HIST103: World History (1600–Present)

President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greet President Ngo Dinh Diem in Washington

As dictated by the Geneva Accords of 1954, the partition of Vietnam was meant to be temporary, pending free elections for national leadership. The agreement stipulated that the two military zones, which were separated by a temporary demarcation line (which eventually became the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ), "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary" and specifically stated that elections would be held in July of 1956. However, the Diem government refused to enter into negotiations to hold the stipulated elections, encouraged by U.S. unwillingness to allow a certain communist victory in an all-Vietnam election. Questions were also raised about the legitimacy of any election held in the communist-run North. The U.S.-supported government of South Vietnam justified its refusal to comply with the Geneva Accords by virtue of the fact that it had not signed them.

Diem, a devout Roman Catholic, was aloof, closed-minded, and trusted only the members of his immediate family. Vehemently anti-communist, he was untainted by any connection with the French, and he was a natural ally of the United States. In April and June of 1955, Diem (against U.S. advice) eliminated political opposition by launching military operations against the Cao Dai Sect, the Hoa Hao, and the Binh Xuyen organized crime group (which was allied with the secret police and some army elements).

Later that year, Diem organized an election for president and a legislature and wrote a constitution. In the election (which he might have won legally), Diem received 98.2 percent of the vote, attracting charges of a rigged election.

Beginning in the summer of 1955, he launched a "Denounce the Communists" campaign, during which communists and other anti-government elements were arrested, imprisoned, or executed. During this period, refugees and regroupees moved across the demarcation line in both directions. It was estimated that around 52,000 Vietnamese civilians moved from south to north, while 450,000 were air- or boat-lifted from north to south.^[4]

As opposition to Diem's rule in South Vietnam grew, low-level insurgency began to take shape in 1957, conducted mainly by Viet Minh cadres who had remained in the south and had hidden caches of weapons in case unification failed to take place through elections. In late 1956, one of the leading communists in the south, Lê Duẩn, returned to Hanoi to urge that the Vietnam Workers' Party take a firmer stand on national reunification. Hanoi hesitated in launching a full-scale military struggle. In January 1959, under pressure from southern cadres who were being successfully targeted by Diem's secret police, the Central Committee of the Party issued a secret resolution authorizing the use of armed struggle in the South.

On December 12, 1960, under instruction from Hanoi, southern communists established the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in order to overthrow the government of the south. The NLF was made up of two distinct groups: South Vietnamese intellectuals who opposed the government and were nationalists and communists who had remained in the south after the partition and regrouping of 1954, as well as those who had since come from the north. While there were many non-communist members of the NLF, they were subject to the control of the party cadres and increasingly side-lined as the conflict continued; they did, however, enable the NLF to portray itself as a broad-based, nationalist rather than communist movement.

Coup and Assassinations

Some policy-makers in Washington began to believe that Diem was incapable of defeating the communists; some even feared that he might make a deal with Ho Chi Minh. During the summer of 1963, administration officials began discussing the possibility of a regime change in Saigon. The State Department was generally in favor of encouraging a coup. Meanwhile, the Pentagon and CIA were more alert to the destabilizing consequences of such a coup and wanted to continue applying pressure on Diem to make political changes.

Chief among the proposed changes was the removal of his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, from all of his positions of power. Nhu was in charge of South Vietnam's secret police and was seen as the man behind the Buddhist repression. As Diem's most powerful adviser, Nhu (along with his wife) had become a hated figure in South Vietnam and one whose continued influence was unacceptable to all members of the Kennedy administration. Eventually, the U.S. State Department, Pentagon, National Security Council, and the CIA determined that Diem was unwilling to further modify his policies. The decision was made to remove U.S. support from the regime. President Kennedy agreed with the consensus.

In November, the U.S. embassy in Saigon communicated through the CIA to the military officers who made up the conspiracy that the United States would not oppose Diem's removal. The president was overthrown by the military and later executed along with his brother. After the coup, Kennedy appeared genuinely shocked and dismayed by the murders, although the CIA had anticipated this outcome.

Chaos ensued in the security and defense systems of South Vietnam. Hanoi took advantage of the situation to increase its support for the insurgents in the south. South Vietnam entered a period of extreme political instability as one military junta replaced another in quick succession. Ironically, Kennedy was himself assassinated just three weeks after Diệm. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, declared on November 24 that the United States would continue its support of the South Vietnamese. During this period, the U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam dramatically increased,  and the "Americanization" of the war began.

The Saigon governments and their Western allies portrayed the military action as simply a defense against the use of armed violence to effect political change. At a geopolitical level, the conflict was perceived as a deterrent against expansive global communism emanating from Moscow and Beijing. The Cold War paradigms of containment and the domino theory were in their heyday and framed many of the arguments on the issue of Vietnam. As far as the North Vietnamese and the NLF were concerned, the conflict was a struggle to reunite the nation and to repel foreign aggressors and neo-colonialists – battle cries that were a virtual repeat of those of the war against the French.