Embers of War (134 page)

29
See, e.g., George C. Herring,
America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975
, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 48; Duiker,
U.S. Containment
, 183.

30
See here, e.g., Zhou Enlai’s comments to Eden on July 13, as recorded in Minutes of meeting between Zhou Enlai and Anthony Eden, July 13, 1954, Record No. 206-Y0006, CFMA. Translated by Chen Jian.

31
Chester L. Cooper,
In the Shadows of History: Fifty Years Behind the Scenes of Cold War Diplomacy
(Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2005), 126.

32
Zhou’s “servant mentality” vis-à-vis Mao is a theme in Gao Wenqian,
Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary: A Biography
(New York: Public Affairs, 2009). On Mao’s strategy at Geneva, see also Yang Kuisong, “Changes in Mao Zedong’s Attitude toward the Indochina War, 1949–1973,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper no. 34 (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2002), 6–11.

33
Quoted in Stanley Karnow,
Vietnam: A History
(New York: Viking, 1983), 220. This point was also emphasized by Trinh Quang Thanh, interviewed by author, Hanoi, January 2003.

34
I’m grateful to Geoffrey Warner for sharing his views on this point. And see here also Asselin, “Democratic Republic of Vietnam.”

35
Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953–1956
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1963), 362.

36
Mendès-France, “Entrevue Mendès-France–Chou En Lai à Berne,” June 23, 1954, 71–77, IPMF.

37
Casey and Chauvel quoted in Cable,
Geneva Conference
, 88, 134.

38
Anthony Eden,
Full Circle: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), 144.

39
Le Figaro
, July 21, 1954.

40
The press conference is excerpted in
FRUS, 1952–1954, The Geneva Conference
, XVI, 1503.

41
Cooper,
Lost Crusade
, 99–100; Eisenhower-Dulles telcon, July 20, 1954, Box 4, Diary Series, Eisenhower Library.

42
Eden and Chauvel are quoted in Devillers and Lacouture,
End of a War
, 313.

CHAPTER 25:
“We Have No Other Choice but to Win Here”

  
1
Quoted in
Newsweek
, October 18, 1954. See also Donald Lancaster,
The Emancipation of French Indochina
(London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 359–67.

  
2
Quoted in
NYT
, October 11, 1954.

  
3
Jawaharlal Nehru,
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru
, 2nd. series, ed. Ravinder Kumar and H. Y. Prasad (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 27:21ff.

  
4
Luu Doan Huynh, interview by author, Hanoi, January 2003.

  
5
Neither the Democratic Republic of Vietnam nor its successor, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, has ever published casualty figures for their armed forces in the years 1945–54. The French have estimated a total of 500,000 Vietnamese killed during the war, including civilians. The figure here is an estimate drawn from various sources, including Stein Tønnesson,
Vietnam 1946: How the War Began
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 1; and Michael Clodfelter,
Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618–1991
, vol. 2:
1900–1991
(Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, 1992), 1122.

  
6
Lich Su Bien Nien Xu Uy Nam Bo va Trung Uong Cuc Mien Nam (1954–1975)
[Historical Chronicle of the Cochin China Party Committee and the Central Office for South Vietnam (1954–1975)] (Hanoi: National Political Publishing House, 2002), 33–47. Translated by Merle Pribbenow.

  
7
Sainteny to Paris, October 21, 1954, Dossier VII, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Marcel Duval, “L’Avenir des Intérêts Français en Indochine,”
France-Indochine
(December 1954), 236.

  
8
Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture,
End of a War: Indochina, 1954
(New York: Praeger, 1969), 355; Pierre Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine (1953–1956): Une ‘carte de visite’ en ‘peau de chagrin’ [France and Indochina (1953–1956): Visitor’s Pass to the Land of Sorrow], doctoral dissertation, Institut d’études politiques de Paris, September 2002, 1253–54.

  
9
MAE to Washington, August 13, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Claude Cheysson to PMF, “Note pour le Président,” August 12, 1954, Dossier VII, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Baudet to MAE, August 13, 1954, Indochine, vol. 157, Asie, 1944–1955, MAE.

10
Duval, “L’Avenir des Intérêts Français en Indochine,” 239; “Projet d’instructions à M. Sainteny,” September 1954, Dossier VI, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine,” 1258.

11
Note du Ministre des Etats Associés, September 30, 1954,
Documents diplomatiques français, 1954 (21 juillet–31 décembre)
, 489–92. See also Paul Ely,
L’Indochine dans la tourmente
(Paris: Plon, 1964), 246–49; and Laurent Cesari, “The Declining Value of Indochina: France and the Economics of Empire, 1950–1955,” in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall, eds.,
The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 193–94.

12
The Dulles press conference is reprinted in
Department of State Bulletin
, August 2, 1954.

13
Dulles is quoted in George McTurnan Kahin,
Intervention: How America Became Involved in Vietnam
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), 75.

14
NSC, “Review of U.S. Policy in the Far East,” August 1954,
Pentagon Papers. United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: Study Prepared by the Department of Defense
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 10:731–41.

15
Saigon to MAE, July 10, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF. See also Frances FitzGerald,
Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), 97.

16
Two important studies are Edward Miller, “Grand Designs: Vision, Power, and Nation Building in America’s Alliance with Ngo Dinh Diem, 1954–1960,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2004; and Jessica M. Chapman, “Debating the Will of Heaven: South Vietnamese Politics and Nationalism in International Perspective, 1953–56,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California–Santa Barbara, 2006.

17
Thomas L. Ahearn, Jr.,
CIA and the House of Ngo: Covert Action in South Vietnam, 1954–63
(Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2000), 31. At another point in these weeks Harwood put it more starkly: The “task is hopeless, but [the] effort must be made.” Thomas L. Ahearn, Jr.,
CIA and Rural Pacification in South Vietnam
(Washington, D.C.: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 2001), 2.

18
On the sects’ origins and their roles, see Jayne Susan Werner,
Peasant Politics and Religious Sectarianism: Peasant and Priest in the Cao Dai in Viet Nam
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, 1981); Frances R. Hill, “Millenarian Machines in South Vietnam,”
Comparative Studies in Society and History
13 (July 1971): 325–50; Hue-Tam Ho Tai,
Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam
(Boston: Harvard University Press, 1983); Bernard B. Fall, “The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam,”
Pacific Affairs
28 (September 1955): 235–53.

19
Don Oberdorfer,
Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 2003), 120–21. On Diem and relations with the U.S., see Seth Jacobs,
America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, 1950–1957
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Chapman, “Debating the Will of Heaven”; Miller, “Grand Designs”; David L. Anderson,
Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

20
Mike Mansfield, “Indochina,” report prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of a mission to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953), 14–15.

21
Oberdorfer,
Senator Mansfield
, 128; Memcon, Dulles and La Chambre, September 6, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 2:2007–10.

22
Oberdorfer,
Senator Mansfield
, 128.

23
Summary minutes of State Department meeting, September 25, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 2:2069.

24
George C. Herring,
America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950–1975
, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002),
57
.

25
Barbara W. Tuchman,
The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 270.

26
Ronald H. Spector,
Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 228–30.

27
The letter is reprinted in Marvin E. Gettleman et al., eds.,
Vietnam and America: A Documented History
(New York: Grove, 1995), 113–14.

28
NYT
, October 25, 1954.

29
“Compte rendu de la conversation entre M. Mendès France, M. Dulles, et M. Eden,” October 23, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF; Memcon, Dulles and PMF, October 24, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 2:2198–99; Grosser, “La France et l’Indochine,” 1282–85.

30
Eden quoted in Arthur Combs, “The Path Not Taken: The British Alternative to U.S. Policy in Vietnam, 1954–1956,”
Diplomatic History
19 (Winter 1995): 51. A few weeks later, when Mendès France visited Washington, he reiterated the pledge. “Compte rendu de la conversation entre M. Mendès France, M. Dulles, et M. Eden,” November 18–19, 1954, Dossier V, DPMF Indochine, IPMF.

31
Edwin E. Moïse, “Land Reform and Land Reform Errors in North Vietnam,”
Pacific Affairs
49, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 70–92; and Moïse,
Land Reform in China and North Vietnam
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), 178–268. See also Pierre Brocheux,
Ho Chi Minh: A Biography
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 152–60.

32
Quoted in Hy Van Luong,
Revolution in the Village: Tradition and Transformation in North Vietnam, 1925–1988
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1992), 190. Another firsthand account is Xuan Phuong and Danièle Mazingarbe,
Ao Dai: My War, My Country, My Vietnam
(Great Neck, N.Y.: EMQUAD, 2004), 162–86.

33
Moïse, “Land Reform and Errors in North Vietnam,” 73–78; Mark Philip Bradley,
Vietnam at War
(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2009), 70.

34
Ho quotes are from Brocheux,
Ho Chi Minh
, 158.

35
William J. Duiker,
Ho Chi Minh: A Life
(New York: Hyperion, 2000), 486–88.

36
A key study of Franco-American relations concerning Vietnam in this period is Kathryn C. Statler,
Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), chap. 4. French policy is also closely examined in Pierre Grosser’s massive study, “La France et l’Indochine,” 1253–1342.

37
Chester L. Cooper,
The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), 129.

38
Stanley Karnow,
In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines
(New York: Random House, 1989), 15.

39
A fine study is Jonathan Nashel,
Edward Lansdale’s Cold War
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005). Also useful is a highly sympathetic account by a former aide, Rufus Phillips,
Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned
(Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2008). See also Ahearn,
CIA and the House of Ngo;
and Cecil B. Currey,
Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988). Lansdale’s own recollections are in Edward Lansdale,
In the Midst of Wars: An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1991). The Dulles quotes are in Nashel,
Landsdale’s Cold War
, 1.

40
Phillips,
Why Vietnam Matters
, 14–15; J. Lawton Collins interview, 1981, WGBH Vietnam Collection,
openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/org.wgbh.mla:Vietnam
(last accessed on November 18, 2010).