Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Indochina, Volume XIII, Part 1

PSA files, lot 58 D 207, “Paris Correspondence”

The Counselor of Embassy in France (Bonsal) to the Director of the Office of Philippine and Southeast Asian Affairs (Lacy)

personal and secret

Paris, March 31, 1952.

Dear Bill: The other day I gave a small luncheon for Offroy¹ who is going out to Saigon as Diplomatic Adviser to the High Commissioner (the others were Paul Sturm, Phil Sprouse² and Roux who, we all hope, will take Baeyens’ place in charge of Far Eastern affairs in the Foreign Office). We were all most favorably impressed by Offroy. I believe that he will be cooperative and intelligent. As you may remember, he was Bidault’s³ chef de cabinet for a good many years and knows a good deal about us from San Francisco in 1945 on.

Offroy spoke in serious, and, I thought, plausible terms about the decline in morale in Indochina. He referred to recent military difficulties as well as to the increasing consciousness in France of the degree to which the burden in Indochina is paralyzing France’s efforts to play her part in the defense of Western Europe. He said that the exchange of letters between the military in Indochina and their relatives and friends in France was producing and emphasizing increasingly unfavorable reactions.

He also referred to the effect of this growth of pessimism upon the spirit of the politicians and people of Viet Nam upon whom we in theory rely to produce the “situation of strength” which will in some unpredictable future permit us to cut our commitments in Indochina. The only remedy which Offroy proposed was a ringing declaration by the U.S. concerning our determination to support the French and Vietnamese in their struggle. I passed this one off by referring to what we have already done and said and by then suggesting that one of the most helpful current developments could well be the appointment by the French of a worthy successor to General de Lattre as High Commissioner. Offroy did not give on this one, i.e. he did not reveal to us the Government’s decision—a decision which we expect to hear about in the very near future.

All this, I know, adds very little, if anything, to your knowledge of this situation. I am writing you about it to stress my conviction that, while from the financial and supply point of view there is no immediate anticipation of any change in the continued bearing by the French of their Indochinese burden, the situation nevertheless is changing for the worse from the psychological aspect. And that, in a sense, leads us to the very crux of the whole problem. If the IC effort is to be anything more than a holding operation, a climate of confidence must be created—and that means among the Vietnamese, French and Americans. Such confidence does not seem to exist here and, from the reports reaching us from Saigon and on the basis of the accomplishments of the Huu Government to date, there seems to be at least a partial lack of confidence in Indochina. You are better able than I to estimate the degree of confidence in Washington.

But, how to create this confidence? It seems to me that, if we continue to look at the problem as merely one of continued appropriations for and deliveries of military and economic aid, we can expect it to be simply a holding operation. As long as the Chinese Communists sit on the other side of the border and feed in the ingredients necessary to a continuation of the Vietminh rebellion, there seems to be no hope of a purely military decision. This, in my opinion, serves to emphasize the inextricably woven pattern of the politico-military aspects of the situation. Certainly there can be no confidence without the military security which would reduce the Vietminh threat. But that alone is not enough and never will be, unless we are willing to throw in overwhelming forces to aid the French and stay until the job is done. I take it that such a course of action is not even worthy of consideration, given present world conditions. We must, therefore, behind the screen of military protection find some means of building up confidence which would increase the effectiveness both of the Vietnamese Government and of its national army. There certainly seems to be some kind of mystique behind the Vietminh which makes its troops, who are also “Vietnamese”, continue the fight and create the uneasiness among the native people which results in less than full support of the Huu Government and creates attentism.

In searching for the means by which we can build up this confidence, the first thing that comes to my mind—and this is not a new idea by any means—is the long range outcome to all this effort. Given the present state of mind of Asiatics and the state of world affairs in terms of the strength of the Occident, is there any reason to believe that a Vietnamese Government strong enough to make a decisive contribution to the effort against the Communist-led rebellion will ever be willing to settle at the end of the battle for anything less than complete independence or, at best, a status comparable to that of India or Pakistan? Have we, and more importantly, have the French thought this through to the end? They, and we, speak of the creation and building up of a Vietnamese national army as a means of obtaining the repatriation of French forces in Indochina to the Metropole, where they can make the essential contribution to the rearmament effort in Europe. If the French are to bring back a sizable portion of their forces now in Indochina, it will flow either from the success of the Vietnamese forces or from a military disaster ending in their eviction. In either case the French are faced in the long run with a dynamic Vietnamese Government or a Communist Vietminh regime. If these assumptions have any validity—and I am laying aside the assumption that the whole thing is only a holding operation, since that is defeatist—then the French Government should face up to the long range end result.

I know that in doing this they face the ever present problem of how to justify the French effort in Indochina if it is only in order to hand over the country to the Vietnamese when it is all over. There is the vital question whether the National Assembly would have any heart for a contribution of French funds and blood if that was the only end in sight. There is also the important question of the effect of such action on the rest of the French Union, particularly North Africa. These two aspects of the problem—that is, the difficulty of obtaining from the National Assembly the continued necessary appropriations and the possible effect on North Africa—may represent insurmountable obstacles.

It seems to me that we have the following alternatives (there may be others): (1) The French withdraw, cut their losses and have Ho Chi-minh take over immediately. (2) The French hang on with our aid in a holding operation, frankly recognized as such, thus continuing the heavy drain financially and militarily, accompanied by the risk that at some point the burden becomes unbearable and they are forced to withdraw. If it is a holding operation, it becomes worthwhile only as an operation against the day when World War III breaks, at which time they might withdraw in an effort to save what forces they could for use elsewhere. In either case the French are finished in Indochina. (3) The French face up to the probability that the only way they can ease their burden is by the creation of native forces which will allow a partial French withdrawal and will bring about a greater and more effective Vietnamese effort. If this policy (which is that now being tried by the French Government if their own words are to be believed) is followed to its ultimate end and is successful, we will have a native government which will be in a position to face up to the French and perhaps tell them in effect “so sorry, this our garden now” (to paraphrase Ogden Nash). If the French are reluctant, they might get pushed out and thereby end the possibility of any kind of understanding with the Vietnamese. Here again, the end result is the end of France in Indochina.

Against the background of the foregoing, it seems to me that the French might well be asked what their view of the end result is and what they are prepared to do about it. If we invite Letourneau to the States and if we have tripartite talks on Indochina, we might ask this very question. The French Government could do much worse than realize the probable end results and then tell the Vietnamese, both privately and publicly, that when the bloodshed is over and the Vietminh rebellion is ended, the Vietnamese will be allowed to make their own choice—to remain in the French Union or to become completely independent. There is inevitably the risk that they might choose the latter, but if they, in the face of a hostile Communist China, decided that membership within the French Union had its advantages (don’t forget that one of France’s commitments in the constitution is to defend the French Union), then France and the free world would have gained. In the interim, the attentists would no longer have an excuse for attentism on the grounds that the French had no aim other than to maintain their control. It would provide an answer to the Nehrus of this world. And, the French might then save something from the ruins in the investment field, which would not otherwise be the case. In any event the French should cease bothering about minor unimportant items, such as, the status of Vietnamese representation at Paris, the Palace at Saigon et cetera, and concentrate on the major military and economic questions. That all is not well is shown by Col. The’s revolt, the desertion of Thanh in Cambodia and the sideline sitting of men like ex-Governors Tri and Chao [Giao].⁴ The French have not convinced enough Indochinese that the real enemies are Ho Chi-minh and the Chinese Communists.

Obviously, if we discuss the Indochinese situation with the French on a basis involving an eventual free decision by the Indochinese themselves as to whether they will stay in the French Union or not and if we urge the need for the availability of such a free decision to the Indochinese themselves as an element in the creation of the situation of strength which will keep Indochina in the free world at an eventual minimum of cost to France and the U.S., we invite the French to point out that since the contemplated end-result is of interest to the free world as a whole rather than specifically to the French Union, the supply of means for the achieving of that result should be the responsibility of the French Union only to the extent that that Union is also a member of the free world. In other words, the French might well argue for an internationalization of the conflict (meaning an international sharing of the burden), the practical effect of which would be greatly to increase our contribution in money and equipment, it being presumably understood that we could make no manpower contribution (except perhaps air) and that the British, the only other world power active in SEA, are too involved in Malaya and elsewhere to be in a position to make any real contribution, if, indeed, they can make any at all. Are we ready to assume this added responsibility? If we are, we can urge the French along the path we think is the right one; if we are not, we had probably better keep quiet.

To return from conjecture to realities, I do not pretend to try to reconcile the divergent accounts which we receive of the military situation. I am inclined myself to believe that in spite of the increased strength of the enemy over the past 12 to 18 months there is substance in the French official statement of their ability to hold the line for the present. Nevertheless that ability is certainly going to be affected by the loss of confidence which I have tried to illustrate by reference to Offroy’s conversation. In other words, we haven’t, in my judgment, very much time in which to decide on our own future actions in relation to Indochina. I know that this is now being given earnest consideration in Washington.

Under present conditions the odds seem to be against a Chinese overt invasion but there is the constant influx of materiel, of little bulk perhaps but of great immediate value in actual combat, which the Chinese Communists can send across the border in never ending streams. We are pretty close under present circumstances to the maximum which our friends can put in the field, unless the Vietnamese national army can be created at a more rapid pace. The situation is one which is dismaying many of our most stalwart friends here. They are, as they have been for a long time, really looking to us for some concrete statement of what we will do in certain eventualities.

This letter has grown well beyond what was originally intended. It represents the views of Phil Sprouse and myself—with most of the drafting Phil’s.

With warm regards,

Yours,

Philip W. Bonsal

1. Raymond Offroy.
2. Philip D. Sprouse, First Secretary of the Embassy in France.
3. Georges Bidault, former Premier and Foreign Minister; Minister of Defense in the governments of Rene Pleven and Edgar Faure, August 1951—February 1952.
4. The references are to the armed opposition to the French led by Colonel Trinh Minh The, a dissident leader of the Cao Dai sect; to the defection in early March of Son Ngoc Thanh, an important Cambodian nationalist; and to Nguyen Huu Tri (former Governor of Tonkin) and Pham Van Giao (former Governor of Annam).