Vietnam Ho Chi Minh\'s Dream

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh's Dream of a Unified Communist Vietnam

Today, Southeast Asia is seen as a hub for international business. The increasing emphasis on globalization and free trade between the western and eastern hemispheres is bearing a determinant impact on the outlook for such nations as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Inclined by the success of nearby neighbors Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, these have begun to present themselves as venues for profitable investment in technology and production endeavors. However, the type of economic independence now gradually emerging in these settings would be hard won, only a recent development in a far more protracted history of occupation, resistance and violence. Modern day Vietnam is a stable if only now developing nation, independent and a rare entity in its steadfast commitment to the socialist title which it earned through its 1975 reunification of its North and South. It is this reunification, a realization of the dream of North Vietnam leader Ho Chi Minh, that drives the focus of our discussion.

Indeed, it may even be said that this unification which so many American soldiers gave their lives to prevent is responsible for a regional stability has in turn invoked a ripple effect in Southeast Asia, promoting in what was once the bloodstained region known as Indochina, a positive trend of economic growth and very gradually refining political orientation. Indochina, incorporating neighbors Cambodia and Laos in Vietnam's tangled web of European imperial ambitions, militant political divisions and ideological confrontations, would be set upon its path by the arrival of French-Catholic missionaries in the early twentieth century. This was true as early as 1625, when Alexander Rhodes, a Jesuit scholar, "gained the approval of the College of Propaganda at Rome for his scheme to recruit from the French clergy a missionary society which would be dedicated to the task of providing manpower and funds for training an indigenous Catholic hierarchy for the church in eastern Asia."

This crucial event would sow the seeds for a colonial occupation that would not take hold in any official capacity until 1860, when the French initiated a full-scale military effort to retain political authority there. Here would begin the chapter which leads Southeast Asia to modern day. The French occupation of that which had come to be identified as French Indochina would last directly up to the dying days of colonialism. The splintering effect of World War II and the exhaustion of European powers had made the notion of colonialism, in its aftermath, an impossibility. The postwar era would be marked by two correlated patterns in the spread of socialist ideology and the decolonization of territories which had functioned under European authority for, in some cases, centuries. Indeed, the impulse for independence would be particularly pronounced at this juncture. As Young (1991) reports, "in August 1945, most Vietnamese believed their country was at last independent of all foreign rule and at peace . . . For that entire period, Vietnamese had struggled against French rule in sporadic uprisings that sometimes achieved the intensity of full-scale guerrilla warfare."

These effects would provoke a movement for independence in the traditionally, fiercely independent Vietnam, where a fomenting communist movement noted the opportunity in France's relative weakness to declare itself extricated from its colonial authority. Under the leadership of communist revolutionary and ardent Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, the northern-based political party achieved recognition by the French government as a legitimate governing authority. Yet, even as Ho Chi Minh negotiated the terms of his nation's independence from the century of colonial rule, "French authorities on the scene were attempting to set up Cochinchina as an independent state separate from the rest of Viet Nam and under French protection."

This site would become the seat of operations first for the French during the First Indochina War from 1946 to 1954, and then, as Saigon, for the Americans during the Second Indochina War from 1965 to 1975. This latter conflict is frequently referred to as the Vietnam War amongst American scholars, and is marked as one of the most salient military failures in American history.

The war in Vietnam is a narrative of internal divide and foreign occupation. Though the period known as the Vietnam War was predicated on a civil divide between North and South, it was spurred into full-scale, country-wide battle by the intervention of the United States. It is thus that three capital cities would serve as the seats of leadership and decision-making as the war spiraled out of control in the mid-1960s. In the Hanoi capital of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Cong proceeded with efforts to impose the dream of unification under a communist banner upon the South. In Saigon, the transition of leadership to D?

ng V-n Minh would create a deeply unstable seat of support for the efforts of the United States in Vietnam. In Washington D.C., an aggressive desire to stimulate full-scale resistance against communist pressures in the South would provide an impetus for most of its decisions.

Perhaps central among the leadership decisions to be made would be that resolved in Washington D.C., where in 1963, the Kennedy Administration and the CIA decided to move forward with an assassination of Ngo Din Diem, president of South Vietnam. Designed as a move to insert itself directly into the political leadership of South Vietnam, it would actually throw into chaos any form of stability preventing the permeation of communism. Accordingly, Mullen (2008) reports that "no federal law then or now criminalizes U.S. involvement in the assassination of a foreign official. While the involvement of the CIA in and White House approval of the plot against Diem may have been questionable, it was not illegal. Nor was his death the end of the U.S.'s problems."

This would leave Saigon in the throes of uncertainty and would strengthen the position of the North by eliminating what Ho Chi Minh perceived as his staunchest enemy in Diem.

The popularity of the communist movement in Vietnam as a whole bade well for his dream at this juncture to unify the country. Its influence in its neighboring states, coupled with the heightening drive by the North to seize authority in the south, presented a fair case that all of Indochina could fall under the pale of Soviet communist doctrines. Its vested interest in helping to push Vietnam toward a reunification under the umbrella of the Northern authority would be motivated by the form of imperialism which was emerging in the vacuum left by the process of decolonization. Nation-building, as its two superpower perpetrators referred to it, would be a method of imperialism characterized by its allegiance to a strict ideological canon based on a defined philosophy for proper governance.

In many ways, it directly reflected the recent history of France in Vietnam. Here, the North Vietnamese (NVN) had vanquished another foreign invader and in doing so, had gained greater confidence in their ability to unify the nation and to outlast the American invaders. As Schultz (2000) reports, "the NVN rulers and people were still exulting and living in the aftermath of their having won independence from colonial oppression by militarily defeating the French in 1954.' There was still popular support for 'the Hanoi regime's effort to build a progressive and economically sound nation.' This was the case . . . even though North Vietnam had carried out a very harsh land-reform program in the latter 1950s."

For a nation which had so badly demanded agrarian reforms and other extensions of the public interest in state affairs as to provoke a coalescence of parallel communist nations, a move toward socialism appeared a practical one to the North Vietnamese and to their Soviet patrons. This would invoke them to train, arm and fund the Northern military with the implicit understanding that, in eventuality, it would attempt to annex its southern half. This points us toward a key decision in Hanoi, which would be to accept the heightened challenge from the Americans for full scale confrontation. Thus, "in early 1964, Hanoi decided to follow Bui Tin's recommendation and escalate the war in the South."

Naturally, this would play a complicating role in America's interest in Southeast Asia. America had adopted a strategy of containment in its desire to prevent Soviet Union from spreading its influence. Thus, it had become an overarching U.S. policy in the wake of World War II to dedicate its resources and attention to sites where communism appeared to be on the brink of emergence. As early as the middle of the First Indochina War, Vietnam appeared a theatre for such a threat. Thus, even with the dispatching of the French, the U.S. remained in South Vietnam, another key decision from Washington leadership that would impact the nation's immediate future.

Washington's methodology represented a transition from France's colonialist ideology, but did not present much in the way of a break from its imperialist motives. The United States had begun in earnest to dedicate itself to the establishment of bastions for democracy throughout the world. South Vietnam, it believed, could be a base for the desired ability to mount military and economic operations throughout the globe and regardless of the insidious presence of communist influence, a premise which stood in direct contrast to Ho Chi Minh's dream.

Indeed, as an official policy, leaders in Washington considered that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would be a pathway to the prevalence of communism in other venues, such as Cambodia, Laos and even France, where the ideological movement was very robust amongst student movements. As stated a U.S. Department of State representative during the period in between the first and second Indochina wars, "the recognition by the Kremlin of Ho Chi Minh's communist movement in Indochina comes as a surprise. The Soviet acknowledgment of this movement should remove any illusions as to the 'nationalist' nature of Ho Chi Minh's aims and reveals Ho in his true colors as the mortal enemy of native independence in Indochina."

As point of fact, Ho had ingratiated himself to the support of Russia and China in so extreme a manner as to validate this concern, exchanging supportive propaganda in his own nation in exchange for tactical girding. This would reflect the key decisions made in Hanoi inducing the heightened conflict as it would exist in the period between 1964 and 1968.

The United States would attend to its motives by continuing the training and arming of South Vietnamese soldiers. At the juncture that a proxy war was waged through native forces on both sides, the United States and the Soviet Union would resist dirtying their hands with combat action for another five years. Nonetheless, outright civil war was now a product directly resultant of the divisive imperialism originating in Washington D.C. And bouncing back through a defiant and Soviet-supported leadership in Hanoi.

After a 1964 attack in the Gulf of Tonkin sunk an American warship, the conflict reached a breaking point. Declaring full-scale war on North Vietnam and the NLF, the Johnson administration engaged a policy that was divided between ground forces and air strikes. Beginning in 1965, Johnson oriented the fight in Vietnam with Operation Rolling Thunder. This campaign was girded by Johnson's Rules of Engagement (ROE), also initiated that year as something of a warning regarding the mounting intensity of confrontation with the expansive Soviet Union. Here, Phan (1992) reports that "the restrictive ROEs reflected the administration concern that provocative military activities in the region would trigger a confrontation with the Soviet Union or China. Under the intense political pressure from the U.S. home front to reduce American involvement, Operation Rolling Thunder was gradually de-escalated and came to an end in November 1968. Rolling Thunder failed not only because the coercive campaign was poorly planned and executed but, fundamentally, because North Vietnam was immune to conventional coercion due to its applied revolutionary warfare."

These were lessons which would eventually become clearer to the administration of President Nixon. When the Johnson administration withdrew from its air campaign strategy, it was perceived by the North as a concession. Operating on the pretense that it had broken the American will to defend its nation-building interests in the South, the NVN gradually broke off peace negotiations in Paris and heightened its employment of guerrilla tactics in the South. In 1972, with talks at a stalemate and the United States enjoying little progress in the war while simultaneously suffering a diminishing support at home, the North Vietnamese saw the opportunity to emerge with a full victory. In March, the NVN abandoned guerilla tactics in favor of a conventional invasion of important southern infrastructural points. This would be known as the Easter Offensive, and would mark the end of the American interest or ability to continue its war and occupation in Vietnam.

And consideration that the United States might continue to support its overall goals in Vietnam at least through aid to the South Vietnamese forces that it had propped up for a decade would ultimately be fully dismissed when "in 1975, Congress refused President Gerald Ford's last-minute request to increase aid to South Vietnam by $300 million, just weeks before it fell to communist control. Few legislators had taken the request seriously; many conservative Republicans and hawkish Democrats agreed by then that Vietnam was lost and that the expenditure would have been a waste."

At this juncture, the government which the United States had left to support itself in South Vietnam was toppled and the nation existed under a single, communist flag. Vietnam's 'victory' passed only the major criterion of dispatching a foreign enemy from its soil with its governmental self-determination intact. But for the toll levied on its infrastructure, in its psyche and through the millions dead in the region, it could hardly be said that Vietnam won a war which the United States clearly lost.

Vietnam's emergence from colonialist subjugation to the remarkable status of having defeated the United States in a long and terrible war would make it the dominant power in its regional sphere. In the same year that it would reunite its own nation, the Communist party would likewise instate communist leadership in Laos. And by 1979, it would also overthrow the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia for its gross mismanagement of the civilian population. In these regards, Ho Chi Minh would truly facilitate the unification of his region under a shared banner of communist rule. That said, some objective scrutiny is relevant when praising the success of Ho Chi Minh's ambitions.

For Vietnam, it accomplishments during the war would foster a false sense of confidence. Torn by decades of war, both civil and insurgent, the Communist government would immediately find itself faced with the difficulties inherent in its ideologies. A compelling embodiment of Southeast Asia in the relatively brief time which has passed since its century of subjugation is one offered in 1990 by a top communist advisor Tran Bach Dang, he recalled an "old Chinese adage: 'you can conquer a country from horseback, but you cannot govern it from horseback.'

Though the resistance formulated by a shared communist ideology converged with a vehement sense of nationalism to enable the Vietnamese to dispatch the United States, they were yet unable to adapt these philosophies as functional governmental policies. Initial indications were that Vietnam's prospects for reconstruction would be arduous, costly and afflicted by obstacles.