Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965

by Asselin, Pierre

  Ideally for Hanoi, the PLAF would succeed in crushing the ARVN before the Americans committed their own troops. As long as that scenario remained plausible, as long as the apparent liabilities outweighed the potential benefits of direct northern military intervention in the South, Hanoi could—and would—resist deploying PAVN units to the area below the seventeenth parallel.

  RESISTING ALIGNMENT WITH BEIJING

  Resolution 9 and the concomitant silencing of opposition voices markedly impacted Hanoi’s relations with the Soviet Union and the PRC. Knowing that Moscow would be none too pleased by the results of the VWP Central Committee’s Ninth Plenum, Hanoi sent a delegation of high-ranking leaders, including Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, to Moscow to assure Soviet leaders that Resolution 9 constituted neither a challenge to peaceful coexistence nor a statement of intent to align with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute, that it was simply a policy document dealing with conditions in and specific necessities for Vietnam. When the delegation asked for Soviet endorsement of Hanoi’s new strategy and material support for its implementation, Khrushchev responded that the Soviet Union could not approve such a hazardous initiative and would provide no weaponry to help the NLF/PLAF or the DRVN meet their objectives militarily in the South.38 That the VWP had failed to consult Moscow before shifting gears in the South, opting instead to present the Soviets with a fait accompli, clearly rankled Khrushchev.39 “Something much less than complete identity of views was reached,” one report of the meeting noted.40 The Vietnamese received “no promise of Soviet aid”; in fact, they left Moscow “with nothing.”41

  During and after the delegation’s visit, the Soviets remained adamant that Hanoi escalate the hostilities in the South no further, resolve its problems there diplomatically, and do nothing else that might devolve into a nuclear confrontation between themselves and the United States.42 In retrospect, the visit itself proved more important than its results. The fact that Le Duan and Le Duc Tho, respectively the number one and two figures in the new DRVN regime, personally traveled to Moscow to confer with Khrushchev demonstrated their desire to maintain close ties to the Soviet Union.43 The Canadian Embassy in Moscow inferred from the “amiable tone” of the concluding joint communiqué that the Vietnamese had succeeded, to a degree at least, in assuring the Soviets that they hoped to maintain adequate relations with Moscow even as they engaged in war in the South and the Sino-Soviet dispute continued.44

  Mao, who had recently finally endorsed violent revolution in Vietnam, for his part was most gratified by news of the adoption of Resolution 9 and by what he thought were sure signs that the Vietnamese were aligning with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute. At once he substantially increased Chinese assistance, both military and economic, to the DRVN.45 The increase rested on not just ideological but also political calculations: the desire to “guarantee Hanoi’s obligation to stand on China’s side” in the Sino-Soviet split and to demonstrate that “the center of world revolution had shifted to Beijing.”46 In fact, for Beijing at this point, Hanoi may have been “less important as an ideological ally than as the best and closest living example of the ongoing processes of world revolution.”47 According to a cynical estimate, the PRC helped Vietnam at this point because it hoped thereby—naïvely in retrospect—to extend its hegemony over Indochina.48 For its own aggrandizement, in this view, Beijing was prepared to support war in Vietnam “to the last Vietnamese.”49 More reassuringly, in June Chinese foreign minister Chen Yi promised Hanoi increased support in the event hostilities spread in the South, including troop support if the United States invaded the North: “The Chinese people will not sit idly,” Chen pledged, “while the Geneva agreements are completely torn up and the flames of war spread” to North Vietnam.50

  Whatever motivated these promises, Mao misread the meaning of Resolution 9. Despite what the substance and attendant consequences of the resolution suggested, Hanoi would not side openly with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute. Completely at odds with the Soviets over southern strategy, Le Duan’s regime nonetheless wanted no break with Moscow, as Tirana and Beijing had made, and insisted instead on continuing to cultivate the VWP’s traditional relationship with the CPSU, as just noted.51 The French general delegate thought militant leaders in Hanoi remained “honestly concerned” about the negative effects of the Sino-Soviet split on the socialist camp, and thus avoided polemics against Moscow even when adhering to Chinese revolutionary prescriptions.52

  When Beijing proposed a meeting of Asian communist parties without Soviet participation and promised Hanoi a billion yuan in aid if it refused further assistance from Moscow, Hanoi demurred.53 The reasons for the demurral were calculated, reflecting the operational realism of decision-makers who remained highly dogmatic on larger, strategic matters. Indeed, the means Le Duan and his entourage used to meet their desired ends often reflected pragmatism on their part, but those ends remained the product of rigid ideological convictions. In this instance, the Politburo understood that the international clout of the Soviet Union was greater than that of China, and Moscow’s nuclear arsenal represented important insurance against an American invasion of North Vietnam.54 Also, Soviet industrial technology remained necessary for socialist development in the North, to which they remained committed. Hanoi’s problem continued to be, as economists Adam Fforde and Suzanne Paine have documented, that the DRVN had an “aggravated shortage economy,” which had to import “almost all modern means of production,” principally from the Soviet Union.55 Lastly, the Soviet military arsenal far surpassed anything the Chinese had to offer and would be indispensable for protecting the DRVN in the event of war with the United States.56 “Hanoi’s own arms and ammunition production capability is limited,” American intelligence estimates indicated in 1964. “It produces only small quantities of mortars, bazookas, grenades, and light arms.” Its arms repair capabilities were similarly limited. “The most notable North Vietnamese inadequacies,” this estimate added, “are concentrated in heavy ordnance equipment such as artillery and armor.”57

  Despite recent advances in all areas of Vietnamese deficiency, China remained incapable of supplying the machinery and expertise necessary to enable the DRVN to manufacture and stockpile the weaponry necessary to fight the Americans.58 It produced little sophisticated military hardware of its own, which partially explained its staggering human losses in the Korea War. “If the DRV did get deeply committed to China in the Sino-Soviet dispute,” a British assessment noted with these considerations in mind, “then Soviet reprisals, involving sharp declines in the level of Russian/E[ast] European trade, economic aid and military aid could be confidently predicted.”59 At that time, the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe accounted for a much larger share of DRVN foreign trade than China, 55 percent compared to 30 percent, according to an American estimate.60 In practice, then, Hanoi had to stay “on good terms” with Moscow to continue receiving “desperately needed machinery and certain raw materials which the Chinese cannot furnish.”61 Though military aid from Moscow was just then less than that from Beijing, southern liberation, national reunification, and socialist transformation might be unachievable without Soviet support.62

  Geography and history were also likely factors that encouraged Hanoi to keep its distance from Beijing. Vietnamese militants were enamored with China’s revolutionary achievements, but they remained wary of Chinese interference in Vietnamese affairs and thus “justifiably apprehensive about future Chinese policy and actions” relating to Vietnam. “The Vietnamese for all their talk of the brotherhood of communists have not forgotten their 1,000 years of subjection to China,” the British Consulate noted.63 According to this reasoning, Hanoi preserved its alliance with Moscow because that allowed it to offset Chinese influence in Vietnam and the rest of Indochina.64 Breaking with Moscow and complete unity of views with China, coupled with more or less absolute dependence on Chinese aid, could turn the DRVN into “little more than another Chinese province.”65 Le Duan and his regime would never submit to a revoluti
onary strategy dictated by either Beijing or Moscow.66

  Finally, Hanoi rejected alignment with Beijing because it understood that to do so would not alter Soviet behavior but only widen the fissures in the socialist camp.67 As Le Duc Tho noted, the VWP had no quarrel with the CPSU; rather, it thought individuals within it embraced erroneous views. “Our party,” Tho wrote, “draws a political line between the Tito revisionist clique that betrays Marxism-Leninism and persons that [sic] commit mistakes in revising Marxism-Leninism in a number of brother parties.”68 Some sources suggest that a preliminary draft of Resolution 9 named Khrushchev as a revisionist, but, at Le Duan’s urging, his name was dropped.69 A document in the Vietnamese archives, the draft of a report Pham Van Dong presented, in revised form, to the National Assembly, seems to substantiate that suggestion. One section of the fifty-page report was “sanitized,” redacted by censors. That section discusses the need for the party and government to “resolutely oppose [twenty to twenty-two characters here sanitized, enough for a reference to “Nikita Khrushchev and” in Vietnamese] modern revisionism in order to protect” the unity of the socialist movement.70 A personal attack on Khrushchev would likely have led to an open break with Moscow, much as had happened to Albania after Hoxha publicly denounced the Soviet leader and pointedly aligned his country with China in the Sino-Soviet dispute. “In toeing the Chinese ideological line,” Ottawa concluded, “Hanoi has meticulously avoided overt criticism of the Soviet Union and has refrained from indulging in Sino-Soviet polemics.” Since the DRVN was “a small state without the complex international interests of either of its two giant allies, the North Vietnamese would clearly prefer to be left free to tackle their own internal problems and this can be the case only when a state of harmony exists within the communist camp.”71

  VOICING DISPLEASURE AT MOSCOW

  Although Hanoi would not align with Beijing in the Sino-Soviet dispute, there were ample signs of its displeasure with Moscow. For example, the only foreign-language bookstore in the capital displayed Chinese and Albanian but not Russian works on ideology; the Russian works on display were technical manuals and novels.72 Also, the DRVN now hosted larger numbers of Chinese than Soviet technical experts, including military advisers. On the basis of these and other indicators, the British Consulate surmised that “Chinese influence in all spheres” was fast becoming “much greater than that of the Russians” in the North.73 Government officials soon regularly referred to Chinese as “comrades” and Soviets as “friends,” even in conversations with Soviet diplomats.74 These tendencies clearly disturbed Soviet diplomats, who concluded that Hanoi was now “mainly pro-Chinese.”75 Equally revealing were public references by Vietnamese to Soviet and other European communists in the capital as “Communist Americans” because of their “bourgeois” lifestyle. That perception stemmed largely from the fact that Eastern Europeans in Hanoi tended to live in large houses with servants and had access to automobiles. In these things, they contrasted with the PRC nationals, including diplomats, whom Beijing ordered to live under the same conditions as average Vietnamese, sharing the same standard of living without exception.76

  The leadership in Hanoi also expressed its dissatisfaction with Moscow through veiled, deniable polemics. References to Tito and “Yugoslav revisionism” in Hoc tap and other publications were unmistakable stand-ins for Khrushchev and peaceful coexistence. Pointedly, party publications denounced revisionism in the same language the Chinese had used against the Soviets in 1960–61.77 A dangerously bold denunciation of revisionism, and thus implicitly of Khrushchev, appeared in Hoc tap in January 1964. It included criticism of individual revisionists in the socialist camp, clearly implying that Khrushchev’s turpitude was second only to Tito’s. Revisionists, the article insisted, were damaging the cause of world revolution. They failed to acknowledge capitalism as the intrinsic cause of colonialism and imperialism, as well as the wars and oppressions those “isms” spawned. They thus failed to see that to drop the struggle against those “isms” for the chimera of peaceful coexistence was an act of “political naïveté.” The idea that peace could be achieved without destroying capitalism and imperialism was “an illusion.” There was no shortcut to a better world. To renounce the struggle against capitalism and imperialism was to act “without any class spirit,” “to close one’s eyes to objective realities,” to “distort Marxism-Leninism.” Such attitudes desecrated revolutionary ideology and amounted to counterrevolutionary malpractice. To pursue accommodation with the West was “by [its] nature, a plot to protect the capitalist system,” a preliminary not to “the funeral of capitalism” but to “the funeral of socialism.” Lenin had said it long ago: imperialism, “with all its capitalist strength and its perfectly organized military techniques, cannot, under any circumstances, live beside the Soviet Union.”

  If peaceful coexistence was counterrevolutionary, the article continued, the fear that escalating the war in the South might force Moscow into a nuclear confrontation was irrational. “In the recent Korean War between socialist Korea and imperialist United States, there was neither peaceful coexistence nor nuclear war,” the article noted. Similarly, “between the Korean people and U.S. imperialists at present there is still neither peaceful coexistence nor nuclear war.” More recently, the Cuban missile crisis had similarly demonstrated that nuclear war was a remote possibility. “In the past revolutionary struggle between the Cuban people and the U.S. imperialists, there was neither peaceful coexistence nor nuclear war”; there was instead a “state of ‘cold war.’” As a result of its defiance, Cuba “earned the right to survive beside the imperialist United States” and “‘coexist’ with it” on Havana’s terms.78

  In June, Hoc tap published another scathing criticism of revisionism, arguably the harshest to date. This editorial was remarkable less for its substance than for its tone. Entitled “Preserving International Solidarity and Struggling against Divisive Maneuvers,” it repeated the usual charges against revisionism, reviled the “treachery” of those who condoned it, and iterated the importance of adhering to the “just line” of Marxism-Leninism, which meant avoiding the trappings of peaceful coexistence. The ferocity of the attack was unprecedented. “If Hanoi is not yet at the point of delivering personal insults, its tone is nonetheless becoming increasingly polemical,” the French general delegate wrote of the editorial. “Until now, when [Hanoi] wanted to criticize the Soviet line, it was the revisionism of Tito and his clique that was highlighted.” That was no longer the case. “If the Hoc tap editorial does not go as far as naming the CPSU and its chief, its contents leave no doubt about the identity of the modern revisionists targeted by the criticism.” If there were uncertainties before as to where the VWP stood on matters of East-West relations and the Sino-Soviet dispute over revolutionary strategy, the editorial dissipated them. “Through this editorial of polemical tone and of clearly directed criticisms,” the French delegate opined, “the DRVN has taken a definitive step on the path of pure and simple alignment with Chinese positions.”79

  Why had Hanoi adopted so strident a tone? The French delegate believed the leadership felt it had to “strive for unity in order to allow the struggle against revisionism to achieve its objectives, that is the triumph of Marxism-Leninism, the squashing of revisionism, and the elimination of leaders guilty of [revisionism].” “The Chinese could not ask for more,” he concluded.80 Hanoi’s exasperation with Moscow was confirmed when the former boldly rejected an invitation from the CPSU to participate in a conference of world communist parties to address the Sino-Soviet dispute and other problems.81 Shortly thereafter, DRVN authorities prohibited the sale of Pravda, the CPSU organ available only at the foreign-language bookstore in Hanoi, to its own nationals so they would not find out how Soviet positions on current issues contrasted with those of Hanoi.82 The new regime was clearly not shy about signaling its displeasure to Moscow.83 What it was shy about, as noted earlier, was breaking its alliance with the Soviets. One scholar has attributed the boldne
ss of the militants now in charge of DRVN decision-making to their confidence that “active elements” in the CPSU would sooner or later convince Khrushchev to revisit his stance on peaceful coexistence or would engineer his removal from power.84

  In retrospect, one can say that DRVN leaders were as tactful as they had to be on matters concerning relations with allies and the Sino-Soviet dispute. They championed socialist solidarity because they needed the benefits it promised domestically, but also because they considered it imperative for the success of the world revolution, in which they firmly believed. In 1964, Hanoi was less pro-Chinese than anti–peaceful coexistence.85 Its increasing dependence on China was “very largely unwilling,” and its long-standing admiration of the Soviet Union never changed.86 But by then, it had concluded that the CPSU’s stance on capitalist-socialist relations threatened the future of the revolution in the South and around the world generally. That belief probably accounted for the panicky aspects of the views expressed in Hoc tap and the subtle and not-so-subtle belittlement of the Soviets. Insofar as this was indeed the case, the course pursued by Hanoi was contoured less by fear of offending Moscow than by genuine concern for the consequences of disarray in the socialist camp and of peaceful coexistence. The Soviets could do little to change this mindset. Moscow at that juncture—as at any other, for that matter—had “minimal influence” in Hanoi; it was, in fact, often a mere “spectator to events” in that country.87

  SEEKING UNITY AND IDEOLOGICAL CONFORMITY AT HOME

  As the purge of “deviationists” in the VWP and other circles continued, some critics of the new road to liberation in the South kept making trouble. “Many comrades do not yet understand clearly the theoretical and practical bases of strategic and tactical matters” or “the essence of the differences in the international communist movement,” the Politburo noted. Also, a number of cadres and members remained “under the influence of revisionism,” and therefore “do not yet fully grasp the basic requirements for victory and the central issues of the party line.”88 Le Duc Tho himself complained a little later that many “comrades” did not yet share the “viewpoints” of the Central Committee and continued to “express their own view.”89 To address this problem, the party stressed “the development of the spirit of revolutionary struggle and of workers’ socialist consciousness” and redoubled its effort to combat rightism, revisionism, and individualism in party ranks.90 In fact, the work of ideological indoctrination soon reached “exaggerated” levels.91