THE CONTINUING CRISIS IN VIETNAM

K. P. S. MENON

Former Indian Ambassador in U. S. S. R.

The eyes of the world are on Vietnam. So, let us remember, were they this time 11 years ago. In the spring of 1954, too, events in Vietnam were mounting to a crisis. Indeed, in my diary, written in Moscow on this day, the 11th April 11 years ago, and reproduced in my book, The Flying Troika, I expressed a fear that the world was on the brink of war.

At that time, the French armies in Indo-China were on the run and France had no heart left in the fighting. The U.S.A., however, strove hard to keep up the war. “If communism were to be imposed on Indo-China”, said John Foster Dulles, “the U.S.A. would consider it ‘a grave threat to the free world’, and the threat would be met by united action.” He proposed that an ultimatum should be sent to China warning her to keep her hands off Indo-China, or to take the consequences. He flew to London and Paris in order to obtain the agreement of the U. K. and France to the issue of such an ultimatum, but they declined to join him in his policy of ‘massive mobile retaliation’. “Was all this a piece of colossal bluff, asked the Manchester Guardian, or did Dulles mean business? If the former,” said the Guardian “the Chinese would laugh in our faces; if the latter, it would set off the third world war.”

Events in Indo-China moved inexorably to a crisis, and French hegemony over Indo-China was destroyed once and for all at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Then followed the Geneva Conference at which a reasonable settlement was devised. Vietnam was partitioned, despite the opposition of Dulles who had scoffed at the idea, saying that, “the only partition I would favour would be to set apart a place away up north about the size of this room and lock up all the communists there;” and an International Commission, composed of India, Canada and Poland, was appointed in order to facilitate free elections and bring about the unification of Vietnam. “Today, after many years,” said Jawaharlal Nehru after the Geneva Conference in 1954, “there is no war in any part of the world.”

Before long, however, little wars began in different parts of the world, including our own frontier; and there is now a fear of a big war resulting from recent developments in Indo-China. What has gone wrong? There is little doubt that the original error was the misunderstanding of the character of the revolution, led by Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. To start with, it was essentially a revolt against French imperialism. The U. S. A., however, regarded Ho Chi Minh simply as a tool of Moscow and Peking. In fact, Ho Chi Minh’s struggle began before the communists established themselves in China. At one time he was genuinely anxious to “concede” a measure of French influence in Indo-China. Sainteny, who negotiated with him in Hanoi in 1946 and accompanied him to Fontainebleau, compared him, in his reluctance to use force, to Mahatma Gandhi. He wrote that “Ho Chi Minh is disposed to concede to France the care of those things which she holds most dear, her economic and cultural interests.” He also quoted Ho Chi Minh’s words that “if we wish to administer our own country and if I ask you to withdraw your administrators, I shall, at the same time, need your professors, your engineers and your capital to build a strong and independent Vietnam.” Unfortunately the French Government did not see the writing on the wall, as the British clearly did in India, and the Dutch did more tardily, in Indonesia. And France paid heavily for this failure.

The blame for the present crisis in the region of Indo-China must rest primarily on China. In 1954, however, it looked as if China was genuinely satisfied with the settlement reached at Geneva and that she would not obstruct the work of the International commission. ‘An era of peace,” said Chen Yun, the spokesman of the Chinese Communist Party, “is indispensable for the consolidation of Chinese Revolution.” At that time, there was a hope that the Geneva Conference would pave the way for the admission of China to the U. N. and that thus China would be brought under the influences and disciplines of that world body. Unfortunately, owing to a variety of circumstances, this hope was not fulfilled, and China became more and more opposed to the policy of peaceful-co-existence, to which her own ally, the U. S. S. R. was firmly wedded. In this process, China and the U. S. S. R. drifted away from each other; and in Laos, Vietnam and elsewhere China fomented and promoted subversion, for all she was worth.

The U. S. Government has been suffering heavily from the legacy of John Foster Dulles. Dunes sulkily withdrew from the Geneva Conference and never reconciled himself to its outcome. The antics of the rightist ‘strong man’, Phoumi Nosavan, who once overthrew the delicately poised regime of Prince Souvanna Phouma in Laos and attempted to repeal his exploit this month, and the kaleidoscopic governmental changes in South Vietnam, have been the result of the policy of Dulles which his successors inherited and which they are not in a position either to continue with success or to discard with immunity. Hence the recurring crises in Vietnam and Laos.

One such crisis occurred when I was in Washington last August and American planes destroyed, as a measure of retaliation, a number of naval bases in North Vietnam. That very evening, I was present at a dinner party in our Embassy in Washington, which was attended by a number of Senators, Secretaries to the Government and State Department officials. The conversation which took place then clearly revealed the perplexities of the American mind, which has been conscientiously searching for a viable policy in Vietnam.

Vietnam has become, to use a picturesque phrase of Khruschev, which he employed in another connection, a dead rat in the throat of Americans which they can neither swallow nor spit out.

It does not behove us to gloat over the predicament of the U. S. A. We should rather understand and sympathise with her. There is no denying that China, in her present mood, is a menace to peace, particularly in South East Asia; and we must be grateful to those Great Powers which alone have the will and the means to contain her. At the same time, if past history has any lesson, it is that only a political settlement can be of enduring value.

To reach a political settlement, however, is one thing; to implement it, another. In 1954, at Geneva, a sound political settlement was reached, but it was not faithfully implemented. The present crisis can only be solved by making one more effort to find a political solution through a conference of the type which took place in Geneva in 1954, and thereafter, by implementing it sincerely. The fact that the two strongest powers in the world, the U. S. A. and the U. S. S. R., have a common desire to avert war and preserve peace, and have now a far better understanding of each other’s policies than they had in 1954, gives rise to the hope that such a solution can be found and will be implemented.

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