Embers of War (98 page)

Zhou Enlai in particular played a critical role in facilitating the ultimate agreement of July 20–21. Content in the conference’s early weeks to maintain a fairly low profile, his more activist posture from mid-June onward proved decisive, as the courteous elegance and diplomatic savvy for which he would in time be heralded came to the fore. “The godfather of the partition solution,” U.S. delegate Chester Cooper would call Zhou, and this seems fair. For although partition had been bandied about as a potential solution for many weeks prior to Geneva, it was the Chinese premier’s subtle but forceful advocacy, coming at a time when many predicted the imminent dissolution of the conference, that made all the difference. As Cooper put it, “once [Zhou] advanced the idea, it achieved enough momentum that by early July, it was not a question of
whether
there would be a partition, but
where
the dividing line in Vietnam would be.”
³¹

Of course, behind Zhou Enlai there loomed always the imposing figure of Mao Zedong. Zhou always deferred to Mao in matters of significance—usually in a fawningly servile way—and there is no doubt that Zhou acted, in these climactic days in Geneva, at the behest of his leader.
³²
In this sense it is Mao Zedong who could be considered the
true
godfather of partition. Whatever one’s position on the matter, the broader point stands: The Chinese contribution to the final settlement of the Indochina War was crucial.

That DRV officials chafed under the pressure from their powerful allies is undeniable. “He has double-crossed us,” Pham Van Dong is alleged to have muttered to an aide after one of the final haggling sessions, in reference to Zhou, a remark that has the ring of truth.
³³
But the argument should not be taken too far. The Viet Minh, as we have seen, had their own reasons for wanting a negotiated settlement in mid-1954, their own concerns about the balance of forces on the ground, their own fears of American intervention. Even before Geneva, internal documents show, they thought in terms of the area around the sixteenth parallel as a possible line of division, and they reiterated this suggestion in the early, secret Franco–Viet Minh negotiations in Geneva. The demand for the thirteenth parallel came later, after the investiture of Mendès France and his promise to end the war in a month or resign; most likely it was an attempt to drive a hard bargain in an altered environment rather than a firm negotiating position. And if the sixteenth parallel was the real Viet Minh objective all along, the common assertion in the literature that the acceptance of the seventeenth parallel was a surrender forced on the DRV by her allies seems excessive. A concession, yes, but not a surrender.
³⁴

Surrender
is a term better applied to the Viet Minh’s acceptance of another Sino-Soviet proposal: namely, to delay the elections for reunification well beyond the six months demanded by Pham Van Dong. Confident that the Viet Minh would win any nationwide election, the DRV foreign minister and his colleague Ta Quang Buu clung to this demand up until the final few days. Western officials understood only too well that Ho Chi Minh would win in such a vote, which was why they wanted as long a delay as possible, or—even better—no fixed date at all. “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs,” Dwight Eisenhower later famously remarked, “who did not agree that had elections been held as of the time of the fighting, possibly 80 percent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.”
³⁵

Neither Zhou nor Molotov seemed willing to force the issue. Zhou did not object when Mendès France, at their pivotal meeting in Berne on June 23, said elections could not be held in Vietnam until the people had been given sufficient time to cool off and calm down. The Chinese premier said the final political settlement should be reached via direct negotiations between the two governments in Vietnam, and he gave no sense that these negotiations needed to happen right away. He even assured Mendès France that Paris could play a useful role in the talks and that he saw no reason why the eventually united State of Vietnam could not remain within the French Union.
³⁶
Molotov, for his part, was initially a bit more helpful to the DRV’s cause, pressing as late as July 16 for elections to take place in June 1955. That very day, however, he backed off and said any time in 1955 would be acceptable. The Western representatives refused, and with time running out on July 20, he made his suggestion of July 1956.

The Western negotiators made their own concessions, but fewer than each of them had initially thought would be necessary to secure an agreement. Anthony Eden had arrived in Geneva deeply desirous of gaining a deal, and he never gave up even when prospects were at their lowest—at times, it seemed his will alone kept the conference going. Arguably he did as much as anyone to facilitate a successful outcome, and his performance from start to finish drew tributes from all sides—except perhaps from the American duo of Dulles and Smith. Australia’s foreign affairs minister R. G. Casey wrote in his diary of Eden’s “almost inhuman good humour and patience.” Echoed France’s Jean Chauvel: “Towards his foreign partners he had the best conference table manners I have ever seen.”
³⁷

But it was more than that. Eden’s advocacy—fully supported by Winston Churchill in London—greatly complicated the Americans’ not-so-secret hopes of seeing the conference break up without agreement. He disrupted the Eisenhower administration’s preferred narrative—that negotiations with Communists had yet again been a fruitless endeavor, proving once more that talk should be resolutely avoided unless they involved the terms of said Communists’ surrender—just as he had confounded it for several months, going back to the Berlin conference in January–February. This was no ordinary ally speaking, after all; this was Great Britain, America’s most important partner in world affairs, the one whose opinion mattered most. The personal feud between Eden and Dulles was real and deep and important, as we have seen, but it should not obscure the fact that the two countries disagreed fundamentally about how to proceed in Indochina, and that Britain’s stance limited Washington’s options.

“I was continually producing proposals,” Eden recalled, “because if I did not we stuck fast. On the other hand, we were constantly being criticized for doing so, particularly in the American press.… I had been compelled to adopt the role of intermediary between the Western powers and the Communists. My activities in this respect were open to every kind of misrepresentation. I was concerned about their effect on Anglo-American relations.”
³⁸
This account omits important elements in Eden’s calculations—a Geneva agreement would strengthen his political standing at home, as he waited impatiently for Churchill to vacate 10 Downing Street, and also elevate Britain’s standing in East-West matters generally—but overall it seems right: The foreign secretary did serve a vital intermediary role, especially in the early phases of the conference.

He was less vital after that because by then Pierre Mendès France was on the scene. The premier took an enormous risk that he could end the war within a month of taking office, and he won. He made clear his determination both to achieve a settlement and to gain concessions for France, and he succeeded. The right-wing
Le Figaro
, not normally a supporter, on July 21 paid tribute to his efforts, while making a nod also to Laniel and Bidault, who went before:

We are in mourning. Half our positions in the Far East are lost, and the rest are severely shaken. The free world, which must concede a new territory to Communist expansion in Asia, is also in mourning. But once things have gone this far, a failure by Mendès France in Geneva would have made the immediate future look dark and stormy indeed.

Let us be thankful to him for his success. Soon, French blood will no longer flow in a hopeless battle.

M. Mendès France has worked hard and well for his nation in Geneva. It would be unjust to permit him to bear alone the burden of surrenders that had already been written into the record before he came to power. It would be equally wrong to forget—and we can be sure he would not think of doing so himself—that his predecessors in Geneva undertook the task, started the talks, and laid out solutions.
³⁹

At a press conference in Washington that same day, President Eisenhower expressed satisfaction that an agreement had been reached to stop the bloodshed in Indochina. But he emphasized that the United States was not a party to the accords or bound by them, for the agreement contained elements that the administration could not support. The task now, he continued, would be to pursue the formation of a collective defense organization to prevent further direct or indirect aggression in Southeast Asia.
⁴⁰
Privately, Eisenhower knew what every other informed observer knew: that the terms of the agreement at Geneva were far better, from France’s perspective and the West’s perspective, than would have been expected on the day the proceedings opened. He felt a measure of vindication. America’s tough words, starting with Dulles’s speech in September 1953 that warned of major retaliation if China intervened directly in the war, had had their effect. The threat of direct U.S. military involvement caused nervousness in Beijing and Moscow and helped persuade the Viet Minh to accept concessions in the final agreement—the sources make that clear.

Which is not to say the administration should get great credit for conscious policy planning. Quite the contrary, senior policy makers were usually uncertain and hesitant as they tried to maneuver around an imposing set of obstacles: a grim battlefield situation in Vietnam and a poor bargaining position in Geneva; powerful—and contradictory—congressional pressure to prevent any territorial loss to the Communists and, at the same time, to avoid “another Korea”; the troubles and the fall of a Laniel government in which Washington had vested so much hope, with respect not merely to Indochina but also to the European Defense Community. Nevertheless, at the end of the day Eisenhower and Dulles had a deal they could live with. They had two years before the elections, two years in which to build up the South Vietnamese government, free of the taint of French colonialism. Canada, a loyal ally, had a seat on the International Control Commission and could be counted on to “block things.”
⁴¹
All in all, hardly a catastrophe.

For others, including two of the principal craftsmen of the agreement, the time to look ahead had not yet come; it was enough now to reflect on what had been and what had been achieved. “The agreements,” said Anthony Eden in the wee hours of July 21, “are the best that our hands could devise.” Jean Chauvel was more somber: “There is no good end to a bad business.”
⁴²

CHAPTER 25
“WE HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE BUT TO WIN HERE”

T
HEY ARRIVED AT DAYBREAK IN HANOI’S OUTER NEIGHBORHOODS
. the green-uniformed troops of the People’s Army, in Molotova trucks, in jeeps, on bicycles, and on foot. In the lead were infantry of the 308th Division, many of them veterans of Dien Bien Phu, carrying their mortars and machine guns as well as bouquets of gladiolas. Word spread quickly among the city’s residents, who rushed out on the sidewalks to cheer the procession. “Long live President Ho!” they chanted. “Long live the People’s Army!” “Free Vietnam!” Already the gold-starred red flags of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam fluttered from almost every window, and banners had been hung proclaiming “
Doc lap!
” (independence). It was the eve of the formal Viet Minh takeover of the city, under the terms of the Geneva Accords. It was Saturday, October 9, 1954.

Later in the day, a very different scene played itself out. Near the Citadel at the city’s heart, a lone French bugler sounded taps as the tricolor was lowered for the last time. A steady rain fell. A small contingent of battle-weary officers and men watched passively as a silently weeping colonel accepted the furled flag. In eight years of war, the French Expeditionary Corps had won more engagements than it had lost, had killed far more enemy soldiers than it had lost, yet victory had not come. “We shall never come back,” a French colonel murmured, his head bowed. “My heart is heavy when I think of the great heritage we are abandoning.”
¹

The French withdrawal occurred sector by sector, almost street by street, the engines of the armored cars growling in low gear. The last three streets were those converging on the road leading to the Paul Doumer Bridge that spanned the rain-swollen Red River. At long last, in the early evening, the last car made its way up the slope of the bridge. The three French officers who had been directing traffic glanced around, looked at one another, then walked slowly up the slope. The Vietnamese onlookers, sensing the moment, surged forward to the edge of the bridge. After a few minutes, the three men were gone from view. In that instant, Hanoi, the apple of French colonialism’s eye since a detachment under Lieutenant Francis Garnier marched into town in 1873 and claimed it for France, passed fully into Viet Minh control.