choosing peace - hanoi and geneva agreement on vietnam 1954-1955 (bai nghien cuu)

7/28/2019 Choosing Peace - Hanoi and Geneva Agreement on Vietnam 1954-1955 (Bai Nghien Cuu)

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sse nano an e eneva reemen on e nam

Choosing Peace

Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam,

19541955

Pierre Asselin

Introduction

In early February 1997 the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party(VCP) authorized the publication of a major series of documents relating toits own history. The resulting series, Van kien DangToan tap(Party Docu-mentsComplete Works), has been published incrementally since 1998 bythe ofcial National Political Publishing House. The series is organized chro-nologically beginning before the founding in 1930 of the Indochinese Com-munist Party (ICP), the forerunner of the Vietnamese Workers Party (VWP;

which existed from 1951 to 1976) and the present VCP. By early 2007 theseries, which includes documents on domestic and foreign affairs generatedby the highest party ofcials (those on the Politburo and the Central Com-mittee), had reached events of the early 1980s, with new volumes appearingevery few months. Each volume typically covers one year.1 The resulting re-cord is incomplete and selective, but the volumes shed much new light onVWP policies, internal debates and disagreements, and the motivations forspecic policies.

Among the topics that are now easier to comprehend is the VWPs imme-diate response in 19541955 to the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam. Muchhas been written about the role of the delegation from the DemocraticRepublic of Vietnam (DRVN) during the Geneva negotiations. Moreover,thanks to the scholarship of Robert Brigham, we now understand how pro-Hanoi groups in the south responded to the Vietnamese agreement.2 Less well

Journal of Cold War StudiesVol. 9, No. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 95126 2007 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology

1. Some volumes for the years before 1948 cover multiple yearsfor example, Vol. 1 (19241930),Vol. 6 (19321936), and Vol. 7 (19401945).

2. James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (New York: St. Martins Press, 1986);Robert F. Randle, Geneva 1954: The Settlement of the Indochinese War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton


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known, however, is the stance of VWP leaders on a number of key points: thesettlement generally, specic provisions concerning the temporary divisionof the country along the seventeenth parallel, and the prospects for achieving

peaceful reunication through a political process culminating in nationwideelections.3 Did the authorities in Hanoi believe that the Geneva settlementwas workable and in the interest of the revolution?4 Did they immediately orat a later point regret having signed it? When did VWP leaders realize thatpeaceful reunication under the agreement was impossible and a resumptionof hostilities inevitable?

The volumes in the new series covering 1954 and 1955 contain previ-ously secret documents that make it possible to answer these questions more

or less conclusively.5 This article draws on the volumes and other sources toexplore VWP policymaking in the immediate aftermath of the Geneva Agree-ment and to assess Hanois actions in 19541955 relating to that settlement.The article demonstrates that Hanoi accepted the agreement and sought toabide by its provisions, condent that implementation would bring peacefulreunication and promote the cause of socialism in Vietnam. Revolutionaryleaders in the south, however, objected to the agreement because they sus-pected that the French, the Americans, and the anti-revolutionary forces that

controlled the South Vietnamese government would never abide by its termsor permit a peaceful triumph of the revolution. In a series of directives thatbegan in late July 1954, the leaders of the VWP nonetheless insisted thatparty cadres and supporters in both halves of Vietnam should undertake noactivity that would contravene the spirit of the agreement or that might pro-voke or serve to legitimize non-compliance on the part of the Saigon regimeor its French or American backers. The failure of this policy, which was soonapparent in Hanoi, had major repercussions, prompting a change of leader-

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University Press, 1969); and Robert K. Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLFs Foreign Relations andthe Viet Nam War(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

3. Carlyle A. Thayer explored some of these issues in his insightful War by Other Means: National Lib-eration and Revolution in Viet-Nam 195460(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989). However, his treatmentof the VWPs stance on the settlement is cursory and based solely on Western sources and ofcial Viet-namese histories produced before the era of renovation (doi moi)began in 1986.

4. The term revolution refers to the effort spearheaded by the VWP and initiated by its previous in-carnation, the ICP, during World War II. That effort had three objectives: (1) to liberate Vietnamfrom the clutches of Japanese occupation forces, French colonialists, and, subsequently, Vietnamesereactionaries and American neo-imperialists; (2) to achieve national reunication of three territo-

ries (Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina) that were initially under French rule and then established as twopolities after 1954; and (3) to set up a socialist regime. Liberation and reunication were essentiallyachieved simultaneously in April 1975 with the fall of Saigon; the march to socialism is, by ofcialaccounts, ongoing.

5. Because of the secretive nature of the party and the fact that its raw archives are closed to foreignand most Vietnamese scholars, one would be nave and irresponsible to contend that available Viet-namese materials can provide denitive answers to perplexing questions about VWP policymaking.


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ship in the North and causing VWP leaders to lose faith in diplomacy as ameans of advancing the revolution, and induced them to rely predominantlyon military operations to achieve revolutionary success. The DRVN adhered

to these policies throughout the subsequent period of American military in-tervention and during the Paris negotiations of 19721973 that produced theend of that intervention.

Choosing Peace

On 7 May 1954, Vietnamese nationalist forces under Communist leadership

overwhelmed the garrison of the French Expeditionary Corps in the Far East(Corps expditionnaire franais en extrme-Orient;CEFEO) at Dien Bien Phu.6

A day later, an international conference on the future of Indochina convenedin Geneva.7 Chaired by representatives from Britain and the USSR, the con-ference was supposed to end hostilities on the Indochinese peninsula by forg-ing a political settlement between French colonialists and their indigenousopponents in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Besides Britain and the SovietUnion, the participants included delegates from France, the DRVN (repre-

senting Vietnamese nationalists), the royal governments of Laos and Cambo-dia, the United States, and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).8Also in at-tendance but notably ignored in the deliberations about substantive issueswere representatives from the State of Vietnam (SOVN), which the Frenchhad created in Saigon in March 1949 under former emperor Bao Dai as headof state and Tran Van Huu as president. A puppet regime, the SOVN gained aveneer of legitimacy when the French National Assembly voted in April 1949to repeal the dpartement status of Cochinchina and grant autonomy toVietnam (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina) within the French Union(Union franaise).9 Under this arrangement, the SOVN government ostensi-

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Hanoi and the Geneva Agreement on Vietnam

6. The best account of the battle is Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien BienPhu(New York: Da Capo Press, 1966). One of the most recent is Martin Windrow, The Last Valley:Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam(London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003).

7. The Geneva Conference ofcially opened in April 1954 to discuss the postwar situation on theKorean peninsula. At the conclusion of those talks, on 8 May, the focus shifted to Indochina.

8. The DRVN was proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi on 2 September 1945, following Japanssurrender. The event marked the culmination of a relatively peaceful process known in Vietnam as theAugust Revolution, during which Communist nationalists seized the reins of government from the

Japanese and forced the abdication of the presiding Nguyen emperor, Bao Dai, thus ending the ten-century-old dynastic system in Vietnam. After the military occupation of Indochina by the Frenchand the outbreak of war in December 1946, the DRVN government retreated to the mountains ofnorthern Vietnam at Pac Bo, on the border with China, where it remained until the signing of theGeneva Agreement.

9. The French Union (19461958) was, by ofcial denition, an association of sovereign and inde-pendent peoples, free and equal in their rights and duties. On the nature of the French Union, see


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bly became responsible for domestic and some foreign affairs of Vietnam anddeployed an army under its own ag. Leaders in Hanoi were concerned thataccommodating SOVN interests would give that government international

legitimacy. Hence, the DRVN insisted that the SOVNs positions onsubstantive issues be ignored. To expedite the diplomatic process, the Frenchacceded to this request.

After weeks of bargaining, negotiators in Geneva agreed on 20 July 1954to three separate agreementsone for each of the Indochinese states (Viet-nam, Laos, and Cambodia)that, among other results, effectively ended theFirst Indochina War.10 In the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities inVietnam, signed by France and the DRVN, the two parties agreed to an im-

mediate ceasere, the independence of Vietnam, the temporary division ofthe nation into two zones separated by a demilitarized zone at the seventeenthparallel, a mandatory relocation of all forces loyal to France or the SOVNsouth of that line and forces loyal to the DRVN north of it within 300 days,and a voluntary relocation of individual Vietnamese along the same lines.11

The two parties also agreed to prohibit the introduction of additional foreignmilitary personnel into Vietnam, to refrain from retaliating against former en-emy combatants, and to hold general elections within two years to set up a

government for a unied Vietnam. To supervise the implementation of theseprovisions and monitor violations of them, the settlement created a JointCommission for Vietnam with representatives from France and the DRVN,as well as an International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC)with representatives from India, Poland, and Canada.

In line with the balance of forces in the country as of mid-1954, theDRVN inherited jurisdiction over the northern zone, and Franceand by ex-tension the SOVN, which was not a party to the agreementreceived juris-diction below the seventeenth parallel. Because the partition of the nation wasmeant to be temporary, the Geneva negotiations produced an additional doc-ument titled Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference: On RestoringPeace in Indochina, 21 July 1954, which called for consultations betweenthe competent representative authorities of the two zones starting in April

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Xavier Yacono, Histoire de la colonisation franaise (Paris: Presses universitaire de France, 1969),pp. 110117.

10. The French National Assembly voted to ratify the Geneva agreements on 23 July 1954 by 462 to13, with 134 abstentions. See Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the

Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 2001), p. 251.

11. The text of the agreement is reproduced in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Rela-tions, Background Information Relating to Southeast Asia and Vietnam, 90th Cong., 1st Sess., 1967,pp. 5062.


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1955 to set the terms for nationwide elections leading to reunication under asingle government by July 1956, at which point all French forces were to bewithdrawn from the country.12 By the spring of 1955, the entities effectively

taking part in this process were the DRVN and the SOVN, the de facto gov-ernments of North and South Vietnam. Despite having been almost totallyexcluded from the Geneva negotiations and the resulting agreement, theSOVN was now playing a crucial role. The SOVNs cooperation was a prereq-uisite for the success of the agreement and the post-Geneva processes.Yet France ignored the SOVN during the negotiations. The absence ofany French consultation, in the words of one historian, was remarkable indiplomatic history.13 Not only did this policy absolve the SOVN of responsi-

bility for abiding by the terms of the agreement and thereby all but guaranteethe failure of the accord; it also revealed the essence of French attitudes towardVietnamese sovereignty. The Hanoi authorities had colluded with the Frenchto exclude the SOVN from the Geneva negotiations, and if their intent was toisolate the SOVN from the French and from Vietnamese nationalists and toundermine its legitimacy, then they succeeded brilliantly.14

Equally lamentable was the non-committal stance of the United States inthe Geneva negotiations, a situation that left another major actor in the Viet-

namese arena unbound by the July 1954 agreements. The United States hadbecome actively engaged in Indochina in the spring of 1950 when the Tru-man administration began assisting the French nancially and materiallyagainst Vietnamese nationalists, whom the U.S. and French governments re-garded as Communists.15 From that point on, U.S. ofcials were so deter-mined to preserve a non-Communist Vietnam that they had even consideredmilitary intervention in 1954 to save the CEFEO from defeat at Dien BienPhu.16 The assumption that an agreement on the future of Vietnam could be

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12. Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference: On Restoring Peace in Indochina, 21 July 1954,The Department of State Bulletin, Vol. XXXI, No. 788 (2 August 1954), p. 164.

13. Dommen, Indochinese Experience, p. 249. Dommens work offers a nuanced assessment of theterms of the Geneva agreements (see pp. 256260).

14. Ibid., p. 250.

15. On the origins and evolution of the U.S. commitment to Indochina, see Lloyd C. Gardner, Ap-proaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu(New York: W. W. Norton, 1988).

16. In the end, the Eisenhower administration decided against military intervention. However, on8 April, the day the administration communicated its decision to France, Secretary of State John Fos-ter Dulles allegedly offered French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault two nuclear bombs for France touse to save its garrison, an offer the French declined. On this purported episode, see Georges Bidault,Dune rsistance lautre(Paris: Les Presses du Sicle, 1965), p. 198; George C. Herring and RichardImmerman, Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: The Day We Didnt Go to War Revisited, in

Andrew J. Rotter, ed., Light at the End of the Tunnel: A Vietnam War Anthology(New York: St. MartinsPress, 1991), p. 80; and J. R. Tournoux, Secrets dtat(Paris: Librairie Plon, 1960), p. 56. For a more


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successful without the acquiescence of the United States was therefore morethan misguided; it was folly. The U.S. government was so deeply concernedabout the region, which it viewed exclusively through the prism of the Cold

War, that it was not inclined to uphold an agreement to which it was not aparty, especially an agreement that mightand likely would if the partieshonored its termsresult in the reunication of Vietnam under a Commu-nist regime. In a unilateral declaration at Geneva, the United States had re-fused to endorse the agreements on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia or to jointhe Final Declaration approved by the negotiators. Instead, the U.S. delega-tion merely took note of those agreements and of the Final Declaration(aside from a section in the declaration stipulating that conference members

agree to consult one another on any question which may be referred to themby the ICSC to insure that the agreements are respected) and pledged torefrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb the agreements andview any renewal of the aggression in violation of the [agreements] withgrave concern and as seriously threatening international peace and security.The U.S. government also afrmed that it would continue to seek to achieveunity [in Vietnam] through free elections supervised by the United Nations toensure that they are conducted fairly, an arrangement altogether different

from that set forth in the Geneva accord.17

The omission of two crucial parties meant that the Geneva Agreement onVietnam amounted to little more than a bilateral accord between France andthe DRVN to end the 19461954 war and endeavor to unify postwar Viet-nam. Despite the obvious aws in the settlement, it fullled the immediateneeds of both France and the DRVN: it rescued France from a highly unpop-ular sale guerre(dirty war) on terms short of capitulation before a deadlineimposed by Premier Pierre Mends-France; and it presented the DRVN withan opportunity to advance its revolutionary goals by means less costly thanthe long and destructive war it had fought for the previous eight years.18

In accepting the Geneva Agreement, the DRVN seemed uncharacteristi-cally willing to compromise, placing at risk the achievement of substantive

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comprehensive treatment, see Melanie Billings-Yun, Decision against War: Eisenhower and Dien BienPhu, 1954(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); and John Prados, The Sky Would Fall(New

York: Dial, 1983).

17. Unilateral Declaration of the United States at the Concluding Session of the Geneva Conference,21 July 1954, in The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of the United States Decision-Making in VietnamSenator Gravel Edition, 5 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), Vol. 1, pp. 570

571.18. Six days after the collapse of the Laniel government in Paris on 12 June 1954, Pierre Mends-France was appointed president du conseil (that is, leader of the ruling coalition) by the French presi-dent. Mends-France, in his acceptance speech, promised to deliver peace in Indochina by 20 July1954. See Pierre Mends-France, Gouverner cest choisir, 19541955(Paris: Gallimard, 1986).


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revolutionary goals. Some scholars have argued that the DRVN was acting re-luctantly and under pressure from the USSR and the PRC.19 The SovietUnion and China, the argument goes, sold out their Vietnamese allies by

insisting that they accept a partition of the country and a highly problematicplan for reunication. The USSR and China, according to this view, were lessinterested in helping the Vietnamese Communists than in improving rela-tions with Western countries, including the United States. Coming on theheels of the end of the war in Korea, the Geneva Conference supposedly of-fered an opportunity for a thaw in the Cold War. By one Vietnamese account,Soviet ofcials went to Geneva with the intention of rapidly ending the onlyhot war remaining in the world after the ames of the Korean War were extin-

guished. The USSR, according to this account, was aiming to bring aboutfavorable conditions for dtente and international cooperation.20 The Chi-nese, for their part, supposedly wanted to facilitate the settlement of a majorinternational conict in order to gain wider credibility for the recentlyfounded Communist government in Beijing.21 The same Vietnamese sourceclaims that the Chinese were so eager to make a deal with the West that theyacquiesced in a Korea-type solution for the Indochina war, namely a militaryarmistice without a full political settlement.22 According to another, more

problematic, Vietnamese source, the Chinese pressured the DRVN delegationin Geneva to accept the partition of the nation because Beijing feared thatWashington would intervene militarily in Vietnam if it found the outcome ofthe Geneva talks objectionable.23

Although Soviet and Chinese pressure may have affected the outcome ofthe Geneva talks by inducing the DRVN to be more accommodating, there islittle reason to believe that Hanoi could have achieved a better agreementwithout that pressure. Dien Bien Phu may have been a momentous victory

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19. See Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 19451990(New York: Harper Collins, 1991) pp. 3839; Gary R. Hess, Vietnam and the United States: Origins and Legacy of War(New York: Twayne Pub-lishers, 1998), p. 48; and George C. Herring, Americas Longest War: The United States and Vietnam,19501975(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), pp. 3940.

20. Le Kinh Lich, ed., The 30-Year War, 19451975, Vol. 1, 19451954(Hanoi: The Gioi, 2000),p. 368. See also Ban chi dao Tong ket chien tranhTruc thuoc Bo chinh tri, Tong ket cuoc khang chienchong thuc dan Phap: Thang loi va bai hop(Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 1996), pp. 216217.

21. For an elaboration of the Chinese position at Geneva, see Franois Joyaux, La Chine et le rglementdu premier conit dIndochineGenve 1954(Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1979); and Qiang

Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 19501975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,2000), pp. 4963.

22. Le Kinh Lich, ed., 30-Year War, p. 368.

23. Su that ve quan he Viet Nam-Trung Quoc trong 30 nam qua (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Su that, 1979),p. 32.


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for the Vietnamese resistance, but it was also a bloody and costly climax to along and devastating war. During the siege, the revolutionary forces sufferedmore than 20,000 casualties, including perhaps 10,000 killed in action. In the

aftermath, those forces were in desperate need of respite.24 Furthermore, al-though the outcome of the battle denitively undermined Frances position innorthern Vietnam, it did little to affect Frances position in the south (or thestrength of Frances indigenous allies there). In fact, the colonial apparatus inthe south remained almost intact, an outcome that facilitated the American-ization of the South after 1961. At Dien Bien Phu, the French, pro-SOVN,anti-Communist side lost a battle, not a war.25 Ho Chi Minh admitted asmuch in a letter in May 1954 addressed to participants in the Dien Bien Phu

campaign. The victory marked only the beginning, he told the participants.We must not be self-complacent. The revolutionary struggle may be longand hard before complete victory can be achieved.26 The PRC eventuallycounseled Hanoi to the same effect, suggesting that in the near future theNorth Vietnamese desist from ghting and use the peace to mend theirwounds.27

More important, in signing the Geneva Agreement, VWP leaders wereconvinced that its provisions were workable, precluded direct U.S. military

intervention, and created favorable conditions for the triumph of socialismin the whole of Vietnam.28 On the one hand, the settlement recognized theliberation of the North by revolutionary forces. The VWP publicly hailed thisas a major victory for our peoples struggle for liberation because it allowedfor the establishment of a solid base (dat co so vung chac)to achieve peace,unity, independence, and prosperity in [all of] Vietnam.29 On the other

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24. Jules Roy, La bataille de Dien Bien Phu(Paris: Ren Julliard, 1963), p. 568; and Phillipe Devillersand Jean Lacouture, End of a War(New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969), p. 149.

25. We emerged victorious from that war with the French, one cadre later commented, but [the en-emys] forces had not been completely destroyed. That is why we signed the Treaty of Geneva.Quoted in Joseph J. Zasloff, Political Motivation of the Vietnamese Communists: The VietminhRegroupees(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1968), p. 53.

26. Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu(Hanoi: The Gioi, 2000), p. 8. (All translations mine unless oth-erwise noted.) In a recent interview, Giap himself admitted that the victory at Dien Bien Phu was im-portant only to the extent that it contributed to the success of the Geneva Conference, which recog-nized Viet Nam as an independent and unied nation and completely liberated North Viet Nam andthe capital city of Ha Noi. Vietnam News Service, 5 May 2004.

27. Ang Chen Guan, Vietnamese Communists Relations with China and the Second Indochina Conict,19561962(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1997), p. 13.

28. Truong Loi Hoa, Cuoc chien tranh chong My cua Viet Nam (Ho Chi Minh City: Nha xuat banThanh pho Ho Chi Minh, 1998), p. 9. The work of a Chinese scholar, this translation offers valuableinsights into the Vietnamese Revolution.

29. Quoted in Vien nghien cuu chu nghia Mac-Lenin va tu tuong Ho Chi Minh, Lich su Dang Congsan Viet Nam, Vol. II, 19541975(Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 1995), p. 27.


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hand, new evidence suggests that the leaders of the VWP believed that theSouth Vietnamese state created by the French in 1949 would not long survivethe political process set in motion by the Geneva Agreement.30 The titular

head-of-state in the South, Emperor Bao Dai, was unpopular and was per-ceived on both sides of the seventeenth parallel as a French stooge. Accord-ingly, North Vietnamese leaders were condent that their side would win theupcoming elections and would reunify the nation under their authority. Theybelieved that even if the Southern regime and its French allies tried to sabo-tage the agreement and boycott or cancel the elections, such efforts would failunder the weight of popular pressure. Thus, the North Vietnamese leaderswere convinced that reunication would come peacefully and in a relatively

short time, probably before 1957.31 DRVN President Ho Chi Minh was sin-cere when he heralded the Geneva Agreement as a big victory (thang loilon). The settlement, Ho insisted, had compelled the French to recognize theindependence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of our country.32

The VWP Central Committee subsequently reiterated this view, adding in apublic declaration that the Geneva Agreement was a great victory (thangloi vi dai)for the people and the armed forces of Vietnam. For the VWP, thevictory was doubly pleasing. Not only did it mark the collapse of French mili-

tary power in Indochina, but it also signaled the defeat of the American im-perialists plan to transform Indochina into an American colonial outpost andmilitary base.33 Unlike Ho, whose statement on the subject made no refer-ence to the United States, the VWP Central Committee voiced concern aboutU.S. intentions. Acknowledging that the French position in Indochina gener-ally and in Vietnam specically had been undermined by Dien Bien Phu andthe Geneva Agreement, the VWP Central Committee nevertheless warnedthat the future of the revolution remained uncertain and that the people, thearmy, and the party must remain vigilant and keep their ghting spirit well

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30. See Dang Cong san Viet Nam, Van kien DangToan tap, Vol. 15, 1954(Hanoi: Nha xuat banChinh tri quoc gia, 2001) (hereinafter referred to as VKDwith years covered). See also William J. Dui-ker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam(Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), p. 181.

31. Janos Radvanyi, Delusion and Reality: Gambits, Hoaxes, and Diplomatic One-Upmanship in Viet-nam(South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1978), p. 14. Radvanyi was a Hungarian diplomat who reg-ularly dealt with North Vietnamese counterparts.

32. Loi kieu goi sau khi Hoi nghi Gionevo thanh cong, ngay 22 thang 7 nam 1954, in VKD, 1954,p. 229.

33. Loi kieu goi cua Ban Chap hanh Truong uong Dang Lao dong Viet Nam, ngay 25 thang 7 nam1954, in VKD, 1954, p. 234. By their intervention in Indo-China, Prime Minister Pham VanDong added later, the American imperialists pursued the aim to gradually oust the French from Indo-China and turn Indo-China into an American colony. Quoted in American Imperialisms Interventionin Viet Nam(Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), p. 21.


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honed in case the United States tried to sabotage the peace process establishedby the settlement.34

In contrast to the optimism expressed by leaders in Hanoi, revolutionar-

ies in the South were dismayed by the outcome of the Geneva negotiations. Intheir view, the agreement did nothing to help the revolution in the South anda great deal to harm it. The source of their immediate concern was the provi-sions concerning South Vietnam. By giving France and the SOVN jurisdic-tion over everything below the seventeenth parallel, including areas alreadyliberated by revolutionary forces, it nullied the results of years of strugglewhile legitimating the SOVN. Our armed forces had to regroup and retreatto the North, a Vietnamese source later noted. As a result of the Geneva

Agreement, large liberated areas and revolutionary bases fell under enemycontrol, where our people had to live under the cruel yoke of the Southernregime and its American ally.35 Many of the revolutionaries, in the words ofanother account, experienced a profound sense of frustration in having to ac-cept not only the partition of the country, but a sudden halt to a march to-ward the victory of the Revolution.36 Instead of waiting for the problematicresults of the political processes devised in Geneva, insurgents operating in theSouth wanted to continue ghting until complete victory or ghting for a

while longer to pressure the enemy into making further concessions.37

Ho Chi Minh himself eventually acknowledged the validity of these assess-ments before the VWP Central Committee.38

The Southerners believed that the forced retreat of revolutionary forcesfrom the South as mandated by the Geneva Agreement meant that VWPleaders in Hanoi had essentially abandoned the South. The surrender of areasthat had been liberated at great cost was particularly difcult to accept.Although the war against the French and their indigenous allies had beenwaged under Northern leadership and by a predominantly Northern army,thousands of Southerners had contributed to the effort. Now, after the cessa-tion of hostilities in July 1954, those men and women had little to show fortheir efforts and sacrice. The tradeoff of concrete assets for the promises of a

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34. Loi kieu goi cua Ban Chap hanh Truong uong Dang Lao dong Viet Nam, ngay 25 thang 7 nam1954, in VKD, 1954, p. 236.

35. Vien Lich su DangHoi dong bien soan lich su Nam Trung bo khang chien, Nam Trung bokhang chien, 19451975(Hanoi: Tong cong ty phat hanh sach Lien ket xuat ban, 1992), p. 237.

36. Philippe Franchini, Les guerres dIndochine, Vol.2, De la bataille de Dien Bien Phu la chute deSagon(Paris: ditions Pygmalion/Grard Watelet, 1988), p. 151.

37. Vien Lich su DangHoi dong bien soan lich su Nam Trung bo khang chien, Nam Trung bokhang chien, p. 238.

38. See Duiker, Communist Road to Power, p. 172.


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political process in which they had no faith was not an exchange that South-ern revolutionaries made willingly.

Hanoi tried to assuage these concerns by repeatedly assuring the South-

erners that the setbacks were tactical and temporary and the reunication ofthe nation under revolutionary leadership was a foregone conclusion. TheSoutherners were unmoved, and they increasingly viewed the VWP as aNorthern-dominated organization willing to advance the interests of theNorth at the expense of those of the South. Some of them quit the VWP inprotest and joined other nationalist organizations more concerned with theadvancement of Southern interests.39As these developments unfolded, Hanoiremained committed to the Geneva Agreement and to the process of peaceful

reunication it entailed.When the Geneva Agreement was signed, DRVN leaders had not yet set

forth their position on the agreements provisions and had not instructedparty cadres on their responsibilities in the new phase of the revolution. In thedays and weeks that followed, the VWP laid out its position in increasinglyspecic terms. On 27 July 1954, VWP First Secretary Truong Chinh toldparty cadres that our nationalist struggle has entered a new era and becomea political struggle to consolidate peace.40 In revolutionary terminology, this

meant that the VWP would forgo military activity and instead use politicsand diplomacy to implement the settlement and achieve revolutionary goals.Hanois stance, according to the historian Robert Brigham, manifested itswillingness to persuade legal and semi-legal organizations to agitate for im-plementation of the political provisions of the Geneva Accords.41 The deci-sion to abandon the military struggle also signaled Hanois acceptance of theMoscow line.42Anxious to reduce Cold War tensions after the death of JosifStalin the previous year, the Soviet Union had been hoping to avert a resump-tion of war in Vietnam. For Moscow, the easing of tensions in Indochina cre-ated an important opportunity to reduce East-West tensions in the Cold Wargenerally. Although the Soviet political line may have inuenced Hanois deci-sion, satisfying the interests of the USSR was ultimately not a priority for theVWP.43Although Soviet leaders welcomed North Vietnams decision to sus-

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39. Bhabani Sen Gupta, The Soviet Union and Vietnam, International Studies(New Delhi), No. 4(OctoberDecember 1973), p. 560.

40. Chi thi cua Ban bi thu, ngay 27 thang 7 nam 1954: Tuyen truyen ve nhung Hiep dinh cua Hoinghi GionevoTinh hinh va nhiem vu moi, in VKD, 1954, p. 238.

41. Robert K. Brigham, Why the South Won the American War in Vietnam, in Marc Jason Gilbert,ed., Why the North Won the Vietnam War(New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 100.

42. Ibid., p. 101.

43. A similar claim regarding Hanois decision to abide by the terms of the agreement is presented in


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pend military activity in favor of peaceful struggle, and although Moscowjoined Beijing in urging Hanoi to abide by the Geneva Agreement and avoidgiving the Americans a pretext to intervene, the VWP decided primarily for

its own reasons to accept the agreement and work for its implementation. TheVWP chose peacethat is, to discontinue the military strugglemainly be-cause that was the sensible approach to take under the circumstances.Avoiding war for the time being was crucial for several reasons.44

First, the armed forces had been exhausted by the war with France andneeded to regroup for a possible U.S. intervention in Indochina. In the imme-diate aftermath of Dien Bien Phu, the revolutionary forces would have beenhard pressed to continue the war against the French, much less against an

American army equipped with superior weaponry and other resources. Ac-cording to the revolutionary armys own account, the majority of our weap-ons and equipment were infantry weapons, which were not uniform in quan-tity or type and were of poor quality. Many of the armaments wereunserviceable, and they were technically obsolete when compared to equip-ment used by other armies around the world. In addition, the armys techni-cal support facilities were very poor.45 Regardless of what VietnameseCommunists thought about the United States, they were mindful of U.S. mil-

itary might and the ability of the United States to destabilize the region andundermine the revolution.Second, peace would give the DRVN desperately needed time to consoli-

date itself politically and economically. From 1938 to 1954, North Vietnamspopulation had increased by 50 percent to 15,300,000 at the same time thatannual rice production had declined from 3.5 million to 2.5 million tonslargely because of disruptions caused rst by the Japanese invasion and thenby the war against the French. More people and less food spelled trouble forDRVN leaders and compelled them to rely heavily on assistance from theUSSR and the PRC.46 Moreover, the long period of almost continuous warand disruption had led to a dire economic situation. The North Vietnamese

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Duiker, Communist Road to Power, p. 172. The paucity of references to Moscows foreign policy objec-tives in the Vietnamese documentary record also suggests that the VWP was not mainly concernedabout satisfying Soviet interests.

44. According to Carlyle Thayer, Hanois decision to accept the Geneva Agreement was not withoutcontroversy, and disagreement within the VWP was rife. See Thayer, War by Other Means, pp. 7, 8.

Although little is known about some of the VWPs internal debates, including this one, King C. Chenhas argued that General Vo Nguyen Giap and other VWP leaders had strong reservations about end-

ing the war through negotiations. See King C. Chen, Vietnam and China, 19381954(Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 294295.

45. Military Institute of Vietnam, Victory in Vietnam: The Ofcial History of the Peoples Army of Viet-nam, 19541975, trans. by Merle Pribbenow (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002),pp. 910.

46. Franchini, Les guerres dIndochine, pp. 170, 177.


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estimated that 57 percent of urban workers at this time had no formal train-ing in vocational skills, in part because most of them were former peasants, re-cently demobilized soldiers, or both. The lack of training and the absence of

an individual work ethic resulted in an average rate of worker absenteeismabove 20 percent.47Years of war had also taken their toll on the states physicalinfrastructure. Roads outside large cities were in generally poor condition, aswere bridges everywhere. The French-built rail system was in even worseshape because revolutionary forces had routinely targeted railways duringthe recent wars to disrupt the movement of enemy forces and supplies. Railconnections to China that carried food and other assistance, including vitallinks between Pingxiang and Dong Dang, Longzhou and Cao Bang, and

Fangcheng and Mon Cay, were in particularly poor condition and in need ofrepair or reconstruction. The restoration of these links was especially pressingbecause North Vietnam was dependent on imports from China for its survivaland recovery from war.48

The disastrous consequences of rural land redistribution and forced agri-cultural collectivization, the brainchild of First Secretary Truong Chinh andmodeled after similar programs in the PRC, compounded the DRVNs eco-nomic problems. These policies were key components of the VWPs effort to

create a socialist Vietnam. The aim was to abolish feudal agrarian practicesby eliminating landlordism and tenancy, redistributing land, and setting upcollective farms. The program failed so miserably that it further dislocated theeconomy, produced widespread disenchantment among peasants, and, ac-cording to Edwin Moise, prevented the VWP from paying close attention todevelopments below the seventeenth parallel.49 In crisis-prone Nghe An Prov-ince, for example, the collectivization campaign provoked a bloody rebellionamong peasants at Quynh Luu. Many of the rebels were Catholics, and themilitary forces that were sent to quell the unrest consisted mostly of exiledSouthern guerrillas embittered by having to give up revolutionary gains they

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47. Raymond Toinet, Une guerre de trente-cinq ans: Indochine-Vietnam, 19401975(Paris: Lavauzelle,1998), p. 225.

48. The absence of an appropriate technical framework [encadrement technique comptent], one his-torian wrote, will nd only a partial solution in the assistance [provided] by fraternal countries and,especially, in the formation of the Vietnamese themselves. See Franchini, Les guerres dIndochine,p. 177. Despite receiving economic assistance from China, the DRVN steered clear of entering into a

formal alliance with either China or the USSR, a step that would have violated the terms of theGeneva settlement.

49. This is one of the primary conclusions in Edwin E. Moise, Land Reform in China and North Viet-nam: Consolidating the Revolution at the Village Level(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1983). On the land reform effort generally, see also Christine P. White, Agrarian Reform andNational Liberation in the Vietnamese Revolution: 1920957, Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University,1981.


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had made in the South.50 The exiled insurgents had no ties to the Northernpopulation and were loyal only to the VWP. Hence, during the land-reformcampaign, the exiles were often deployed by the North Vietnamese authori-

ties to crush resistance.51 Such measures intensied popular resentmentagainst land reform and against the ofcials responsible for it, includingHo Chi Minh.52

Third, North Vietnamese leaders believed that their own example inhonoring the Geneva Agreement would encourage the other side to do like-wise, paving the way for peaceful reunication and fulllment of revolution-ary objectives. Ofcials in Hanoi gured that even if the settlement collapsedand war broke out because of violations by the other side, this would make it

easier to convince Vietnamese on both sides of the seventeenth parallel of thelegality as well as the righteousness of the VWPs cause. If the revolutionaryforces showed restraint and endeavored to keep the peace in the face of enemyviolations, they would also make world opinion more sympathetic than itwould otherwise be, thus facilitating the mobilization of moral, diplomatic,and material support abroad. Hanoi would enhance its credibility and itscause if it could cast itself as a victim of aggression.

Finally, and perhaps most important, North Vietnamese leaders believed

that peace under the Geneva Agreement would be more promising thanwar as a vehicle for encouraging national reconciliation after reunication.Leaders in Hanoi were aware that the French and their American allies had forsome time been playing divide and conquer, actively recruiting Vietnameseto ght their war against Vietnamese revolutionaries. Through the creation ofthe SOVN and its pro-French army, the French had damaged the revolution-ary cause by changing the nature of the conict in Vietnam from an anti-colonial resistance to a war between conicting Cold War ideologies. TheSOVN had held its rst military draft and founded a military academy at DaLat in 1950. By 1954, many non-Communist Vietnamese, including manynationalists, had come to regard the SOVN and its government as legitimatepolitical entities despite continued French tutelage and even interference, andthey saw no reason to continue ghting Hanois battles. Radical nationalists,including most Communists, saw the situation differently. For them, the typeof independence the French permitted the SOVN was unsatisfactory, andthey continued their struggle. The role of SOVN forces in the military phaseof the Franco-Vietnamese war gave that conict a veneer of civil war.53 By

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50. Franchini, Les guerres dIndochine, p. 181.

51. Zasloff, Political Motivation, pp. 4445.

52. Ibid., p. 50.

53. More than forty years ago, Jean Lacouture convincingly argued, in Vietnam between Two Truces


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1954, more than 300,000 men had joined or been drafted into the SOVNarmed forces, and nearly one-fth of them (58,877) had been killed or de-clared missing. Additionally, from 1946 to 1954, 26,923 Indochinese service-

men in the CEFEOmany of whom were Vietnamese from the Southhadalso been killed or declared missing. That Vietnamese had been killing Viet-namese for a long time and in large numbers was detrimental to the VWPcause.54 In opting for peace under the Geneva Agreement, the VWP hoped toforestall further internecine conict and thereby improve the prospects for asmooth transition to national unity.

Resuming hostilities was also unappealing because the seventeenth paral-lel was a historical fault line between the two Vietnams. Starting in the eigh-

teenth century, when Vietnam began to take its present form, the two halvesof the country had been variously hostile toward or suspicious of each other.For much of the eighteenth century, warfare resulting from a feud betweentwo aristocratic families, the Trinh based in Hanoi and the Nguyen in theSouth, divided the nation along sectional lines that hardened over time.55

During the colonial era, the division grew more pronounced as a result of theconcentration of the French presence in Cochinchina, which Paris favored inmatters of economic and infrastructural development to the relative neglect of

the rest of the country. What is more, the French-imposed division of the na-tion into three administrative districts (Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina)largely undermined Vietnamese nationalism, which was already nascent whenthe French intervened in Indochina in the middle of the nineteenth century.The devitalization of Vietnam, as one scholar has argued, began under theFrench when they effectively destroyed the constructive economic link[le lien conomique efcace] between the Red and Mekong river deltas,thereby removing the primary connector between northern and southernVietnam.56 Thereafter, Northerners and Southerners were no longer condi-tioned to see each other as extensions of themselves. Given this long history ofprovincialism, the resumption of hostilities by Hanoi after the Geneva Agree-ment could easily have been interpreted by Southerners as Northern aggres-sion and encouraged many of them to view the SOVN and its allies moresympathetically. Moreover, North Vietnamese leaders understood that undersuch circumstances, mobilization of the populace in the North would be chal-

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(New York: Random House, 1965), p. 9, that the creation of the SOVN transformed the Vietnameseconict into a civil war.

54. Yves Gras, Histoire de la guerre dIndochine(Paris: Denol, 1992), pp. 578579; and Dommen,Indochinese Experience, p. 252.

55. Charles Maybon, Histoire moderne du pays dAnnam, 15921820(Paris: Plon, 1920), pp. 1325.

56. Hugues Tertais, Limpact conomique et nancier des deux guerres dIndochine, in Charles-Robert Ageron and Philippe Devillers, eds., Les guerres dIndochine de 1945 1975, No. 36 (Paris:Cahiers de lInstitut dHistoire du Temps Prsent, 1996), p. 222.


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lenging. As Philippe Franchini writes: The patriotic motives invoked [duringthe First Indochina War] would not this time have the same impact becausethe state in the South was independent and the American presence could

not as a matter of fact be compared to an occupation of the neo-colonialtype.57

Initial Steps to Uphold the Geneva Agreement

Having resolved to renounce war for the time being, the leaders of the VWPsought to convince the partys southern cadres that this was the correct strate-

gic move. They instructed all party members to respect the letter and spirit ofthe Geneva Agreement and to avoid hostilities. The revolution must continueaccording to a peaceful approach [phuong phap hoa binh], Hanoi instructed.For now, the pressing task was to explain the present situation to membersand masses alike and to impress on everyone the importance of avoiding vio-lent action even in the face of provocations by the enemy. Our people mustcontinue their protracted and arduous struggle by peaceful methods, theVWP insisted, in order to consolidate peace and achieve reunication, total

independence, and democracy throughout the nation.58

Shortly after theseinitial directives, the VWP First Secretary elaborated on them, emphasizingthe necessity for revolutionary forces to refrain from hindering the Genevapeace process or otherwise adversely affecting the political situation in theSouth. Any actions that obstructed the agreement, the First Secretary warned,would legitimate the desire of the Americans and their SOVN and French al-lies to thwart peaceful reunication. VWP ofcials called on supporters of therevolution to court Vietnamese who were traditionally friendly to Westerninterests, including Catholics and those who had served in the colonial ad-ministration, and let them know that the VWP and the DRVN governmentfully supported the Geneva settlement and the peace and reunication itpromised.59

These instructions became part of a broad campaign to win the heartsand minds of people in both halves of Vietnam. In a missive dated 31 August1954, Truong Chinh instructed cadres in the North to keep close watch overthe movement of people from the South to the North under the regroupmentprogram authorized by the Geneva Agreement. Such people might inuence

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57. Franchini, Les guerres dIndochine, p. 190.

58. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 27 thang 7 nam 1954, pp. 238241.

59. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 30 thang 7 nam 1954: Ve viec chap hanh lenh dinh chien, in VKD,1954, pp. 248249.


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the results of the general elections scheduled for 1956, and the VWP wantedthem to be treated generously. Kindness toward these people would, TruongChinh hoped, have a very big inuence (anh huong rat lon)on the spirit of

southern compatriots and increase the prospects for peaceful reunicationunder VWP leadership.60 Some 50,000 to 80,000 of an estimated 90,000Southern supporters of the revolution regrouped to the North after July 1954.Those who remained were directed by Hanoi to uphold the terms of the set-tlement and serve as a hedge against the failure of the unication of Viet-nam if the agreement collapsed.61 Upon arriving in the North, maleregroupees of appropriate age received military or other practical training, andtheir families had access to a variety of educational, economic, and social op-

portunities. Despite these efforts, many regroupees eventually regretted theirdecision to move to the North. They had been forced to sever their ties withfriends and family and in time had developed feelings of homesickness and re-morse. Others developed feelings of alienation, as Vietnamese parochialismmade it difcult for them to integrate into Northern society. Even within thearmed forces, Southerners found it difcult to bond with their Northerncomrades. The Northerners stayed with Northerners, the Southernerswith Southerners, one regroupee later commented. They didnt mingle eas-

ily.62

Another concern was the regrouping of signicant numbers of Northern-ers to the South. VWP leaders believed that the French and the SOVN gov-ernment were enticing(du do)or pressuring(bat ep)Northerners, especiallyCatholics, to move to the South as part of a strategy to inuence the politicalsituation there by gathering a few more votes for the upcoming elections.Undermining the French/SOVN strategy by limiting the number of North-erners who chose to regroup to the South was thus a pressing struggle forthe VWP.63 In and around Hanoi alone, more than 30,000 people signed upfor emigration to the South, including 7,373 who left within days after theGeneva Agreement became effective.64 To thwart this movement, the VWPFirst Secretary urged cadres at all levels to work cooperatively with Catholicand other organizations that enjoyed inuence among potential regroupees.

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60. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 31 thang 8 nam 1954: Ve viec don tiep bo doi, thuong binh, ot socan bo va dong bao mien Nam ra Bac, in VKD, 1954, p. 259.

61. Douglas Pike, PAVN: Peoples Army of Vietnam(New York: Da Capo Press, 1991), p. 41; and Dui-

ker, Communist Road to Power, p. 183.62. Quoted in Zasloff, Political Motivation, p. 59.

63. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 5 thang 9 nam 1954: Ve viec dau tranh chong Phap va bon NgoDinh Diem du do va bat ep mot so dong bao ta vao mien Nam, in VKD, 1954, pp. 263264.

64. Dang Cong san Viet NamBan Chap hanh Dang bo thanh pho Ha Noi, Lich su Dang bo thanhpho Ha Noi, 19541975(Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Ha Noi, 1995), p. 10.


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Cadres were to assure these organizations that the party would protect religionand freedom of belief. Gaining the trust of the sizable Catholic communitiesin Bui Chu and Phat Diem was a major objective for the VWP. Those com-

munities included staunch military and political supporters of the Frenchduring the 19461954 war. The leaders of the VWP now sought to co-optthem and other Vietnamese Catholics by relying on pro-VWP Catholics tospread information favorable to the party and the DRVN. In September 1954the party made a further effort to curry favor in Bui Chu and Phat Diem byenacting a suspension there of reductions in land rents and land redistribution(central features of the agrarian reform program) and allowing the circulationof foreign currencies, including Southern currency, prohibited in the rest of

the DRVN. More signicant, the VWP also ordered the return of propertyseized from Catholic organizations and the release of clergy members thenunder house arrest.65 Shortly thereafter, Truong Chinh directed cadres in theNorth to help their Catholic compatriots prepare for and celebrate Christ-mas. Christmas has a peaceful meaning, he wrote, and celebrating the holi-day offered party members an opportunity to generate an atmosphere ofhappiness in Catholic areas and make our [Catholic] compatriots under-stand our Governments correct execution of the religious policy of freedom

of belief. The directive also instructed party members to keep an eye onpriests and report any of them who encouraged their followers to regroup tothe South.66

As the VWP endeavored to improve its political position in the North, italso sought to cultivate a positive relationship with the ICSC. In a revealingletter to party cadres on 26 September 1954, Truong Chinh reviewed thepolitical dispositions of ICSC member-states and stressed the importance ofmaintaining cordial relations with them. The commission, he argued, couldprove helpful if the SOVN or its allies undermined the Geneva Agreement oraccused Hanoi of doing so. Describing Poland as our friends and India asagreeable to peace in Indochina, Truong Chinh warned that Canada is[ideologically] close to the United States and that the presence of Canadianrepresentatives on the commission would likely compromise the GenevaAgreement or otherwise cause problems for Hanoi. Truong Chinh thereforestressed the need for caution while at the same time trying to develop gooddiplomatic relations with the Canadian representatives. He urged party cad-res to make every effort to accommodate the Canadians, for doing so would

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65. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 5 thang 9 nam 1954, pp. 264270.

66. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 14 thang 12 nam 1954: Ve viec to chuc ngay le Noen cho dong baoCong giao, in VKD, 1954, p. 403.


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create favorable conditions for the struggle to consolidate peace and achieveour reunication.67

The VWP Politburos September 1954 Position

Statement

In September 1954 the VWP Politburo issued a lengthy and denitive state-ment of its policy for dealing with the situation created by the Geneva Agree-ment. Entitled New Situation, New Responsibilities, and New Policy, thedocument elaborated on the views already expressed by Truong Chinh and

the VWP Central Committee, offering a list of pressing tasks and fundamen-tal requirements of the new period (giai doan moi)needed to preserve peaceand achieve reunication.68 The report specied ve transitions that wouldcharacterize the new period: (1) from war to peace, (2) from national unity topolitical partition (the temporary creation of two Vietnams), (3) from rural tourban life, (4) from decentralization and dispersal to centralization, and(5) from separation to unity of the three Indochinese states. The documentexplained how to implement these transitions in a wide range of domestic and

foreign areas, including agricultural production, land reform, industrializa-tion, defense, the situation in southern Vietnam, and relations with neighbor-ing Southeast Asian countries and the United States. The VWP Politburo saidthat although the North was now liberated, the revolutionary struggle wouldcontinue in the South, where Vietnamese compatriots were under the yokeof the Ngo Dinh Diem regime and its American patrons.69 But the documentstressed that the mode of struggle [phuong thuc dau tranh] must change tomeet changed circumstances. It called on revolutionary forces to respect theceasere and to shift from armed struggle [dau tranh vu tranh] to politicalstruggle [dau tranh chinh tri].

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67. Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 26 thang 9 nam 1954: Ve nhiem vu cua cac cap uy Dang o cac diaphuong thuoc bac vi tuyen 17 doi voi Uy ban quoc te, in VKD, 1954, pp. 320323.

68. The Politburo issued the resolution at the conclusion of a meeting/conference from 5 to 7 Septem-ber 1954; it is reproduced as Nghi Quyet cua Bo chinh tri: Ve tinh hinh moi, nhiem vu moi va chinhsach moi cua Dang, in VKD, 1954, pp. 283315.

69. Diem became prime minister of the SOVN on 19 June 1954 and, by imperial decree, received fullcivil and military authority. A Catholic from central Vietnam, he had served as minister of the interiorunder the French and had become a well-known mandarin-administrator. After his resignation, his

popularity and prestige among southern nationalists soared. Frustrated by conditions in Vietnam, hetraveled to the United States and studied at a seminary in New Jersey in 1952. There, CardinalSpellman, the archbishop of New York City and head chaplain of the U.S. armed forces, andSpellmans successor, Cardinal Cook, took notice of Diem and recommended that Washington sup-port his bid for power in the South. Among the most recent and well-researched works on Diem isPhilip E. Catton, Diems Final Failure: Prelude to Americas War in Vietnam(Lawrence, KS: UniversityPress of Kansas, 2002).


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The VWP Politburo indicated that, above the seventeenth parallel, theparty and the people must foster conditions conducive to reunication, inde-pendence, and democracy for all three Indochinese states. To revive the econ-

omy from the damage inicted by many years of war and foreign occupation,they must increase agricultural production through land redistribution, pro-mote industrial growth, and take other steps to improve living standards andthe quality of life. The party must also facilitate national unity by not interfer-ing in religious matters and by otherwise encouraging social harmony. Thisemphasis on the North and Northern concerns suggests that within the newmode of political struggle the VWP was pursuing a North First policy. In-deed, the Politburo document was far more specic about the tasks and re-

sponsibilities facing the revolutionary movement in the North than aboutanything to do with the South. By the autumn of 1954, the authorities inHanoi realized that development and reform in the North were essential toconsolidate the revolution. Fortifying the gains of the revolution above theseventeenth parallel while improving standards of living would enhance thepartys image during the campaign for national unication. Beyond satisfyingimmediate needs, the effort would lay the foundation for the establishment ofa socialist economy after the liberation of the South.70

With respect to the situation in southern Vietnam, the VWP Politburodocument was much less substantive, reiterating earlier pleas to revolutionarycadres there to observe the peace and work to implement the Geneva Agree-ment. Your situation is very complex, the Politburo said to its Southernsubordinates, urging them for the time being to limit their activism to thepromotion of peaceful reunication while preparing the South Vietnamesepeople for a more active struggle against the Diem regime.71

As part of a united-front strategy, the Politburo called for close collabora-tion with friendly elements in Laos and Cambodia. Although the Genevaagreements effectively abolished Indochina as a political entity, party leadersstill believed that the fate of the Vietnamese nation and the revolution waslinked to that of the peoples of Laos and Cambodia.72 Perhaps the war thatended in 1954 had convinced them that Vietnams national security and terri-

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70. On this point, see Thong tri cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 22 thang 11 nam 1954: Ve may viec can dechinh don bien che trong quan doi, in VKD, 1954, pp. 370372.

71. Ban chi dao tong ket chien tranh truc thuoc Bo chinh tri, Chien tranh cach mang Viet Nam, 19451975: Thang loi va bai hoc (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2000), p. 88; and Trung tam

Khoa xa hoi va nhan van quoc giaVien su hoc, Lich su Viet Nam, 19541965(Hanoi: Nha xuat banKhoa hoc xa hoi), pp. 5465, 179180.

72. Party leaders, a former VWP cadre asserted in a recent memoir, always considered Indochina asone geographical entity and a single battleeld. See Bui Tin, From Enemy to Friend: A North Vietnam-ese Perspective on the War(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2002), p. 11.


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torial integrity hinged on the political situations in Laos and Cambodia andthat Vietnam could not be free and secure from outside interference unless itswestern neighbors were equally free and secure. That conclusion was by no

means unreasonable. Vietnam, which at its narrowest point is no more thanforty miles wide, had long been vulnerable to circumstances in the rest of theIndochinese peninsula. Moreover, the borders of the three states had neverbeen denitively drawn and over time had been mutable and uid. Until theFrench imposed themselves on the region, borders on the Indochinese penin-sula had shifted on numerous occasions over two thousand years. The regionhad always been characterized by a dynamic of its own, much of it attribut-able to the expansionist designs of successive Vietnamese leaders. Indeed,

Vietnam itself as a political entity had been forged out of territory originallybelonging to the Cham, Lao, and Khmer peoples.73 By some accounts, if theFrench had not intervened during the nineteenth century, the Vietnamesealong with the Thais to the west would have swallowed up what remained ofCambodia after the Vietnamese had taken from it the rich and fertile MekongRiver delta in the late eighteenth century.74As students of history, VWP lead-ers knew that Vietnam had thrived historically partly because of its peoplessuccess in encroaching on and absorbing territory belonging to the countrys

neighbors. They therefore had no compelling reason to assume that Vietnamcould evolve properly unless they took account of what was occurring else-where on the peninsula. Nor could they assume that the Geneva Agreementon Vietnam could be fully implemented unless the related accords on Laosand Cambodia were also carried out.75

Regarding other international matters, the VWP Politburo asked itssupporters to work with progressives in France and elsewhere to assure theimplementation of the Geneva agreements and the reunication of Vietnam.Mobilizing world opinion on behalf of the revolution was fundamental tospread it to the South. World opinion would be especially important if thepeace and reunication efforts failed amid international controversies overwho was responsible for the failure.

Until the failure of the Geneva accords became irreversible in late 1956,

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73. See Dao Duy Anh, Viet Nam van hoa sa cuong(Paris: Sudestasie, 1985), pp. 3335.

74. At the end of the rst millennium CE, the Khmer empire was the grandest in Southeast Asia andone of the greatest in the world. After the Thais sacked its capital in the fteenth century, the Khmernation entered a period of gradual decline and lost signicant portions of territory to the Thais and

the Vietnamese.75. On the historical and political evolution of the Indochinese peninsula, see Pierre-Bernard Lafont,ed., Les frontires du Vietnam: Histoire des frontires de la peninsule indochinoise (Paris: LHarmattan,1989); and Michel Blanchard, Vietnam-Cambodge: Une frontire conteste(Paris: LHarmattan, 1999),pp. 3350.


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the VWP Politburos September 1954 document remained the basis of partypolicy. In the context of the immediate post-Geneva period, it was the mostconsequential document produced by any of the VWP branches on the

Geneva Agreement.

Efforts to Implement the Document

Within the parameters of the September 1954 Politburo document, the VWPinstructed the Central Ofce for Southern Vietnam (COSVN; Trung uongCuc mien Nam), its arm below the seventeenth parallel, to exploit contradic-

tions (mau thuan)there between the French and the Americans. North Viet-namese leaders correctly sensed that despite the common goal of creating apro-Western, non-Communist state in the South, the French and the Ameri-cans disagreed about important matters, including governance structures andthe role of the military therein. Having learned that the chief-of-staff of theSOVN army, General Nguyen Van Hinh, a stooge [con bai] of the Frenchcolonial reactionaries, disapproved of Ngo Dinh Diem, a stooge of theAmericans, the VWP Politburo directed its Southern operatives to try to ex-

ploit that enmity and, by extension, the differences between the Americansand the French. The goal was to foster the creation of a new government inthe South that cared relatively little about the Americans [tuong doi it thanMy].76

North Vietnamese leaders understood that France was obliged to give theUnited States a voice in South Vietnamese affairs because of the material assis-tance the Americans provided to the Saigon regime. They also understoodthat French ofcials resented U.S. involvement because they regardedIndochina as being within Frances exclusive sphere of inuence. The Frenchauthorities particularly resented Washingtons designation of Diem, a staunchanti-Communist who despised Frances mission civilisatrice, to head theSouthern government. The VWP Politburo, having surmised that the Frenchwere worried that the Americans were trying to edge them out of the region,sought to capitalize on the resulting tensions between the two powers. Amongother initiatives, the Politburo suggested spreading disinformation and inl-trating the Southern regime and its armed forces.77 For the time being, how-ever, the most pressing task was to coordinate legal and illegal political activi-

ties closely, but give primary emphasis to the illegal work, and at the same

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76. Dien cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 6 thang 10 nam 1954: Ve nhan dinh tinh hinh va chu truong cong tacmoi, in VKD, 1954, pp. 327328.

77. Ibid., pp. 328329.


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time take full advantage of every legal and semi-legal opportunity to propa-gandize and educate the masses on a large scale.78

In the face of mounting difculties in the South, the VWP Central Com-

mittee called in mid-December 1954 for intensication of the propagandacampaign against the Americans, denouncing them for intervening inIndochina and sabotaging the Geneva agreements, while disparaging theirFrench and Vietnamese lackeys for perdy. In a parallel effort, the VWP un-dertook to spread its views among the people of South Vietnam. These mea-sures were responses to the disillusion felt by many Southern revolutionariesabout the political struggle. We must overcome subjective, remorseful, andpessimistic and faltering thoughts, the VWP urged. Perhaps most impor-

tant, supporters of the revolution had to overcome fear of the Americansand lack of belief in the triumph of the political struggle. To dissuade revo-lutionary elements from resorting to violence, the VWP Central Committeerepeated earlier warnings about the importance of respecting the ceasere.We must give all our attention to protecting the foundation [laid by theagreement], avoiding provocations, [and] avoiding manifestations of force.The Central Committee called on party leaders in the South to promotepeace more actively, making use of such slogans as Vietnamese do not kill

Vietnamese (nguoi Viet Nam khong ban giet nguoi Viet Nam).79

Growing Strains on the Accord

Despite such efforts, the situation in the South continued to deteriorate, mak-ing increasingly obvious the shortcomings of the VWPs policy. Southern rev-olutionary leaders tried their best to follow that policy, praising its merits innewspapers, magazines, and public meetings.80 Privately, however, they neveragreed with the policy, and their disaffection grew as the shortcomings be-came more evident. Vo Chi Cong, a prominent Southern revolutionaryleader, admitted as much in a recent memoir. Hanois acceptance of theGeneva Agreement, according to Cong, effectively nullied all the gains therevolutionary forces had achieved below the seventeenth parallel, and it wastherefore detrimental to the revolution generally. Equally disconcerting

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78. Quoted in Trung tam Khoa xa hoi va nhan van quoc giaVien su hoc, Lich su Viet Nam, p. 179.See also Dang Cong san Viet Nam, Nhung su kien lich su Dang, Vol. III (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Thong

tin ly luan, 1985), pp. 1213.79. Chi thi cua Ban Chap hanh Trung uong, ngay 17 thang 12 nam 1954: Tuyen truyen van dongmanh dau tranh chong de quoc My can thiep vao Dong Duong va pha hoai Hiep dinh dinh chien, inVKD, 1954, pp. 409419.

80. Vo Chi Cong, Tren nhung chang duong cach mang (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia,2001), pp. 148152.


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to Southerners was Hanois insistence that all the provisions of the settlementbe observed and violence foresworn, even when the enemy resorted to it. Rev-olutionaries in the South argued that in light of the duplicitous history of

French colonialists and the Cold War mindset of U.S. ofcials, it was naive toassume that either group would permit the reunication of Vietnam under aVWP-led government. They feared that this misplaced optimism, evennavet, would result in the loss of the South for the people and setbacks forthe revolution.81

Southern leaders shared some of their reservations with Hanoi. Followinga discussion of the VWP Politburos September 1954 policy pronouncement,the Executive Committee of Region IV (essentially Quang Tri and Thua

Thien provinces) in the South suggested to Hanoi that the new policy was notin the best interest of the revolution because it left Southern revolutionaries atthe mercy of enemy violence. Sustaining a purely political struggle in theSouth, the Region IV leaders insisted, would be extremely difcult and com-plex, especially in the Tri Thien theater, whose people had suffered greatlyduring the Franco-Vietnamese war and now faced further violence. Despitepledging to implement the will of the VWP, the regional party ofcials madecertain that Hanoi understood the nature and depth of their concern.82

A month later, the Executive Committee of Region V, in the central partof South Vietnam, voiced similar concerns, though in far more explicit lan-guage. After a three-day discussion in October 1954 about the VWP Polit-buros document, the regional committee sent a lengthy critique of it to Ha-noi that covered a wide range of issues, such as helping peasants to producehigher yields and encouraging more Northerners in the South to returnhome. The committees critique highlighted the priorities of Southern revolu-tionaries after July 1954 and what would be necessary to achieve them. In dis-cussing these issues, the committee pointedly refrained from mentioning themerits or eventual triumph of the political struggle mandated by Hanoi.83

Instead, after making the necessary obeisance to Hanois directive, theRegion V Executive Committee expressed its wariness of enemy intentionsand doubts that reunication could be achieved peacefully. Our army andgovernmental structure [chinh quyen] have retreated to the North, the com-mittee told Hanoi. Consequently, the French enjoy military and political su-

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81. Vien Lich su DangHoi dong bien soan lich su Nam Trung bo khang chien, Nam Trung bokhang chien, pp. 235236.

82. Quyet nghi cua Lien Khu uy IV, ngay 26 thang 9 nam 1954: Ve cong tac o Thua Thien va QuangTri (Thi hanh Chi thi cua Bo Chinh tri ve tinh hinh moi va nhiem vu cong tac moi cua mien Nam),in VKD, 1954, pp. 560562; and Vien Lich su DangHoi dong bien soan lich su Nam Trung bokhang chien, Nam Trung bo khang chien, pp. 227229.

83. Nghi quyet Hoi nghi Lien Khu uy V, tu ngay 18 den 21 thang 10 nam 1954, in VKD, 1954,pp. 577607.


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premacy in the South, and the people there suffer under a colonial and feu-dal regime. The new situation created by the Geneva Agreement, thecommittee said, was producing many difculties in the task to lead the

reunication effort. In language intimating a sense of betrayal, the critiquereected the pessimism of revolutionary leaders who knew that the Frenchand their allies would never give up southern Vietnam without a ght. TheAmericans represented a particularly signicant threat, the committeewarned, because they clearly intended to intervene in the South and carryout the destruction of peace in Indochina. Working in collusion, the Ameri-cans, the French, and their Vietnamese allies will not allow us to achievepeace and national reunication through free general elections. The commit-

tee reported that in areas under U.S. control, people were being terrorized,cadres jailed or killed, and revolutionary bases destroyed. Under these circum-stances, the committee advised Hanoi to prepare for the subversion of thegeneral elections of 1956 and the resumption of war.84

The tone of these warnings reected the growing frustration of Southernrevolutionaries with Hanoi and its response to the post-Geneva situation.85

Again, however, Hanoi ignored the warnings and concomitant problemsof Southern cadres and instead directed them to continue the regroupment of

revolutionaries from the South to the North, restructure their ranks with newrecruits, and otherwise adhere to the policy announced earlier by the Polit-buro.86 The leaders of the VWP remained committed to the advancement ofthe political struggle through early 1955. They redoubled their efforts to keepNorthern Catholics from regrouping to the South and launched a wider cam-paign to rally public opinion in and out of Vietnam behind their cause. Theauthorities in Hanoi instructed cadres on both sides of the seventeenth paral-lel as well as North Vietnamese diplomats abroad to publicize the VWPs con-tinued commitment to the peaceful reunication of the nation despite themachinations of the Americans and their lackeys in Saigon to derail thatprocess. North Vietnamese leaders by then were worried that the partys credi-bility was minimal and that the masses still did not understand the VWPs in-tentions. They urged party members to ght harder for the spirit of the peo-ple [tinh cam dan toc].87 The ostensible aim was to make the people in thecountry and the people of the world understand clearly that we have alwaysstrongly advocated peace and the scrupulous implementation of the agree-

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84. Ibid., pp. 577581.

85. Ibid., p. 580.

86. Vo Chi Cong, Tren nhung chang duong, pp. 163165.

87. Nghi quyet cua Ban Bi thu so 03-NQ/TW, ngay 29 thang 1 nam 1955, Thanh lap Tieu ban dantoc, in VKD, 1955, p. 37.


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ment, and that the opponents of the agreement are the American imperialistsand their puppets.88 Party leaders argued that because of the increasingly bel-ligerent stance of the enemy, appeals to the global community by interna-

tionalizing the political struggle had become more important than ever.89The world must recognize the wicked intentions of the enemy and be madeto feel resentment toward the hostile forces.90

The VWP was indeed growing more concerned about the United Statesand its role in Vietnam. By March 1955, Hanoi saw the Americans as primar-ily responsible for the failure to carry out the agreement. The American im-perialists have compelled the French colonialists to betray the agreement andare determined to rely on feudalists and the most reactionary bourgeois col-

laborators headed by Ngo Dinh Diem and destroy [the prospects for] peace,unication, independence, [and] democracy in Vietnam.91 A statement is-sued by the VWP Central Committee at a plenum in March 1955 assertedthat although France and the Diem regime in Saigon were monumentalobstacles to peace, the United States was the primary and most dangerousenemy [ke thu dau so va nguy hai nhat].92 Shortly thereafter, the VWP Polit-buro referred to the Americans as neo-fascists, adding that Washingtonmight intend to keep Vietnam permanently divided, like Germany and

Korea. To avoid that odious prospect, the Politburo advanced a new slogan,Oppose the Americans, Oppose Diem, Peace, Unication (Chong My, chongDiem, hoa binh, thong nhat).93

Equally disconcerting for North Vietnamese leaders at this juncture wastheir growing sense that the difculties they faced in promoting implementa-tion of the agreement were multiplying. After launching the political strugglein mid-1954, the VWP had achieved several successes, but, by its own admis-sion, the campaign to implement the agreement has had many shortcomings[thieu sot]. Specically, coordination of the effort to implement the agree-

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88. Dien cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 9 thang 2 nam 1955, gui Xu uy Nam Bo va Lien khu uy V, ve chongam muu dich du do va cuong ep giao dan di cu vao Nam, in VKD, 1955, p. 54.

89. See Chi thi cua Ban Bi thu so 06-CT/TW, ngay 10 thang 2 nam 1955, ve viec chong hoi nghikhoi xam luoc Dong Nam Ao Bang Coc, in VKD, 1955, p. 61.

90. Chi thi cua Bo Chinh tri so 07-CT/TW, ngay 16 thang 2 nam 1955, day manh dau tranh phaam muu cua dich trong viec du do va cuong ep giao dan di cu vao Nam, in VKD, 1955, p. 71.

91. Ket luan cuoc thao luan o Hoi nghi trung uong lan thu bay (Hop tu ngay 3 den ngay 12-3-1955), in VKD, 1955, p. 177.

92. Nghi quyet cua Hoi nghi Trung uong lan thu bay mo rong, hop tu ngay 3 den ngay 12-3-1955,in VKD, 1955, p. 207.

93. Chi thi cua Bo Chinh tri so 26-CT/TW, ngay 15 thang 6 nam 1955, tinh hinh hon loan o mienNam va nhiem vu cong tac cu the cua chung ta o mien Nam Viet Nam, in VKD, 1955, pp. 361362,387.


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ment was poor, and local party branches were ineffectually connected toHanoi. Consequently, party policies and plans did not reach lower levels in atimely manner, and the struggle to implement the agreement is oftentimes

belated and passive, which is why our victory has been limited.94Frustrated by existing conditions and intent on placating the growing

number of detractors in both halves of Vietnam (particularly in the South),the VWP started espousing a different line in the spring of 1955. Althoughparty leaders continued to press for implementation of the agreement andnon-violent struggle, they now claimed that resumption of war must be de-layed at least until the North had been consolidated (cung co). In light of thehavoc created by the Americans and their allies below the seventeenth parallel,

solidifying the North had become a prerequisite for national reunicationbecause only the DRVN could provide the guidance, manpower, and otherresources necessary for success under these changing circumstances. TruongChinh afrmed in March 1955 that although our strength resides in the en-tire nation, the most essential priority for the time being was the northernregion.95 Ho Chi Minh supported that position, stating in a public addressthat the principal tasks of the VWP included continuing the struggle to im-plement the Geneva provisions, developing stronger leadership at all levels of

the party, and consolidating the North on every front while intensifying thepolitical struggle in the South.96

The VWP claimed later that another reason for the adoption of theNorth First policy was concern that the enemy might exploit the vulnerabil-ity of the DRVN and attempt to roll back the revolution if the party spreadits resources too thin. Truong Chinh argued in a report to party members thatif our northern region is not consolidated, then not only will unication beimpossible but the Americans and their allies might use the South as aspringboard to encroach on the North.97 This assertion by the head of theVWP is remarkable in its suggestion that concern about U.S. intentions hadreached the point that party leaders feared for the very survival of the DRVN.The aim of the political struggle by mid-1955 was no longer promoting im-plementation of the Geneva Agreement; it was saving the revolution generally.

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94. Tinh hinh hien tai va nhiem vu truoc mat, bao cao cua dong chi Truong Chinh o Hoi nghi Trunguong lan thu bay mo rong (tu 3 den 12-3-1955), in VKD, 1955, p. 116.

95. Ibid., pp. 129, 135.

96. Loi khai mac cua Ho Chu tich, ngay 3 thang 3 nam 1955 tai Hoi nghi lan thu bay mo rong BanChap hanh Trung uong Dang Lao dong Viet Nam (khoa II), in VKD, 1955, p. 93.

97. Bao cao cua dong chi Truong Chinh tai Hoi nghi Trung uong lan thu tam, hop tu ngay 13 den20-8-1955 doan ket nhan dan toan quoc dau tranh de thuc hien thong nhat Viet Nam tren co so doclap va dan chu, in VKD, 1955, p. 485.


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Only after the DRVN had become a viable political entity could the struggleagainst the enemies of the revolution be reoriented. For the time being, theVWP needed peace.

In April 1955, Hanoi issued orders for the creation, consolidation,and organization of guerrilla units throughout the DRVNa decisionthat suggested fear of an American invasion of the North.98 In the South, theVWP remained committed to the pursuit of the political struggle. In a dis-patch to the Region V Executive Committee, Truong Chinh wrote that theplan of action for the South remained political and economic struggle, notarmed struggle. The VWP leader conceded, however, that party memberscould indirectly assist other groups, including criminal organizations and

religious militias, that were actively ghting the Diem regime and the Ameri-cans.99

On 19 May 1955, voluntary regroupment ended. By that time, theVWPs attempts to keep Catholics in the North had failed. Most of the north-ern Christians, including the entire communities of Bui Chu and Phat Diem,had decided to follow the Virgin Mary and go south. In their new location,they reestablished their communities and, predictably, became dedicated sup-porters of the Southern regime.100 In all, nearly a million Northerners, mostly

Catholics, migrated southward.101

After the regroupees arrived in the Southand after the territory formerly under revolutionary control had been ceded tothe Southern regime, Diem moved to wipe out the revolutionary movementby launching a vigorous anti-Communist campaign across the South.102 Soonthereafter, Diem publicly announced that as a non-signatory to the GenevaAgreement his government was under no obligation to support the 1956 elec-tions and would in fact not participate in them.103 Instead, he held a referen-dum of his own in October 1955 asking the Southern population to make

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98. Chi thi cua Trung uong so 14-CT/TW, ngay 16 thang 4 nam 1955, ve van de tiep tuc pha ammuu gay phi cua de quoc, in VKD, 1955, p. 260.

99. Dien cua Ban Bi thu, ngay 15 thang 5 nam 1955, in VKD, 1955, p. 299. Such organizations in-cluded the Binh Xuyen criminal syndicate and the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai religious factions.

100. By one account, Northern regroupees, most of whom were Catholics supportive of Diem, even-tually dominated the South Vietnamese government and armed forces. See Anthony James Joes, TheWar for South Vietnam, 19541975(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), p. 36.

101. On the resettlement of Northern Catholics, see Tran Thi Lien, Les catholiques vietnamiens dansla Rpublique du Vietnam (19541963), in Pierre Brocheux, ed., Du conict dIndochine aux conitsindochinois(Paris: ditions Complexe, 2000), pp. 5380.

102. By January 1956, Ordinance No. 6 granted South Vietnamese ofcials carte blanche to incarcer-ate and put to death suspected Communists and other opponents of the regime.

103. The position of Diems regime regarding the 1956 elections was articulated in Republic of Viet-nam, The Problem of Reunication in Vietnam(Saigon: Ministry of Information, 1958). On 20 July1954, the day of the signing of the Geneva agreements, Diem declared an ofcial day of shame (jourde la honte). Diem is quoted in Tranh-Minh Tiet, Les relations Americano-Vietnamiennes de Kennedy Nixon, Vol. 1, KennedyNgo Dinh Diem(Paris: Nouvelles ditions latines, 1971), p. 35.


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him head of state in place of Bao Dai with the mission of installing a demo-cratic regime below the seventeenth parallel. Despite indications that thevoting was riggedin some districts the number of ballots cast was greater

than the number of eligible voters, and the outcome of the vote was 98.2 per-cent in favor of Diemthe referendum nonetheless removed Bao Dai fromofce and made Diem the head of state as well as the prime minister of a vehe-mently anti-Communist and anti-revolutionary government. The referen-dum therefore enhanced the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Southern re-gime and set the stage for the formal creation of the Republic of Vietnam(RVN). The U.S. Senates vote to ratify the treaty creating the Southeast AsiaTreaty Organization in February 1955 formalized the U.S. commitme

choosing peace - hanoi and geneva agreement on vietnam 1954-1955 (bai nghien cuu)

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