Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954-1965
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15. “Zhou Enlai and Pakistani president Ayub Khan, Karachi, 2 April 1965,” in Odd Arne Westad, Chen Jian, Stein Tønnesson, Nguyen Vu Tung, and James G. Hershberg, eds., “77 Conversations between Chinese and Foreign Leaders on the Wars in Indochina, 1964–1977,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 22, Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., 1998 [hereafter “77 Conversations”], 77. According to Lorenz Lüthi, Beijing strenuously objected to Moscow’s February 1965 proposal to reconvene the Geneva Conference. “China’s antagonistic attitude toward negotiations,” he writes, “was rooted in Mao’s view of the country’s place in the world and, ultimately, its domestic politics.” See Lorenz Lüthi, The Sino-Soviet Split, 1956–1966 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008), 316, 336. According to French documents, Beijing was amenable to the idea of convening an international conference to resolve the Vietnamese crisis until the commencement of American combat operations; thereafter, its stance hardened and it considered holding such a conference “impossible.” See Direction des Affaires Politiques Asie-Océanie —Ministère des Affaires Étrangères [hereafter DAPAO], “Chronologie des principales interventions française à propos du Vietnam depuis Juillet 1962” [Chronology of Main French Interventions about Vietnam since July 1962], 6 April 1965, #162, Asie-Océanie [hereafter AO]: Vietnam Conflit [hereafter VC], Archives Diplomatiques de France, La Courneuve [hereafter ADF], 5. A portion of the discussion that follows is drawn from Pierre Asselin, “‘We Don’t Want A Munich’: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Struggle during the American War, 1965–1968,” Diplomatic History 36, no. 3 (June 2012): 547–82.
16. “Oral Statement of the PRC Government, Transmitted by PRC Vice Foreign Minister Liu Xiao to the Chargé d’Affaires of the USSR in the PRC, Cde. F. V. Mochulskii, on 27 February 1965,” in Lorenz Lüthi, “Twenty-Four Soviet Bloc Documents on Vietnam and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1964–1966,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 16 (2008) [hereafter CWIHPB 16]: 376.
17. “Chen Yi and Nguyen Duy Trinh, Beijing, 17 December 1965,” in Westad et al., eds., “77 Conversations,” 89. American proposals for peace talks were to Beijing “a mere ploy to eliminate revolutionary forces in Vietnam,” historian Niu Jun has written. See Niu Jun, “The Background to the Shift in Chinese Policy toward the United States in the Late 1960s,” in Priscilla Roberts, ed., Behind the Bamboo Curtain: China, Vietnam, and the World beyond Asia (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2006), 339. Beijing also condemned Moscow’s “mistaken policy of Soviet-American cooperation for the solution of international problems” and of the “Vietnam question” specifically (“Oral Statement by the Head of the Department for the USSR and for the Countries of Eastern Europe of MFA PRC, Yu Zhan, Transmitted to the Embassy on 8 June 1965,” in CWIHPB 16, 380). As Lorenz Lüthi has noted, at the onset of the American War, “Beijing pursued a hard line,” “rejecting any negotiated settlement” and “advocating people’s war as the only method to fight” (Lüthi, Sino-Soviet Split, 338).
18. David G. Marr, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, no. 6 (July 1981): 53. See also Pierre Journoud, “La France, cinquième partie aux négociations?,” in Pierre Journoud and Cécile Menétrey-Monchau, eds., Vietnam, 1968–1976: La sortie de guerre / Exiting a War (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011).
19. Ilya V. Gaiduk, The Soviet Union and the Vietnam War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1996), 46.
20. British Embassy, Saigon, to Southeast Asia Department, London [hereafter SEAD], 21 October 1965, FO 371/ 180536, National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew [hereafter NAUK], 2.
21. Ang Cheng Guan, The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002), 107; Gaiduk, Soviet Union and the Vietnam War, 47–53, 79–80; Robert K. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Viet Nam War (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 60. Moscow hoped the war in Vietnam would end sooner rather than later because the “danger center for a new war is not Vietnam,” Leonid Brezhnev told the French foreign minister in November. “It is in the heart of Europe, in Germany” (French Embassy, Moscow, to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris [hereafter MFA], 4 November 1965, #162, AO: VC, ADF, 3).
22. Quoted in Ilya Gaiduk, “Peacemaking or Troubleshooting? The Soviet Role in Peace Initiatives during the Vietnam War,” in Lloyd C. Gardner and Ted Gittinger, eds., The Search for Peace in Vietnam, 1964–1968 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004), 264.
23. Reported in British Consulate General, Hanoi [hereafter BCGH], to Foreign Office, London [hereafter FO], 12 November 1965, FO 371/ 180526, NAUK, 1.
24. BCGH to SEAD, 18 November 1965, FO 371/180528, NAUK, 2.
25. Nguyen Dinh Binh, ed., Ngoai giao Viet Nam, 1945–2000 [Vietnamese Diplomacy, 1945–2000] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2005), 211; Luu Van Loi, Ngoai giao Viet Nam, 1945–1995 [Vietnamese Diplomacy, 1945–1995] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Cong an nhan dan, 2004), 346.
26. Ban chi dao tong ket chien tranh truc thuoc Bo Chinh tri, Chien tranh cach mang Viet Nam, 1945–1975: Thang loi va bai hoc [Vietnam’s Revolutionary War, 1945–1975: Victory and Lessons] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2000), 155; Tran Quang Co, “Duong loi quoc te dung dan va sang tao cua Dang trong thoi ky chong My, cuu nuoc” [The Correct and Creative International Line of Our Party in the Anti-American, National Salvation Era], in Bo Ngoai giao, Mat tran ngoai giao voi cuoc dam phan Paris [The Diplomatic Front and the Paris Negotiations] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2004), 68–69; Hoc vien quan he quoc te, Ngoai giao Viet Nam hien dai: Vi su nghiep gianh doc lap, tu do, 1945–1975 [Contemporary Vietnamese Diplomacy: For the Cause of Securing Independence and Freedom] (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2001), 239; Nguyen Dinh Binh, ed., Ngoai giao Viet Nam, 202. “Our foremost international activity was strengthening strategic alliances,” a study by the Institute of International Relations in Hanoi reports (Hoc vien quan he quoc te, Ngoai giao Viet Nam hien dai, 221).
27. Nguyen Dinh Binh, ed., Ngoai giao Viet Nam, 210–12.
28. Quoted in Maurice Vaïsse, “De Gaulle and the Vietnam War,” in Gardner and Gittinger, eds., The Search for Peace in Vietnam, 163. The solidification of Vietnamese resolve following the start of U.S. combat operations in North and South Vietnam is underscored in British Embassy, Moscow, to FO, 7 April 1965, FO 371/180524, NAUK, 1; DAPAO, “Note,” 25 August 1965, #162, AO: VC, ADF, 1; and French General Delegation, Hanoi, to MFA, 12 April 1966, #83, AO: VC, ADF, 4.
29. Pierre Asselin, “Revisionism Triumphant: Hanoi’s Diplomatic Strategy in the Nixon Era,” Journal of Cold War Studies 13, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 129-34. On the Paris negotiations more generally, see Pierre Asselin, A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
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