The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam by Geoffrey DT Shaw

Author:Geoffrey DT Shaw [Shaw, Geoffrey DT]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681496863
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2015-12-14T22:00:00+00:00

11

Washington Isolates Diem

The violence at the Buddhist protest in Hue deeply troubled Ambassador Nolting, but he believed the affair would be handled properly by all parties involved and, when the country seemed relatively calm, he left for his planned holiday on May 23, 1963. This proved to be a fateful decision: once Nolting was out of the country, Diem’s foes amongst the radical Buddhists—and in the State Department—redoubled their efforts to bring down the president of South Vietnam. According to journalist John Mecklin,

There was a personal drama behind the scenes of the American reaction to the Buddhist upheaval. It arose out of the coincidence that Ambassador Nolting had left Saigon on a well-earned home leave with his family just before the crisis developed. . . . It was a last-straw touch to Nolting’s anguished tour of duty that in his absence the U.S. switched back to a “tough” policy with Diem and it failed miserably. It will remain one of the unanswerable “ifs” of history that Nolting’s low-key way, at the moment of ultimate challenge, might have been more effective.1

As can be seen from his memoir, Nolting agreed: “I could not have made a worse mistake. I left my post on the eve of the storm—a storm that eventually destroyed nine years of constructive American help and support for South Vietnam’s independence.”2

During Nolting’s absence from Saigon, his deputy, William Trueheart, was in charge of the embassy. Nolting left him strict instructions to contact him immediately if any sort of crisis or serious problem developed.3 Unfortunately for all concerned, the Buddhist crisis escalated while Nolting was out of the country, and Trueheart failed to contact the ambassador. This was a serious breach of trust, and it had long-term ramifications for U.S. policy. Later, in August 1963, when Nolting was back at the State Department in Washington, he filed a report on Trueheart with the personnel division. In it he stated that Trueheart,

through no fault of his own, was faced by a dangerously developing crisis shortly after my departure. It was of such magnitude as to threaten to destroy the base on which United States policy in Viet-Nam was founded and to cause great changes in the relationships between the United States Mission and the Vietnamese Government. . . . Mr. Trueheart failed to let me know of these developments. This was contrary to our understanding and, in my view, not in keeping with the responsibilities and loyalties of a Deputy Chief of Mission to a Chief of Mission, irrespective of previous understandings.4

In May 1966, Nolting claimed in an interview that Trueheart had failed to communicate with him because he had been won over by the Harriman group.5 The historical question is, what happened in Nolting’s absence that undermined the constructive and mutually respectful relationship he had built between the American and Vietnamese governments? The answer is the Buddhist crisis. This simple answer, however, reflects only the surface of the problem, because the relationship between Saigon and Washington might have withstood the crisis but for the way Trueheart treated Ngo Dinh Diem.

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