Vietnam

Link to PDF of book: http://charlesmartinreid.com/files/Karnow_Vietnam_A_History.pdf

Chapter 1: The War Nobody Won

• Vietnam had influence on later administrations' foreign policy decisions
  • Carter administration decisions not to block revolutionary movements (Angola, Ethiopia, Iran)
  • After bombing in Beirut, Reagan withdrew forces - lesson learned from Vietnam
  • Grenada - "comic" operation allowing appearance of showing force without risk of getting bogged down in large conflict
  • American public rebuffed Central America communists - avoid another Vietnam in Central America

• Lyndon Johnson - reluctant to go into Vietnam, tiptoed in
• Contrast to Bush in Iraq:

Thus Bush assembled a force that, combined with that of its allies, numbered more than six hundred thousand - larger than the U.S. military machine in Vietnam at its peak.

"There's so much at stake," he said. "Are we willing to die for oil? Are we willing to sacrifice our kids for the sake of stimulating our economy? We're still paying dearly for Vietnam."

- Bill Fournier, former policeman in Auburn, Maine, imploring Congress

• Differences between Vietnam and Gulf War... but parallels, too
  • No clear purpose
  • Failure to define concept behind attack
  • Unclear whether victory vital to US interests, or of illusory importance

• Vietnam reconstruction - daunting task; broken economy, broken social structure, exhausted population
• Civil war tore families apart, over 1 million fled abroad

"We should have heeded the old Chinese adage: 'You can conquer a country from horseback, but you cannot govern it from horseback.'"

- Tran Bach Dang, top Communist party adviser

"This is still very much a feudal society, whatever its ideological labels."

- Dr. Duong Quynh Hoa, physician

• Following Vietnam war, Russian technicians sent to improve railroads, build power plants, etc.
• "Vietnamese lamented the Russians as 'Americans without dollars.'"

Rejecting an urgent appeal for help, Moscow cables Vietnam: "Tighten your belts." To which Vietnam replies: "Send belts."

• The US commitment to the region dated back to 1950, when President Truman decided to help the French retain their hold over Indochina to block Chinese Communist expansion.

Chapter 2: Piety and Power

• Vietnam also known in Europe as Cauchinchina
• Portugese explorer, Prince Henry the Navigator, endorsed to explore by Pope Nicholas V (1454)
• Portugese explorers landed in east India, then Malacca (gateway to China Sea), then Cambodia and Vietnam
• "Giao Chi" - Chinese characters for Vietnam; became "Cauchi," then "Cauchichina"

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• August 1883 - Tu Duc dies, French fleet appeared at mouth of Perfume river near Hué
• French installed officials and garrisons, and exercised jurisdiction over Vietnamese authorities
• French collected customs, managed defense and foreign relations
• Vietnam was French posession

Clemenceau, more eloquent than ever, accused Ferry of "high treason" for bogging France down in Vietnam; his address foreshadowed speeches that French politicans were to hear, under similar circumstances, sixty years later. his words strangely resembled a private warning that deputy Secretary of State George Ball would send to Lyndon Johnson in 1965: "When our soldiers are again threatened, as they are today, we will be asked for more money and more men. We will not be able to refuse. And millions upon millions, fresh troops on top of fresh troops will lead to our exhaustion. Gentlemen, we must block this route.

But the French colonial experience would also open Vietnam to Western ideas that, along with the violence and repression and humiliation, rekindled Vietnamese nationalism.

Chapter 3: The Heritage of Vietnamese Nationalism

• Recorded history of Vietnam - begins in 208 BC, when Trieu Da, turncoat Chinese general, conquered Au Lac, domain in northern mountains of Vietnam populated by Viets (Mongolian descendants)
• Han dynasty annexed Vietnam as Chinese provice of Giao Chi
• Chinese integration of territory resembled way Rome managed territories, and way French managed territories a millenia later (military districts, advisers, schools, language, roads/ports/canals/infrastructure)
• China failed to assimilate Vietnamese, who retained ethnic singularity
• Vietnamese began a long history of challenging Chinese dominion
• 1418: Nguyen Trai, advisor to Le Loi (future emperor who had proclaimed himself Price of Pacification, led revolt) explained Vietnamese strategy in an essay
  • Similarities between Le Loi strategy and future strategy of 20th century Communists
  • Subordinate military action to the political and moral structure: "Better to conquer hearts than citadels"
  • Tot Dong, 1426: Chinese routed
• China acknowledged Vietnam independence

• Golden age of Vietnam: Le Thanh Tong, ascended throne in 1460, ruled for 38 years
• Political and bureaucratic structure of Le Thanh Tong's administration served Vietnam until French disrupted it 400 years later
  • Six ministries shaping policy, each paralleled by department to implement decisions
  • Standing army of 2,000 men

• By sixteenth century, Vietnam was in turmoil
  • Trinh and Nguyen clans
  • Nguyen Anh would turn to France in 18th century, lead to French intervention

The war between North and South Vietnam after 1954 largely expressed ancient regional animosities only newly overlaid with an ideological veneer. And the same tensions continued after 1975 as southern Communists balked at domination by their northern comrades. Equally inimical to Vietnam's unity was the traditional autonomy of its rural communities... A sense of Vietnamese national identity nevertheless grew into reaction to foreign intervention - crystallizing during the long resistance against the Chinese. it confronted the French from their first intrusions into Vietnam.

"A country is not conquered and pacified by crushing its people through terror. After overcoming their initial fear, the masses grow increasingly rebellious, their accumulated bitterness steadily rising in reaction to the brutal use of force."

- General Joseph Gallieni, French colonial officer and hero of WWI

• Early guerrillas (1859) - led by Buddhist monks, lived in inaccessible zones, nagged French soldiers

"We have had enormous difficulties in enforcing our authority... Rebel bands disturb the country everywhere. They appear from nowhere in large numbers, destroy everything and then disappear into nowhere."

- Admiral Bonard, French commander in Cochinchina

The more I sense my duty the more I feel

On my shoulders its infinite weight.

A man worthy of the name must blush

If he cannot pay the debt with his life.

- Nguyen Huu Huan, poet

• Young Vietnamese studying in Paris
  • Returned to Vietnam only to have newspapers/books confiscated
  • Could not find jobs to equal their capacities
  • French still treated them as inferiors, as servants
  • Many of them became revolutionaries
  • Economic change - transfer of financial burden from French taxpayers to Vietnamese people
  • Paul Doumer - governor-general of Indochina, mainly responsible for shift in financial burden

• Doumer built opium refinery
  • opium addiction rose, led to increase in colonial administration income
  • led to enormous undercurrent of contradictory/counterproductive outcomes

• French had made Indochina world's largest rice exporter after Burma and Thailand
  • commercial success impoverished peasantry
  • land-grabbing, speculation by rich led to peasants being pushed out
  • pressures of population growth
  • landless peasants - led to slave labor
• Rubber was second largest Vietnamese export after rice
• Hongay coal mines - output increased from (0.5 million in 1913) to (2 million in 1927)
• Indochina integrated into French economic order as exclusive source of raw materials and protected market for French merchandise

• Not just raw materials but MARKETS, too

• Primitive French capitalists drove Vietnamese nationalists to extremes
  • Moderates outpaced by communists
  • French steered Ho Chi Minh, personification of nationalism, toward violence

• Ho Chi Minh - left Vietnam in 1911 - would not see Vietnam for another 30 years
  • Went to Europe rather than Japan (hotspot for Asian nationalists)
  • Counting on Japanese against French: "drive the tiger out the front door while letting the wolf in through the back"
  • spent time at sea, 1913 went to United States, then ewent to London
• became politically involved in Europe

When he proclaimed Vietnam's independence from France in 1945, his speech would feature an excerpt from the American Declaration of Independence.

Ho might have preferred to stick with Socialists like Longuet and Blum, whose gentle temperament he shared. But he opted for the Communists, figuring that their Soviet patrons had the potential power to spark the global revolution that would liberate Vietnam. As Ho explained years afterward, "It was patriotism and not Communism that originally inspired me."

• 1924: Ho went to Moscow; Lenin had recently died, Soviet leaders only interested in power vacuum, not in Vietnam
• 1930s: world economic depression, rubber and rice prices plummeted, producti oncut, unemployment, hungry peasants
• Ho realized time was ripe for creation of united Communist party; met with leaders abroad in Hong Kong (soccer match) in June 1929, formed Indochinese Communist Party
• 1940: tidal wave swept over southeast Asia; Japanese poured down from China, crushed French administration in Vietnam, drove British from Malaya, drove Dutch from Indonesia, drove United States from Philippines
• Asian nation had destroyed European colonialism
• While some nationalists rallied to Japan, Ho skeptical; aligned himself with Allies, hoping the French would be ousted, Japanese defeated, and independence as reward
• Strained relationship with Soviets (forbade Communist resistance to Axis powers), but main concern was Vietnam

Chapter 4: The War with the French

• September 2, 1945: Vietnamese declaration of independence by Ho Chi Minh
• Ho was pragmatist - shifting tactics to suit changing circumstances
• State Department - two camps; one camp thought Europe should run Indochina, other thought Indochina should be independent
  • European faction won
  • May 1945, shortly after Truman took office after Roosevelt's death, US recognized French claim to Indochina
  • By 1954, US spent $2.5 billion to finance French military effort in Indochina (more assistance than France received in the Marshall Plan aid from America to rebuild its postwar economy)

• US/French operatives clashed, quarreled, had factional disputes
  • Chinese officials tried to manipulate Westerners
  • Everybody cashing in on opium, gold transactions, arms smuggling, etc.
  • Ho continued to play sides off of each other