Where the Domino Fell - America And Vietnam 1945-1995

by James S. Olson

  The French general wanted to make sure that American assistance would continue under Eisenhower. Although he did not know how the communists could “continue to suffer the losses they have been taking . . . I don’t know how they can stay in the battle,” Ely readily admitted that Dienbienphu was finished. He made no specific request for anything more than continued American financial support. When the meeting concluded, Eisenhower asked Radford to see whether the United States could offer some more assistance to the French. Without the knowledge of Eisenhower, Dulles, or even other joint chiefs, Radford with the assistance of American and French officers in Saigon was hatching a rescue plan.

  Radford, a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, had commanded aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II. In May 1953, when President Eisenhower toured the Pacific and East Asia to assess the Korean situation, Radford was commander of naval forces in the Pacific. He spent some time with Eisenhower during the tour and impressed the president with his grasp of Asian affairs. Eisenhower named Radford chief of naval operations in 1953 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By that time Radford was a saber-rattling darling of the Republican right. A zealous convert to complicated weapons technology and air power, Radford had endeared himself to a number of conservative politicians during World War II when he said the only approach to the Japanese was “to kill the bastards scientifically” Infantry combat “was messy and wasted personnel” Strategic and tactical bombing was “precise and clean” Radford was convinced that Asia, not Europe, would be central to American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century. Late in 1953, when the president expressed concern about the defense budget, Radford became the author of the “New Look” Radford urged, and Eisenhower and Dulles accepted, the notion that instead of planning for a variety of military contingencies—strategic nuclear war, conventional war, limited nuclear war, and guerrilla war—the United States should plan for a war in which nuclear weapons would be used whenever they were strategically advantageous. Such an approach would be less expensive than a more comprehensive response system. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used Radford’s logic in his famous “massive retaliation” speech of January 12, 1954, when he threatened to use strategic nuclear weapons whenever and wherever the Soviet Union fomented rebellion.

  When Radford learned of the desperate situation at Dienbienphu, he was eager to use air power. It was the perfect place, he thought, to try out the Eisenhower administration’s “New Look” defense policy. He proposed Operation Vulture: the use of B-29s, based in the Philippines and accompanied by aircraft from the carriers USS Essex and USS Boxer, to knock out Vietminh artillery. Without artillery the Vietminh could not destroy the outpost. The airstrip could be repaired, and a full-scale re-supply resumed. “We could have helped the French with air strikes,” Radford’s memoirs declare. “Whether these alone would have been successful in breaking the siege of Dien Bien Phu is debatable. If we had used atomic weapons, we probably would have been successful”

  The proposal triggered an intense debate. The other chiefs of staff, especially General Matthew Ridgway of the army, were opposed. Fresh from his command of United Nations forces in Korea, Ridgway felt sure the bombing would fail to lift the siege and that only ground troops— seven to ten full divisions—could rescue Dienbienphu. The Korean War had already proven how difficult Asian land wars could be, and the terrain of Indochina was far worse, the stuff of which bloody, endless guerrilla wars are made. Eisenhower listened carefully to Ridgway; the two infantry commanders understood each other. Vice President Richard Nixon supported Operation Vulture. On March 13, the day the Vietminh overran Gabrielle, Nixon announced, “We have adopted a new principle. Rather than let the communists nibble us to death all over the world in little wars, we will rely in the future on massive, mobile retaliatory forces” In a press conference Nixon declared that there “is no reason why the French forces should not remain in Indo-China and win. They have greater manpower, and a tremendous advantage over their adversaries, particularly air power” Like Radford, Nixon was prepared to use atomic bombs to lift the siege.

  Eisenhower listened to Radford. He listened to Ridgway and Nixon. Never threatened by conflicting viewpoints, Ike believed in the value of good advice and well-reasoned arguments. As Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s World War II chief of staff and close friend, described him: “One of his most successful methods in dealing with individuals is to assume that he himself is lacking in detailed knowledge and liable to make an error . . . . This was by no means a pose, because he . . . values the recommendations . . . he receives, although his own better . . . judgment might cause them to be disregarded” And so Eisenhower listened to opinions bold and cautious—and then he made his decision. He knew from experience that wars are seldom as neat as they seem in strategic papers, and that the “fog of battle” confounds the best laid plans. And the politics of the issue brought conflicting perils. The Republican right wing was making enormous political capital out of the claim that the Democrats had lost China, and he was not prepared to be blamed for losing Indochina. But at the same time, he perceived public skepticism about American involvement in Vietnam. The Korean armistice was just a few months old. Most Americans did not want another war in Asia. Eisenhower was intrigued with Radford’s plan. He would not, however, go forward without the support of Congress and the British.

  Congress was the president’s first target. On April 3 he had Dulles and Radford try to sell the idea to a congressional delegation that included Senators William Knowland and Lyndon Johnson and Congressmen Joseph Martin and John McCormack.

  Eisenhower was not asking for an immediate air strike. He was more cautious than that. What he wanted to know was whether the delegation would give him the discretionary authority to use American forces if a Vietminh victory at Dienbienphu would lead to the fall of Indochina. The legislators were skeptical. They worried about what would happen if the bombing failed. Would ground troops be committed? They also were concerned about Washington’s taking unilateral action. Why not coordinate an international effort to save Dienbienphu? The legislators did have one unequivocal answer for Ike: no more Koreas, where the United States had supplied 90 percent of the combat troops. John F. Kennedy added on the floor of the Senate: “No amount of military assistance in Indo-China can conquer an enemy that is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, 'an enemy of the people' which at the same time has the support of the people”

  The debate in the administration and the reservations within Congress persuaded Eisenhower that American intervention would have to be contingent on securing cooperation from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization powers, and getting France to make plans for granting independence for its Indochinese colonies. That was going to take some time, time Dienbienphu did not have. Convinced that Operation Vulture was the only way of saving Dienbienphu, the French asked Eisenhower for an immediate air strike, leaving the question of joint allied military operations for later discussions. He summarily rejected the request, chastising Radford for misleading the French but agreeing to explore the possibility of subsequent American intervention if European allies would cooperate. Eisenhower asked Dulles to go to Europe and secure NATO support. Dulles set out to achieve what he called “United Action”

  Dulles and Eisenhower made an odd couple. Compared to the warm, friendly president, the secretary of state seemed cold and distant. In fact, compared to almost anyone Dulles was cold and distant. The nation called Eisenhower “Ike,” but no one called Dulles “Jack” The historian Townsend Hoopes describes Dulles as a “solid tree trunk of a man gnarled and durable . . . a rectangular brow and aquiline nose, a thin and drooping mouth, a strong jaw, the whole creating an effect of ultimate seriousness and at the same time of ultimate plainness” Proud of the history of foreign service in his family—a grandfather as secretary of state for Benjamin Harrison and an uncle in the same position for Woodrow Wilson—Dulles had been part of the Versailles peace mission in 191
9, a Wall Street lawyer with clients across the globe, a delegate to the United Nations, and a lifelong student of foreign relations. As Eisenhower told reporters, there is “only one man I know who has seen more of the world and talked with more people and knows more than Dulles does—and that’s me” Dulles, described as a “card carrying Christian,” equated communism with all the sins of atheism. Once on hearing Jiang Jieshi and Syngman Rhee spoken of in unflattering terms, Dulles responded heatedly, “No matter what you say about them, those two gentlemen are modern-day equivalents of the founders of the church. They are Christian gentlemen who have suffered for their faith”

  Travel was as much a part of John Foster Dulles’s life as diplomacy and breathing. He used airplanes as other men used cabs. Now he began a dizzying round of shuttle diplomacy, traveling back and forth between Europe and the United States trying to line up allies. Back home the president tried to drum up public support for intervention, using the domino theory in an April 7 press conference: “You have a row of dominoes set up and you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly . . . . The loss of Indochina will cause the fall of Southeast Asia like a set of dominoes” But while Eisenhower and Dulles were trying to line up the allies, General Ridgway torpedoed the idea. He was furious with Radford. Ridgway was convinced that Ike would not use atomic weapons; in 1945 he had advised Truman against employing them on the Japanese. Ridgway was right. At a meeting of the National Security Council in late April, when the issue came up again, the president finally interrupted a discussion with a frustrated outburst: “You boys must be crazy. We can’t use those awful things against Asians for the second time in less than ten years. My God!” Ridgway also believed that conventional air strikes would not lift the siege. Intervention with ground troops would be inevitable. In a memo to President Eisenhower, Ridgway shared his misgivings: “How deep was the water over the bar at Saigon? What are the harbor and dock facilities? Where could we store the . . . supplies we would need? How good was the road network—how could supplies be transported as the fighting forces moved inland, and in what tonnages? What of the climate? The rainfall? What tropical diseases would attack the combat soldier?” Eisenhower understood. The next day Dulles informed Henri Bonnet, the French ambassador to the United States, that American intervention might not be forthcoming.

  Operation Vulture and the larger proposal for United Action were compromised also by French intransigence. During the discussions with the French, Eisenhower became more and more frustrated. He complained that the French “want us to come in as junior partners and provide materials, etc., while they themselves retain authority in that region” In the previous months they had balked at the notion of United Action, fearing that French power would be subordinated in a multinational force. Nor were the French willing even to talk of independence for Vietnam. That, too, bothered Eisenhower, who wrote to a friend that France had employed “weasel words in promising independence . . . and through this reason … have suffered reverses that have been inexcusable” The French would not even cooperate with the Military Assistance and Advisory Group, an American mission sent to Vietnam in 1950 to coordinate United States economic and military aid. France wanted American money, not American advice.

  Britain as well doomed United Action. The British thought Ho Chi Minh was a highly independent communist who would not let the Chinese, any more than the French, take over his country. When Dulles predicted the apocalypse if Dienbienphu fell, the British calmly replied that the United States was viewing the situation through ideological blinders. Foreign Minister Anthony Eden predicted that India, Burma, Pakistan, Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan would survive even if Ho Chi Minh took over Vietnam. Dulles left London empty-handed on April 14. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was relieved to see Dulles go. In his judgment, “Dulles is the only case of a bull I know who carries his china closet around with him”

  Everything also went wrong at Dienbienphu. Navarre’s plans to increase the size of the Vietnamese National Army failed miserably. The government of Bao Dai sent 94,000 draft orders late in 1953, but only 5,400 new soldiers reported for duty. The Vietnamese National Army never exceeded the 115,000 level, and by early 1954 the desertion rate reached nearly 4,000 men a month. In a country where nationalism, communist and noncommunist, ran very deep, the French plan to develop a highly effective army of colonial troops was incredibly naive. The idea of turning the war over to the Vietnamese was no closer to reality in 1954 than it had been in 1951 when General de Lattre created the Vietnamese National Army. Monsoon rains immobilized French tanks in the heavy mud and prevented resupply from Hanoi. French troops rationed food and water. The shovels Vietminh soldiers carried into Dienbienphu were as useful as their rifles. They dug trenches and tunnels. Twenty-four hours a day, day after day, antlike, tens of thousands of Vietminh extended the trenches, inching their way toward the French outpost, steadily reducing the French perimeter, eliminating the stretches of open space the French had relied on. By the end of April, the Viet-minh outnumbered the French ten to one, and the French perimeter, which once had a circumference of fifteen miles, was reduced to a thousand-yard square.

  As Vo Nguyen Giap closed the circle on Dienbienphu, the Geneva Conference convened in Switzerland. Conflicts of interest and personality abounded. John Foster Dulles did not want to be there at all and was committed to making sure that the Geneva Accords resulting from the conference did “not give one inch of territory to the Communists” At Geneva he behaved badly, “like a puritan in a house of ill repute,” according to his biographer. Pham Van Dong, representing the Viet-minh, wanted a complete political settlement leading to the withdrawal of French forces and establishment of a new, independent government under Ho Chi Minh. France only wanted a military ceasefire. Georges Bidault, who headed the French delegation, recognized that the fall of Dienbienphu would banish the French from the north, but he hoped to regroup in Cochin China and maintain the empire. Laos and Cambodia sided with Bidault. They were already dealing with internal communist rebellions and assumed that French withdrawal, combined with a Viet-minh triumph, would destroy the French Union and condemn Indochina to communism. Zhou Enlai and the Chinese wanted to partition Vietnam. They did not want a united Vietnam—French or Vietnamese—to the south. The Soviet Union was conciliatory. Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 had removed the most militant voice in Moscow, and the new Soviet chieftains did not want a confrontation with the United States, not over a faraway place like Indochina. Only they and the British, represented by Anthony Eden as foreign secretary, came to Geneva without a firm political agenda. The two emerged as the leaders of the conference.

  The various delegations spent their first two weeks at Geneva on other questions before turning their attention to Indochina. On May 6, just when the talks began, Vo Nguyen Giap attacked the French fortress, hitting it with new Soviet Katyusha field rockets, which the French dubbed “Stalin’s organs” because of their roar, and sending thousands of Vietminh out of the trenches, through the exploding shells, and into the base. On the afternoon of May 7, after bitter, hand-to-hand combat, Vietminh entered the French headquarters and struck the flag. In a final radio message, Castries cried: “Our resistance is going to be overwhelmed. The Viets are within a few meters of the radio transmitter where I am speaking. I have given orders to carry out maximum destruction. We will not surrender. We will fight to the end. . . . Long live France!” The Vietminh seized Castries moments later, along with more than 10,000 of his comrades. The French prisoners spent the next ten weeks in horrible prison camps before their repatriation began on July 20.

  Vo Nguyen Giap’s troops had sustained 22,900 casualties, 7,900 killed and 15,000 wounded, while the French buried 2,080 dead and treated 5,613 wounded. But Giap was the victor. He regrouped his four divisions at Dienbienphu and marched them east toward the Red River Delta and Hanoi. Certain that a general French defeat was near, General Nav
arre rearranged his troops in the Red River Delta and placed them around Hanoi and along Highways 5 and 18 between Hanoi and Haiphong, the last escape route out of Tonkin.

  The defeat toppled the French government. Prime Minister Joseph Laniel resigned on June 12 and Pierre Mendes-France, a radical socialist, became prime minister. He stunned the French Chamber of Deputies announcing, “I promise to resign if, one month from now, on July 20, I have failed to obtain a cease-fire in Indochina” Mendes-France was committed to ending the war that had brought only humiliation to his country.

  The Eisenhower administration realized that a settlement in Geneva was inevitable and that the communists would gain part of Indochina. On June 24 Dulles told congressional leaders that the United States would have to look beyond Geneva and try to salvage something in Southeast Asia. In particular, he talked of assuming the responsibility for making sure that not another domino fell in Indochina. In order to “keep freedom alive,” Dulles worked for a NATO-like regional alliance system in Southeast Asia. Nobody was farsighted enough to recognize that the United States was setting itself up for another Asian land war.

  Mendes-France’s promise and the change in the American position breathed new life into the Geneva talks. Anthony Eden began assuming a central role in the conference, as did Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet representative. Along with Zhou Enlai, they persuaded Pham Van Dong and the Vietminh to accept a temporary partitioning of Vietnam to be followed by reunification elections. The French and the Vietminh hotly debated the question of where to divide Vietnam and when to hold the elections. Bidault wanted the dividing line as far north and the elections as far into the future as possible. Pham Van Dong wanted the dividing line as far south and the elections as soon as possible. Unlike Dienbien-phu, this battle went to the French. The Geneva Accords divided Vietnam at the seventeenth parallel into North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The accords imposed a ceasefire and provided for the withdrawal of French forces from North Vietnam and Vietminh forces from South Vietnam within the next three hundred days. Both the French and the Vietminh were to withdraw their troops from Laos and Cambodia. The accords provided for free elections in 1956, with the goal of reunifying the two Vietnams. An International Control Commission composed of representatives from India, Canada, and Poland was established to monitor compliance with the accords.