Transcript L3 lecture a2 ppt

With the end of the Japanese Empire in 1945
and the weakness of war-exhausted
colonial powers like France,
east Asian “dominos” fell to communism:
• China 1949
• North Korea 1950-53
• communist control of Vietnam
north of the 17th parallel 1954
Dwight D. Eisenhower
U.S. President
1952-1960
“You have a row of dominoes
set up, you knock over the
first one, and what will
happen to the last one is the
certainty that it will go over
very quickly.”
- Eisenhower , press conference, April 7, 1954.
Eisenhower quote from Eisenhower Memorial website,
National Park Service
http://www.nps.gov/features/eise/jrranger/quotes2.htm
Except…
that Korea was not China,
the Chinese were not Vietnamese,
and while “international communism”
(the Russians) did offer some aid and encouragement
they did not direct Chinese communists,
Korean communists,
or Vietnamese communists.
The Vietnamese people were not dominos.
As effective as they were to frighten American politicians,
big red arrows on maps in Pentagon briefing rooms
were just that: big red arrows on maps.
But the Big Red Arrows on the maps were frightening,
and American fear of communism
was at a fever pitch throughout the 1950s.
In the US Congress the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC) investigated Communism nationally;
In the U.S. Senate, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin
held hearings, called witnesses, (bulllied witnesses),
demanded names, publicly accused the U.S. State Department
and the U.S. Army of harboring communist spies.
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Were charged by the U.S.Justice Department
with passing atomic bomb secrets
to the Russians.
They were convicted and executed for espionage in 1953.
Modern cultural commentary
understands the flying saucer scares
and popular “alien invasion” movies
of the 1950s as manifestations of
anti-communist hysteria.
People were freaked out!
© 1954 Warner Brothers
© 1957 Albert Kallis
http://www.riprenfield.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/11/015-whitehouse-flying-saucer50s.jpg
Major American cities had special investigative units
in their police departments to investigate communism.
According to Munk, the Portland (Oregon) Police Department
“Red Squad” was very active in the 1950’s.
“In 1954…the House UnAmerican Activities Committee held Portland
hearings to investigate communism in Oregon.
Fifty-three Oregonians were publicly identified as leftists by three HUAC
informers... Most of those who defied HUAC lost their jobs, and
four…were convicted of contempt of Congress…and sentenced to
prison; their convictions were reversed on appeal by the Supreme
Court.” (Munk, 2012)
LET’S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: Anti-communist hysteria
was a great tool to attack leftists, progressives, anti-war activists,
and organized labor. And to build support for foreign policy.
REFERENCE:
Munk, Michael. (2012). McCarthy Era (late 1940s-late 1950s). In Oregon Encyclopedia (Oregon History and Culture).
Retreived from http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/entry/view/mccarthy_era/
The U.S. foreign
policy strategy
was containment
on a global scale,
not major military
confrontation.
u.s.
u.s.
Communism:
Russia,
China,
N. Korea
N. Vietnam
u.s.
u.s.
Vietnam was understood by American politicians
to be just another front
in the world-wide struggle against communism.
A battlefield in the Cold War against the Russians…
and since 1949, against the Chinese too.
The French were non-communist American allies.
So we supported the French attempt to re-occupy Vietnam.
It was their colony after all. They could manage it.
They had a mision civilatrice. They said so.
But America was not seeking to colonize.
We did not desire to control Vietnam or take it over,
or take its natural resources of oil, tin, rubber, rice,
land, or people.
Just deny them to the communists.
NOT COLONIALISM.
GET IT?
• By the early 1950s the US were propping up the French
in Vietnam with about $1 billion a year
• Dien Bien Phu 1954
Vietnamese communists besiege and defeat a French
Army; France gives up all claims to SE Asia
• 1954 Geneva Convention
temporarily divides Vietnam into a northern zone, to be
controlled by the Vietminh, and a southern zone, controlled
since 1945 by the French-installed Bao Dai
• Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel pending a planned
1955 election to reunify
• the US does not sign off on this Geneva-sanctioned
election plan; concerned that Ho Chi Minh, and the
communist Vietminh would win. Ho Chi Minh and the
Vietminh who had fought against the Japanese and thrown
out the French
N
1954 Geneva Convention
“temporary” partition
at the 17th parallel,
pending elections
17th parallel
Vietminh (communist) north
Capitol: Hanoi
Non-communist,
U.S. supported south
Capitol: Saigon
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-mapspublications/map-downloads/Vietnam_Physiography.pdf
The US looked for a strong
anti-communist leader in the South.
Diem looked great, at first…
Ngo Dinh Diem
Premier of the Republic of Vietnam
(South Vietnam)
ruled 1955 – 1963
• wealthy aristocrat
• catholic
• authoritarian
• acceptable to a range of American
politicians
Tolerated government corruption
© 2012 Time.
Suppressed democratic opposition,
prosecuted dissent, neglected
much-needed land reform,
Promoted wide-spread
political repression including
“extra-judicial” arrests, detentions,
and assassinations.
“By 1959, the (Diem) land reform program was virtually inoperative.
As of 1960, 45% of the land remained concentrated in the hands of 2%
of landowners, and 15% of the landlords owned 75% of all the land.
By the fall of 1960, the intellectual elite of South Vietnam was politically mute;
labor unions were impotent; loyal opposition in the form of organized parties
did not exist. In brief, Diem's policies virtually assured that political challenges
to him would have to be extra-legal.”
Pentagon Papers (1971: vol. 1: 11, 77)
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon/pent11.htm
• 1959 the communist North Vietnamese government approves
supporting a new guerrila movement in the south to resist Diem
and his American supporters; Diem christens them
Viet Cong, meaning “vietnamese communists”
• mostly in the countryside, and sometimes in the cities,
the Viet Cong battle the Diem government for control:
- assassinate pro-Diem village leaders, government officials,
and landowners
- hit and run battles, sabotage, ambush tactics against the
American-armed and supplied Army of the Republic of Vietnam
(ARVN)
1960 National Liberation Front
(the Viet Cong) were
established in southern Vietnam
• to train for armed struggle
• to defeat Diem
• expel American forces
• redistribute land
300,00 members
lived among the peasants
because they were the peasants
The VIET CONG were the National
Liberation Front (NLF)
They had two key components:
the Liberation Army
for armed missions (usually carried
out by organized military units).
And a parallel political organization:
The People's Revolutionary Party
(the "Marxist-Leninist Party of South
Vietnam“)
The NLF program called for nationalism, anti-colonialism and land reform.
What do you think the U.S. foreign policy establishment saw?
W
They saw Vietnam as another front in the Cold War
against Russia and Communist China
http://www.johndclare.net/images/Soviet_takeover.GIF
Question: if it was so important to keep
South Vietnam out of Communist hands,
and if the North Vietnamese were arming
the communist Viet Cong in south Vietnam,
why did the U.S. not go to war against North
Vietnam? The U.S. had the most powerful
military on the planet: why did we not follow the
suggestion of USAF General Curtis LeMay
to, “bomb them back to the Stone Age”?
Why did we hold back?
Answer #1: if the North Vietnamese
communists were – as was believed –
proxies or tools of the Russians and
the Chinese, then taking the war to
North Vietnam might well be perceived
to be an attack on Russia or China.
We didn’t want to start that war. Russia
and China had atomic weapons.
Answer #2: the communist Vietnamese – and the Russians,
and the Chinese - accused the U.S. of trying to replace the French
and make Vietnam a U.S. colony.
U.S. politicians also believed that if we invaded North Vietnam
with full-scale war, we would lose a global public-relations war
with other developing countries. We didn’t want that either.
Which is why we pinned our hopes on Diem.
In 1956, then Senator John F. Kennedy had this to say about Diem:
“The living conditions of the peasants have been vastly improved, the
wastelands have been cultivated, and a wider ownership of the land is
gradually being encouraged. Farm cooperatives and farmer loans have
modernized an outmoded agricultural economy; and a tremendous dam
in the center of the country has made possible the irrigation of a vast
area previously uncultivated. Legislation for better labor relations, health
protection, working conditions and wages has been completed under the
leadership of President Diem.”
Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at the Conference on Vietnam Luncheon in the Hotel Willard,
Washington, D.C., June 1, 1956.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Senator-John-FKennedy-at-the-Conference-on-Vietnam-Luncheon-in-the-Hotel-Willard-Washing.aspx
Then Sen. Kennedy’s confident predictions did not work out.
By the time Kennedy won the U.S.Presidency in 1960,
Diem was failing on several fronts:
• land reform never happened; Diem had little to no support
in the country
• persecution, jail, torture continued for any political dissenters
• corruption in government was widespread
• the Catholic Diem vigorously suppressed the majority Buddhists
• most fatally, he failed to prosecute the struggle against the Viet
Cong; the Army of Vietnam (ARVN) lacked will to fight and
performed badly
• his own generals distrusted him
• he squabbled with his American political supporters
In 1963, massive Buddhist
protests, combined with
Army discontent, led to
an ARVN general’s coup
against Diem.
By then, Diem’s resistance
to U.S. demands for reform
had so alienated his U.S.
supporters, that when the
CIA suggested a coup was
imminent, President Kennedy
chose not to interfere.
Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức burns himself to death in Saigon
during Buddhist protests against Diem regime repression, 1963.
© 1963 Malcom Browne
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Quang_Duc
Diem was assassinated
November 1st, 1963.
The ARVN generals took
over.
Three weeks later, on
November 22, 1963,
U.S. President John F.
Kennedy was assassinated.
By the time Kennedy’s Vice President Lyndon Johnson assumed the
presidency on November 23, 1963,
16,700 American troops had already been committed to
South Vietnam. They were Special Forces Green Berets,
not regular Army.
Lyndon Johnson never fully understood Vietnam's fierce determination to
endure whatever was necessary to prevent foreign domination.
“You generals have all been educated at the taxpayers’ expense, and
you’re not giving me any ideas and any solutions for this
damn little pissant country.”
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1964
quoted in
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/generalarticle/lbj-foreign/
What’s next?
1964 – 1968:
• President Johnson looks
for – and finds –
a reason to deploy
conventional U.S. Army
forces to supplement
Kennedy’s Special Forces
already in Vietnam
• begins Air Force bombing
of selected
targets in North Vietnam
USAF bombing North Vietnam
Photo: U.S. DOD:
HD-SN-99-02076; NARA FILE #: 306-MVP-15-14 WAR
U.S. Army troop levels in Vietnam 1950-1974
http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/learning_history/vietnam/escalate_graph1.cfm