Eisenhower’s Secretary of State was John Foster Dulles. He sought to contain communism. His obsession with communism blinded him to the desire of people in Africa, Asia and Latin America to end European and Western colonialism and imperialism, and their desire to gain self determination and control over the resources in their own countries.
IRAN
In 1953 the CIA conspired to overthrow Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected prime minister of Iran. In a covert operation, Allen Dulles and the CIA gave $1 million to stir up the secret police against Mossadegh. The US disliked Mossadegh because Iran took over British and foreign oil property in Iran. The US thought this would threaten Western control over and access to cheap oil. The Shah then returned to Iran, as the ally of the US, and ruled as a brutal dictator, and the Iranian people blamed the US. The seeds of Iranian hatred for the US go back to the meddling of 1953. If the US props up a regime that is hated by the people of a given country, that hatred "rubs off" on the US. This is guilt by association.
VIETNAM
During World War II the Japanese took over (occupied) French Indochina, which is to say the French colonies in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Vietnamese fought against the Japanese imperialists, and the Vietnamese leader was Ho Chi Minh. He was a communist, but his chief ambition was to win the independence of Vietnam and drive out all foreign colonizers (no matter where they came from). In 1945 Ho Chi Minh declared the independence of Vietnam. The US refused to recognize this, and instead favored the restoration of French colonial rule. The US was siding with a white, European government, which was "our" ally.
In May 1946 the French proclaimed an artificial "Republic of Cochinchina" in the south. Efforts at negotiation between Ho Chi Minh and the French ended in failure. In December 1946 the Vietminh began a guerilla war against the French in Hanoi. In June 1948 the French granted "independence" to Cochinchina, but France would keep control of its army, finances and foreign affairs. This was, as the French say, a charade.
In 1949 when Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communists won the civil war in China, they captured tons of weapons that the US had given the Nationalists. Mao began to support the Vietminh, and provided American automatic weapons, mortars, howitzers and trucks to the Vietminh (Karnow, Vietnam, p. 184). The Chinese trained the Vietminh at camps in China, and China massed 200,000 Chinese soldiers on the border with Tonkin, or northern Vietnam. Britain feared for the safety of Hong Kong, and preferred not to antagonize the Chinese. France came to understand that a prolonged war in Vietnam could turn into a war with China.
From 1949 to 1954 General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Vietnamese fought a guerilla war against the French. By 1952 France had suffered 90,000 men dead, wounded, missing or captured (ibid, 188). By 1953 the US was providing France with $1 billion a year to help the French fight in Vietnam. In 1954 the French pursued the Vietnamese up into the jungles and mountains to a fortress in a remote valley near the border with China. The fortress was called Diem Bien Phu. The Vietnamese ambushed the French and surrounded them, and cut them off, and a Vietminh force of 50,000 men besieged the fort for 2 months (beginning March 13, 1954). Another 20,000 Vietminh were strung oput along the communication lines reaching toward the coast. The 13,000 French were trapped. The Vietminh dragged heavy American artillery up onto the hills overlooking the valley fortress and bombarded the fort, where the French were fighting with their American weapons. Bad weather and cloud cover made it impossible for the French to fly food or supplies or reinforcements up to Diem Bien Phu, or to bomb or strafe the Vietminh.
France sought US intervention (Karnow, Vietnam, p. 196). Perhaps the US could send bombers from the Philippines to bomb the Vietminh. But General Matthew Ridgway objected. He had been an infantryman. He argued that air power alone would not be enough. He said that even with air strikes, in order to prevail it would be necessary to send in combat divisions (ground troops). In fact, he argued that even if the US used nuclear weapons, the US would need to send in seven combat divisions to assure French success--twelve divisions if the Chinese intervened. The Joint Chiefs insisted that this would be the wrong war, in the wrong place, and divert American resources from the Soviet menace.
Eisenhower was reluctant to countenance air strikes unless Congress approved, and unless US allies such as Britain also "signed on." He did want the US to get stuck out on a limb by itself. Congressional leaders rejected efforts to give the president discretion to use air strikes, but suggested that they might go along IF the British joined the effort to rescue the French (Karnow, Vietnam, p. 197). However the British wanted no part of this adventure.
On May 7, 1954 the French were forced to surrender. It was a disastrous defeat for the French. The US considered air strikes to help, but the military estimated it would require 1 million American soldiers to be effective. Coming so soon after Korea, this did not seem wise.
An international peace conference was called at Geneva, Switzerland. France, Britain, Russia, China and the Vietminh participated. The Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai negotiated for China. When the negotiations broke down, the Russian foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov arbitrated. On July 21, the Final Declaration of the Geneva Accord was produced. Its terms were
In October 1954 the French left Hanoi and the North, as they had promised to do.
Late in 1954 the Eisenhower Administration sent an envoy to talk with Prime Minister Ngo Diem, who served the traditional hereditary emperor, Bao Dai. The US affirmed support for Diem, and funneled $100 million to Diem. The US secretly opposed carrying out the election that was scheduled for 1956 because it predicted that Ho Chi Minh would win. Minh was revered as a freedom fighter who had fought against the Japanese and the French for Vietnamese independence from foreign rulers. He was a nationalist hero. The US opposed any Vietnamese government that included or was led by communists. If one does not like the likely outcome of an election, one may try to prevent the election from occurring and producing the result that one does not want to see. Therefore the US conspired to prevent the election from taking place.
In January 1955 the US began to train a South Vietnamese Army.
On July 16, 1955 Diem publicly repudiated the Geneva Accord, and announced that the South would not participate in the nationwide election of 1956. The US Government backed this decision. Diem was using the US, and the US was using him.
It was now evident that the Diem regime in "South Vietnam" would subvert the Geneva Accords. This drove Ho Chi Minh to seek additional support from the Soviets.
On October 23, 1955 Diem deposed Emperor Bao Dai, and established the artificial, contrived Republic of South Vietnam, with himself (Diem) as president (no longer a monarchy).
Dulles could not see the nationalism of Ho Chi Minh.. All that he could see was Ho Chi Minh's communism. Dulles could only understand a bi-polar contest for power between the US and Russia. Everyone was either on "our side" or the Soviet side. If the "wrong" guy was going to win the election, then the election could not be allowed to take place. So much for democracy.
This was the beginning of the fateful US step into Vietnam. It grew under Eisenhower. The US refused to accept the unification of North and south Vietnam under communist leadership.
In October 1957 the North Vietnamese communists (called Vietcong by Diem) began infiltrating South Vietnam with armed companies of soldiers. In response, the US Government sent advisors to help.
In 1961, when John Kennedy came into office, Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow recommended sending combat troops to South Vietnam. JFK rejected the idea, but sent more aid and advisors. During 1962 the number of American military advisers rose from 700 to 12,000.
When the Diem government became unpopular with the people of the south, in 1963, and there were riots and protests (Buddhist monks setting themselves on fire), the US supported the overthrow of Diem (November 1, 1963) by the generals (led by Doung Van Minh). Diem was assassinated the next day (might not have been part of US plan). The US Government was seeking to replace Diem with new "partners" who would be more popular with the south Vietnamese people, and more "reliable." The replacements turned out to be just as corrupt and unpopular as Diem. By the end of 1963 there were 15,000 military advisers in South Vietnam. During 1963 South Vietnam received $500 million in US aid.
In January 1964 General Nguyen Khanh seized power in Saigon.
In July 1964 South Vietnam began COVERT maritime operations against North Vietnam (the American public did not know), and on August 2 North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked an American destroyer named the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two nights later (August 4) in a storm American radar operators thought they were under attack again, but this is now doubtful. Nevertheless LBJ seized upon this supposed event to tell the American people that there had been an unprovoked attack on American ships for no reason. LBJ sent a resolution to Congress on August 5th. In this climate, on August 7th Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution (more about this in a future lecture). Essentially, it gave the president broad powers to "take all necessary measures" to repel attacks against US forces and to "prevent further aggression" in Southeast Asia. In effect, it gave LBJ license to do almost anything he deemed necessary in Southeast Asia, without further debate or a formal declaration of war by the Congress. Johnson said it was like grandma's nightshirt--it covered everything. Only two Senators voted against it. Ernest Gruening of Alaska said that "Vietnam is not worth the life of a single American boy." The other dissenter was Wayne Morse of Oregon. The House of Representatives passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution unanimously.
In December there were popular riots in Saigon against General Khanh. South Vietnam was falling apart once again. Vietminh attacks intensified. It looked as if LBJ had two choices. The first choice was to write off Vietnam as a hopeless cause and cut his losses and withdraw. The second choice was to send in combat troops to save South Vietnam from collapse. In the spring of 1965 it appeared that nothing less than intervention would keep South Vietnam from collapsing (from within) and being picked off by North Vietnam.
LBJ had a hard choice to make. One wonders if he realized that his presidency rested on that fateful choice.