Vietnam, Why Did We Got Involved?

 

                    Potsdam Conference, July, 1945

Back in 1969, when I went to Vietnam, I didn’t much question our reasons for entering the conflict. I accepted the government line that we were justified in intervening there to fight against the spread of communism. I do remember thinking that maybe we should have just let the Vietnamese settle their differences among themselves. I still think that if we hadn’t become involved, it wouldn’t have escalated into a major war.  

Since then, I’ve questioned our motives for being there, and for staying as long as we did, in spite of the tremendous costs of the war, both for the Americans and the Vietnamese. I now realize that we were involved there for almost 30 years.  during the terms of five presidents, both Democrat and Republican, from Truman to Nixon. Our reasons for entering were based on speculation, not facts, and every president had opportunities to get out, but kept pursuing the same policy, in spite of mounting evidence that our involvement was folly.  

The historian, Barbara Tuchman, published a book in 1984, The March of Folly[i], in which she points out this conundrum, the tendency of governments to pursue policies that “prevailing information indicate as hopeless.” Our involvement in Vietnam is the example she sights from modern history.

It was 1945 when the United States first became involved in Vietnam, or French Indochina as it was then known. I was only three years old. As WWII was ending, Franklin Roosevelt, president during the war, was vehemently opposed to the return of the French to Vietnam, which they had oppressed and exploited for over eighty years, but he died in April of that year, just four months before the Japanese surrender, and Harry Truman became president. Viet Minh guerilla forces under Ho Chi Minh took control of Vietnam after the Japanese surrender, and the Free French party under Charles de Gaulle took control of France after the fall of the Nazis. They both requested aid from the US, the Viet Minh to set up a new government and to defend themselves against the return of the French, and the French, to reimpose their rule over Vietnam.  

Tuchman contends that after WWII we had an opportunity to “gain for America an enviable primacy among Western nations and confirm the foundation of goodwill in Asia by aligning ourselves with, even supporting, the independence movements.” Truman decided instead to side with French.

There was ample evidence from the start, that siding with the French was a mistake. First of all, the Vietnamese hated the French. They had revolted multiple times against the French before the war and were even more determined to prevent their return afterwards. Bao Dai, hereditary emperor of Vietnam, and actually supported by the French, said in a letter to de Gaulle, “You would understand better if you could see what is happening here, if you could feel this desire for independence which is in everyone’s heart and which no human force can any longer restrain. Even if you come to re-establish a French administration here, it will no longer be obeyed: each village will be a nest of resistance, each former collaborator an enemy, and your officials and colonists will themselves ask to leave this atmosphere which they will be unable to breathe.” Second, knowledgeable officials in the US government advised against supporting French return to Vietnam.  Charles Yost, political officer in Bangkok, reported that American prestige in SE Asia was seriously deteriorating due to our failure to support nationalist movements. John Ohly of the State Department warned that we could replace France as Vietnam’s oppressors. Third, military experts in the Pentagon reported that the Vietnamese revolutionaries couldn’t be defeated by outside intervention. Even General Jacques Leclerc, hero of the French liberation, said, “It would take 500,000 men to do it (take control of Vietnam), and even then it could not be done.”

 Why would President Truman ignore all this and support the French in their reconquest of Vietnam? Truman, British Prime Minister Clement Atlee, and Russian Premier Joseph Stalin had discussed the disposition of Vietnam at the Potsdam conference in July of ’45, prior to the end of WWII. Independence for Vietnam was not considered then, since it was still under the control of Japan, and Vietnam was not considered “ready” for independence. There was a feeling that former colonies needed guidance before they could rule themselves. So at Potsdam the decision was made to divide the country temporarily into northern and southern sections at the 16^th parallel, with Nationalist China in control of the northern part and Britain in control of the south.

Since the USSR had taken advantage of Germany’s surrender to annex most of eastern Europe, there was a fear that communism would spread over the world. Actually there was no evidence of Russian influence in Vietnam, but this fear of communism led some American leaders to favor French return to Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh, popular leader of the Viet Minh, was indeed a communist. He joined the communist party while living in France because the communists there supported independence movements in several countries, but his main aim was independence for Vietnam. During WWII Ho fought with the American OSS (Office of Strategic Services), forerunner of the CIA, against the Japanese. After the war, he expected that the US would support his fight for independence, like we had the Filipinos. The OSS officers who worked with Ho wanted to support the Viet Minh, but their chief vetoed them since Ho was communist. What really tipped the scales in France’s favor was when Charles de Gaulle demanded that we transport French troops to Vietnam to reimpose French control. He told the American ambassador in Paris, “If you are against us in Indochina,”  it would cause “terrific disappointment” in France, which could drive her into the Soviet orbit. “We do not want to become Communist…but I hope you do not push into it.” When de Gaulle visited Washington weeks later Truman agreed to his request.

 Over the next six months, as French troops were arriving in Vietnam on American ships, supplied with American equipment, sometimes even wearing American uniforms, Ho Chi Minh appealed to President Truman on eight separate occasions for support and financial aid, but his requests went unanswered. 

Truman’s decision to oppose Vietnamese independence was based on fantasy. The fantasy that the Vietnamese would be better off under the colonial domination of France. The fantasy that the Vietnamese communists were Russian puppets, and the fantasy that we would be welcomed as liberators. By the end of his administration, we were sending millions of dollars, as well as military equipment, and MAAG (Military Assistance Advisory Group) military advisors, to aid the French. He justified his efforts by what came to be known as the “Truman Doctrine,” described in a speech to Congress in March of 1947: “It is the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”^[ii] The Vietnamese revolutionaries were not a minority, and the outside pressure trying to subjugate them was us. 

[i] The March of Folly, From Troy to Vietnam, Barbara W Tuchman, Ballantine Books, NY, 1984

 [ii] https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/truman-doctrine