ORIGINS OF THE VIETNAM WAR PART TWO:

THE DIVIDING OF VIETNAM

While the siege at Dien Bien Phu was raging, a conference was held in 1954 in Geneva, Switzerland, to draft a treaty for an orderly transfer of power from the French to the Viet Minh. When the Viet Minh won the siege, they hoped it would mean Vietnam would be free of French rule and influence. Even though the French were ready to leave Vietnam, they continued to fight the Viet Minh in order to extract economic concessions that would produce a treaty favorable to France.

QUICK FACTS

• The 1954 Geneva Conference established a temporary border between North and South Vietnam at the Ben Hai River on the 17th parallel, at approximately the middle of the country. This border became a 5-mile-wide buffer zone called the Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, because the treaty prohibited ground or artillery activity in this area. The North Vietnamese government did not observe this restriction.

• Ho Chi Minh predicted that the Indochinese war against France would be the war of the tiger (Vietnamese) and the elephant (foreigners). Because the tiger could not fight the elephant as an equal, it would ambush it, slash the elephant with its claws, hide in the jungle, then attack again. Eventually the elephant would bleed to death. This philosophy worked against both France and the United States.

• In 1954, following the French departure from Vietnam, President Eisenhower asked the army’s chief of staff, General Matthew Ridgeway, to conduct a study of what American military aid would be needed to help the South Vietnamese defeat the Communists in Vietnam. Ridgeway reported that the United States would have to commit between 500,000 and 1 million men. President Eisenhower decided this was an impossible option, so instead chose to send minimal aid in the form of weapons, supplies, economic aid, and military and political advisors.

Unfortunately the Geneva Conference was held during the Cold War, a period of severe tension between the United States, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China (Communist China). Though the Viet Minh had won the battle at Dien Bien Phu, the United States intervened and refused to allow Communists to take over all of Vietnam. Because the Soviet Union and Communist China, who had sent military and economic aid to the Viet Minh, did not want to risk a war with the United States by backing the Viet Minh too strongly, on July 20, 1954, Ho and his followers had to accept revised terms of the treaty: Communist Viet Minh would govern the northern half of the country (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam), and a democratic group supported by the United States would administer the southern half (the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam).

This temporary division was scheduled to end two years later, in 1956, with a general election designed to unite the whole country. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States was allowed to intervene in creating a new government for Vietnam, so it became very active in the politics of the country. The United States recognized that Communists were better organized than the other political parties and would win the election. Therefore the United States delayed the event in order to allow the non-Communist political parties time to become strong enough to ensure a fair election. Because the country did not have a strong democratic tradition, it was difficult to build a strong political party to oppose the Viet Minh. The United States had continually postponed the election until finally the Viet Minh realized that the only way to unite Vietnam would be to conquer South Vietnam.

The compromise that effectively divided Vietnam into two countries did not satisfy either side. The Geneva Conference ensured that it would only be a matter of time before fighting would resume in Vietnam.