifesting their disagreement with Hanoi over certain issues. But in the end, they always fell into line. However, this was different. The NLF was led by communists, but its members were from all walks of South Vietnamese society. As a united front, it was more likely to deviate from the party line than were purely communist organs. During talks with Chinese officials in Beijing, for example, a visiting NLF delegation reiterated the importance of the proposal for creating an enduring “neutralized zone” in Southeast Asia consisting of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam. Then, in a clear show of autonomy from and perhaps even defiance of Hanoi, the NLF delegation signed a joint statement with the Chinese Committee for Afro-Asian Solidarity that made no mention of Vietnamese reunification and stated instead that South Vietnam “must be prepared to form a neutral zone with Cambodia and Laos, in which their respective sovereignty is fully retained.” This statement was the NLF delegation’s own, having presumably never been approved by DRVN authorities. “There is little doubt,” the British chargé in Beijing remarked of this defection from VWP orthodoxy, that DRVN leaders “look forward instead to the emergence of a united communist Vietnam” and not to a neutral zone that included the “sovereign” southern half of their nation.134
To jump-start negotiations on a neutral South Vietnam, Hanoi turned to France, applying “quite a lot” of pressure to get Paris to agree to mediate between the two Vietnams and between the DRVN and concerned western governments.135 It nudged this initiative along by renewing a trade agreement with French authorities and making a series of other conciliatory gestures.136 There may have been another motive in Hanoi’s courtship of Paris: widening the gulf separating France from the RVN and its American allies. As previously noted, Paris was never keen on Diem. At the time, the French were in a row with Saigon over the anti-Diem activities of Vietnamese exiles in France.137 Possibly, Hanoi thought that by throwing a “sop line” to the French, by suggesting that a “special position” could be reserved for them in a neutral South Vietnam, it could edge them away from “the firm Anglo-American policy on South Vietnam.”138 The British Embassy in Saigon concluded on the basis of these and other North Vietnamese overtures to Paris that Hanoi was “actively seeking” to detach the French from the United States and other western allies. “The Communists hope they can split the French from the Americans not only to weaken the present regime [in Saigon] but to secure active support for their ‘international policy.’” Such “market research into the exploitable characteristics and weaknesses” of the West, the embassy thought, in veiled praise of Hanoi’s diplomatic maneuverings, was “quite thorough.”139
It is a telling testament to the subtlety of Hanoi’s behavior in this course of events that it made no formal proposal in 1962 for an international conference on neutralizing the South. That reticence may have been an expression of its desire to wait on events there. Hanoi “may think that the Viet Cong can still win militarily or at least that the West will weary of the struggle and be prepared to compromise,” the British Consulate calculated in September 1962, in which case it “will get better terms [at that time] than by holding a conference now.” Possibly also, the consulate thought, Hanoi “may have come to the conclusion that America is willing to go to almost any lengths to prevent a communist victory in South Vietnam.” If that was indeed the case, it “may therefore be waiting for the Americans to get themselves still more involved in the fighting which would strengthen [its] case, in any future conference, that the South Vietnamese question had degenerated into a war between the Americans (assisted by a few South Vietnamese stooges) and the Vietnamese people.” Hanoi “may [thus] be waiting for the combination of war-weariness, neutralist propaganda and the ever latent xenophobia to take effect in South Vietnam” before publicly and officially requesting an international conference on neutralization of the South.140
According to this interpretation, Hanoi did not advance a formal proposal for such a conference in order not to paint itself into a corner. It did, however, continue to circumspectly signal a desire to negotiate the issue. During a meeting with the Indian commissioner on the ICSC, Ho Chi Minh spoke “in very moderate terms” of Diem and the regime in Saigon. Ho also endorsed an Indian proposal to negotiate the matter under the auspices of the ICSC as part of an effort to reunite divided families.141 This diplomatic game served Vietnamese communist interests by signaling to both allies and enemies that Hanoi wanted no wider war and was prepared to use diplomacy to preclude that eventuality. That stance satisfied Hanoi’s allies while increasing the pressure on its enemies to limit hostilities in the South, and furthered the prospects of a peaceful settlement.
TEMPORARY NEUTRALITY
All things considered, it appears that DRVN leaders indeed wanted some kind of diplomatic resolution of the crisis in the South, at least for a time. But that did not mean they were prepared to forgo the central goal of the revolution—national unification under their governance. It simply meant that they wanted to avert a wider war, for now. In fact, while Hanoi may have been ready to discuss neutrality and even agree to it, it never envisaged a neutral South to be permanent, or to become sovereign, as some NLF members had suggested earlier. A month after he had written his letter to COSVN in support of neutralization, Le Duan indicated that to him at least neutrality represented “a halfway house to a communist takeover,” a way of getting rid of Diem and the Americans before pursuing revolutionary objectives by other means.142 “The only solution” Vietnamese communists entertained, western diplomats surmised at the time, “is reunification of the two halves, which they have suggested might come about gradually after the South had got rid of President Ngo Dinh Diem and established a broadly based coalition government ready to negotiate with the North.” Inferences that Hanoi would accept prolonged neutrality of the South and thus indefinite postponement of reunification were merely intended to manipulate world opinion, they thought.143 “The North Vietnamese approach is shrewd,” French diplomats cynically observed. It aimed to “avoid all semblance of violating the Geneva accords” while seeking to bring to power in Saigon a new, ostensibly neutral government, which, by persuasion or by threat, would gradually acquiesce to Hanoi’s tutelage. Reunification would thus be achieved duplicitously, but by “the free will of the people of the southern zone.”144 Nguyen Vu Tung concluded that Hanoi’s support of neutralization aimed at “winning internal and external support” and “enlisting the sympathy of nationalist countries,” both central aims of the diplomatic struggle.145
According to a revealing Central Committee report, the party endorsed neutralization on the one hand to “win over” the “middle classes” below the seventeenth parallel and sympathetic people in socialist and neutral countries and, on the other, to “isolate to a high degree” the American imperialists.146 Permanent or long-term neutrality for the South was never seriously entertained by the VWP, the same report intones.
Similarly, Hanoi never actually favored the idea that South Vietnam should join Cambodia and Laos in a neutral bloc in Southeast Asia, as “independent elements” in the NLF maintained. In fact, it rejected the idea because it “might result in South Vietnam becoming permanently part of a neutral ‘cordon sanitaire’ between the communist and western blocs.”147 Also, if South Vietnam were integrated into a neutral Indochinese zone, the NLF might become even more independent and act contrary to guidelines set by the party leadership in Hanoi. Such concerns are further evidence that Hanoi and at least some members of the NLF did not always see eye to eye on major issues.148 So apparent did this eventually become that historian Edwin Moïse later concluded that any agreement between Saigon and the NLF saying they would coexist below the seventeenth parallel with or without Hanoi’s concurrence or acquiescence was “necessarily going to be a farce.” “If the NLF had been a genuine united front in which communist and noncommunist forces shared power,” Moïse continued, “it would have opened up a serious possibility that a neutral government in which communists and noncommunists shared power could be created by a peace settlement.” However, Moïse concludes, “the united front was largely a sham: [its] noncommunist leaders . . . were there more as window dressing than as genuine power sharers.”149
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