BUILDING A NATION IS HARD WORK; it is much easier to construct a colony. As U.S. agencies attempted to modernize and westernize South Vietnam while imprinting American values and culture on the Vietnamese population, the Eisenhower administration replaced the French colonial presence in South Vietnam with an American neocolonial one. The United States did not directly colonize South Vietnamese territory, but it certainly exhibited neocolonial behavior in the sense that Americans and American institutions took over former French functions at all levels of South Vietnamese society. Americans trained, taught, guided, and controlled in their search for a stable, independent, and noncommunist South Vietnam.
Although at first Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem appeared to share the American vision of South Vietnam, thus ensuring increased U.S. aid and commitments to his regime, it became clear by the late 1950s that he would pursue his own course. The escalating clashes between South Vietnamese and American officials would eventually lead the Eisenhower administration to lose its anticolonial credentials as well as its ability to extricate itself from the ever more complicated situation in Vietnam. By the time Eisenhower left office, the United States was committed to a noncommunist, but not necessarily democratic, South Vietnam.
Eisenhower officials believed in the idea of an independent South Vietnam, but only if its leader followed an American model. Thus, while paying much lip service to Diem’s nationalist credentials, Washington did not want an actual nationalist—the trappings would have sufficed. Unfortunately for those in the White House and U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Diem’s nationalism only grew stronger as the tide of American advisers and agencies rose. As a result, American actions became more and more neocolonial in nature as they tried to persuade, and eventually coerce, Diem to follow American policy. Attempts to modify Diem’s behavior began with cultural initiatives, but spread to the economic, political, and military realms as well. Neocolonialism under the Eisenhower administration would set the tone for future American involvement in Vietnam, permanently marring its claims to be fighting for an independent South Vietnamese nation.
Although France and the United States shared a “colonial mentality” in that representatives of both countries operated on the assumption of their cultural superiority, the two differed in why they used cultural initiatives in South Vietnam. The French sought to preserve their civilizing mission; the Americans planned to stop the spread of communism. The French tried to separate cultural activities from propaganda whereas the Americans combined the two. It is perhaps fair to say that American cultural diplomacy in Vietnam began as propaganda in the war against communism, but propaganda eventually metamorphosed into cultural initiatives designed to build a nation. Although the Americans thought they would be able to avoid earlier French mistakes by replacing the civilizing mission with one of modernization, they too would come to be seen as imperialists rather than liberators.
American officials paid close attention to how institutions and characteristics of French origin “colored” the situation in Vietnam, recognizing that they “might” have been as important as native factors in determining South Vietnam’s development and modernization. The Portuguese romanization of writing, which was imposed by the French, helped Vietnam gain “immeasurable ground” over those countries that succeeded in clinging to their ideographs in the race to make the entire population literate. Almost equally important was the secondary use of a European language, which gave a very influential portion of the population easy access to western knowledge and thought. French engineering “bestowed” on Vietnam a railway, several ports, an extensive canal system, roads reaching to every region, and a number of airports, as well as private plantations, a telephone system, and revenue-producing power companies. In the government structure the French had held almost all positions of responsibility, from administrators, technicians, and civil servants, down to very routine work. The rapid withdrawal of this vast responsible group after the independence of South Vietnam was a severe blow to the operation of the government.1
Americans, for the most part, quietly stepped into places the French had vacated as they attempted to build South Vietnam on an American rather than French model. Americans asserted their influence by “recovering the spot.” They systematically replaced the French names for streets, buildings, institutions, roads, and just about every other French-designated object, with an American version. But Americans in Saigon did not create a more nationalist South Vietnam; they simply switched one authoritative western figure for another.
The first factor leading to an increased American commitment to nation-building in South Vietnam was Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem’s supposedly pro-western, anticommunist, Catholic, and anticorruption credentials continued to appeal to American officials. And yet, Diem systematically thwarted American desires in South Vietnam by proclaiming himself not only an ardent anticommunist but also an independent Asian leader. From 1954 until his assassination in 1963, Diem welcomed American aid but resisted the Eisenhower administration’s attempts to direct South Vietnamese policy. Diem thus succeeded in wagging the dog as he manipulated Washington into providing increasing amounts of aid while simultaneously distancing himself from American policies. A succession of American special representatives and ambassadors (Donald Heath, J. Lawton Collins, G. Frederick Reinhardt, and Elbridge Durbrow) failed to convince Diem of the value of American political, social, and economic advice.
In addition, Diem sought to gain the respect and cooperation of other Third World neutralist countries to escape being perceived as an American puppet. Diem dressed as a westerner because he realized the West was where the locus of power resided, but he was determined to follow his own path in Southeast Asia. Interestingly, by the late 1950s, the once passionately anti-French Diem had begun to work on repairing relations with Paris to demonstrate his independence from Washington. Despite Diem’s actions, the Eisenhower administration continued to fund his government in order to achieve an independent, noncommunist nation. Diem thus succeeded in expanding, intensifying, and prolonging the American commitment to South Vietnam, as many other Third World leaders succeeded in “expanding, intensifying, and prolonging” the Cold War.2
The West consistently underestimated Diem. Most western accounts at the time and into the present assess Diem as an uncompromising and unskilled leader. But consider his accomplishments. This was the man who eliminated the Cao Dai, Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen sects, forced the FEC to leave South Vietnam, obtained considerable U.S. aid, and imposed on the international community not only the “end of the idea of the all Vietnamese 1956 elections” stipulated at the 1954 Geneva Conference, but also recognition that the country could not be reunified as long as the communists maintained power in the North. In addition, Diem created a constitution where the executive was all powerful, established a South Vietnamese National Assembly, and integrated at least eight hundred thousand North Vietnamese refugees.3 Of course, Diem had his failings, as numerous critics past and present have demonstrated. Specifically, Diem’s disastrous land reform policies, political repression, and refusal to listen to advisers other than family members all weakened his regime.
In the domestic arena, from 1955 to 1961 Diem began to consolidate his rule by promulgating the South Vietnamese constitution, reorganizing the government, and working on economic reform. American aid and advisers allowed him to carry out these tasks, but Diem tended to ignore American advice on their implementation and remained skeptical of American capabilities to understand the situation in South Vietnam. Guaranteed American aid and training of the ARVN ensured internal security, at least for the time being, allowing Diem to focus on foreign policy.
It was in the foreign arena that Diem experienced his greatest success. His first foreign policy goal was to raise South Vietnam’s international standing by normalizing relations with other countries. Although Diem had a rocky start at the Bandung Conference in 1955 when he was snubbed by most African and Asian leaders, by October 1956, South Vietnam had diplomatic chiefs of mission in France, the United States, Britain, Spain, Italy, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Hong Kong, Djakarta, and Taipei, and had made greater strides than the North in being recognized internationally by more countries. Indeed, French fears that the Bandung Conference would increase Asian solidarity and further weaken ties between its former colony and the metropole were proven correct, as were American fears that Bandung would lead to greater neutralist sentiment in Saigon. Diem was increasingly concerned that Asian countries viewed him as a “western construction.” Once he had ensured South Vietnam’s political survival, and his own, by refusing to participate in consultations for the 1956 elections and ending the French military presence, he became less dependent on the Americans. Before the election deadline Diem disparaged noncommitted or “nonaligned” nations, but after the deadline he radically changed his policy by trying to improve relations with other Asian countries, moving away from a solely western, that is to say, American, focus. Diem’s reliance on the United States made true nonalignment impossible, but the appearance of independence could benefit him domestically and throughout Asia. A more sovereign South Vietnam could also make excellent propaganda fodder for the United States, as the Eisenhower administration would be able to claim that it had built a truly independent nation. But American officials never grasped this subtlety and viewed each independent step Diem took with increasing suspicion. Washington was eager to proclaim South Vietnam’s independence, as long as Diem followed American policy.4
In a series of articles in early January 1957, Georges Chaffard in Le Monde noted how Diem, through his energy and inflexible courage, his governmental team, and his army’s loyalty, had “succeeded in erasing all traces of foreign domination, consolidating the South and assuring security,” although there were complaints against Diem’s “authoritarian paternalism.” Moreover, American economic leadership, according to Chaffard, had not reduced Diem to a puppet. Diem reiterated this point in a meeting with French ambassador Jean Payart, stating that South Vietnam was looking for “its independence not only with respect to France but also vis-à-vis the United States.” Diem argued that the fact that “Britain receives American aid doesn’t mean it loses any of its sovereignty, which is how we envision our relationship with the U.S.”5 Diem thus sought to distance himself from the Eisenhower administration, although he was happy enough to bask in all the media attention during his trip to Washington on May 8, 1957. The trip raised Diem’s prestige, since Eisenhower greeted him personally—only the second time Eisenhower had done so for another head of state. Still, Diem saw the dangers of too close a relationship with the Americans and attempted to shift his policy, which had been anti-French, toward autonomy from all other countries and cooperation with other Asian leaders.
Diem first went to work on improving relations with India, making a personal appearance in New Delhi in 1957. A major goal of his trip was to prove that he was not another Syngman Rhee or Jiang Jieshi, whom he considered vassals to the United States. Diem also began to travel to other countries and to receive a number of dignitaries, such as Burmese leader U Nu, in order to boost his international standing. He journeyed to Washington, Canberra, Seoul, Bangkok, Delhi, and Rangoon, and met with members from the Colombo Plan as well as the Japanese prime minister and the Moroccan and Iraqi missions.6 Diem also secured an agreement with Australia, Korea, and Thailand on solidarity of action against the communists. He worked to develop relations with the neutralist bloc, establish contact with Arab countries, and negotiate with Japan on war reparations. And Diem attempted to join as many world organizations as possible to promote the South Vietnamese nation.
Diem’s travels throughout Southeast Asia began to dispel Asian misgivings about the regime. At the beginning of 1958, Diem was more acceptable to hesitant neutrals than Jiang Jieshi or Syngman Rhee, and was recognized by more than forty nations. Considering where he had started three years ago, Diem’s achievements in foreign relations were noteworthy.7 As a result of American help, by late 1957, South Vietnam was represented in at least twenty UN special or affiliated agencies. South Vietnam became a member of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the Colombo Plan. South Vietnam even belonged to the World Meteorological Association. The South Vietnamese enjoyed the benefits of technical training under the Colombo Plan, and the ninth annual conference was hosted in Saigon, with twenty-one nations and observers from several international organizations participating.8
Domestically, South Vietnam did not fare so well. The Diem regime faced a host of economic, administrative, and security problems. Its dependency on American aid and fight to maintain internal security alienated much of the population. According to British observers, South Vietnam had made political improvements but long-term economic and administrative restructuring remained remote, and the population was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Diem. Moreover, Diem had not successfully implemented land reform, with the result that less than 10 percent of the land had been redistributed. Despite the amount of aid the United States supplied, American power to influence Vietnamese policy in both domestic and foreign affairs was, as one British official noted, “remarkably incomplete”—a fact that frustrated American organizations in Vietnam. In particular, American officials despaired of Diem’s unwillingness to encourage foreign investment and private enterprise. This American frustration would only grow more intense as Diem consistently disregarded American suggestions.9
Meanwhile, Diem continued his efforts to turn toward Asia. During his August 1957 visit to Bangkok, Diem emphasized the solidarity of Asian countries, the spiritual community that unified them and the need to keep close ties in the face of the communist menace. Diem applied these same values at home through his philosophy of personalism. The chief of state offered himself as a model to his people, exalting his exemplary private life, perfect familial education, profound piety, austerity, and his revolutionary activities and qualities as a man of action. More important, Diem rejected both liberal capitalism and communism as a means of modernizing South Vietnam. Rather, he intended to rally the South Vietnamese population to work together to build a socially engaged and economically secure state. Through “personalism, community development, and collective progress,” South Vietnam would achieve political, social, and economic stability, according to Diem. Diem’s plan ensured a difficult road ahead for South Vietnamese–American relations, as Ambassador Frederick Nolting and other American officials fretted over the term “personalism.” They feared that it would be viewed as a concept of political leadership implying dictatorship.10
In assessing Diem’s philosophy of personalism, Payart drew a parallel between Diem and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, stating that “the essential vice of Marxist society, for Diem and Dulles, was the crushing of the individual and injury of human nature.” Both men shared the same Manichean spirit, believing that this violence to the natural order could not last and that the people would reject it. Accordingly, the Vietnamese population would reject the communists. Diem envisioned “an Asian renaissance with himself as the leader of the Southeast Asia area.”
Diem’s “new look” policy for South Vietnamese politics became more pronounced as he tried to ingratiate himself with the rest of Asia while continuing his diplomatic shift away from U.S. influence.11 American ambassador Elbridge Durbrow worried that the American tactic of encouraging Diem to assume a more important role as a free world leader in Asia had backfired to a certain extent, noting that Diem “has given indications that the real or organized enthusiasm shown him on his visits may have gone to his head. He is beginning to look upon himself a bit too pointedly as the great hope of Southeast Asia.”12
This balancing act between Asia and the United States brought Diem to a major crossroads in his foreign policy by 1958. According to the leading western expert on Vietnam, Bernard Fall, South Vietnam could remain entirely in the American camp at the risk of being branded a satellite; or Saigon might find its way toward a middle path, but would then face political instability and economic problems without the large cushion of American support it now “enjoyed so well but not too wisely.” Whichever the choice, “it would be agonizing—and it would have to be made by one man alone.”13In the end, Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, a figure of growing importance in the government, embraced the idea of maintaining South Vietnam’s liberty of action vis-à-vis the United States. By 1960, fifty-five countries had extended formal recognition to South Vietnam, which compared favorably with the DRV’s relative isolation in the international community. Continuing to proclaim his independence, Diem stated that “Vietnam neither accepts foreign military bases nor foreign troops on its territory,” and that he had “no intention of joining SEATO.” Diem also challenged the American conception of the army as an internal security force and wanted to exceed the hundred thousand men limit to meet external threats.14 Notwithstanding Diem’s moderately successful attempts to assert his independence in foreign policy during the mid-1950s, by the time John F. Kennedy was elected president, Diem was losing his grip in both the domestic and foreign arenas as a result of increasing American intervention and Diem’s inability to address domestic problems.
American officials in South Vietnam faced an additional problem in convincing Diem to follow a U.S. model—themselves. Despite Eisenhower’s assurance to Durbrow that he was indeed the top U.S. official in South Vietnam, Diem, with the support of other Americans, routinely ignored Durbrow’s suggestions for reform. In theory, Durbrow was responsible for coordinating civilian agencies and had wide discretion to act, but Lieutenant General Samuel Williams, who had replaced John O’Daniel as the leader of MAAG, consistently undermined Durbrow and the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Williams promised Diem that the Eisenhower administration would continue to support him whether he implemented political and economic reforms or not. Williams also had the support of the CIA. Diem trusted Williams, and Williams argued he had the right to consult with Diem about defense matters and bypass the embassy since Diem still served as his own defense minister. Williams was convinced that exposure to American training schools and methods would resolve ARVN’s problems and establish internal security.
Durbrow had attempted to remove Williams a number of times, but Diem insisted he stay. In fact, Williams stayed until 1960, with the result that embassy officials and MAAG officers continued to battle inconclusively. It would not be until May 1960 that the issue of how to handle Diem would be brought up at a regular NSC meeting. American agencies also disagreed over whether to prioritize economic and political reform or military security. The embassy and USOM contended that the economic development of South Vietnam was at least as important as military training; MAAG and Diem argued that military considerations were paramount. Diem was thus able to play one American agency against another.15
The American effort in South Vietnam received another blow during the summer of 1959, when a series of articles by Albert Colgrove, a Scripps Howard reporter, exposed waste, fraud, and the general high living that American officials enjoyed in Saigon. Colgrove had been sent to South Vietnam to investigate U.S. assistance projects and returned home with a cynical view and a somewhat exaggerated account of the mismanagement actually occurring, as a later Congressional investigation confirmed. At the time, the articles infuriated Durbrow, Williams, and the AFV. Durbrow subsequently curtailed some of the more lavish American spending and he also stepped up his reform efforts toward the Diem regime, going so far as to give Diem a list of suggestions such as appointing a minister of defense, adding opposition figures to the government, and providing more government accountability, transparency, and reorganization.
Another example of American divergences of opinion occurred over the issue of civic action. Director of the Foreign Operations Administration Le- land Barrows feared that CIA operative Edward Lansdale’s desire to link “civic action” with community development would duplicate or supersede aid from other American agencies. According to Barrows, civic action should not be used as an instrument of community development, as it seemed to be an “outgrowth of psychological warfare” rather than genuine assistance. Civic action sought to arm the government with a selected, trained, and disciplined body of agents who would move from village to village, seeking by the distribution of relief goods and by the organization of various propaganda efforts to counteract the infiltration of communist agents and to win the villagers’ support of the Diem government while turning them against the communists and other “dissident” elements. Rather than stimulating local initiative and village self-development, the program sought to establish some measure of central government influence and control over village attitudes and activities, one of the Diem regime’s goals.16 Barrows’s concerns went to the heart of the American dilemma in Vietnam—try to control South Vietnam through a psychological warfare program and military build up or try to develop Vietnam through economic and technical programs. In the end, hard power tactics would triumph.
These hard power tactics would be applied against Diem as well. As a result of Diem’s attempts to distance himself from the Americans and his refusal to engage in political and economic reform, the Eisenhower administration finally appeared to be toughening its stance toward him. American officials in Washington and Saigon worried that the South Vietnamese population would begin to hold the United States responsible for Diem’s failure to implement reforms. They also recognized that Diem would not adopt the necessary reforms unless the United States increased pressure to do so. Finally, a number of officials suggested that if Diem would not adopt what the United States considered “essential” reforms, Washington would have “no choice but to support some new leader who will.” Such claims were somewhat premature as the opposition to Diem, the most active of whom were in France, was divided, and there was no one personality who could challenge him. Beginning in mid-1960, Durbrow indicated to Diem the strong American concern over corruption in his government, and that the United States was considering withholding military aid unless Diem agreed to political and economic reforms.17
Durbrow’s observation of South Vietnamese affairs had led him to hold an increasingly unsympathetic stance toward Diem. Although Durbrow claimed that he “got along well” with Diem until he left and that he did “not want to get rid of Diem,” he did feel obliged to consider “contingencies.” Despite this attempt to place more pressure on Diem, additional bureaucratic battles among the various American agencies operating in Vietnam made such efforts difficult. For example, the MSUG wanted to suspend aid to the civil guard until Diem stopped using it as his own personal army, but MAAG refused to do so. Setting an early precedent that would become ever-more prevalent in the 1960s, military and economic aid to keep South Vietnam afloat would always trump political reform. Washington’s support of Diem had increased the U.S. commitment to an independent, noncommunist South Vietnam and proved to be at least a temporary lifeline for Diem’s government.
Increasing South Vietnamese difficulties can be attributed in part to the American failure to understand Third World nationalism and Diem’s motivations. American officials in Saigon continued to express surprise that, despite substantial aid, Diem resisted American reforms. Diem, on the other hand, remained baffled as to why the Americans could not understand his determination to avoid both the democratic capitalist and the communist paths while pursuing his own. Even though American advisers had soured on the Diem regime, they still chose to work with it in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The way they did so, however, was almost guaranteed to subvert any chance of a genuinely independent South Vietnam.
The second factor leading to an increased U.S. commitment to South Vietnam was the nature of the Eisenhower administration’s nation-building effort. Although American officials disdained the French colonial effort and civilizing mission, they too attempted to create an artificial edifice by building, naming, and teaching. Following in French footsteps, American agencies did not laud indigenous cultural achievements or the Vietnamese language; rather, they tried to impose American standards, culture, and language, teaching the Vietnamese about American institutions, history, consumer products, and democratic values. American officials insisted that their mission was generous, benevolent, and aimed at protection, just as the French had. Where the French had employed the civilizing mission, the Americans tried nation-building. As the Americans replaced the French militarily, politically, economically, and culturally, they assumed what George Allen has referred to as the “de facto mantle of colonial administration” in a country not yet capable of self-governance.18 In other words, American efforts in South Vietnam represented a not-so-new form of colonialism and cultural imperialism that grated on South Vietnamese pride.
While American official and unofficial agencies proliferated, a number of small, yet significant, symbolic changes occurred, which highlighted the transition from the French to the American presence in South Vietnam and the increasingly neocolonialist behavior of the Americans. For example, Vietnamese military dress went from French to American. The insignia were now modeled on the American pattern, and in the armed forces, the helmet replaced the beret. Vietnamese money resembled American dollars; rue Catinat became known as Tu Do, or Freedom Street; and Lutece—a novelty store on the former rue Catinat—became “Chicago.” After its official formation in October 1955, the new South Vietnamese government modeled itself after Washington. The ministers became secretaries, the Vietnamese constitution borrowed from the American one, and Diem, when he took office for his second term on April 29, 1961, modeled the ceremony after a U.S. presidential inauguration. From 1956, learning English became a major goal. The Vietnam Press published an English edition, La Gazette de Saigon became bilingual, and The Times of Vietnam became popular. More and more, whether in official publications or in simple invitations, Anglo-Vietnamese bilingualism replaced Franco-Vietnamese bilingualism.19 These changes indicated an increasing American presence in all sectors of Vietnamese life.
As American cultural activities increased, OCB officials recognized the dangers of a “too noticeable” American presence in Vietnam. They feared alienating the local population, suggesting that American personnel should be limited to the absolute minimum required for effective operations and made fully aware of the necessity for discreet and circumspect personal behavior. One example of a too-noticeable American presence was the effort to switch to the longer American working hours in public administrations (7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. with a half-hour break for lunch). The measure fell through in the face of determined resistance by all civil servants, but it remained in everyone’s minds as an American attempt to make its presence felt.
American influence spread into all sectors of Vietnamese society. The American presence became very strong politically, exclusive in the military domain, predominant on the economic level, and increasing on the cultural level with the help of USIS, USOM, and MSUG. Whereas USIS focused primarily on the press, radio, and cinema, and USOM worked only in the cultural domain and provided technical assistance, MSUG acquired a number of functions. When it had first arrived in 1955, MSUG had planned to reorganize the police services. But it quickly moved into administrative reform and formation of functionaries, particularly for the NIA. MSUG also created libraries, reorganized the Ministry of National Education, and directed the instruction of fifteen hundred members of the Sureté Nationale (National Security force) and twenty-one thousand of the civil guard. With the help of USOM, MSUG put at South Vietnam’s disposition arms, munitions, vehicles, and transmission machinery. In addition, a number of American experts worked with chiefs of service in different Vietnamese administrations. Perhaps one MSUG professor summed up the American presence best when he stated that “where it is proper for the French to fly a flag, it is equally so for the Americans.” Although MSUG members purported to systematically replace French colonialism with American nation-building and modernization, they inadvertently imposed American cultural assumptions and used colonial methods to achieve their goals. Not one MSUG member spoke Vietnamese fluently.20
MSUG, along with the University of Southern Illinois and Ohio State University, reorganized primary and secondary teaching to the detriment of the French. As early as the end of 1956, several thousand Vietnamese in Saigon were capable of understanding English, and by the end of the 1960s, more than half the students in secondary education chose English as their second language. The AVA also had huge success with intensive English language courses (four hours a day, five days a week for three months)—English classes on the premises of the AVA at 55 Mac Dinh Street were filled to overflowing. In 1957 Charles Falk, head of the Education Division of USOM and professor at San Diego State College, noted that “one cannot help but observe that English now competes with French as the international language.” According to one French journalist, the great majority of Americans in Saigon sincerely believed that in “transplanting” their institutions they would “immunize” South Vietnam against communism.21
This immunization continued as American methods of work organization and the English language spread. A structured workday was implemented, and brochures and films boasting of the advantages of productivity were distributed in the public services. The Times of Vietnam went from a weekly to a daily, new institutes to teach English continued to open, and the AVA inaugurated a new building with twenty rooms in which English was taught free of charge every day. The progress the English language had made could be seen at the ninth annual Colombo Conference held in South Vietnam, at which English was decreed the official language. Ambassador Payart remarked that what was most “noticeable” about the American efforts to further their language was the sort of “crusading spirit” with which they acted.22
American officials at the time were enamored of the survey, and South Vietnam felt the full force of this American obsession. Surveys focused on what radio stations the Vietnamese listened to, how well they understood American movies, and how they perceived the United States. A constant assessment of every U.S. cultural effort took place in South Vietnam, with the expected outcome that all results were positive. For example, by 1959, American officials claimed there was more interest in English than French books.
Nhu also felt the weight of the American presence. According to Nhu, by mid-1958, “the honeymoon with the Americans was over.” They were tolerated because they were rich and powerful and because South Vietnam had need of them. Other Vietnamese had also grown disillusioned with the American presence. Tran Van Do, former minister of foreign affairs, gave the following criticism of the Americans: “An Englishman who knows Vietnam and the Vietnamese well three years ago, when meeting a Vietnamese for the first time, would say I am not French. Today he says I am not American.” According to Payart, “many Vietnamese [considered] the Americans rich and generous, but also clumsy people who could cause the Vietnamese people great unhappiness with the best intentions in the world.”23
At least some American officials recognized the dangers an increasing American presence could bring. General John O’Daniel, former chief of MAAG and chairman of the AFV, visited South Vietnam in June 1958. Although O’Daniel felt South Vietnam was beginning to move “with more speed in the right direction,” he also asserted that the U.S. approach had been “too regimented, and indifferent,” and suggested that the American approach should be that “of a member of a team, not merely as a teacher or coach of the team,” since being “too aloof and official” made Americans little different in approach from the French. He recommended that “U.S. personnel should play down American participation in projects and try to make it appear that the ideas had come from the Vietnamese themselves.”24 Of course, O’Daniel was more concerned that the Saigon regime appeared independent rather than that it actually was so. NSC officials also worried that the National Liberation Front propaganda campaign, in addition to its increased use of violence in the South, would succeed in alienating the masses by depicting Diem as a puppet of the “colonialist” Americans—successors of the hated French.25
O’Daniel’s concerns were not shared by many. On April 4, 1959, Eisenhower called for more aid to Third World countries engaged in the battle against communism and heralded Vietnam as an example where progress and security there justified American aid. The number of projects the United States had undertaken during the 1954–1959 period was astounding. Americans helped build or rebuild hundreds of miles of roads and dozens of bridges, connecting all of South Vietnam to Saigon. Americans constructed an auto route from Saigon to Bien Hoa and National Routes 21 and 19. National Route 21 was the largest aid project since the settlement of North Vietnamese refugees in 1954–1955 and reflected the technological hubris of the Americans—it cost more than health, education, or any other service provided by the United States. Americans dredged hundreds of miles of canals to build navigable waterways and constructed a national railway system from Saigon to Dong Ha at the seventeenth parallel, as well as airports and deep-draft ports to receive economic and military aid. They increased water production in the countryside and towns, implemented a system of water adduction for Saigon, improved telecommunications, and developed electric energy, civil aviation, and food production. Americans also increased harvests, livestock, fishing, and training for farmers. Washington had established a national college of agriculture, credits for agricultural production, agricultural cooperatives, and rural development. Regarding education, the United States implemented teaching programs, American schoolbooks, and English language teaching. They also developed sanitary services, medical teaching, nursing, and disease control, not to mention industry, coal mining at Nong-Son, and cement and sugar industries. Americans organized industrial cooperatives, the Vietnam Textile Company, and the Vietnam Glass Corporation, and created a public administration and a national institute of statistics.26 U.S. efforts extended to university formation, warehouses, civil police, paramilitary security forces, cinema, information centers, public finance, radio, and learning abroad for public service. The Americans were engaged in developing counterespionage, propaganda, an identity card program, and a Vietnamese bureau of investigation, modeled after the American Federal Bureau of Investigation. Washington was even making efforts to bring American tourists to Vietnam by appointing a tourist director. Here, then, was an enormous nation-building effort. These acts of creating and reforming placed a decidedly American imprint on the South Vietnamese landscape. And with good reason. The assumptions underlying all this aid were that South Vietnam would become like the United States, with a political, economic, and social structure along American lines, and that the United States had an obligation to help South Vietnam achieve this goal.
It is important to return to the point of where most American aid actually went. More than three quarters of all aid from the United States went directly to the military and security forces, and much of that went to pay inflated salaries. Of nonmilitary aid, agricultural improvement and land reform projects received 17 percent; health, education, and industrial development received 7 percent each; and social welfare and housing received 3 percent each. Much of the nonmilitary aid was devoted to two of Diem’s pet projects—developing South Vietnamese settlements in the Central highlands and building a secondary road system to connect the highlands with coasts and cities. Once again, the Americans differed with Diem on where American aid should go, with USOM officials cynically referring to “Diem’s roads into the bush.” USOM, contrary to MAAG and Diem, viewed road building from an economic rather than military viewpoint and wanted to concentrate on rebuilding the main North-South coastal highway.27
The issue of aid was front and center during tripartite consultations in early February 1959. The trois grands discussed how to counter communist propaganda that they did not give aid to underdeveloped countries. Once again, South Vietnam served as a shining example of the results that could be obtained with American munificence. J. Graham Parsons, assistant undersecretary of state for Asian affairs, pointed out that the situation in Indochina represented a successful “equilibrium” that the West maintained in that area of the world. Parsons also discounted the attacks and subversion in the South as not “constituting any real danger.”28 At this point, South Vietnam appeared relatively stable as a result of American aid infusions and could thus be pushed to the back burner. But the situation was deteriorating, evidenced by the increase of MAAG advisers and the antigovernment subversion in the Tay Ninh province.
Despite the massive American nation-building effort, in 1960 French ambassador Roger Lalouette observed that five years of American experience in South Vietnam had not yielded great political results. The Americans had debarked in South Vietnam filled with “goodwill and assurance.” After five years, they were bitterly disappointed. Their effort to import “democracy made in America,” according to Lalouette, had not worked. In addition, Lalouette noted that the United States tended to operate on an “ad hoc basis” in South Vietnam and that, apart from the highest-ranking American officials in Saigon, most Americans were mediocre. He pointed out that MAAG, USOM, and USIS received their orders directly from Washington, counterbalancing if not upstaging the embassy, and that American agents working for the various agencies differed in their interests, practices, and methods, leading to different policies and “confusion in overall American policy.” He concluded that these agencies tended to neglect “the political, psychological, and sociological aspects of South Vietnamese problems that North Vietnam was so good at exploiting.” In the end, despite significant American aid, no real stability existed. The United States did create a national army, equip the country, cultivate the land, and aid Diem, but in Lalouette’s words, “the American presence weighed too heavily on a newly emancipated country.”29 The United States had assumed a quasi-colonial position in South Vietnam.
The American agencies that had set up shop in Saigon after Geneva—USIS Saigon, USOM, MSUG, AVA, and many others—had spread in different directions and taken on new activities in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The Eisenhower administration had made remarkable progress in replacing France, and the Kennedy administration was determined to follow the same path. After John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, plans to expand already-large programs continued apace. In expanding these programs, the American officials demonstrated a greater savoir-faire than their predecessors in trying to make American projects look South Vietnamese initiated, but ultimately, few were fooled.
Americans in Saigon wanted to ensure that the South Vietnamese were exposed to every facet of the American way of life. One USIS report noted that traditionally there had been very little contact between the United States and Vietnam because of “geographic remoteness, colonial status with France, and economic ties with its mother” country. To the extent that the “educational and cultural horizons of the Vietnamese elite were broadened prior to 1954, their field of vision was limited largely to France and French culture.” For this reason, South Vietnam, upon achieving independence, found itself in a state of almost complete ignorance toward the United States. Although a great deal had been done in the past seven years to change this, “French cultural if not political influence remains strong and the picture the Vietnamese have of the United States and of the West is still spotty.” Therefore, the United States needed to “redouble” its efforts.30
As of 1961, the Americans had replaced the French as the largest western segment of the population. And because they differed markedly from the French in language, attitudes, habits, and social customs, officials on the ground felt an urgent need for establishing a rapport between the two peoples that would “obviate misunderstanding, prejudice, resentment and criticism and promote mutual esteem, confidence, appreciation, and friendship.” USIS envisioned a three-fold mission for the future: to furnish maximum support to the U.S. military, economic, political, and psychological programs in the achievement of the primary U.S. objective—victory over the Viet Cong; to strengthen the Vietnamese people’s understanding and appreciation of the United States—its government, people, and culture; and to promote effective personal relations between the large number of Americans currently on duty and the South Vietnamese people. USIS thus advocated a carefully developed operating plan. In particular, USIS long-range cultural objectives were emphasized, but psychological operations were also to be “sought out and promoted.” USIS was also concerned about developing and maintaining effective working relationships with appropriate government departments and agencies, which involved the ability of USIS to “sell its plans and projects to appropriate officials” and to work “unobtrusively with the Vietnamese authorities so that all phases of the program appear to be government initiated, planned, and operated.” USIS needed to “gain maximum operational support” from such groups as the army, Vietnamese Information Service, Civic Action cadres, Vietnamese youth, and labor unions. American officials thus wanted to build up information and exchange programs, which had been too “timid” in the past in the face of bold communist propaganda. Washington was determined to remain in South Vietnam for the duration, and the way to do so was to advertise more effectively the advantages of American democracy and capitalism.31
By 1961, the USIS information center occupied excellent roomy quarters in three floors of a prime street corner building in downtown Saigon, about a mile from the embassy. It was completely air-conditioned and included the Abraham Lincoln Library, a 150-seat auditorium, radio studios, and film and recording rooms. USIS also maintained branch posts at Hue and Can Tho, with sub-branches at Banmethuot and Nha Trang, and an additional sub-branch planned for Dalat. Libraries at each center taught English and conducted story hours. Thus the Americans sought not only to bring political, military, and economic aid on the American model, but also to transplant American technology, comforts, architecture, and organization to Vietnam. The development of the buildings alone indicated the American desire to construct in an American style.
USIS also had an extensive radio network, with plans to boost listening. The anticommunist programs included “Beyond the Benhai River,” a daily program analyzing events in North Vietnam, refuting stories and allegations put out by Hanoi, and showing weaknesses of the communist regime. “Communism and Reality” was a weekly feature on communist practices and theories. “Round Table Discussion” was a weekly multivoice program on conditions in North Vietnam as contrasted with those in free Vietnam. “Talking it Over” was a weekly two-voice discussion on what was happening in the communist world in general. Other programs included “History in the Making,” a daily program on foreign aid and economic, social, and political progress made in free Vietnam and the free world; “The World This Week,” a weekly program on domestic and foreign news; “Friendly Nation,” a daily program on science, history, culture, education, and technology; “Questions and Answers,” a weekly program answering questions on various subjects of interest except politics; “Science and Humanity,” a weekly program on scientific developments in the free world in general and in the United States in particular; and two versions of “Chinese,” a daily news program in Cantonese and a six-day one in Mandarin. In a nod to the French, “L’Amérique Vous Parle” was a weekly program in French on subjects ranging from the arts and education to industry and social developments in the United States. Television was a new phenomenon, and one that had not been tried in Vietnam, but USIS officials believed it would become a critical medium in the “psychological offensive” the government “must wage and win” against the NLF.32
In terms of the press, there were fourteen Vietnamese- and ten Chinese-language newspapers, as well as one English and one French in the Saigon area. The English and French had a circulation of about 8,000 each. There was only one Vietnamese newspaper published in the provinces. USIS distributed 90,000 copies of the Vietnamese edition of Free World to teachers, students, government workers, businessmen, and the military. Young Citizen was a quarterly publication with 4,000 copies going to the Ministry of Education and 3,000 copies going to the army. A total of 18,500 copies of Informations et Documents, a French publication produced by USIS Paris, were sent to upper-middle-class groups—government officials, businessmen, educators, and students. The periodical focused on various phases of American life and culture. USIS was interested in stepping up its supply of locally originated stories—picture stories of joint Vietnamese-American activities of all kinds and human interest stories that would help the Vietnamese understand Americans.
The International Cooperation Administration also publicized the U.S. aid effort. Information officers “placed” an average of three stories a week with photos in newspapers, and one to two stories per month were published in Free World. Special exhibits were produced for countrywide exploitation and an average of one story was included in every USIS-produced weekly newsreel, shown by most theaters throughout the country. About three news stories a week were broadcast by Radio Vietnam, a lengthy feature on some aspect of American aid was placed with the press an average of once a week, and three stories per month were placed with local correspondents for use by the U.S. press.
USIS newsreels and documentaries were apparently so successful in rural areas and so effective in picturing the benefits of the U.S. aid program to the Vietnamese people that, by late 1960, NLF members started sabotaging various aspects of the program and increased kidnappings and assassinations, making it impossible by the end of the year for USIS mobile units to show films outside city limits. A Catholic priest living in one of the “terrorist targeted areas” reported that people in his area accepted the stories in Free World “as fact” and that it was proving to be a “valuable tool” to refute oral and written communist propaganda.33
With respect to cinema, the film program sought to disseminate information about the United States, demonstrate the mutuality of American-Vietnamese interests, detail the communist threat, portray American support for and aid to Vietnam, and influence certain elite groups. Films produced in 1961, which included one of Kennedy’s inauguration, Highway for Friendship (about USOM aid), and X-15 and Satellite Launching (on space and rocket advances), attracted much favorable response from officials, teachers, and students. Unfortunately, motion pictures such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Zombies of Mora Tau were also included in agency lists of titles certified for support, which was “not the type of American culture the Vietnamese should be introduced to,” according to USIS officials.
The American-Vietnamese Association (AVA), now renamed the Vietnamese-American Association (VAA) in an attempt to demonstrate South Vietnamese agency, remained the largest and oldest of the bi-national associations. The VAA in Saigon had an academic enrollment of 3,848 persons as of August 1961, and the VAA of Hue, founded in 1958, enrolled 269. The VAA’s Board of Directors consisted of eleven members: six Vietnamese and five Americans. Student enrollment at the VAA had grown steadily, more than doubling since 1957. One hundred teachers were in place, largely MAAG officers and wives of MAAG, USOM, USIS, or embassy men. The bulk of enrollment was in ten basic English language courses; however, there were also students in English composition, American literature, shorthand, and Vietnamese. The VAA had an expanding activities program, including forums and lectures; sponsorship of visiting artists and local music events and entertainment; recorded concerts; film and color slide showings; city tours; art, dance, and stamp-club activities; coffee hour; and various other social events. Total attendance at all of these in 1961 was almost 12,000, including South Vietnamese and members of the large American community in Saigon. Plans were also underway with the minister of education to have Peace Corps personnel teach English in Vietnamese schools.
The minister of education had notified USIS that in the early 1950s about 95 percent of the country’s schoolchildren chose French for primary language study and about 5 percent chose English. By 1961, 45 percent selected English for primary study (they still took French courses but for shorter periods). These figures confirmed an enormous demand for English language instruction. Vietnamese youth sought higher education on an American model as well. Before the 1954 partition of the country, South Vietnam had only University of Hanoi branches; by 1961, it had three universities—two in Saigon and one in Hue—as well as a private Catholic institution in Dalat. The University of Saigon was formally established in 1955; it had an enrollment of almost 10,000 students in six faculties as of 1961, and a roster of 300 professors and instructors. The University of Hue was founded in 1957 and had an enrollment of 1,610 students in seven faculties and around 100 professors and instructors. The University at Dalat had about 250 students. The total university enrollment represented an increase of about 8,000 since 1955. Fields represented by visiting lecturers in the 1960–1961 academic year were American literature, political science, and botany; in 1961–1962 they would be American literature, political science, and English teaching; and for 1962–1963, American literature, political science, and western civilization. American literature had been taught by visiting lecturers at the University of Saigon since the 1957–1958 academic year, and 25 students had received certificates in American Literature and Civilization.
But even in 1961, American officials had trouble weaning the Vietnamese away from such texts as L’Anglais Vivant in order to teach English. Students preferred the obsolete French version because it was cheaper. American officials were thus working to persuade American textbook firms to lower sales prices of books for use in Vietnam. USIS also made simplified French versions of American books available in Vietnam. Although these books would not contribute to the more widespread use of English, they would be a “source of information” on American life and literature for the large French-speaking population of the country.34
USIS also sought to increase Exchange of Persons programs to “complement” the large-scale USOM and military training programs. By providing selected high-level opportunities for study and observation that were “so important to the nation’s political, social and economic development,” USIS officials could expose the South Vietnamese to American institutions as a means of “broadening Vietnam’s window to the West,” as virtually all of the country’s western orientation in the past had been through France and French education. Exposure was also sought by bringing American lecturers, teachers, and specialists to Vietnam, particularly in areas where American scholarship could help fill specific Vietnamese academic and professional needs.
The Exchange of Persons program was “only an island in a sea of scholarship and training activity dominated by USOM and MAAG on the American side and by France as far as other efforts were concerned.” USOM’s 1961 allocation provided for 250 new grants, 250 extensions and renewals, and 126 third country grants. Although largely in technical training, these figures included 30 new and 62 extension grants in a Scholarship for Leadership program under which Vietnamese students received up to four years’ support for undergraduate work at American universities. Grant coordination worked on an ad hoc basis with USIS, VAA, USOM, MAAG, the British Council, the Australian Embassy, the Colombo Plan, the Asia Foundation, and the University of Michigan’s Southeast Asia Regional English project. Under MAAG’s training program, 630 Vietnamese military personnel went to the U.S. in 1960. Possibilities for overlap existed with USOM on student and leader grants, but the State Department had one unique capability—that of bringing American professors to lecture at Vietnamese universities. USIS officials recognized that France still held a leading position among other foreign countries engaged in educational assistance and exchange activity because it maintained a large cultural mission, but this mission was concerned largely with the complete support and staffing of four secondary schools and the 40 professors who taught at the University of Saigon.35
The United States had long been consigned to second place vis-à-vis France in terms of cultural esteem in Vietnam. According to American officials, the President’s Fund program had slowly begun to balance out the picture by providing exposure to American artists’ performances, and a number of musical performances introducing American music had occurred in Vietnam by 1961. Other planned activities included having the Fulbright Program institute a program in Vietnam and continuing the very successful exhibit series already in place. American exhibits tended to focus on themes, developments, and customs deemed typical for American culture and society, including consumer products, high living standards, the advantages of a free market economy, and technology.36
The 1958 “Atoms for Peace” exhibit averaged 5,000 visitors per day. According to South Vietnamese officials, before the exhibit, the Vietnamese associated the atom with Hiroshima, but it “now meant many peaceful things as well.” There was a buildup to the event through press stories and photos (prepared by the USIS press section), trailers on USIS newsreels, and spots on the radio. About 160,000 people attended. USIS felt that the impact and acceptability of the exhibit were helped tremendously by the publicized “co-sponsorship” of the exhibit by the Vietnamese Ministry of Information. USIS “consciously relegated” itself to a secondary role in the public view, making the exhibit a Vietnamese presentation and therefore adding to the credibility of what was said about U.S. accomplishments in the “Atoms for Peace” field. For instance, press materials, although prepared by USIS, were given to newspapers by the Ministry of Information, a device that resulted in excellent press coverage. Every available medium was brought into play—the press had produced and placed fourteen major stories, three photo features, and two advertisements; radio announcers had produced at least five hours of news commentary and other promotional material; and film officials placed a trailer. After the opening, publicity continued, some of it “natural” and some of it “generated.” The exhibit’s success led USIS officials to coordinate a subsequent exhibit on peoples’ capitalism to tell the American story “dramatically and effectively.”37 “These Are Our People,” an exhibit depicting the working activities, home lives, and community participation of U.S. steelworkers, was on display July 12–21, 1958. It featured the interiors of workers’ homes, housewives making clothing on sewing machines, school buses transporting workers’ children to and from school, union members planning recreation, and evidence of health and retirement benefit plans. “Sports in the USA” was also featured in 1958, as well as an exhibit on the Colombo Plan.
USIS proclaimed the 1959 “Abraham Lincoln and His America Today” exhibit another outstanding success. Just as Vietnamese students were “once exposed to Joan of Arc,” they “now learned about Abraham Lincoln.” “American Architecture,” designed to emphasize the grandiose nature of American skyscrapers, was also a popular exhibit. According to USIS, South Vietnam was still recovering from colonialism. Its leaders were passionately engaged in building the country along lines “reflecting the best of modern Western civilization” without “casting off entirely lasting Asian and national characteristics.” Thus, the display filled a need for Vietnamese students who would not have the opportunity to travel to the United States but recognized that it was where many architectural advances originated.38 The “20th Century Highlights of American Painting” exhibit was yet another that USIS pronounced “most successful.”
Other exhibits in 1959 included “Great Ideas of Western Man” and a series of posters on SEATO, which were displayed at various locations in Saigon. There was also an extensive exhibit on the Bien Hoa highway, which had been planned by Americans and constructed with American aid. Beginning on World Health Day, which in 1960 was dedicated to malaria eradication, USIS, USOM, the Administration for Malaria Eradication, the Ministry of Information, and the World Health Organization initiated a national, coordinated, all-media information campaign on the joint South Vietnamese-American aid project on malaria. The project, which already reached almost half the Vietnamese population, was identified in media output as a “free service for the people from the Government and American aid.” Information services stressed the mutuality of South Vietnamese interests and President Eisenhower’s statements on the worldwide campaign. For USIS, the campaign showed the South Vietnamese people that aid benefited them directly. A film on malaria was also produced and shown all day for two weeks at the USIS theater. A large exhibit on the joint Vietnamese-American aid effort toward malaria eradication was designed by USIS, produced by USOM, and displayed in the main Ministry of Information Exhibit Hall in downtown Saigon.39
These exhibits demonstrated a number of facts about the American effort in South Vietnam. The United States had achieved, through its various agencies, an impressive and coordinated propaganda machine, one that was devoted to political, psychological, and cultural methods of promoting American ideals and control. The perceived success of the exhibits in portraying the American way of life ensured that they would continue, and operations for 1960 and 1961 included the “American Pharmaceutical” exhibit, which enticed 5,000 viewers, the “U.S. Presidential Election” exhibit, which drew an audience of tens of thousands, and the “Highways to Progress” exhibit, which brought 20,000. Others on American labor and Hawaii and Alaska were popular as well. There were also innumerable exhibits on display in USIS library windows in Saigon. American officials carefully kept track of all attendance and tried to gauge how well the exhibits furthered understanding about American values and ideals.
Not all exhibits were an unqualified triumph for American cultural diplomacy. The exhibition of the hospital ship HOPE in Saigon turned out to be a mixed success because of its inability to meet the “fantastic clamoring” for treatment by the population, despite carefully worded publicity on the ship’s mission and capabilities. The overall effect was judged to be positive. Other projects included distribution of donated magazines and books, and the visit of the U.S. Seventh Fleet’s flagship—the USS St. Paul—to Saigon on South Vietnam’s independence day, Oct 26, 1960. (Although, perhaps in a sign of times to come, when a squall broke out during an American–South Vietnamese event, the Americans went below while the South Vietnamese stayed on deck.40) Until 1961, the exhibits were used primarily to support USIS’s second objective: “to strengthen understanding and appreciation of the U.S. and the American people.” But in view of the increasing emphasis being placed on the first objective, a U.S. victory against northern-instigated subversion, USIS officials believed that exhibits should be used to a greater extent in a psychological offensive promoting the Diem regime and denigrating the DRV, particularly in the provinces. Thus, USIS efforts would shift from cultural diplomacy to outright propaganda and psychological warfare.
In September 1961, an exhibit titled “Forward March” opened in Saigon City Hall. The exhibit was sponsored by the Vietnamese secretary of state for defense, the secretary of state for civic action, the army psywar directorate, and the directorate general of information in close cooperation with USIS. The purpose of the exhibit was to portray “vividly” the “terrorism” of the NLF, comparing its destructive, negative actions with the constructive efforts of the Diem regime to improve the lot of the Vietnamese people, and to inspire their confidence in their government’s viability and their armed forces’ ability to cope with mounting NLF military campaigns. The exhibit also sought to raise the morale of the members of the South Vietnamese armed forces by developing a greater public recognition of the individual fighting man’s efforts and sacrifices in the war against the NLF. The exhibit consisted of a display of captured weapons, such as light sidearms, rifles, semi-automatic and automatic weapons (many of them of Soviet or Chinese manufacture), NLF equipment and material (such as field radio receivers and transmitters), drugs and surgical tools of Eastern European origin, large photo panels of NLF atrocities, and examples of captured documents. A continuous newsreel proclaimed recent ARVN victories over NLF forces in the Mekong delta area. The highlights of the exhibit were two large sand tables portraying the battle of Kien Phong in the Plain de Joncs (fought and won by ARVN in late July). Thirty thousand Vietnamese attended the exhibit.41
The United States also employed more-traditional forms of “information” dissemination. A text and translations unit officer handled book translations, editing, research, propaganda analysis, and media assessment reporting. Translations worked on in 1961 included Profiles in Courage and The Strategy of Peace, by John F. Kennedy; Deliver Us From Evil and The Edge of Tomorrow, by Thomas Dooley; My Several Worlds, by Pearl S. Buck; The American Republic, by Raymond Bruckberger; and The Economics of Freedom, by Massimo Salvadori. USIS officials felt that the program was modestly successful, but because most Vietnamese intellectuals did their substantive reading in French, they planned to experiment with several French translations during the coming year. The program was projected to continue to grow as more students graduated from universities and studied abroad.
USIS considered that its presence on the local scene was “well accepted” and that it had avoided to “marked degree” the charges of “lavish American living” rendered by Albert Colgrove a couple of years earlier.42 In fact, American officials were so confident of the progress they had made in South Vietnam that they began to actively encourage American tourism. Just as American tourists were encouraged to visit France after World War II, the Eisenhower administration also encouraged travel to Vietnam to spread a democratic model of middle-class leisure and consumerism and to try to promote private investment. According to administration officials, Americans had a leadership responsibility in the world that included vaunting the benefits of democracy and capitalism through mass tourism.43 But all those Americans flying over to put their stamp on Vietnam, to promote democracy, and to modernize, made few attempts to understand Vietnamese culture. Vietnamese cultural and religious concerns, such as ancestor worship or Buddhism, were rarely mentioned in the increasing number of reports flowing back and forth between Saigon and Washington. The United States had exported a variety of cultures to South Vietnam—highbrow, middlebrow, even in some cases lowbrow—but interest in importing Vietnamese culture remained almost nonexistent. To be sure, none of the diplomats, businessmen, and other missionaries of modernization viewed themselves as cultural imperialists; and yet, it seems that is exactly what they were.
The U.S. aid program in South Vietnam by the late 1950s was second in size only to South Korea outside of Europe. Washington had spent $2 billion to $4 billion in 1950–1954 and another $1.5 billion to $2 billion dollars from 1955–1961, not including CIA or MAAG funds that were paid through the Defense Department. The focus from day one had been on a western model of development—but American, not French. In other words, South Vietnam needed to achieve rapid economic growth through industrial and technological progress, which would ultimately result in a western democratic state. In addition, South Vietnam was to be exposed to and eventually embrace American culture and way of life. But this was not the case in 1961. South Vietnam languished economically as the Diem regime remained fixed on military matters and ensuring internal security. Moreover, the South Vietnamese tended to be uninterested in adopting an American model of modernization or lifestyle, much to the surprise of the Americans in Saigon.
When the Kennedy administration took power in January 1961, the American nation-building effort in South Vietnam was securely in place; but the reality was that the United States had fostered the development of a colony, not a nation. Kennedy and his team would contribute to the work-in-progress as the South Vietnamese and American governments agreed to extend and build upon existing programs of military and economic aid. American aid and experts would be used to increase the regular armed forces, provide assistance for the entire Civil Guard, help South Vietnam’s armed forces in health, welfare, and public works activities at the village level, and work out a financial plan as a basis for joint efforts.44
Kennedy thus continued the process of “modernization” that Eisenhower had begun in Vietnam. American officials hoped to transform Vietnam from a traditional and colonial society into a modern one, complete with new economic organization, political structure, and systems of social values built with the rational and analytical tools of social science. Americans in Washington and Saigon persisted in viewing the Vietnamese people as clay on a potter’s wheel to be molded into free men by the United States. Contact through American institutions and culture was what would turn South Vietnam into a nation.
Modernization was not simply a social science but, as Michael Latham has argued, “an ideology, a conceptual framework that articulated a common collection of assumptions about the nature of American society and its ability to transform a world perceived as both materially and culturally deficient.” Thus MSUG, USOM, and USIS bridged American ideas of modernization with projects on the ground in Vietnam. Certainly none of these modernizers viewed themselves as imperialists, but rather as progressive, enlightened, do-gooders who would lead backward Vietnamese culture into the liberal-democratic and capitalist orbit. Material assistance, rational organizations and structures, and the English language were the answer. Drawing on their belief in the unique nature of the United States and its advanced position in the world, Americans in South Vietnam believed success could only be achieved the American way. Like the French before them, the Americans were willing to transfer culture, but only in one direction.45
According to DRV foreign minister Ung Van Khiem, the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations had “feverishly built” a series of military bases and strategic roads, airports, and military ports; “illegally introduced” into South Vietnam tens of thousands of tons of ammunition and war material; “raised” the MAAG military personnel to three thousand men; and “organized, trained, and often assumed the direct command” of the armed forces of the Diem administration. South Vietnam, according to Khiem, had in fact become “a colony of a new type, a military base serving the U.S. policy of intervention in Indochina and in Southeast Asia.” He pointed out that eighty-seven delegations had visited Vietnam as high-ranking American civilian and military officials inspected and activated “America’s plan for war.” Vice President Lyndon Johnson and Diem had published a joint communiqué that was “tantamount to a bilateral military alliance.”46 Khiem had assessed the situation accurately. By 1961, it was undeniable that the Americans had made a major commitment to South Vietnam. Just what the Americans would do with this commitment remained to be seen.
Diem’s success in manipulating the Eisenhower administration while distancing himself from American policies, and an increasingly neocolonialist American presence were vital factors in the American commitment to South Vietnam. But this commitment had not resulted in an independent nation. By 1961, American-South Vietnamese relations had become difficult, as Diem continued to make progress on the international front but refused to consider American suggestions for domestic problems. As a result, the Americans became increasingly disillusioned with Diem, and vice versa. In addition, convinced that the United States would succeed where France had failed, Washington’s determination to replace the French created a full-fledged nation-building effort. Americans in Vietnam provided technical and military assistance, trained administrators and ministers, disbursed economic aid, and taught English. Each additional function U.S. agencies undertook increased not only the American presence, but also the imposition of U.S. culture and values in South Vietnam. Thus Diem’s maneuverings and the incremental assumption of French duties by American organizations contributed decisively to the American presence. Presidential decisions, State Department diplomacy, and military imperatives all factored into increased American intervention, but so too did the many American missions in place that advocated a more forceful presence and an end to the French. Ultimately, replacing France would not help the United States achieve its goal of a noncommunist South Vietnam, but would bring disaster to Americans and Vietnamese alike.