However, even though it was easy to assess the new situation, hard questions remained before any conclusions could be reached about what to do next. Should insurgent forces in the South escalate the level of conflict in the hope of bringing a quick collapse to the new regime? Or should they refrain from increasing military pressure in the hope that it might be amenable to a negotiated settlement? Should the North play a more direct role in the war? What if the United States reacted to the impending collapse of its puppet in Saigon by escalating its own role in the conflict? Barely three weeks after the death of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon, John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. What if his successor, Lyndon B, Johnson, turned out to be even more warlike than the slain young president?
Such concerns were on the minds of Party leaders as they convened the Ninth Plenum of the Third Congress of the VWP in early December 1963. Based on the scattered evidence available, it must have been one of the most explosive meetings in the history of the Party, as delegates argued bitterly over what course to pursue. For once, the committee did not act simply as a rubber stamp for decisions already reached by the Politburo. Some members apparently urged the immediate introduction of conventional military units from the North with the objective of bringing Saigon to its knees before the United States could react. Others worried that a visible northern presence in the South could trigger a harsh response from Washington and lead to direct U.S. intervention in the war. Such an eventuality, of course, would not sit well with the Soviet Union and would necessitate a policy of increased reliance on China. Although the PRC had increased the level of its military assistance to the DRV following Liu Shaoqi’s state visit in May 1963, many Party leaders shared Ho Chi Minh’s discomfort with the growing pressure from Beijing to toe the Chinese line in the Sino-Soviet dispute.
After lengthy debate, the Central Committee reached a compromise; the level of military assistance from the DRV was to be increased, but combat units from the North were not to be sent south to take a direct part in the fighting. Party strategists had decided to gamble that the Saigon regime could be brought to the point of collapse without running the risk of a U.S. entry into the war. Southern insurgents were instructed to push toward final victory in the shortest possible time, but without the promise of vastly increased assistance from the rear base in the North. It was now formally recognized that armed struggle would play a crucial and decisive role in the revolutionary process, although political agitation would continue to be of importance.
Ho Chi Minh’s role in the policy debate is not clear, but it is probable that he urged caution before adopting any decision that could alienate Moscow and Beijing or bring the United States directly into the war. Still, Ho recognized the opportunity posed by the situation and the need to react. At a Politburo meeting on December 10, he urged his colleagues to take advantage of the “disorder” in the South by escalating both military and political pressure on the Saigon regime. Even if the United States should escalate the struggle tenfold, he declared, “we shall still be victorious.”25
The decision to escalate at a moderate rate remained fraught with risks, not only of a possible confrontation with the United States, but also of serious problems with Moscow. For years, Party leaders had carefully sought to avoid antagonizing either of their chief allies, but there had recently been warning signs that some Party leaders were getting restive. In an article written during the summer of 1963, General Nguyen Chi Thanh declared that he and his colleagues had no illusions about the United States and did not underestimate it as an opponent. But, he contended, they were not afraid. If “one is afraid of the U.S. and thinks that to offend it would court failure, and [believes] that firm opposition to United States imperialism would touch off a nuclear war, then the only course left would be to compromise with and surrender to United States imperialism.” Nguyen Chi Thanh’s message would not have been lost on the Kremlin.26
General Thanh’s views were shared by Le Duan and his protégés within the Politburo, who now dominated that policy-making body. With the connivance of Public Security Minister Tran Quoc Hoan and his close ally Le Duc Tho, Le Duan had successfully marginalized potential rivals within the Party leadership. Prime Minister Pham Van Dong presented no problem. Although an efficient administrator and a veteran with a revolutionary pedigree that stretched back to Revolutionary Youth League days in Canton, the self-effacing Dong lacked the stomach for Party infighting and often lamented to intimates about his lack of influence. The fifty-six-year-old Truong Chinh represented a greater potential danger. Prouder than Dong and more assertive in his demeanor within the Party, he undoubtedly resented Le Duan for taking over his position as general secretary and for expressing a preference for the liberation of the South over the task of socialist construction in the North. Still, he too appeared reluctant to raise a challenge to the growing power of his rival. Perhaps to ingratiate himself with the new leadership, Chinh agreed to draft the political report at the Ninth Plenum, thus in effect aligning himself with Le Duan in decisions to come.
Another potential threat was Vo Nguyen Giap. Possessing a degree of prestige and personal popularity exceeded only by Ho Chi Minh himself, General Giap held different views than either Le Duan or Nguyen Chi Thanh on how to conduct the struggle in the South. He rejected Duan’s preference for intensified guerrilla war in favor of a more conventional military approach, but, unlike Thanh, he was reluctant to challenge the Americans until the PAVN had been successfully trained and equipped with modern weapons. To Giap, it would be suicidal to irritate Moscow, since only the Soviet Union could provide the right kind of training and weapons. Yet, like Pham Van Dong, Giap was curiously silent in the face of Le Duan’s arrogant challenge; in Politburo meetings he failed to speak out forcefully against proponents of the new strategy.
The most dangerous potential opponent of the Le Duan faction may have been Ho Chi Minh himself, but by now, Le Duan and his allies clearly harbored a condescending and even contemptuous attitude toward the president, who, in their view, had in recent years lost his acute grasp of politics and was now increasingly muddled in his thinking. Rumors even circulated in Hanoi that Le Duan planned to replace Ho Chi Minh as president with Nguyen Chi Thanh, while relegating the veteran revolutionary to an innocuous position as director of Marxist-Leninist studies. Le Duan, of course, would retain control over the Party.27
Whether or not Ho Chi Minh resented the personal slight of being shunted to the sidelines, he must have had serious reservations about the new strategy to be adopted in South Vietnam. He had clearly expressed his preference for a war of stratagem over one of direct confrontation, and could not have welcomed an approach that could result in a direct conflict with the United States. Similarly, he had always argued in favor of balancing relations with Moscow and Beijing and rejected a policy of exclusive reliance on China. When General Le Liem, a Dien Bien Phu veteran, warned him privately that the draft resolution to be issued at the close of the plenum would contain direct attacks on Moscow, Ho agreed that it would be unseemly for the DRV to slap its primary benefactor directly in the face and encouraged Liem to speak up against the proposal. But when Liem did so, Ho Chi Minh (like Vo Nguyen Giap) sat silently, not uttering a word. As the anti-Soviet tone in the speeches reached a climax, Ho left the conference hall quietly to smoke a cigarette. Ten members of the Central Committee voted against the final report. When a friend asked Ho how he had voted, he said nothing. Had Ho Chi Minh been intimidated into silence by the new leadership?28
Once the new strategy had been approved, the most important question remaining at the plenum was how to placate the Soviet Union. The draft of the resolution issued at the close of the meeting had originally included a direct attack on Khrushchev, but, at Le Duan’s request, the reference was eventually removed. Duan, who, like many of his colleagues, harbored deep-seated suspicions of the Chinese, did not want to burn his bridges with Moscow. In fact, the resolution made a tacit gesture to Soviet leaders by declaring that the basic ob
jective of the new strategy was “to restrict the war within the framework of South Vietnam and to defeat the enemy on the main battlefield.” Even if Washington decided to intervene, “the possibility that a limited war in the South would turn into a world war is almost non-existent because the purpose and significance of this war cannot generate conditions leading to a world war.” In a bid to reassure nervous allies, the Politburo drew up a circular letter to fraternal Communist parties to explain the decision and seek their support and understanding. The letter attempted to assuage fears of a wider war and pleaded for bloc support for wars of national liberation throughout the Third World. Declaring that the concept of peaceful coexistence was a tactic that applied between different world systems, and not between oppressors and oppressed in a particular society, it argued that the concepts of peaceful coexistence and revolutionary struggle were interdependent, not contradictory. A peaceful ascent to power in a repressive society, it concluded, was an illusion.29
Although Party leaders had made a belated effort to placate Moscow, sentiment against the Soviet Union and its Vietnamese defenders was hardening in Hanoi. After the plenum adjourned in mid-December, a secret tribunal was established under the authority of the Politburo to remove “revisionists” from the Party; many senior political figures who were considered sympathetic to the Soviet point of view or suspected of opposing the official line were dismissed from their posts or even placed under arrest. Among those suspected of harboring such views was Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap himself. Although Giap was too popular to attack directly, a number of his protégés, including Le Liem, were purged because of their allegedly pro-Soviet views. A few months later, Giap was accused by some Politburo members of having exchanged private correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev, but that charge was dropped when Ho Chi Minh stepped in to remark that he was aware of the exchange and had fully approved of it.30
Despite its growing animus to the Soviet leadership, the dominant faction in the Politburo was conscious of the need to avoid a complete break with Moscow. After the Ninth Plenum adjourned, Le Duan, Le Duc Tho, and their ally, the revolutionary poet To Huu, visited the USSR to present Hanoi’s views. The presence of To Huu was significant. Born in 1920 near Hué, he made his debut as a major political figure when he publicly attacked Soviet revisionism at the Ninth Plenum. Ho Chi Minh, who must have anticipated the results of the talks in Moscow with foreboding, remained in Hanoi.
En route to the USSR, the delegation stopped briefly in Beijing for discussions with Chinese leaders. In Moscow, the talks with Soviet officials apparently had little success. The final communiqué was vague and suggested that disagreement over the situation in the South continued. After the delegation returned to Hanoi, editorials in the official press praised China’s role in leading the global revolution and continued their scathing attacks on revisionism.31
Ho Chi Minh must have viewed the events surrounding the Ninth Plenum and its aftermath with some discomfort. Washington’s decision to approve the coup that overthrew the Diem regime had raised serious questions about its desire to avoid a direct conflict in South Vietnam. Although Ho had endorsed the decision to escalate the struggle in the South, the readiness of his more headstrong colleagues to offend the Soviet Union and persecure its friends in Hanoi, which ran counter to his conciliatory instincts, were undoubtedly worrisome. After a lengthy silence following the December plenum, Ho finally surfaced in late March 1964, when he presided over a “special political conference” that had been convened hastily to paper over the growing policy split within the Party leadership. In his remarks to the delegates, Ho repeated his appeal for the reunification of the two zones peacefully in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva Accords, but declared that the people of the North “wholeheartedly support the patriotic struggle of our southern compatriots.” Appealing over the head of the U.S. government to the American people, he declared that the unjust war in Vietnam was staining the honor of the United States and called upon them to bring an end to the dirty war and rebuild friendship between the peoples of the two countries. Lastly, he called for unity of purpose within the DRV and among the countries of the socialist community as a whole.32
During the next few months, the resistance forces in South Vietnam intensified their efforts to bring down the Saigon regime; as Ho Chi Minh had predicted, the regime was mired in factional struggles and seemed incapable of focusing on the growing threat in the countryside. Although the Party’s strategy in the South had now shifted perceptibly in the direction of an armed conflict, the role of political struggle remained central to the equation, notably because it was here that the revolutionary forces were seen to operate at a decisive advantage. Although the PLAF did not possess the firepower or the numerical strength of its adversary, it benefited from the inherent political weaknesses of the Saigon government. The goal of the resistance was now to wage a combined “general offensive and uprising,” based on the Party’s plan to launch military attacks on rural areas in conjunction with a popular uprising against the government in the major cities and towns. The anticipated result was the collapse of the Saigon regime and the formation, through negotiations, of a tripartite coalition government consisting of a mixture of officials from the Saigon regime, neutralists, and members of the NLF. Because the Party had already managed to win the secret allegiance of a number of prominent neutralists in South Vietnam and abroad, it was confident that this coalition government would serve as a springboard for the gradual takeover of the South by political forces loyal to the Party,
Ho Chi Minh shared his colleagues’ view that it was vital to persuade Washington that the Vietnamese people were determined to unify their country and were willing to endure enormous sacrifices to achieve that end. At a Politburo meeting in December 1963, he stressed the importance of launching attacks on the U.S. aggressors in Vietnam. “Americans grearly fear death,” he told his colleagues, so it was important that they should not feel immune from the consequences of the struggle. In articles published under a pseudonym in Nhan Dan (several were titled “Beautiful, but Not Handsome,” a reference to the official Vietnamese term for the United States, “Beautiful Country”), he lambasted the United States for its aggressive policies all over the world and its domestic problems at home. Citing articles in the U.S. press (some of them connected to Lyndon Johnson’s highly publicized War on Poverty program), Ho pointed out that, far from being a “beautiful” society, America suffered from such major problems as high crime rates, increasing unemployment, rampant poverty, and racial divisions.33
Throughout the spring and early summer of 1964, Party strategists continued to hope that their formula for a general offensive and uprising could succeed without a substantial input of regular forces from the North. The presence of the PAVN in the South could trigger a retaliation from the United States and bring it directly into the war, something Party leaders fervently wished to avoid. Unknown to Hanoi, however, the Johnson administration was increasingly determined to remain in South Vietnam. In early August, North Vietnamese naval vessels attacked U.S. warships operating in the Tonkin Gulf. When a second attack allegedly took place a few hours later, the White House, which had been searching for a pretext to demonstrate its resolve to Hanoi, immediately launched retaliatory air strikes against military installations in the nearby North Vietnamese panhandle. Although Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara announced that the American vessels had been on “routine patrol,” it soon became clear that they were engaged in reconnaissance operations close to the North Vietnamese coast and may have been testing the ability of enemy radar to monitor U.S. maneuvers in the area. To make matters doubly suspicious, a South Vietnamese guerrilla operation was taking place nearby. DRV military commanders in the area were probably convinced that the two operations were related, and had ordered the attack on U.S. warships on the spot.
The Tonkin Gulf incident convinced Party leaders that Washington was preparing to escalate its role in the war. A few days after the incide
nt, the Politburo decided to make preparations to send the first regular units of the PAVN down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Once in the South, they would be expected to bolster the strength of the PLAF for a final push to victory in the spring of 1965. Party leaders still hoped that they could bring about the collapse of the Saigon regime before the United States decided to intervene in the conflict. After the Politburo meeting adjourned, Le Duan flew to Beijing to inform Chinese leaders of Hanoi’s decision and to consult on future strategy.34
In Beijing, Mao Zedong encouraged his visitor to pursue an aggressive strategy in South Vietnam, expressing his confidence that the United States, despite the recent passage by Congress of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, did not wish to become directly involved in the conflict in South Vietnam, since it was overextended in the world and lacked available troops to send to Southeast Asia. The Americans, he told Le Duan, “do not want to fight a war” in Indochina; therefore, because neither Hanoi not Beijing wished the conflict to spread, “there will be no war.” In the meantime, Mao did not believe that a negotiated settlement was appropriate, since conditions in South Vietnam were not yet sufficiently favorable to the DRV. As he remarked to Pham Van Dong in a conversation in Beijing a few weeks later: “The more thoroughly you defeat them, the more comfortable they feel. For example, you beat the French, and they became willing to negotiate with you....”
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