Piercing the bamboo curtain by Michael Lumbers

Author:Michael Lumbers [Lumbers, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, History, Asian, China, Modern, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781847797209
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2013-07-19T04:00:00+00:00

Averting Chinese intervention in Vietnam

It was precisely this intangible element of Chinese unpredictability or perceived irrationality, rather than any reassessment of Chinese intentions and capabilities, which prompted the administration to supplement containment with new tactics toward the mainland in 1966. From his post in Hong Kong, Edward Rice argued that Beijing’s reckless adventurism in the Indian subcontinent and its subversive activity in Indonesia had been concocted by a group of aging ideologues, men distrustful of their successors’ revolutionary fervor and therefore desperate for “convincing external successes which would justify keeping China on course towards the same aims they have set after they have passed.”34 Chinese setbacks on the world stage had instilled within the leadership an “emotional state of great frustration,” which was only exacerbated by the scale of the American presence in Vietnam.35

Rice likened Beijing’s profound anxieties in Vietnam to those it had experienced just prior to the fall of Pyongyang to UN forces in 1950. While Mao and his comrades probably hoped to avert any commitment to enter the fighting, further escalation of America’s air attacks against the North would only “lend credence to their belief that we are acting under mechanistically increasing pressures to attack their country.” Consequently, the administration’s war planners were urged to heed the PRC’s siege mentality and inherent need for domestic mobilization. The outcome in Vietnam had become so inextricably linked to Mao’s revolutionary ambitions at home and abroad that he would ultimately accept the full consequences of assisting Hanoi, even if this led to a clash with the Americans. If it came, Mao might actually welcome an enlarged war, as it would rally the country behind his vision and imbue younger generations with a militant spirit. “Prudence,” Rice warned Washington, “requires that we pursue a course designed … to disappoint any expectations of Communist China’s leaders that we will play to their strength by fighting them on their own terrain.”36

Rice was only one of several officials who had pressed decision-makers throughout 1964–65 to reduce Sino-American tensions by alleviating Beijing’s paranoid fears of US intentions. These voices had been effectively relegated to the sidelines as the Johnson team focused their attention on defending the besieged government in Saigon, largely out of concern that any relaxation in the administration’s posture toward the PRC would be interpreted as a sign of weakness and encourage further Chinese aggression. Once they had actually committed the US militarily to Vietnam and were confronted with the prospect of another Korea-like war, however, even the most enthusiastic advocates of intervention gradually became more receptive to some of the arguments advanced by the China policy reform camp.

Robert McNamara, for example, expressed growing dismay over the evident stalemate on the battlefield during the latter half of 1965, particularly after a draining fight in the Ia Drang Valley in November, and he wondered whether a military victory could be secured within acceptable risks.37 In December, he told LBJ that “a substantial number of additional forces” – 200,000 ground troops in 1966 and likely the same figure for the following year – would be needed “if we are to avoid being defeated.

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