Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Indochina, Volume XIII, Part 2

Eisenhower Library, Eisenhower papers, Whitman file

Memorandum of Discussion at the 206th Meeting of the National Security Council, Thursday, July 15, 1954¹

top secret
eyes only

July 15, 1954

[Extracts]

Present at the 206th Meeting of the Council were The President of the United States, presiding; the Vice President of the United States; the Secretary of State (for Item 2 only); the Under Secretary of State (Items 1 and 3–7); Robert B. Anderson for the Secretary of Defense; the Acting Director, Foreign Operations Administration; the Director, Office of Defense Mobilization. Also present were the Secretary of the Treasury; the Attorney General (Item 1); the Acting Secretary of the Interior (Item 4); the Secretary of Commerce (Item 1); Under Secretary of Commerce Worthy (Item 1); Assistant Secretary of Commerce Anderson (Item 3); the Director, Bureau of the Budget; the Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (Item 1); the Administrator, Federal Facilities Corporation (Item 3); the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Director of Central Intelligence; the Assistant to the President; the Deputy Assistant to the President; the White House Staff Secretary; the NSC Representative on Internal Security (Item 1); the Executive Secretary, NSC; and the Deputy Executive Secretary, NSC.

Following is a summary of the discussion at the meeting and the main points taken.

. . . . . . .

2. Report by the Secretary of State²

The President said that he wished to hear from the Secretary of State next.

A. EDC and Germany.

. . . . . . .

B. Indochina.

Secretary Dulles began by explaining the dilemma which had confronted the United States with respect to participation at a high level in the Indochina phase of the Geneva Conference. He said that we had been reluctant thus to participate, in the first instance, out of fear that the Communists might say to the French that they would be willing to accept a certain solution of the Indochina problem provided the United States joined in guaranteeing such a solution. Had the United States been faced with such a proposition, we would have had to reject it, said Secretary Dulles. We couldn’t get ourselves into the “Yalta business” of guaranteeing Soviet conquests, but to have rejected such a proposal would nevertheless have left us exposed to the hostility of French public opinion as the power responsible for blocking a settlement of the unpopular Indochinese war. There would have been more talk of too many stiff-necked Presbyterians, of sanctimoniousness, and of invoking lofty moral principles.

The other danger—the other horn of the dilemma—was the possibility that high-level U.S. representation at Geneva might so stiffen the French as to preclude their accepting any settlement offered by the Communists. They might then turn to us and ask us to participate unilaterally with them in continuing the war.

In the event that either of these two possibilities had been realized, the result would have been very great French antagonism. The whole structure of Franco-U.S. friendship might have been destroyed, and there would have been an end of any hope for EDC. These reasons had led us to believe that it was wisest for the United States to withdraw from the Indochina phase of the Conference inconspicuously. We had found, however, that we could not withdraw inconspicuously. There had been very strong French pressure on us to return to Geneva. Secretary Dulles said that his letter to Mendes-France, setting forth his reasons for not wishing to go to Geneva, had not convinced the French Premier.³ When the Premier’s reply had been received Monday afternoon (July 12, 1954) imploring a return to Geneva, Secretary Dulles decided to go to Paris, and left at 6:00 p.m.⁴

Secretary Dulles said that he had spent most of the time at Tuesday’s meeting discussing the United States viewpoint on Indochina with the French.⁵ They in turn had gone into considerable detail in outlining the settlement they wanted to get and thought they could get from the Communists. The original Vietminh proposal called for a partition of Vietnam at approximately the 14th parallel. Subsequently, however, they had expressed a willingness to draw the line at the 16th parallel. Mendes-France told Secretary Dulles that he thought this Vietminh concession was the result of news that Secretary Dulles was coming to Paris. In any event, Mendes-France said that he had rejected the line of the 16th parallel because it would have cost the French their important base at Tourane, the port city of Hue, and the only road from Vietnam into Laos which was not controlled by the Communists. Instead, said Mendes-France, they had stood on their demand that the partition line in Vietnam should run roughly from Dong Hoi to Thakek, together with freedom and territorial integrity for Laos and Cambodia. At the conclusion of the meeting Tuesday night, Mendes-France had made a moving plea for United States high-level representation at Geneva. Secretary Dulles had replied that he would consider the matter and give his answer on the following day.

During the remainder of that night Secretary Dulles and those who had accompanied him to Paris prepared two papers. The first of these was the draft of a French–U.S. position paper. This position paper was substantially the same as the position we had agreed with when Churchill and Eden had visited Washington (copy, entitled “Instructions Regarding Reply to French Government”, filed in the minutes of the meeting).⁶ Secretary Dulles summarized the paper as providing for the independence and integrity of the southern half of Vietnam and of all of Laos and Cambodia. Secretary Dulles informed the Council that the United States did not propose to guarantee a settlement based on this 7-point position paper, but that we would be prepared to agree not to resort to the use of armed force to change such a settlement if the French and the Communists agreed to it. The United States would simply make a unilateral declaration of this intent.

The second paper prepared after the interview with Mendes-France Tuesday night, took the form of a letter which Mendes-France would send to Secretary Dulles.⁷ Secretary Dulles read this letter aloud. It set forth the substance of the French and the U.S. positions, and indicated a commitment by Mendes-France to make a public statement to the French people which would make it perfectly clear that we had come to Geneva at his urging and accordingly were not responsible for any result which might lead the people of France to accuse us of preventing the achieving of a settlement in Indochina, either through our refusal to guarantee a settlement with the Communists or through our support of a position which resulted in a French decision to go on fighting (the two contingencies mentioned by Secretary Dulles earlier in this report). Thus we hoped to avoid any crisis in Franco–American relations.

The upshot was an agreement by Secretary Dulles that General Smith should return to Geneva to represent the United States for the remainder of the Conference. While, said Secretary Dulles, this decision will involve some risk, at least the United States will be going back with an agreed position with France, as well as with a clear position with respect to our responsibility or lack of responsibility for the final outcome of the negotiations. Secretary Dulles was not optimistic, he said, regarding the results of the Conference; that as among the several risky courses of action open to the United States at this time, the one chosen involved the least risk.

In conclusion, Secretary Dulles said he wished to emphasize that from the psychological standpoint our decision to return had been a grave blow to the Communists. The fact that the entire Geneva Conference had ground to a standstill when Mendes-France left for Paris to talk to an American Secretary of State, and that Chou En-lai and Molotov had cooled their heels during this interval, had punctured the Communist prestige which had been built up so high at Geneva. All this indicated that when it really comes down to something important, the United States is the key nation. This had been a matter of great chagrin to the Communists.

At the conclusion of Secretary Dulles’ report the President inquired whether Mendes-France appeared to have any grasp of the fact that no matter what kind of agreement the French reached with the Communists, the French must have the complete confidence of the native peoples of Indochina if the agreement was going to work. Secretary Dulles replied that the President’s point has been one of the seven points in the French–U.S. position paper. Another significant point in that paper had been a French admission that we could bring the Indochina situation before the UN if the final result of the Geneva Conference was no settlement. It had been hard to induce Mendes-France to agree to this step, because of the French insistence that the war in Indochina was a civil war. Secretary Dulles, however, had pointed out that the French could not have it both ways. If this was merely a civil war, the United States had no business participating in it; it was not our custom to intervene in other people’s civil wars. With respect to the issue of the independence of the Associated States, Secretary Dulles said he had also had a hard time with Mendes-France, particularly on the point as to whether the granted independence implied the right to withdraw from the French Union. Here Mr. Eden had been a great help. He had joined with Secretary Dulles to impress upon Mendes-France the necessity for creating and developing a “national effort” by the governments and peoples of the Associated States. To succeed in this would eventually require not only the departure of French troops but of French civil functionaries from the Associated States. To get the French to agree to this had been difficult because of their pride in the French Union. Mendes-France himself, however, seemed to be closer to the British view as to the relation of nations in the Commonwealth to the mother country than Laniel. All he could say, continued Secretary Dulles, was that while the position of Mendes-France may not square 100% with our position, he was much closer to our position on this matter than his predecessors.

Secretary Dulles again paid tribute to the sincerity and honesty of Mendes-France, and predicted that he would offer his resignation as Premier on July 20 if no agreement on Indochina had been reached at Geneva by that date.

Secretary Humphrey expressed the opinion that the most important gain that Secretary Dulles had achieved by virtue of his visit to Paris was to put Mendes-France under obligation to the United States, particularly with respect to Germany. If Mendes-France proved to be honest, and grasped the assistance we were giving him on Indochina, there was hope for a decent German settlement.

Discussion then shifted to the probable Congressional and public reaction to the results of Geneva and to Secretary Dulles’ role. The Vice President stated that while he had been at the Governors’ Conference recently, two or three Republican Governors had spoken to him in very favorable terms of Secretary Dulles’ trip to Paris. They had described it as a shrewd and even a brilliant maneuver. As to reactions in the future, the attitude of Congress, said the Vice President, would largely depend on two things. First, how the press played the matter, and second, how certain of the prominent Republican members of Congress played it. The Vice President believed that it was important to put both the newspapers and the members of Congress on the spot by asking them what they would have done under the circumstances. Very few of the critics would be able to provide a better answer to the problem than the Administration had provided. The Vice President also thought it extremely important that when the Geneva settlement was announced, it be framed in very simple terms which would clearly indicate the alternatives which had confronted the United States. The Administration should also take the offensive by stressing the advantages which had been gained from the settlement; for example, emphasizing the independence and integrity of Laos and Cambodia. This, thought the Vice President, was the way to sell it. Secretary Dulles commented that we must be careful not to go too far to make the forthcoming settlement appear to be a good bargain.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Anderson asked about the likely fate of the large stores of munitions and matériel which had been sent to Indochina by the United States. Had the French agreed that this matériel could be evacuated? Secretary Dulles said that this question had not been specifically discussed, but he believed that the French intended to try to hold the port of Haiphong for a considerable time, which would provide the means of evacuating some of this matériel.

Admiral Radford inquired whether the Vietnamese Government would ever agree to a settlement by the French along the lines indicated by Secretary Dulles. Secretary Dulles replied that he believed that the governments of Laos and Cambodia would find the proposed settlement quite satisfactory, but it was difficult to tell how the Government of Vietnam would react. He said he had met briefly with the Foreign Minister of Vietnam as he was about to leave Paris for Washington.⁸ He was not very happy about the prospect. The Foreign Minister was a Catholic and had come from one of the Delta provinces recently turned over to the Vietminh. The worst of the situation, said Secretary Dulles, was that the most virile elements of the Vietnamese population lived in the Tonkin Delta area. It might be possible to transfer a few of the natives of the Delta to the non-Communist areas, but probably not many.

Admiral Radford went on to say that one of the most dangerous features of the proposed settlement was the likelihood of severe Vietnamese revulsion against the French when the terms were finally announced. Such a revulsion could be very serious indeed if the native troops turned against the French. After all, half of the native troops of Vietnam came from the Delta area. Mr. Allen Dulles likewise expressed the opinion that a Vietnamese uprising against the French was quite possible when the terms of the settlement were announced.

As an afterthought, Secretary Dulles said that he wanted to point out that Mendes-France had informed him that if the Geneva Conference proved to be a failure, the French would have two divisions from NATO which they could send to Indochina. It would be impossible to get them there, however, before the end of September, and it might be impossible to hold the Hanoi-Haiphong bridgehead over this period of time without U.S. air and sea support.

The National Security Council:

Noted and discussed an oral report by the Secretary of State on his recent conferences in Paris with the French Premier and the UK Foreign Secretary, with particular reference to EDC and Indochina.

. . . . . . .

1. Prepared by Deputy Executive Secretary Gleason on July 16.

   Secretary Dulles returned from Paris at 9:15 a.m., July 15, and proceeded to the White House to brief the President and the NSC. (Princeton University, Dulles papers, “Daily Appointments”) The Hagerty diary entry for July 15 read in part as follows: “Prior to the time that the President arrived at the White House Dulles and I had a rather long talk on the situation. He said that he thought that he had made the American position quite clear to the French and British; namely, that we did not particularly like the idea of the partition of Vietnam but would go along with it if they agreed to support the American effort to form promptly in the Far East area a Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. He said he thought it was probably the best thing that Bedell Smith was returning to Geneva since without Bedell there, we would lose a forum for world opinion. Since I had been urging this all along, I was very happy to hear the Secretary say it.” (Eisenhower Library, James C. Hagerty papers)

2. For the statement issued by the Secretary on the occasion of his return from Paris, see Department of State Bulletin, July 26, 1954, pp. 123–124.
3. The message under reference is contained in telegram 127 to Paris, July 10, p. 1807.
4. The reply from Premier Mendès-France to which Secretary Dulles refers has not been identified. Regarding the events of July 12 culminating in the departure of Dulles for Paris, see footnote 1, p. 1812.
5. For the record of the meeting of Tuesday evening, July 13, see p. 1819.
6. The agreed instructions were transmitted to Paris in telegram 4853 of June 28; for text, see p. 1757. For the text or the U.S.-French position paper as approved on July 14, see p. 1830.
7. For the text of the letter, dated July 14, see p. 1832.
8. Reference is presumably to a meeting between Secretary Dulles and Tran Van Chuong, Vietnamese Minister of State and Ambassador at Large, at Paris on July 14, during which Chuong presented the Secretary with a memorandum protesting the French evacuation of the Catholic areas of North Vietnam. The conversation and the memorandum were summarized in telegram 219 from Paris, July 16. (751G.00/7–1654) The text of the memorandum was transmitted to Washington in despatch 147 from Paris, July 20. (751G.00/7–2054)