Vietnam and Containment

Fear of Communism and French Pressure in Southeast Asia

Dec 9, 2009 Michael Streich

America's longest war began after World War II when France reasserted colonial pretensions in Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh began a war of liberation based on Communist ideals.

The lengthy Vietnam War demonstrated that the United States was not invincible and that “Containment” as a policy had failed. Ultimately, the United States had failed to consider that a western-style democracy was incompatible with Vietnamese culture, tradition, religious beliefs, and an agricultural economy. Vietnam represented a political “domino” that fed into the prevailing model of worldwide Communist domination, yet Ho Chi Minh never fully conformed to the image of a Kremlin puppet. He was a nationalist who also embraced Communism. Had the U.S. taken a more pragmatic view of post-World War Two Indochina, the Vietnam War might have been avoided.

Japanese Occupation and French Colonialism

Southeast Asia had been occupied by Japan throughout the Second World War. During this time, an insurgent movement led by indigenous nationalists and assisted by covert U.S. assistance harassed Japan. Following Japan’s surrender in 1945, the Vietnamese people sought independence, repudiating their former status as a French colonial possession. Initially, the U.S. supported this. Historian George C. Herring describes a victory parade in which the Star Spangled Banner was played, American troops marched, and U.S. planes flew overhead. The first Vietnamese Constitution was modeled on the U.S. Constitution.

The European allies, however, notably France and Britain, were not ready to grant independence to any former colonial possessions and struggled to maintain the veneer of empire. When the United States granted independence to the Philippines, held as a territory since 1898, it hoped that the example would be followed by other European colonial powers. France was determined to reclaim Vietnam and the vast mineral resources in Southeast Asia.

Diplomatic Blackmail and Fears of Communism

Post-war France pressured the U.S. government into supporting its efforts at reclaiming Vietnam. This pressure amounted to a quid pro quo. The United States needed French help and support in rebuilding Europe, especially the implementation of the Marshall Plan. Further, as the Soviet Union consolidated power in Eastern Europe making any atomic threat by the U.S. untenable, French support became even more important.

By the time Ho Chi Minh galvanized the Vietnamese people against French efforts at restoring Vietnam as a colony, the Soviet Union had come to be seen as a global threat, seeking to impose Communist-style puppet regimes throughout the world. In the U.S., Communism took on a new persona, one that was diametrically opposed to democracy and freedom. Communism had to be contained and anti-Communist leaders like Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan and Syngman Rhee in South Korea had to be supported, despite their gross corruption.

Communism was antithetical to the free world and had to be suppressed wherever it appeared in the world. Foreign policies were based on a dualistic assumption of good and evil. It was inconceivable that Ho Chi Minh, for example, could – as a Communist, create a nation that would not be tied to the perceived global ambitions of Kremlin-orchestrated plots to snuff out democracy and freedom. These assumptions helped forge the long path toward the Vietnam War.

Vietnam as the Slough of Despond

Both the Truman and the Eisenhower administrations earmarked millions of dollars to assist the French in Vietnam. But, as William Lederer and Eugene Burdick demonstrated in their 1958 book The Ugly American, neither the French nor the American observers and advisers fully comprehended the strategy of jungle warfare. After the fall of Dienbienphu in 1954, the French withdrew. Vietnam was divided by the Geneva Accords (without significant U.S. participation) and the necessity of keeping the South free of Communist influence became an American priority.

Containment, however, proved to be futile despite massive U.S. financial and military assistance. In contemporary terms, the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people were won by the Communists, not the representatives of democracy. Neither massive bombing, chemical warfare, nor troop surges stopped the inevitable consolidation of Vietnam into a fully Communist state.

Sources:

• George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam 1950-1975, 2nd Edition (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1986)
• General Bruce Palmer, Jr., The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (The University Press of Kentucky, 1984)
• Randall Bennett Woods, J. William Fulbright, Vietnam, and the Search for a Cold War Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 1998)

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