Different war questions
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Dec 11, 2006 10:32 AM
subject [Vsg] different war question
Anyone who disagrees with me must be a Stalinist. With that out of the way, I have a question for the list:
I keep seeing revisionist rationalizations for the American intervention in Vietnam on grounds that it bought time for non-communist Southeast Asian governments to put their houses in order, get started on the development of miracle economies, and resist pressures to Finlandize the region. Nixon is best known for propagating this line, but I suspect it began with Lee Kwan Yew, who murmured it into American ears while the war was in progress. Henry Kissinger, Sir Robert Thompson, and other prominent people have repeated the line as though it were a self-evident truth. One of the specific claims is that the American display of resolve in 1965 "played a critical role in convincing Indonesian generals to take power from the pro-Communist Sukarno and destroy the Indonesian Communist Party in late 1965 and early 1966," as Mark Moyar put it in a recent interview at http://hnn.us/roundup/comments/30490.html. However, these claims are always asserted, never elaborated or defended.
My question for the list is this: Is there any evidentiary basis for these claims, other than the broad then-and-now comparison? Does anyone know of a source that has evaluated rather than merely asserted the claims?
Cheers,
Bill Turley
Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
date Dec 11, 2006 6:51 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Like Prof. Turley, I haven't seen evidences to be persuaded by this revisionist argument. But there seems to
be some interests among the current crop of historians-in-training, who have the required linguistic skills
to conduct research. At a grad conference this year, for example, I heard two papers about the support that
South Korea and Thailand gave to the US. But it's pretty preliminary, and much remains in the dark for
possibly a long time to come.
In the meantime, there's the good old "domino theory" for reconsideration. Looking at documented
conversations between the Chinese and others, Stein Tonnesson thinks that the theory was both right and
wrong. In the 1960s, the PRC and DRV did intend to spread communism in Southeast Asia (right), but were
constrained to do that by internal problems and external circumstances (wrong.)
http://wwics.si.edu/topics/pubs/ACFB39.pdf
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Dec 12, 2006 9:59 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Tuan,
Thanks for the comment. I look forward to discussion as historians-in-training take up the issue. The problem with the good old domino theory was its simplicity. Building on the Tonnesson list, I would suggest a list of propositions which, if true, would nullify one anothers' effects and confound attempts to reach a sweeping conclusion:
1. The PRC and DRV did intend to spread communism (but how aggressively? how effectively?).
2. Internal and external circumstances were significant constraints on PRC/DRV objectives (obviously true).
3. American intervention provided the incentive and the opportunity for the PRC and DRV to strengthen the CPT, which otherwise was going nowhere.
4. The American presence in Thailand helped to fuel the insurgency by confirming PRC/DRV/CPT propaganda, encouraging the generals to rely on repressive means of counterinsurgency, and radicalizing a generation of Thai students. This hardly "protected" Thailand so it could develop in peace.
5. American intervention shored up autocratic and corrupt regimes in Thailand and the Philippines, which was destabilizing in the short run but arguably stimulated democratization and democratic consolidation (a work in progress still) in the long run.
6. The Malaysian Emergency was over in 1957 and the real turning point in Malaysia's development came in 1969-70 with the riots and NEP, all of which reflected domestic not international currents. ("All politics is local," and not only in Massachussetts!).
7. Suharto and co. would have crushed the PKI regardless of American actions. They had the means and the motive, quite apart from the international context.
8. Southeast Asia's "economic miracles" were the product of appropriate policies and Japanese investment, neither of which depended on American intervention to occur.
9. Laos was going to be a domino regardless what the U.S. did. The case of Cambodia is less clear because Sihanouk was willing to cut a deal with Hanoi that would have left the KR on the sidelines.
Any others? I have difficulty adding up the facts in a way that supports the Nixon hypothesis.
Cheers,
Bill
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 12, 2006 12:33 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
To add more complication to this, I think the choice is not just between intervention and non-intervention. The third choice was one advocated by Archimedes Patti and the OSS Indochina office - support and cooperation with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh movement. They saw very early, even then, that the chance of success for any other choices against Ho was marginal at best (Cf. American Albatross).
The Soviet Union's support for Ho Chi Minh only came after the US turned it into a Cold War contest. In 1950 or thereabout, Ho Chi Minh's trip to Moscow was a complete failure. Stalin refused any meaningful aid. In his memoir, Krushchev wrote that he was so troubled by Stalin's treatment of Ho that he asked him for an explanation. Stalin averred that he saw no chance for Ho Chi Minh's success in Vietnam, and so why saddled the Soviet Union's prestige with it.
The issue is a distinctly "global" perspective typical of geopolitical considerations, which is appropriate in its context. In this case, it was raised only after the fact, I think, to find some silver lining in the botched intervention. It's certainly meaningless for the Vietnamese, with million deaths and a devastated country.
I think the same could be said for the case of Indonesia and the Philippines. The works of William Blum, Walden Bello, etc. would put a very different spin on it.
Nguyen Ba Chung
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Dec 12, 2006 1:01 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Agreed. Just minutes ago I was reading a very interesting evisceration of the domino theory in Gareth Porter's new book, Perils of Dominance, pp. 243-254. On the Soviet recognition of the DRV in 1950 (at PRC behest, by the way), see the poignant discussion of this incident in Mark Bradley, Imagining Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919-1950.
On Indonesia, the US clearly wanted Sukarno out of the way and tried to unseat him more than once, but it was rather unconcerned about the PKI threat because it knew with Sukarno gone the army could take care of the PKI. As for an American role, there seem to be two interpretations: 1) the generals took heart from American intervention in Vietnam to stage their coup but without any direct American encouragement or involvement, and 2) the CIA put them up to it. Here's a third: the generals did what they did for their own reasons at a time of their own choosing for reasons that were internal to Indonesia and to the army, without paying attention to what was happening in Vietnam. Have the Indonesians loosened up on sources about this since 1997?
Cheers,
Bill
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Dec 12, 2006 1:24 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
On # 8 - East Africa did not benefit from an India growing fast having been given favourable market access to the US for Cold War reasons. Which is to say that economic growth in Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, which surely played an important role in SEA economic development, was in part driven by Cold War policies. as for policies, there is good econometric evidence that there are no robust relationships between economic policies and outcomes.
Adam
Markus Taussig <markustaussig@mac.com>
date Dec 12, 2006 2:16 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
This would extend to include the unique access to US markets enjoyed by Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as some of the Southeast countries. The cold war provided a politically powerful counter-argument to American protectionist tendencies (that, of course, is very much missing today).
"Adam @ UoM" <fforde@unimelb.edu.au>
date Dec 13, 2006 11:29 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
Indeed. I have long felt that if a foreigner could understand why Eisenhower had to beat, in Taft, an isolationist anti-Communist for the Presidential nomination for 1952 they would understand much about your weird country - not that I do.
Adam
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 13, 2006 11:42 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Hi Bill:
There is some, but not much source loosening up in Indonesia since 1997 because although Sukarno fell, the military still plays a significant role in the power structure. There is a governed approved National Commission of Civil Rights to look into the event, sort of a truth commission, but just barely, and a private, poorly funded Indonesian Institute for the Study of the 1965/1966 Massacres that has begun to dig up mass graves to document the crimes against humanity.
There are two recent works on the subject, one by John Roosa, professor of history at the University of British Columbia, for the first time, documents the event leading up to the 1965 massacres extensively -
1- John Roosa, Pretext for Mass Murder: The September 30th Movement and Suharto's Coup d'Etat in Indonesia (New Perspectives in Se Asian Studies) (Aug 2006)
2- Ariel Heryanto, State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia Fatally Belonging (Politics in Asia Series)
(Dec 2005)
There is, however, not much doubt about US involvement in the affair. The State Department volume, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968: Vol. 26--Indonesia; Malaysia-Singapore; Philippines, "talks about how the U.S. government provided financial and military support and lists of political activists to the Indonesian military as it carried out the huge 1965-1966 slaughter aimed at communists and other political activists." For example, on December 2, 1965 Ambassador Green reported to State on providing 50 million rupiahs to Malik, a leader of the death squads - Kap-Gestspu to carry out their activities:
"This is to confirm my earlier concurrence that we provide Malik with fifty million rupiahs requested by him for the activities of the Kap-Gestapu movement?The Kap-Gestapu activities to date have been important factor in the army's program, and judging from results, I would say highly successful. This army-inspired but civilian-staffed action group is still carrying burden of current repressive efforts targeted against PKI, particularly in Central Java. The chances of detection or subsequent revelation of our support in this instance are as minimal as any black bag operation can be."
After providing the Indonesia army with a list of 5000 names of the top echelons of the PKI, the embassy staff then crossed out all those captured or assassinated. By Jan 1966, it was concluded that the PKI was practically destroyed as an organization. In an interview with Kathy Kadane in 1990, Robert J. Martens, the compiler of the list, said:
"It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my
hands, but that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment."
The CIA publication of Helen Louise Hunter Report in 1968, called ir "one of the worst mass murders of the twentieth century", and put the responsibility on the victims (Ralph McGehee called this only a version for public consumption. A real report was distributed inhouse for agents' reference). Admiral Sudomo, the head of the Indonesian state security system, admitted that more than 500,000 had been murdered. Amnesty Internal quoted from its sources a figure of 700,000 to more than a million. Ariel Heriyanto, professor of Indonesian studies of the University of Melbourne, puts the figure at more than a million. The Indonesian Institute for the Study of the 1965/1966 Massacres uses the figure between two and three million. It is one of the most horrendous barbarity of our age.
Perhaps for all the above reason, the CIA put pressure on the State Department to have the volume recalled. Now, it is no longer available publicly. But you can view it at the National Security Archive website - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/
A side notes:
1) There is a connection of all this to Vietnam. William Colby, when appointed chief of the CIA Far eastern division in 1962, discovered that there was no list of key leadership of the PKI in Indonesia. It was like fighting blind, he said. So he ordered to have the list compiled. He compared this effort similar to what was later implemented in Vietnam - the Phoenix Program.
2) It's interesting to note very little of this is available in the West. The maintream press practically ignores, or barely covers it.
For, as President Johnson famously said of Ngo Dinh Diem, Suharto may be a s.o.b, but he is the only s.o.b we have.
3) After the ascension of Suharto in Indonesia, as well as Marcos in the Philippines, the economy of both countries is in serious trouble, after decades of neoliberalism policy.
Nguyen Ba Chung
An article by John Roosa and Joseph Nevins available on the web at numerous locations:
"40 Years Later - The Mass Killings in Indonesia"
http://www.alternatives.ca/article2193.html
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 13, 2006 2:05 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
I just notice that the John Roosa and Joseph Nevins article at http://www.alternatives.ca/article2193.html has the body of the text but without their useful notation. A full version is at:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ROO20051105&articleId=1187
David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>
date Dec 13, 2006 6:37 PM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
I'd add a qualification to anh Chung's otherwise convincing assessment below. Educated Vietnamese across most of the political spectrum in 1945-46 were enamored of the Soviet Union. One can find this in non-ICP/Viet Minh publications: tremendous respect for the Russian fight against the fascists; rapid industrialization; belief that Moscow is anti-imperialist; desire to implement a command economy. This was not unique to Vietnamese at that time, I hasten to add. The major exception was the Catholic Church in Vietnam, which managed to publish searing critiques of Lenin, dialectical materialism, Stalin's mass killings, etc. The DRV government censor let this through until the end of 1946, providing it didn't apply the critique directly to local politics, in which case the scissors came out.
The ICP was able to use this reservoir of good feelings towards the Soviet Union to justify a lot of policies in the late 1940s and beyond, even though Stalin didn't give Ho chi Minh the time of day (which was not public knowledge, of course).
Ed Miller <Edward.G.Miller@dartmouth.edu>
to Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
date Dec 14, 2006 7:35 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
Following on the observations made by Bac Chung and David:
1. Archimedes Patti did indeed argue in his 1980 memoir that the US ought to have supported Ho and the Viet Minh beginning in 1945. However, like the analogous arguments about a “lost chance” for an accomodation between the US and Communist China during the same period, some of Patti’s ex-post-facto claims do not hold up very well. Specifically, as Mark Bradley has shown, Patti’s memoir obscured the deep ambivalence that characterized his on-the-spot reporting about Ho and the Viet Minh. In August 1945, for example, Patti suggested to his superiors that the VM were under the influence of foreign Communist agents, and that their activities had a “Soviet tinge.” (Bradley, IMAGINING VIETNAM AND AMERICA, 134-137). Patti does appear to have genuinely admired Ho and he did think in 1945 that some kind of cooperation with the VM was a good idea; however, his views at the time were not nearly as cut-and-dried--or as prescient--as he later claimed.
2. There is also reason to question how far the VM leadership was willing to go in the 1940s in seeking an accomodation with Washington. It is certainly true that Ho appealed to the US for recognition and support on several occasions. But did this reflect a desire for some kind of permanent accomodation? Or was it more a short- or medium-term tactical move? And given (as David points out) that there was genuine admiration for the USSR in Vietnam during and after 1945, how durable would a US-VM condominium have been in the context of the emerging Cold War? Dr. Tuong Vu delivered an excellent paper at the SHAFR conference in June in which he analyzed writings on foreign affairs written by high-ranking VM strategists during the mid- and late-1940s. He showed that Truong Chinh and others were convinced from an early date that a global confrontation between the US and USSR was inevitable, and that they were determined that Vietnam would stand firmly in the socialist camp. I doubt that this will be the last word on this subject. However, at the very least, I think Tuong’s findings show that the “lost chance” arguments advocated by Patti and many others are more problematic than previously acknowledged.
Ed
William Turley <wturley@siu.edu>
date Dec 14, 2006 8:31 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Thanks for the citations and comment, Chung. I will read everything attentively. Still, it's one thing to establish that the U.S. was implicated in the GESTAPU affair and quite another that American intervention in Vietnam was necessary to stem the tide of communist expansion elsewhere as Nixon et al. would have it.
Cheers,
Bill
vu tuong <vhtuong@yahoo.com>
date Dec 14, 2006 2:58 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
Dear Ed and list,
At Ed's kind suggestion, I am attaching my SHAFR paper
to add a different perspective to the debate on the
"lost chance" thesis. I certainly would appreciate any
comments or criticisms. The paper will hopefully come
out next year in Chris Goscha and Christian Ostermann,
eds. Connecting History: The Cold War and
Decolonization in Asia (1945-1962).
The abstract of the paper is pasted below for a quick
read.
Best,
Tuong
Abstract
How did leaders of the Indochinese Communist Party
(ICP) greet the outbreak of the Cold War, in
particular the formation of two opposing ideological
blocs? Existing scholarship has depicted an
independently minded ICP charting a pragmatic course
vis-a-vis Moscow during 1941-1954. This line of
interpretation would suggest that the arrival of the
Cold War that imposed a rigid global order on small
countries would not be celebrated in Vietnam. Using
party documents and Vietnamese newspaper sources, this
paper examines the changing worldviews of ICP leaders
from 1940 to 1951 in the context of the anticolonial
nationalist revolution. What I find is that, long
before the outbreak of the Cold War, leading
Vietnamese communists had cherished a particular
worldview in which the world was divided into two
hostile camps. Given this worldview, the arrival of
the Cold War was in fact welcome by many top
Vietnamese leaders. First they cheered, and then
volunteered to fight it on the frontline. This paper
thus questions several popular interpretations of
Vietnamese politics. First, the war between the DRV
and the US in the 1960s was not unimaginable in 1945
as many have argued. Second, the difference between a
“pragmatic” Ho and his “radical lieutenants” in
conventional image was not that great when their
fundamental worldviews are examined. Finally, ICP
leaders’ ideological beliefs and revolutionary
commitments are far more important to them than
existing scholarship acknowledges.
MK Moyar <moyars@mindspring.com>
date Dec 14, 2006 6:10 PM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
For evidence supporting the claims about the domino theory, see the book that is mentioned in the HNN interview- Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Mark
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 16, 2006 7:46 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
Anh David:
I certainly agree with anh David on this qualification. There is only one point I want to add, which anh David has already noted - is that we have to put ourselves back to that time, to understand the full force of the attraction of communism as seemingly the only ideology that effectively stood on the side of the poor and the oppressed, that was willing to throw itself with enormous risk against the almost invincible power of empires. The choice was not simply political or ideological, for very few actually understood the full scope of what communism was, but at the root it was very matter-of-factly a simple moral question. To be a communist then was to be ready to face danger, capture, torture and death, with no expectation of material rewards in the service of a grand ideal. It meant to give up the normal life - if life in a colony could be called normal - of family, job, and regular pursuits. It became, however, a self selecting process, for those who made that choice belong to, in this case genuinely, "the best and the brightest" of that generation.
I remember when prof. Hoang Ngoc Hien was interviewed by the BBC program World while he was in Boston doing the Rockefeller residency, he was asked why he joined the communist movement. He was a bit surprised by the question. "Most of the students in my class joined the revolution," he said, "to us, it was a very easy choice. If you want to do something for the country, that is the only place where you could. There was never any doubt." After the failure of Nguyen Thai Hoc, the anticolonial efforts of non-communist nationalist parties in Vietnam lost much of their steam and luster. Many were laudable patriots, certainly. But very ineffective.
As for the Catholic church, the real push started with Pope Pius XI speaking out on the danger of communism in the spring of 1936 during the Spanish civil war, which led to his encyclical "Divini Redemptoris" (On Atheistic Communism) in March 1937. Pope Pius XII then issued an encyclical in July 1949 threatening excommunication of any Catholic who cooperated with the communists. In the background above, such a view had limited impact with the outside population. The history of the cooperation of the local church with the colonial regime was generally known.
Nguyen Ba Chung
Note:
Anh David also mentions that the fact Stalin didn't "give the time of day" to Ho was not public knowledge. I would venture to say that you wouldn't find that mentioned, dissected or discussed in any party document. Pham Van Dong was reported to have said that he and others felt betrayed by the Soviet Union in the Geneva negotiation. You wouldn't find that mentioned, dissected or discussed anywhere in party documents. But these things had tremendous impact on the VCP's course of action. In the Paris negotiation, neither China nor the Soviet Union would be allowed to get near it with a ten-foot pole. That's the major problem I had with Vu Tuong's analysis - the question of the chicken and the egg. Lots of sensitive issues are never put down in documents. The nature of real politics is realpolitics, not to be comfortably put down in conceptual frameworks for the edification of the mass or of the elite. The ideals have to be raised to keep the spirit of the movement high, but actions must come from realistic assessment of the facts on the ground, not some wild-eyed hope or doctrinaire formulation. I'll address Ed Miller's post separately.
Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
date Dec 19, 2006 9:42 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
After reading Tuong Vu's paper and comments from Chung Nguyen et al., I think the heart of the issue has to with the degree of belief. To what degree did the ICP leadership believe in international communism? To what extent did contingency affect their beliefs and explain for their conduct? Our ability to answer these questions are limited by the lack of access to documents. But even with access to more documents, it's likely that methodological problems remain, such as the Party's very different approaches vis-a-vis China and the Soviet Union at Geneva and Paris negotiations that was noted by Chung.
Methodological problems like this are fairly common in historical research, so I don't find them peculiar to this case. Chung mentioned Pius XII, and it was well known that he was very strongly anti-communist long before he became the head of the Catholic Church. As Pope, he used his pulpit power to deliver strong anti-communist statements, and helped the Christian Democrats win elections over the Italian Communist Party.
Truman was well aware of this, and quickly sought a moral and diplomatic alliance with Pius and got help in return from the Vatican. (E.g., the Vatican passed on to the US information gathered from its diplomatic post in Yugoslavia.) Yet, in the last few years of his papacy, Pius began to soften his stance towards the Soviet Union as he noted the unlikelihood that the Cold War was going to end any soon. His successors John XIII and Paul VI certainly pursued negotiation and compromise, just as the rest of the West embraced detente.
(Paul VI was consistently calling for peace in Vietnam and, along the way, helped shed moral doubt among American Catholics on the Vietnam War, in a similar attitude that John Paul II would be against the Iraqi War thirty years later.) Then in the late 1980s, as detente was dissolving, John Paul II began his papacy with a tougher policy towards the communist bloc, well on line with the rise of Thatcher and Reagan and the renewal of Cold War confrontation. So, even the uniquivocally anti-communist Vatican had to adapt to changing events and realities, sometimes at seeming odds with its deeply held beliefs.
Of course, there are historical exceptions to this ideology-realpolitik dynamics too, such as Hitler's anti-Semitic obsession that blinded him to the utilitarian consideration of giving Jews in labor camps more food so they could produce more for the war economy in the last few years of WWII. But most cases aren't as clear cut, including the Vietnamese Communist Party vis-a-vis the communist and imperialist blocs. (Besides, as much as Hitler detested the USSR, realpolitik led him to seal a deal with Stalin in 1939.) That said, however, I think Tuong Vu's paper is a major contribution, and look forward to read the published version. Historians work with what they can find, and even though I am not persuaded by at least some of the conclusions, the paper uses important sources, applies valid historical methods, and makes a plausible case. It opens a new line of inquiry too, which is worthy of further investigation, whether in surport and in opposition to the basic premises. For my money, Tuong makes several insightful points that confirms the excitement of current research into the war.
If I may indulge in one of those points, which is prison. I think (and dearly hope) that the history of the current century will be very different for Vietnam. But in my opinion, twentieth-century Vietnamese history is a history of prison. From imperial prisons to the French colonial prison system, to the pre-1975 DRV's labor camps and the RVN's tiger cages, to postwar re-education camps: it is a very deep history with consequences reaching far beyond the wall that confined the prisoners. Surely many differences existed among those prison systems, but there was at least one consistency: they certainly didn't change the minds and beliefs of any prisoners. If anything, they toughened the prisoners' opposition to the respective regimes even more. In prison, anti-colonial communists became stronger anti-colonial communists, anti-Diem and anti-Thieu dissidents became more anti-Diem and anti-Thieu, anti-communist former ARVN officers and RVN officials became more anti-communist. (Had it not been for the re-education camps, anti-communist overseas Vietnamese wouldn't be as vocally anti-communist as they have been.) In this light, Tuong's distinction between communist members who were trained abroad and those trained in the Indochinese prisons is a significant one and, Peter Zinoman's indispensable book aside, worthy of further research. Find out more about their experiences, then we can determine better the extent of their convictions and the degrees of their adaptability to realpolitik when they were running policies. Find out more too about the relationship between Ho Chi Minh and Truong Chinh et al. Among others, Hang Nguyen and Sophie Quinn-Judge have shown us glimpses into the complex picture of Party membership and decision-making; let's hope we'll learn more about the dynamics and nuances in this composite picture, esp. in the period up to Geneva. Then we will be in a better position to make judgments on the dynamics between contingency and ideology of the Party leadership.
Finally, a note on Archimedes Patti and memoirs. I looked at the pages from the Mark Bradley book that Ed Miller cited, and Bradley points out (on 134-135) a discrepancy between what Patti wrote in an August 1945 cable and what he said in his memoirs in 1980. Bradley shows that Patti had a lower opinion of the Vietnamese vis-a-vis the French in 1945 than he would thirty-five years later. In my opinion, this discrepancy shouldn't surprise any of us. By their nature, memoirs come from memories, and memories have many ways of playing tricks on their owners. Although I've found memoirs useful to a degree, methodologically speaking, I find it necessary to reading them with a grain of salts (and sometimes two), be the memoirs from Patti, William Colby, Henry Kissinger, Truong Nhu Tang, Nguyen Cao Ky, or Bui Tin. (Aside from the defector Hoang Van Hoan, are there any Politburo members that wrote memoirs? I am curious if there's been an unspoken disapproval of them
penning memoirs.) The same applies to interviews, notwithstanding the current popularity of oral history.
Interviews are essential tools for anthropologists, political scientists, etc. But they tell as much about the present as they do about the past, and should be of limited use for historians.
Sorry for going off the tangent, but I suppose the discussion had already gone off from Bill Turley's original
question on Southeast Asia.
~Tuan
"Sidel, Mark" <mark-sidel@uiowa.edu>
date Dec 19, 2006 11:34 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
On the question in the last paragraph - memoirs by Political Bureau members - see the interesting Hoi ky by Nguyen Co Thach in Nha ngoai goai Nguyen Co Thach (NXB Chinh tri Quoc gia 2003), pp. 333-432. These are, to my knowledge, the memoirs that Mr. Thach and some in his circle at MFA and IIR mentioned were underway in the 1990s.
Also a memoir by Tran Quang Co, the long-serving Deputy Foreign Minister and a senior foreign policy strategist, appeared on the web several years ago. Co was never on the Political Bureau (having declined several opportunities to serve as Minister or in other positions), but was considered a contemporary by others at that rank.
In the law field, we are indebted to Vu Dinh Hoe, first Minister of Justice in the mid-1940s, for memoirs of early developments in the law and security field. Hoe was never on the Political Bureau, but his memoirs of serving at a high rank in the law and security arena for a few years written from an intellectual's perspective are valuable.
Mark Sidel
Tuan Hoang <thoang1@nd.edu>
date Dec 20, 2006 10:04 AM
subject RE: [Vsg] different war question
Thanks, Prof. Sidel, for these titles. Related to Prof. Turley's original question, fresh off the press is
the FRUS volume on Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, 1969-1972.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/xx/77838.htm
Office of the Historian
Bureau of Public Affairs
United States Department of State
December 15, 2006
The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1972, Volume XX, Southeast Asia, 1969-1972. This volume presents documentation on U.S. relations with Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, three nations that were key U.S. allies during the Vietnam war.
Thailand played a major role during the Vietnam war, particularly as the launching point for U.S. bombing campaigns in Southeast Asia. In addition, Thai volunteer troops joined U.S.-backed Lao guerillas in a fierce secret war between Laos and the North Vietnamese. For its part, the United States provided substantial economic and military assistance and training to Thailand. Also covered in the Thailand chapter of this volume is the growing congressional criticism of U.S. commitments to Thailand, both secret and open, and the role of Thai troops fighting in South Vietnam. Another theme of the chapter is U.S. concern about an indigenous insurgency in northeast Thailand, and U.S. encouragement of Thai leaders to focus on it. As the United States withdrew its troops from South Vietnam, Thailand began to reevaluate its security relationship with the United States.
Although officially non-aligned since the overthrow of Sukarno, Indonesia under Suharto had close and warm relations with the Nixon administration. The chapter on Indonesia demonstrates this relationship through accounts of personal meetings of high-ranking Nixon administration officials, including the President himself, with Suharto and other Indonesian leaders. This formal face-to-face communication was bolstered by a special channel between Kissinger and Indonesian military leaders, which was designed to expedite communication on bilateral relations, especially U.S. military assistance and training. For its part, Indonesia played an important role in providing the Cambodian armed forces with AK-47s and ammunition in their fight against the North Vietnamese and their Khmer Rouge allies. Finally, the chapter documents the U.S. role in spearheading an international effort to reschedule Indonesia's vast debt, a legacy of the free-spending Sukarno years.
The final chapter documents U.S. policy towards the Philippines, and the focus is on the government of Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda. U.S.-Philippine relations were close because of the two nations' shared history, the extensive U.S. military presence in the Philippines, the Philippine contribution of an engineering battalion to the conflict in South Vietnam, a special tariff preference for Philippine products in the United States, and a host of connections resulting from U.S.-Philippine military cooperation during the Second World War. Although the United States and the Philippines had a close relationship, they also had their differences. Marcos and his supporters worried that the United States was secretly supporting his opponents, notwithstanding U.S. denials. Marcos had his critics in the U.S. Congress and within the Department of State, who believed that his regime was both corrupt and becoming increasingly dictatorial. However, Marcos enjoyed the confidence of the Nixon administration, which while not approving of Marcos's methods-especially his imposition of martial law-did nothing to prevent, and little to ameliorate, them.
This is the last print volume to document U.S. policy towards the non-Indochinese states of Southeast Asia during the Nixon and Ford administrations. For the period from January 1973 to January 1977, U.S. policy towards Southeast Asia (nations other than Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) will be covered in an electronic-only
volume.
The volume and this press release are available at the Office of the Historian website at
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/xx. Copies of this volume can be purchased from the U.S. Government Printing Office at http://bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO stock number 044-000-02582-5; ISBN 0-16-076696-6). For further information, contact Edward Keefer, General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663-1131
or by email to history@state.gov.
Chung Nguyen <Chung.Nguyen@umb.edu>
date Dec 21, 2006 9:59 AM
subject Re: [Vsg] different war question
Hi Ed:
Thank you for a great set of questions and sorry for the delay (I'm still working on the other one, time permits!). Below are some of my personal thoughts on these issues. I will admit that we are treading on very speculative grounds. There is no if-or-but in history. History would not be really interesting, however, if we could not even discuss any other alternative, even if it is not always possible to prove anything to any degree of absolute certainty.
1. In his memoir, Patti mentioned that all the reports, recommendations re: Vietnam at the time that supported the view he set out were still locked up in the State Department archive. I wonder if all of these have been declassified or made available for researchers? Let us also remember it's not just what Patti did or did not write. As soon as he returned to Washington, he was completely sidelined for, presumably, his view was not welcomed. When he first attempted to write his memoir, he was not allowed access to his old papers or the period's archive, and basically given warning that he should not proceed. Certainly, if his view was not so clear-cut, or perceived as so clear-cut, ie. a threat to existing government policy, he would not have received such treatment from the admistration.
2. The "genuine admiration for the USSR in Vietnam during and after 1945" as David points out, is a matter given considering the period, when all Western powers mostly allowed the continuing possession of the colonies, esp. in the case of Vietnam. Ho and his movement had nowhere to turn. In the top leadership, Ho was the only one who had any practical experiences of the US, Britain and French. This is really crucial, because he was possibly the only who could make a distinction between the admirable civil society of these countries and their foreign policies at the time, which could be viewed as abominable from an anticolonial perspective.
Ho and the Vietminh, with some internal dissension, supported the Sainteny agreement in 1946, willing to stay within the French Union for at least 5 years before regaining full independence. Ho even went to Paris to try to persuade the Metropolitan to adopt that agreement. He failed. Sainteney was a French patriot but he understood the Vietnamese and their iron-willed struggle to get back their country. The colons in Paris were too greedy; they didn't want to lose all their lucrative plantations and other business privileges in the colony. This path, however, is clearly not necessarily leading to the socialist bloc, as the party rhetoric might claim.
While in Paris, Ho was so desperate to get the agreement through the French Parliament that he stopped at the US Embassy, talking to Abbot Moffat. He proposed that if the US government used its good office to pressure the French to go along with the agreement, he would allow the US to use Cam Ranh Bay and Vietnam to accept the investment of American capital. He again had his deputy Hoang Minh Giam repeat this offer to Abbot Moffat when Dulles sent him to Hanoi to make a last ditch effort to forestall the looming French-Vietnam conflict.
To talk of trade issues, or some vague bilateral relations is one thing, to offer the use of Cam Ranh bay is a matter of a very different order altogether. With the US navy unfurling its flags in Cam Ranh Bay, for either a short-term or long-term stay, I doubt very much Vietnam would be a bona fide candidate for the socialist bloc.
The real tragedy is that I believe Ho Chi Minh saw very clearly the cost to his country and to his people if he had to start a war against the French, with the US in full support of the enemy. He tried desperately to get his country out of such a horrific predicament, but the US rejected all his offers. And on that side, we have much more convincing documents on US foreign policy - the rejection of any compromise with Ho and the Vietminh [Dulles' personal letter of instruction to Abbot Moffat, the CIA investigating of Ho and its amusing conclusion, the rejection of all of Ho's letters, the marginalization of Patti and his group, the 78% financing of the French effort to retake Vietnam, the role of Cardinal Spellman (Cooney's "The American Pope"), the Friends of Vietnam lobby, the Vatican, the State Department-directed formation of the Catholic-only Can Lao party over the objection of Edward Lansdale, etc.]. Earlier, he even asked Archimedes Patti to get him a visa so that he could go to New York, to personally appeal for US support. Patty declined for it was not something within his power to arrange.
That was the height of the cold war. And what communist would offer the use of one of the best sea ports in Asia to the “arch imperialist” ? For what reason? So he could avoid a war with the French.
Secondly, the question of methodology, as Tuan Hoang has raised.
1) Controversial and sensitive issues do get discussed among high-leveled party members. Documents and reports of this nature, if ever written down, would be available only to a restricted circle. As a rule, they are never released to the general public. The set of documents VT mainly relies on is a publicly available product selected, edited, and published for public consumption. Its purpose, I would hazard a guess, is not to present objectively all the issues relevant to a period, but to highlight the party’s wisdom, far-sightedness, and fidelity to the causes of a sort of idealistic communism as propagandized in the literature. It's certainly helpful, but is it necessary and sufficient ?
2) Certain conclusions that the monograph reaches, relying on that idealistic picture, seem to dispense altogether with the need to re-situate the issues in the give and take of actual events for no serious conflict occurs in a vacuum. To put on the responsibility of a decision on one side, for example, without examining the dynamic reality of the chain of actions-reactions, is problematic, for such doctrinaire formulation could be, instead of the predeterminant factor of the decision, is actually its ex post facto justification (esp. when it's published after the fact). It's the question of the chicken and the egg.
3). To cite an example, during the Vietnam war, the Soviet Union was pursuing a peaceful coexistence with the US, not confrontation. Seeing as its interests to tie the US down in a land war in Asia, China supported the Vietnamese, but would like to control its scope and tempo. Ho Chi Minh was able to play for the support of both, and eventually achieved his purpose – unification, despite in the end, the reluctant support of both China and the Soviet Union for this aim. In the last days of April 1975, China even offered Duong Van Minh support to continue the fight in the South against the communists This was documented recently by Nguyen van Ngan, Nguyen van Thieu's political advisor and behind-the-scene master operator, on www.nguoivietweb.com It was also cited in Ly Trung's memoir published in Vietnam, but with the name China referred to as a foreign country. So much for the rhetoric of the socialist camp.
A real intersting question would be, instead of how squarely on the soccialist camp the rhetoric had been, but how that all-socialist rhetoric squares with the party's sometimes not entirely socialist decisions ?
It reminded me of one of the stories about Ho Chi Minh. He was in China looking for substantial supplies and military assistance. The Chinese generals proposed a certain campaign. Ho Chi Minh praised it, and immediately requested his host to provide him with technical mean to send a directive to the Vietnamese high command about that proposal, no doubt making everyone happy. After the negotiation, Ho Chi Minh returned to Vietnam. It turned out the Vietnamese high command didn’t even bother to consider that proposal until six months later.
To cite another example we are all recently aware of. President Bush called Iran part of the axis of evil in the Middle East and has so far refused to have direct talk with Iran without pre-condition. But for the interest of the US, as the Iraq Study Group and others have advocated, the US should, and mostly would, eventually, do otherwise, condemnation of Satanic behavior notwithstanding. Similarly, the US, following the overthrow of PM Mosadegh and the installation of 17-year brutal regime of the Shah, is portrayed in Iran as the devil incarnate itself. And yet, recent revelation has shown that Iran made a proposal to make peace with the US in 2003, resolving all major issues in a grand bargain, devil or no devil. That is to confirm the obvious – realpolitics is realpolitics, rhetoric not withstanding. Rhetoric is often based on prior grievances in order to assume a sort of moral high ground; it should never be assumed to pre-determine any course of future actions when it serves the party’s current interests.
And the last point, somewhat far afield, but in reality is part of the makeup of Vietnamese culture. The Vietnamese has a very ancient model upon which to assimilate foreign ideas, philosophy, and religions – Confucianism and Buddhism. Let’s just look at the former for it closely approximates the case of communism. The Vietnamese worship Confucius and a long list of his disciples. For centuries, Confucianism has been one of the foundations of Vietnamese culture. They study the Four Books and the Five Classics. They learn by heart the major Confucius’s precepts. But never because of it they have ever been simply a satellite of China. On the contrary, throughout their history, they have relied on their very mastery of Confucianism in order to repel all China’s expansionist projects. There is a very clear distinction between the adoption of an idealistic doctrine and the slavish subordination of the country to any other foreign power. Associations, alliances, consensual agreements on joint policy based upon the implementation of these ideals, yes, but blind following in any sort of puppet following, I don’t think there is much of a case for it.
Nguyen Ba Chung