American Diplomacy in Vietnam

            How did the United States arrive in the Vietnam quagmire?  Diplomatic policies shaped by world events brought the U.S. into the Vietnam conflict.  However, it is not a very simple formula because there were many complicated shifts in policy based on the U.S. leadership and world conditions.  In order to better understand the U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960’s, we have to trace the relationship all the way back to the end of World War I and the Versailles Conference.  President Woodrow Wilson proposed self determination as early at 1919 at the peace talks ending World War I but when faced with an actual case of a small territory aiming to regain its independence from a dominating imperialistic Western country, Wilson failed to follow through.  This is actually the beginning of Ho Chi Minh’s quest for freedom as well as the beginning of U.S. domestic policy involving Vietnam.

            Although Ho never mentioned independence in his statement to Woodrow Wilson, Ho was inspired by “Wilson’s famous doctrine of self-determination” (Karnow).  The fact that Wilson refused to see Ho directed Ho’s future quest for independence for it was that moment that turned Ho to the French Socialists for support against colonialism.  This is the first of many misunderstanding that the U.S. leaders affected in policies towards the Vietnamese.

            Following World War II, and FDR’s death, we see a similar slight to Ho from President Harry Truman who saw Ho as a Communist and nothing else.  However, prior to his death, FDR in collaboration with Winston Churchill “pledged ‘to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them’” (Karnow).  Had FDR lived to see the Atlantic Charter implemented after the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. position in Vietnam may have been different, but FDR died and the political shift in policy followed newly appointed President Truman.  Due to the United States’ increasing fear of Communism in general, highlighted by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch hunts within the United States itself and the fall of nationalist China to Communist Mao Zedong and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, U.S. policy seemed to forbid any support for Ho in his quest for Vietnam’s freedom.  “Containment” became the most important policy in foreign affairs and U.S. diplomacy with Ho was halted.

            Ironically, U.S. policy had entered into an alliance with Ho against a common enemy in the closing years of World War II, the Japanese who were controlling Vietnam since their occupation in March 1945.  The Office of Strategic Services assisted Ho and his followers by providing weapons and arms instruction, as well as the training of Vietnam resurgence effort in exchange for intelligence on the Japanese and help in finding American pilots lost during World War II.  Ho and the O.S.S. were mutually accommodating during this period.  In fact, because of O.S.S. equipment, the Viet Minh were now armed and trained in combat and would use those skills to break free from France, and later from the United States.

            Unfortunately, the alliance did not last for long as U.S. policy shifted toward “containment.”  With this shift, the U.S. entered an alliance with France.  Although the United States disapproved of French tactics, the desire to support its European ally, combined with a growing concern over Communist power in Asia, led first President Truman and later President Eisenhower into close cooperation with the French war effort.  As a matter of fact, the U.S. funded the majority of France’s effort to retain its colony in Indochina.  By 1954, when the Geneva Conference brought a temporary end to fighting in Vietnam, the United States was paying over 75 percent of the French war costs. Therefore, U.S. diplomacy shifted from assisting Ho to assisting the establishment of democracy in the form of the imperialistic France.

            After the fall of Dien Bien Phu and France’s surrender of its reign over Vietnam, U.S. policy shifted toward assisting the non-Communist regime in South Vietnam.  Established by the Geneva Accords in 1954, the area south of the 17^th parallel was governed by Ngo Dinh Diem and the area north was ruled by Ho Chi Minh and would remain as such until the proposed reunification elections were to take place in 1956.  Diem’s regime was supported by the U.S., but was corrupt and authoritative in which he directed violence at anyone he deemed a threat to his administration, including Buddhists and South Vietnamese Communists.  Diem went as far as to refuse to hold the 1956 reunification election and expected backing from his U.S. supporters due to their increasing fear of Communism, which he received.  Presidents from Kennedy to Nixon continued to support the South Vietnamese regimes, even after each one fell because of warring factions, corruption, and internal dissent. 

            Foreign relations were directed by the idea of “containment” which was initiated by President Truman and further defined by President Eisenhower’s domino theory and President Johnson’s warnings that Communism, if not contained in Asia, would “menace ‘the beaches of Waikiki’” (Karnow).   Because of this fear of Communism, the Soviet Union also unwittingly played a key role in the U.S. diplomatic affairs with South Vietnam.  Before the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, “the Soviet Union…showed little interest in Ho Chi Minh”  (Karnow).  However, the U.S. and its fear of the expansion of Communism, inexplicably linked Ho Chi Minh to “a worldwide Soviet plan to dominate the world” (Karnow).  Thus, in 1947, the U.S. under Harry Truman “conceded that Ho’s Communist ‘connections’ might serve the Kremlin’s purposes” (Karnow).  This fear of a strengthening Communist Soviet Union spurred Secretary of State Dean Acheson to state that Ho’s nationalism was irrelevant because Ho was first and foremost a Communist.  Because of this perceived connection with the Soviet Union, the U.S. tightened its grip in an attempt to control Communism in Vietnam in order to prevent Soviet control of Southeast Asia through Ho.  This furthered the commitment to the Saigon regime, regardless of how corrupt or unstable it had been because, in the eyes of the U.S., the fall to the Kremlin would be worse than trying to assist a defective democratic regime.

            Therefore, the U.S. policy towards Vietnam after World War II was directed by fears of Communism and Truman’s policy of containment.  Each President following Truman, all the way through to Nixon, continued to support the Saigon regime because of the fear of losing all of Southeast Asia to Communism and the idea of “containing” Communism everywhere.  From the support given to France in its Indochina war to the U.S. direct involvement in the Vietnam War, “containment” was the key. 

Sources:  Stanley Karnow.  Vietnam:  A History.  Penguin Group, 1997.

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