No More Vietnams Read Online Free PDF Page A

visited in French colonial Hanoi in 1953 were among the best we saw on our official visits to over fifty Third World countries during the Eisenhower years. However, although in many respects Vietnam did benefit from their presence, the French failed in the most critical respect: They lacked the vision to prepare the Vietnamese for eventual self-rule and to set up a process to ensure stable government during the transition.
    Vietnam was destined to be independent. In the 1920s and 1930s, Vietnamese resentments over colonial rule, coupled with a deep sense of nationalism, led to a ground swell of opposition to the French. The fashionable view that only Ho Chi Minh’s Communist party sought independence is a myth. Scores of political groups organized to alter Vietnam’s status as a colony. These included the Constitutionalist party, the Vietnam People’s Progressive party, the Journey East movement, the League of East Asian Peoples, the Vietnam Restoration, the Vietnamese Nationalist party, the Vietnam Restoration Association, the Greater Vietnam Nationalist party, and two militant religious sects. Some sought self-determination within the French Community. Others wantedto break all ties with France and pushed for open warfare. Still others favored collaboration with Japan.
    The turning point was World War II. The Japanese conquests of Southeast Asia shattered the aura of invincibility that the European powers had enjoyed as colonial masters. After the war, Europe’s former subjects no longer held them in awe and would not tolerate foreign rule indefinitely. The Europeans found that they could either grant independence to their colonies voluntarily or be driven out militarily. Some, like the British in Malaysia, saw the writing on the wall and provided for a peaceful transition to independence. Others, like the French in Vietnam, asserted that they had come, as one French general put it, “to reclaim our inheritance” and delayed serious consideration of independence until it was too late to do so without bloodshed.
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    For France the result was the first Vietnam War. From 1946 to 1954, the French battled Vietnamese insurgents in a vain attempt to stay in Indochina. The United States from the outset urged France to give the colonies their independence. Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower all pushed for decolonization. But it took over $5 billion in military expenditures and 150,000 casualties before the French government was forced to follow that advice.
    France’s principal enemy was the Communist Viet Minh, led by Ho Chi Minh. During World War II, Ho had taken carefully calculated steps to position himself to strike for power afterward. At the war’s end, his opportunity came. Through ruthless and adroit infighting, he had eliminated his nationalist rivals as significant military forces. When the sudden surrender of Japan produced a vacuum of power in Vietnam, Ho moved quickly to exploit it. In 1945 he seized power in northern Vietnam and declared the creation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
    In 1945, when the French returned, they easily reestablished their control in southern Vietnam and extended their rule tonorthern Vietnam through the March 6, 1946, agreement with the Viet Minh. The French controlled all important cities but had no sound strategy to retake the countryside. They poured resources into building fortifications and spread themselves too thinly in widely scattered outposts. After relations between the French and the Communists broke down, the Viet Minh adopted the tactics of the weak—constant skirmishes, hit-and-run attacks, ambushes along jungle roads, always avoiding anything approaching an even test of strength. They also built a parallel government alongside the French colonial administration to organize those who supported them and to subdue or liquidate those who did not. Despite these efforts, the French continued to hold the upper hand