The Origins of the Vietnam War by A. Short

Author:A. Short [Short, A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Americas (North; Central; South; West Indies)
ISBN: 9781317872269
Google: WFfJAwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-06-11T20:44:56+00:00

NGO DINH DIEM

As a government that was recognized by more than 30 countries it was of course entitled to speak on behalf of the state even though it was obviously and actively opposed by large numbers of its citizens. It may or may not have represented national feelings but it certainly had nothing like a representative government and in so far as it was a sovereign state it depended upon French forces, US money and an absentee emperor. For the first time, it had as Prime Minister a passionate and uncompromising nationalist whose violent dislike of the French was exceeded only by the intensity of his opposition to communism and who, if one were to take his government's claim and the new US ground rules seriously, was now empowered to cast a veto on behalf of the US on whatever settlement that was reached which did not meet with his approval.

In just under ten years, up to his violent death in 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem and his family came to represent a war that could not be won. When, however, he was asked by Bao Dai to form a government in June 1954 and accepted, two days after Mendès France took office, Diem could present himself by virtue of his unusual but almost impeccable record of attachment to Vietnamese independence as a symbol of an alternative and in some respects purer nationalism than that represented by Ho Chi Minh. The fact that he was a Catholic, had spent most of the previous three years in American seminaries and had the support of such influential figures as Cardinal Spellman and Senator Kennedy did not immediately disqualify him. If anything and in so far as the US, too, was interested in genuine Vietnamese independence it was an advantage; and within days of his return to Vietnam he was making it perfectly plain, and with frequent reiteration, that the future of Vietnam depended on the US. Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were described as being at an almost insane pitch of hatred against the French and while the US chargé in Saigon described Diem as ‘a messiah without a message’ nevertheless Diem was asking for immediate US assistance in every possible form which included not only refugee relief but the training of troops and armed US intervention as well.45 Bao Dai's choice of Diem as Prime Minister provided the US with a more or less unexpected and fortuitous opportunity. With only six weeks to go before an agreement was reached at Geneva Diem was scarcely more unrealistic than his predecessors in government had been in his attachment to an undiminished Vietnamese sovereignty; but Diem was different in his almost mystical belief that Vietnam would be saved, through him, by a reassertion of its national integrity and its national, pre-colonial, traditions. In some of the earliest reports filed by the US embassy in Saigon on his position Diem was presented as quite obsessed with the loss of northern territory: to

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.