AMST 3100 The 1960s Vietnam 19451963

1
AMST 3100 The 1960sVietnam 1945-1963

• Powerpoint 9
• Read Farber Chapter 6

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Vietnams Significance

• The Vietnam War grew directly from the policies
  of the Cold War, and the consequences of the U.S.
  role in Vietnam are still being felt today.
  
• The youth culture of the 1960s was forced to
  consider a distant struggle that was the
  antithesis of what many thought America stood
  for. The war
• pitted generations against each other.
• led to world fears of American imperialism that
  reverberate even now and call into question
  Americas role in the world.
  
• crippled LBJs war on poverty and ultimately led
  to his demise.
  
• led to the exposure of political leadership in a
  web of lies and deception, crippling American
  faith in politics.
  
• contributed to a significant decline in American
  idealism.
  
• killed roughly 58,000 American GIs and up to 5
  million Vietnamese.
  

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The Starting Point

• 1940s Cold War Context
• Climate of anticommunism.
• Climate of American moralism.
• Climate of superpower rivalry.
• Climate of (male) machismo among U.S.
  leadership.
  
• 1950s Cold War Context
• The Korean War containment via confrontation.
• The domino theory.
• The U.S. as a nation builder.

Click on the map for a larger view of the U.S.
domino theory perspective in 1950.
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The Korean War (1950-53)

• While the North did invade the South, Truman
  mistakenly assumed that the Soviets were
  responsible for the Korean War. He viewed it as a
  test of U.S. resolve to fight communism.
• In reality it was a civil war over a nation that
  had been divided into two halves by the politics
  of the Cold War. This is significant to the
  Vietnam experience.
• Aside from Korea, Truman and other U.S.
  presidents lumped many Third World nationalist
  liberation movements as Soviet-run communist
  take-overs. This mistaken assumption would lead
  to numerous U.S. foreign policy blunders during
  the 1940s-1970s.
• In fact, many insurrections were essentially
  nationalist movements intended to bring
  sovereignty to former colonies of Western
  empires.

U.S. artillery, Korea. In this war, unlike
Vietnam, the U.S. had the support of the United
Nations.
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Key American Cold War Errors

• 1. The American failure to understand the effects
  of Western colonialism in the Third World.
  
• 2. Due to American Cold War fears, Americans
  misinterpreted post-1945 Third World liberation
  movements (nationalism) as Soviet-led communism.
  
• 3. The domino theory did not hold up if
  insurrections were nationalist-inspired more than
  communist-inspired, yet the U.S. clung to the
  domino theory, partly because it sold well.

This is a photo of the Shah of Iran, placed in
power by the U.S. in 1953. In 1953-54, just as
the Korean War was ending, the U.S. thwarted
democracy in Iran and Guatemala and installed
right-wing dictatorships friendly to American
multinational corporations. In both cases, the
CIA-sponsored coups were directed against
legitimately elected leaders who had dared to
speak of nationalizing some of their countrys
resources (oil fields, banana plantations, etc).
In effect the U.S. was a colonial power in the
name of anticommunism.
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The Korean War Set Precedents

• It represented a decisive moment in U.S. foreign
  policy by establishing precedents that shaped
  subsequent policy
  
• 1. The central belief that military containment
  works.
  
• 2. A willingness to support capitalist right-wing
  dictatorships in the name of anti-communism.
  
• 3. The feeling that increased brutality was
  necessary during times of war.
  
• 4. The idea that Asia was a key battleground in
  the Cold War.
  
• 5. The use of executive lies and public deception
  as necessary for national security.
  
• 6. The President could by-pass Congress in making
  war.
  

This is a photo of American GIs torturing a
Vietnamese captive. The technique is called
water-boarding, where the victim has water poured
through their nose to stimulate the sensation of
drowning. Such techniques were part of the
Korean War lessons that brutality was necessary
in war. The communists tortured Americans, too,
sometimes in the most grotesque techniques
imaginable.
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Vietnam

• Vietnam was an extension of the Korean
  involvement.
  
• Truman supported the French colonialists during
  the Indochina War (1946-1954).
  
• The Indochina War was a conflict between the
  French imperialists, who sought to return Vietnam
  as a colony of France, versus the Vietnamese
  nationalists (most of whom were also communists)
  who sought sovereignty for Vietnam.
• The U.S. supported the French, while China and
  the USSR supported the nationalist communists.
  
• The Indochina War was largely funded and partly
  supplied by the U.S. in exchange for French
  support for the American-desired NATO.
  
• The French and Americans sought to carve out the
  southern region of Vietnam and turn it into
  South Vietnam in a nation-building experiment.
  South Vietnam would be a pro-U.S. capitalist
  friend.

Richard Nixon visits Vietnam, 1953.
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Vietnamese History

• Vietnam has a long history of invasion and
  colonization by outsiders
  
• China occupied Vietnam for 1200 years and was
  finally repelled in 939 AD. Vietnam would be
  largely independent until the 19th century.
  
• In the 19th century, France invaded and occupied
  Southeast Asia (including the southern region of
  Vietnam) and for 100 years it was a French
  colony. While Buddhism is Vietnams dominant
  religion, the French preferred Christianity.
• Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam during WWII.
• France, devastated by WWII, tried to re-occupy
  Vietnam (with U.S. support) from 1945-54 but was
  driven out.
  
• The U.S. stepped in to occupy South Vietnam in
  1954 and was driven out by 1975. The U.S. never
  won over the hearts and minds of the indigenous
  population of the region. They were outsiders,
  just as the French and Japanese were.

Japanese officer surrenders to an Indian officer
in Saigon, 1945. The Vietnamese hoped they had
finally won their independence, but the French,
with American support, re-occupied Vietnam
immediately after WWII. This re-occupation
provoked the First Indochina War.
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Ho Chi Minh

• Leader of the Vietnamese nationalist movement to
  bring sovereignty to the region.
  
• His most important characteristic is that he was
  a nationalist. This is what made him appealing to
  the Vietnamese. He was beloved.
  
• A hero during the Japanese occupation who, with
  British and American support, helped drive them
  out.
  
• Grateful to the American liberators and an
  admirer of the American Revolution, as is
  apparent in the Vietnamese Declaration of
  Independence.
• A Marxist with a proletariat background.
• Advocate of guerilla warfare tactics against
  foreign occupiers/imperialists.
  
• Not a puppet of the USSR or China. Unfortunately,
  Truman and others lumped him as a puppet of the
  Soviets.

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The First Indochina War 1946-1954

• In 1945, Vietnam was liberated from Japanese
  occupation.
  
• Ho Chi Minh celebrated the Americans as
  liberators and sends a letter to Truman begging
  him to honor the Atlantic Charter principles
  established by FDR.
• However, FDR caved in to French and British
  demands to return Vietnam as a colony of France.
  FDR felt he needed the French and British as
  allies in the emerging superpower rivalry with
  the Soviets.
• Truman carried out this policy by supporting the
  French in the Indochina War of 1946-1954..
  
• By 1954, the French lost a last stand battle
  (Dien Bien Phu) and signed the Geneva Accord of
  1954.

Medical attention is given to a French soldier
during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
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Geneva Accords, 1954

• 1. Established the sovereignty of all of
  Vietnam.
  
• 2. Allowed for the temporary division of Vietnam
  into two regions (North and South), which were to
  be unified by a national referendum in 1956.
  
• This democratic referendum would decide what kind
  of leadership would guide all of Vietnam.
  
• 3. Signed by the French and the Vietnamese, but
  the U.S. did not participate in the signing.
  
• This gave the U.S. a surface excuse when they
  ultimately refused to obey this accord.

The Geneva Convention of 1954 dealt with the
problems of Southeast Asia and established the
sovereignty of Vietnam, which was a major goal of
the Vietnamese nationalists. While the French and
Vietnamese signed the Accord, the Americans
declined to participate. They had their own
agenda for Vietnam.
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The U.S. Agenda

• The U.S. had no intention of allowing the
  unification of Vietnam.
  
• The national referendum of 1956 would certainly
  have led to Ho Chi Minhs election as leader of
  all of Vietnam, and he was a Marxist.
  
• By the mid-1950s, the CIA and other U.S. security
  agencies were trying to destabilize the Vietminh
  (the communist nationalists).
  
• The U.S. decided to enter into the region more
  directly to try to prop up South Vietnam as a
  noncommunist state.
  
• The U.S. quickly installed a dictator in South
  Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. He was expected to be a
  U.S. puppet.
  
• The U.S. set up advisors in South Vietnam, and
  proceeded to install the infrastructure necessary
  for stability.
  
• South Vietnam became a virtual puppet state of
  the American empire in what the Americans
  labeled nation building.

The U.S. helped oust the former emperor, Bao Dai
, and installed Diem in 1954 as Prime Minister,
just after the Geneva Accords.
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U.S. Nation Building

• To the U.S. policy makers, Vietnam was just
  another Third World country with internal dissent
  and with communism threatening to take over.
  
• There was not a great deal of debate over what to
  do in the Truman/Eisenhower administrations.
  
• In Iran and Guatemala the U.S. set up puppet
  dictators relatively easily at this same time.
  
• The U.S. was convinced it could avoid the errors
  of the French.
  
• The French were colonialists, but the U.S. had no
  intention of creating a European-style colony.
  They wanted South Vietnam to ultimately stand on
  its own as a friendly-to-U.S. capitalist state.
• To the American leaders, the French did not know
  how to fight. World War II showed that the
  Americans knew how to fight.

John Foster Dulles, one of the architects of the
U.S. foreign policy that installed Diem, was
celebrated in 1954 by Time Magazine as Man of the
Year.
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Ngo Dinh Diem an Unlikely Unifier

• Installed as Prime Minister of South Vietnam by
  the U.S. in 1954-5. In 1955 he became President
  of the new republic in a fraudulent election
  guided by the U.S.. In effect, he was a right
  wing dictator.
• He was selected largely because he was educated
  in America and not connected to the hated French
  colonial aristocracy. He was fresh at a time
  when it was hard to find someone who was not
  connected to the French regime.
• Upper class, in a culture of peasants
  (proletariats).
  
• An Asian Catholic (in a Buddhist region).
• An anti-communist.
• A nationalist.
• A reluctant puppet of the Americans.
• Stubborn, aloof, and elitist.

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Diem

• Diem was given unlimited support by the U.S. to
  buy off his opponents.
  
• With the support of the Americans, Diem proceeded
  to subvert the 1954 Geneva Accords which promised
  to impose unity on the divided nation by 1956.
  
• Diem refused to permit the election.
• Diem proceeded to legitimize his own authority
  and held a rigged referendum in South Vietnam.
  
• He received 600,000 votes in Saigon, a city of
  400,000.

This is a photo of Diem in 1957 when he visited
the U.S.. President Eisenhower stands next to
him. Foster Dulles stands behind Eisenhower.
16
Nation Building

• In the 1950s, the military side of the equation
  always came first.
  
• John Foster Dulles (Sec. of State) thought that
  the primary requirement for South Vietnam
  nationhood was the creation of a strong
  military.
• During the 1950s, virtually all of Americas
  military energy was devoted to building a
  conventional army (the ARVN Army Republic of
  Vietnam), with little effort to develop
  anti-guerrilla tactics.
• The results
• 1. The rural country, which was most of Vietnam,
  was never controlled.
  
• 2. The military build-up reinforced the image of
  the U.S. as yet another colonial power.

The primary architects of nation-building,
Eisenhower and Dulles, meet in 1956. Dulles had
an almost religious fever against communism. He
felt if South Vietnam was made into a right-wing
dictatorship it would be better for U.S.
interests than if it was to become communist,
even if Ho Chi Minh was open to a democratic
system.
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Nation Building

• Nevertheless, most Americans believed they were
  being successful.
  
• The ARVN was getting bigger.
• Diem had entrenched his power.
• Western goods flowed into Saigon.
• The U.S. corporate media routinely echoed
  political and military authority without question.

The mainstream American media did not challenge
the basic assumptions behind U.S.
nation-building. Americans were deeply concerned
about the spread of communism.
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Diem

• Most Americans were a bit naïve. In fact, Diem
  was no hero.
  
• The CIA knew he was hated by the Vietnamese
  people and advised Diem to break up the huge land
  estates of the corrupt aristocracy land reform
  was essential. Yet Diem resisted this advice.
• In 1961 Diem and his American advisors initiated
  a highly unpopular peasant relocation program,
  the Strategic Hamlet Program.
  
• What property Diem did redistribute went from
  local Buddhists to Catholics migrating down from
  the north.
  
• Diems brother jailed and murdered thousands of
  political dissenters in Diems repressive and
  authoritarian regime.
  
• The result was that the Vietnamese people felt
  alienated from Diem and his South Vietnamese
  system. This provided fertile soil for dissent.
  

The Strategic Hamlet program, begun in 1961,
uprooted peasants from their traditional farming
and ancestor areas and placed them in compounds
protected by spiked fences and armed guards. This
program was so unpopular it drove many peasants
to side with the communist nationalists. More on
this later.
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The Vietminh Mobilize

• By 1957, the Vietminh mobilized a campaign of
  discontent against Diem in the South.
  
• They encountered very receptive peasants.
• By 1959, with very little resource support from
  the north, the Vietminh succeeded in galvanizing
  support against Diems corrupt government.
  
• A similar event was happening in Cuba as Castro
  was over-throwing the U.S.-backed right-wing
  dictator, Batista.
  
• In late 1959, North Vietnam began a campaign of
  arming the rebels in the south, and they found
  that local rebels were already in control of the
  rural infrastructure.
• The rebels were now ready for full-scale attacks
  on the ARVN.
  
• The ARVN consisted of reluctant draftees who had
  little loyalty to the Diem regime. Unlike the
  Vietminh, they were not motivated fighters. It
  was largely a puppet army.

ARVN soldiers were typically Vietnamese
conscripts who were trained in conventional
warfare. Generally they were a poor army, but
there were some exceptions by the early 1970s.
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Which way does the wind blow?

• Ironically, by 1959 Eisenhower was showcasing
  South Vietnam as a model of communist
  containment.
  
• In effect, the U.S. had made itself hostage to
  the Diem regime, and by 1960 the U.S. had
  repeated most of the French errors that it had
  confidently stated it would avoid.
• Yet most Americans believed what they were told
  that South Vietnam was a model for nation
  building and successful containment.
  
• Americas Cold War assumptions had blinded it to
  the reality of the situation. Imperialism in the
  service of Cold War containment was unpopular
  among the Vietnamese, especially given the
  post-WWII rush by former colonies of Europe
  toward sovereignty.

President Diem watches an honor guard ceremony in
Saigon. Diem was aloof from the peasants.
21
American Imperialism

• In the name of communist containment, the U.S.
  had subverted
  
• The sovereignty rights of the southern
  Vietnamese.
  
• Democracy in the region, as promoted by the
  Geneva Accords.
  
• No truly free elections were permitted in South
  Vietnam under American policy.
  
• After all, how would the peasants likely have
  voted if they had been given an opportunity to
  participate in the Geneva Accord referendum
  slated for 1956?
• Freedom. South Vietnam was not a free society
  under the American system.
  
• To American policy makers, a right-wing
  dictatorship was preferable and even desirable
  over a free, truly democratic, and sovereign
  South Vietnam. American leaders did hope that
  maybe someday in the future after the peasants
  came around democracy and freedom could be
  considered.

22
U.S. Motivations in Vietnam

• To the U.S., the primary motivation for getting
  involved in Vietnam was to contain communism. But
  there was another, lesser motivation to open up
  new markets for capitalist expansion.
• This latter motivation is entirely
  self-interested.
  
• By the late 19th century, American foreign policy
  blurred these motivations together because of the
  influence of powerful multinational corporations
  and the military industrial complex on U.S.
  foreign policy.
• As an empire, the U.S. declares certain regions
  of the world of strategic interest to its
  survival, and this includes both political and
  economic considerations. At this time Southeast
  Asia was of strategic interest, especially in a
  political sense and to a lesser extent in an
  economic sense.

Even President Eisenhower, whose cabinet
consisted of one corporate executive after
another, warned Americans as he left office about
the dangerously growing influence of the military
industrial complex.
23
The Reaction at Home

• Americans were socialized to believe that their
  country stood for sovereignty, freedom and
  democracy.
  
• Americans were also socialized to be fairly
  moralistic we learned to view people and
  policies as good or evil.
  
• Students were socialized to view America as a
  sort of holy land of freedom, while communism
  (tyranny) was evil.
  
• When college students examined Vietnam closely
  many were morally outraged that U.S. policy
  subverted these basic American values in favor of
  a right-wing dictatorship.
• Similarly for Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, and other
  regions.
  
• Students became angry. They had been lied to.
  American foreign policy was not living up to its
  ideals, and it appeared to many by the early
  1960s that American domestic policy did not live
  up to its ideals either, given the legacy of
  racism.

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John Kennedy

• By the time Kennedy took office, the Vietminh had
  already turned to reunifying Vietnam via the
  countryside.
  
• Their campaign was not noble. Assassination was
  common. Both sides employed despicable tactics,
  including murder and torture.
  
• Diem appointed his puppets as village mayors. The
  Vietminh targeted these puppets who were
  unpopular - for assassination.
  
• By October, 1961, most of the South Vietnamese
  countryside was under the control of the
  Vietminh.
  
• In 1961, Kennedy believed that America could and
  should shape the structure of developing nations.
  
  
• JFK believed that political/economic instability
  was one of the sources of communist appeal among
  peasants.
  
• He believed the U.S. could help the Third World
  modernize and thus bring stability. This help
  could be economic or military.

Vietminh peasants in South Vietnam, near the DMZ,
with rifles stacked to be used against the ARVN.
25
Kennedy

• Kennedy realized the mistake of building up the
  ARVN a conventional army to fight a guerilla
  army, so he proposed a counterinsurgency force of
  guerillas called the Green Berets.
• However, like Eisenhower, JFK refused to see the
  Vietminh as nationalist fighters legitimately
  fighting for sovereignty.
  
• And like Eisenhower, JFKs administration had its
  share of ethnocentric arrogance North Vietnam
  cant beat us. They cant even make ice cubes.
  
• Only one of JFKs key advisors opposed the war
  George Ball (Under Sec. of State for Economic
  Affairs).
  
• Ball knew about Vietnamese history and their
  drive for sovereignty. He said that if the U.S.
  maintained the fiction of South Vietnam it
  would blow up into a military war.

Undersecretary of State, George Ball. One of the
few Kennedy advisors who opposed American war
policy in Vietnam.
26
Kennedy initially escalates the war

• In May, 1961, Kennedy sent 500 advisors to
  Vietnam, bringing the total to 1400.
  
• The military wanted a force of 13,000 and put
  great pressure on Kennedy. He wavered at first,
  but began to escalate U.S. involvement over the
  next year.
• By the end of 1962, there were 11,300 advisors
  in Vietnam and napalm was being used on rural
  villages.
  
• Increasingly, hawks portrayed Vietnam in terms of
  American machismo. Doves were sissies and
  cowards.
  
• Kennedy and most other politicians played to the
  hawks, but Kennedy was also determined not to
  make Vietnam a full blown war.
  
• He would not bomb the North.
• He would not send troops to South Vietnam.

This photo, taken around 1970, depicts Americans
consulting a map as they help the ARVN. In the
JFK era, the President was not authorized to have
troops in Vietnam. Hence, advisors were sent to
train and increase the combat readiness of the
ARVN.
27
Strategic Hamlet Program

• Rural areas were increasingly controlled by the
  Vietminh (now called Viet Cong cong means
  communist). To prevent this, the U.S. initiated
  the Strategic Hamlet program between 1961-63.
• This was a program of forced removal of civilians
  away from their ancestral region to new villages
  controlled by the ARVN. A stockade was built
  around the village and patrolled by soldiers
  sort of like a concentration camp only it was to
  protect the villagers. The program was
  ultimately run by Nhu Diem, the unpopular brother
  of the President.
• This strategy failed and actually led to an
  increase in peasants joining the Viet Cong. As
  was pointed out "Peasants resented working
  without pay to dig moats, implant bamboo stakes,
  and erect fences against an enemy that did not
  threaten them but directed its sights against
  government officials."

Americans inspect punji stakes at a Vietnamese
hamlet constructed under the Strategic Hamlet
Program.
28
The Situation Deteriorates

• Despite the failure of American policies, the
  military elite reported that the war was fast
  being won and some predicted victory by 1965.
  
• The American corporate press echoed this spin,
  and the average American was not well informed
  about Vietnam.
  
• In reality, the war was being won by the Viet
  Cong all along.
  
• The Strategic Hamlet program, the U.S. use of
  napalm, and the U.S. bombing of southern villages
  had turned most peasants against the U.S..
  
• Many were joining the Viet Cong cause of
  liberation.

This photo depicts a napalm attack on a South
Vietnam village. Napalm is usually gasoline
based. When it has contact with skin it burns it
off. The American military continues to use
napalm, or variants of it.
29
Kennedy tries to de-escalate

• By 1963 the situation was even worse.
• There were now 16,500 advisors in Vietnam.
• Diem had refused to implement land reform for the
  peasants and his policies were not popular.
  Kennedy knew that Diem was a disaster and
  searched for alternative policies.
• JFK, determined not to let Vietnam blow up into
  an all out war, decided by the Fall of 1963 to
  begin the withdrawal of the U.S. advisors. About
  1000 of the 16,500 advisors had been removed by
  the time he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.
• Had he lived, some say it is likely the rest
  would have been pulled out, leaving only a force
  large enough to guard the U.S. embassy. That is
  one view, at least.
• The National Security Action Memorandum No. 263
  suggests he intended the U.S. to remain in
  Vietnam, but cautiously.

30
Events of 1963

• In the summer of 1963, the CIA approved the
  assassination of Diem, with Kennedys tacit
  approval.
  
• Diem was killed in a coup detat on Nov. 2, 1963.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Kennedy lacked a clear policy to
  pursue in Vietnam.
  
• JFK felt, at least during the early part of his
  administration, that the U.S. could not show
  weakness, lest the communists exploit it.

These South Vietnamese generals were behind the
coup that assassinated Diem. It is believed they
were paid with CIA funds.
31
Chafe Four Interrelated Themes in JFKs Cold War
Vietnam Policy

• 1. JFK believed that communism was a monolithic
  conspiracy spearheaded by Russia and China to
  take over the world. Vietnam was a domino in this
  plan.
• 2. Khruschev seemed to endorse communist
  expansion.
  
• 3. Due to a series of reversals elsewhere (Cuba
  and Laos), JFK felt he needed to take a strong
  stand somewhere. U.S. credibility was at stake.
  
• 4. Vietnam was a laboratory to test the U.S.
  strategy of flexible response the Green
  Berets.
  
• Chafe argues that for these reasons, Kennedy
  was responsible for escalating the Vietnam
  conflict, just as Eisenhower had done when he
  committed the U.S. to nation-building in Vietnam
  in 1954.

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AMST 3100
End