Quotations

“Today, freedom, like prosperity and happiness, is indivisible.”
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Citation/CitationThienTon.htm

 

“There could be no real freedom for people unless they were given the opportunity of acquiring knowledge through education and free access to information.”
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien: Asian Libertarian”, p. 78

 

“My problem is how to enlarge press freedom in Vietnam – and freedom in general.”
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien: Asian Libertarian”, p. 77

 

“A clean and honest government has nothing to fear [of a free press].”
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyThienTon.htm

 

“Why have 25,000 Allies and more than 100,000 Vietnamese died in this war, if not for freedom?”
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyThienTon.htm

 

“In August 1945 and thereafter, the CPV was in control of a government of Vietnam. What remained for it to do was to transform this government into the government of Vietnam.”
The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam: A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 68

 

“. . . since 1945 CPV leaders have constantly talked about peace, but since 1945, of all the nations of the world, Vietnam under their rule has been constantly at war.”
The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam: A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 60

 

“[Vietnamese continue] to be horrified and embittered at the way the Americans fight their war. . . . Our peasants will remember their cratered rice fields and defoliated forests, devastated by an alien air force that seems at war with the very land of Vietnam.”
Quoted in Gerald C. Hickey, Window on a War, p. 258

 

“The more foreign control over the Saigon government is heavy, visible, and real, the stronger the pressure on the Vietnamese in search of dignity to cross the line and go over to the other side . . . . Unless one offers enough to the nationalists to keep them away from Communism – and enough here means liberation from the feeling of loss of dignity – Communism is going to triumph in Vietnam.”
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien: Asian Libertarian”, p. 76

 

“Do the Americans have an overall plan for Vietnam that we, the Vietnamese, somehow fail to understand, or is there no plan at all?”
Quoted in Gerald C. Hickey, Window on a War, p. 210

 

“Just because the Americans want to quit the war is no reason to assume that the Vietnamese do too.”
Quoted in Gerald C. Hickey, Window on a War, p. 259

 

“The dilemma of two Vietnams is the cruel fate which has befallen the Vietnamese people – a victim of the mistakes of the statesmen of the great powers, as well as the follies of their own leaders.”
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien: Asian Libertarian”, p.72

 

“Was it necessary for the Vietnamese people to resort to war to achieve national independence and improve their living conditions? To give a firm answer, again one would have to look at Vietnam’s Southeast Asian neighbors. All these countries achieved national independence and improved their living conditions without war. Indeed, they were able to do so sooner and faster than Vietnam precisely because they had achieved independence with rather than against the colonial nations, and had not followed the Communist road.”
The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam: A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 201-205

President Diem’s greatest mistake during the spring and summer of 1963 was to listen to the Americans.  Washington forced Diem to dig his own political grave when it urged him in the summer of 1963 to be conciliatory and allow that extremist wing of Buddhists and students to create turmoil in the streets, and so to parade their false charges in the gullible American press and powerful television media.  During this period of “conciliation” the Buddhists cleverly used to the maximum the time of supposed negotiation with the government as a cover to slander it and weaken it.  Pretty soon the whole world began to believe the accusations against Diem.  The Americans were tying Diem’s hands behind his back and telling the manipulators of the mob, “Hit him again.” Thich Tri Quang can hardly be blamed for being smart enough to aim his blows for the moment when CBS News and the New York Times were ready. 

Diem knew that Thich Tri Quang was using the Xa Loi Pagoda as a propaganda and subversion command post to topple his regime.  Diem knew that Thich Tri Quang had served with the Communists and that the tumult was serving Communist ends.  He knew all about those horrible Buddhist suicide squads in which monks brainwashed likely recruits and furnished them with gasoline and anti-pain pills.  Diem had every sound reason to end the mobocracy, arrest its leaders, disband its suicide squads, and get on with the war.  Instead, to please the Americans, Diem allowed the turbulence to go on, in the name of conciliation, for three whole months, and in the process permitted the Buddhists to poison the world opinion to the extent that Washington decided to get rid of him.  It was a perfect vicious circle and served Diem right for ever having trusted the Americans in the first place.

Vietnamese professor in Saigon
Quoted in Marguerite Higgins, Our Vietnam Nightmare, p. 102-103
(Note:  Confirmed to Jeff McMurdo by Ton That Thien that it was he who was quoted here)

 

Do the Americans have an overall plan for Vietnam that we, the Vietnamese, somehow fail to understand, or is there no plan at all?

Ton That Thien
Quoted in Gerald C. Hickey,  Window on a War, p. 210

 

. . . [Ton That] Thien said the Vietnamese ability to cope with the war is increasing while the need for the physical presence of the Americans is concomitantly decreasing.  Just because the Americans want to quit the war is no reason to assume that the Vietnamese do too.

Gerald C. Hickey,  Window on a War, p. 259

 

[Vietnamese continue] to be horrified and embittered at the way the Americans fight their war. . . . Our peasants will remember their cratered rice fields and defoliated forests, devastated by an alien air force that seems at war with the very land of Vietnam . . . villagers will remember their hamlets uprooted from the earth, all to no purpose . . . until the Americans find a way of allying themselves with Vietnamese nationalists, there is little hope of achieving an early peace, or bringing Communism in Vietnam under our control.  AS long as America persists in its present course, Vietnamese nationalists can do nothing but wait and pray – realizing that the hour is late, that Vietnamese society may soon be past saving and that Communists and Americans may wind up contending for sterile victory over a wasteland.”

Ton That Thien,
Quoted in Gerald C. Hickey,  Window on a War, p. 258 

 

If the policies of the United States and the government of General Ky had popular support, it would be evident to all.  The people of this country would raise the money and pay the taxes to support the war.  The young men of the country would do the fighting against the enemy.  The peasants in the countryside would not help the Viet Cong and would supply the intelligence needed to eliminate them.  But we in Vietnam are doing none of these things.   You are paying for this war . . . .not the Vietnamese.  You are fighting this war with American troops because the Vietnamese soldiers will not fight.  The peasants are helping the Viet Cong and they are not giving you the intelligence you want.  You are confronted with a society that opposes the present policies in the only way it can – with passive resistance.

Ton That Thien
Quoted in Ward Just,  To What End:  Report from Vietnam, p. 67

 

“No important position could be attained by a Vietnamese official, without the approval of the French colonial government,” [Ton That] Thien wrote.  “It was from the cities that the new officials were recruited.  To qualify for high government positions, new diplomas were required, and these could be gained only through a long and expensive period of schooling obtainable only in the cities.  The peasants were therefore excluded from the high, as well as the middle, positions.”  What had happened was a systematic separation of the peasantry from the government.  The new system, instituted by the French, was aimed principally (and logically enough) at the preservation of colonial interests.

Ton That Thien’s view was that the Americans were perpetuating this system, and making it inevitable that the Viet Cong would keep control of the revolutionary atmosphere.  The two most important social, or political, ideals to the Vietnamese are nationalism and sovereignty.  Both were the property of the Communists, as the Vietnamese bureaucracy worked increasingly in the service of the Americans.  It was never put quite as crassly as that, but that is what it amounted to.  The ministries in Saigon became agencies for the execution of American programs.

Ward Just,  To What End:  Report from Vietnam, p. 87

 

In Saigon Vietnamese officials, both pro and anti-Diem, found him anxious about US military and political intentions.  Diem’s press secretary at that time, Ton That Thien, states that ‘from 1960 on, the Americans started… stronger consultation, so they were thinking of moving into Vietnam at the time, and President Diem and especially his brother Nhu were dead set against the Americans moving in and taking over’.

Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, p. 77

 

In Saigon, Ambassador Lodge delayed his scheduled 31 October departure.  At 10:00 am on 1 November, the Ambassador called on President Diem together with General Harkins and visiting Pacific Commander Admiral Felt.  The President’s press secretary, Ton That Thien, was present: ‘Lodge kept President Diem busy until past twelve.  Each time Admiral Felt goes to leave, Lodge asks another question and we know now from the Pentagon Papers that Lodge knew all along that the coup would be staged and he was simply pinning down President Diem to deny him access to his staff.  Downstairs Mr Nhu – this was a coincidence, a strange coincidence – was being asked all sorts of questions by [General] Thieu.  Afterwards I talked to people who wanted to get in touch with either Mr Nhu or the President to tell him that there was something going on.  And they couldn’t get any orders from the palace at all until the rebellious troops were on the outskirts of Saigon.  You cannot say that this is sheer coincidence.’

Michael Maclear, Vietnam, p. 101

 

Most of the more than a thousand million dollars poured into Vietnam yearly have found their way into pockets of this urban population in the form of buildings, bars, restaurants, nightclubs.

Ton That Thien, journalist
Quoted in Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, p. 197

 

‘Little has changed since the overthrow of Diem,’ wrote journalist Thien in an article called ‘Vietnam:  A Case of Social Alienation’.  Thien had been press secretary to the late President and both had feared excessive American influence.  Thien now saw economic aid as a form of it: ‘If change has occurred, it has been for the worse.’  A military leader could win more money in a poker game one night than a peasant could dream of earning in a lifetime.  ‘American aid simply adds to social alienation, from city to countryside.’  Thien said the money should go to improve rural education and communications and to pay social workers enough to go to the countryside and stay there.  But it was anyhow too late.

Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, p. 197-198

 

Thien was with the prestigious Vietnam Guardian until it and other critical newspapers were closed down by Premier Ky.  Thien stresses that he was not anti-American, saying America’s mistake was in permitting blatantly unrepresentative government in Saigon, epitomized for him by Premier Ky.  Thien found a friend in Daniel Ellsberg:  ‘I remember Ton That Thien, a very respected journalist at that time, saying “It is an insult the people you have chosen for us: Prime Minister Ky – why do you have to humiliate us by bringing a man of this caliber for us?  We could live with a puppet – we’re on your side – we could work with you with much self-respect if you had someone more representative of Vietnamese values.

Ton That Thien, journalist
Quoted in Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War, p. 200-201

Today, freedom, like prosperity and happiness, is indivisible
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Citation/CitationThienTon.htm

 

There could be no real freedom for people unless they were given the opportunity of acquiring knowledge through education and free access to information.
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien:  Asian Libertarian”, p. 78

 

My problem is how to enlarge press freedom in Vietnam – and freedom in general.
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien:  Asian Libertarian”, p. 77

 

A clean and honest government has nothing to fear [of a free press].
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyThienTon.htm

 

Why have 25,000 and more than 100,000 Vietnamese died in this war, if not for freedom?
http://www.rmaf.org.ph/Awardees/Biography/BiographyThienTon.htm

 

The more foreign control over the Saigon government is heavy, visible, and real, the stronger the pressure on the Vietnamese in search of dignity to cross the line and go over to the other side . . . . Unless one offers enough to the nationalists to keep them away from Communism – and enough here means liberation from the feeling of loss of dignity – Communism is going to triumph in Vietnam.
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien:  Asian Libertarian”, p. 76

 

“The dilemma of two Vietnams is the cruel fate which has befallen the Vietnamese people – a victim of the mistakes of the statesmen of the great powers, as well as the follies of their own leaders.”
Maslog, Crispin C. “Ton That Thien:  Asian Libertarian”, p.72

If ‘liberation’ has a deep meaning in the eyes of the Vietnamese, so has ‘freedom’.  The latter has become a catchword embodying a strong desire among the articulate elements of the population for democratic liberties, and among the masses, for equality.  The enjoyment of these rights and what they bring – a better life – is visualized through the establishment of democratic institutions, the adoption of democratic practices, and the rejection of all forms of dictatorships.  Lastly, in Vietnam, like in other Asian countries, backwardness is considered a cause of national weakness leading to foreign domination, and the desire to get rid of it quickly is as strong as the willingness to accept hardship to achieve it.

Ton That Thien, “The War in Vietnam” (1966)

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Vietnam Seen From East and West p. 59

 

 

 

As long as dignity for their country and dignity for themselves have not been secured, the Vietnamese will, one way or another, persist in their struggle.  This question of dignity is something about which the Vietnamese feel highly emotional.  It is this, and not material considerations, which is the most important element of their motivations.  At the thought of being deprived of it by foreign domination they react strongly.

Ton That Thien, “The War in Vietnam” (1966)

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Vietnam Seen From East and West p. 60

 

 

 

The Democratic Republic of Vietnam [North Vietnam] has proclaimed its unswerving loyalty to the Communist cause, and prided itself in being the ‘outpost of socialism in South-East Asia’.  Communism is denial of individual freedom.  There is no need to belabor this point for the enlightenment of the Vietnamese.  They know it well.  The Vietnamese have been offered liberation without freedom, or freedom without liberation.  In this double half-offer lies the tragedy of Vietnam, and the main cause of a prolonged war.

Ton That Thien, “The War in Vietnam” (1966)

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Vietnam Seen From East and West p. 60

 

 

 

Communism or no Communism, the North suffers from an unsurmountable handicap:  it is poor and is bound to remain poor.  There is little to divide, and the best propaganda cannot convince the people of the virtues of Communism if the general standard of living does not improve.

Ton That Thien, “The War in Vietnam”, (1966)

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Vietnam Seen From East and West p. 61

 

 

 

The United States’ decision to intervene directly and massively saved South Vietnam from falling into Communist hands in the winter of 1964.  But the United States Government has problems of its own.  Public opinion may not go on supporting intervention in Vietnam and may demand the withdrawal of the American forces from there under the cover of a face-saving settlement that would give North Vietnam the chance of getting at the Conference table what is denied to it on the battlefield by American arms.  It is true that the United States Government has repeatedly affirmed its intention of honoring its commitments to South Vietnam, in particular of not abandoning it to Communist conquest.  But the United States being a democratic country, the American government will eventually have to swim with the tide of public opinion.  There is no certainty that this opinion will not change.  In fact there are risks that it may even swing sharply.

Ton That Thien, “The War in Vietnam”, (1966)

Sibnarayan Ray (ed.), Vietnam Seen From East and West p. 61

[Note:  This was written two years before the Tet Offensive of 1968]

 

 

 

 

From the outset, our people, educated by President Ho Chi Minh and the Party, have combined patriotism with proletarian internationalism, always conscious that their revolutionary struggle is an inseparable part of the revolutionary cause of the world’s peoples.  All the successes we have recorded cannot be separated from the international support and assistance given us by our brothers and friends in all continents . . . To remain worthy of this international support, the Vietnamese people will always do their utmost to fulfill their “international” duty.

Pham Van Dong, 1970, Quoted in Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 80, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

In January, 1949, more than 26 years before the Communist troops entered Saigon, Ho Chi Minh, addressing the cadres of the PCV, said:  “We form the Communist Party of Indochina, but we have the additional task of contributing to the liberation of Southeast Asia”.  In his memoirs, Kissinger says that in his negotiation, Le Duc Tho, Hanoi’s main negotiator, said repeatedly that it was Vietnam’s destiny to dominate Indochina and Southeast Asia.

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 80, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

If they resort to negotiation, then a settlement is only a temporary halt.  The march forward to final total victory will resume as soon as circumstances permit.  This is what happened after 1946, 1954 and 1973.

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 81, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

. . . the Vietnamese Communist leaders skillfully used decoy issues.  They would put forward two apparently equally tough demands, well knowing that, to them, one is really fundamental and the other secondary but, to the enemy, both are just as equally important.  So the latter would concentrate his attention and energy on the secondary issue and yield easily and more readily on the fundamental issue.  It is only after the agreement has been reached that one can see clearly which of the two issues was really fundamental.

 

 

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 85, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

When they are in a weak position, they observe total secrecy, are very conciliatory and courteous, even flattering, towards the adversary;  they try to allay his fears as to their true nature – i.e. to assure him that they are not communists, are full of goodwill and reasonableness.  The purpose of all that is to disarm the adversary mentally.  They also want to settle quickly and on reasonable terms, knowing fully well that they are not going to honour the agreement signed.  They do not seem to care much about building a reputation of reliability.  They are essentially interested in scoring gains on the way to total victory.

 

When they are in a position of strength, they engage in both public and secret moves, are tough and merciless, and take no trouble in avoiding humiliating the adversary or hurting his feelings.  They exploit his weakness to the full and take pleasure in demonstrating to him the hopelessness of his position.  They present their proposals in the form of an ultimatum, in peremptory terms (you must this, you must that), consider their demands as the only possible solution, reject their adversary’s proposals, do not even discuss them.  They would put forward their demands and hang on to them for weeks, months, years.  They conduct, as mentioned earlier, psychological warfare against the adversary, trying to wear him down and break his will, driving him to insanity.  They would exploit the adversary’s domestic divisions to the full, and use this to produce a collapse of his negotiating position.

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 85-86, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

Commenting on a secret offer made in September 1970 in which the US would withdraw its troops totally and leave no residual forces, no advisers, no bases, Kissinger said:

“These proposals were not without their weird quality.  Given the domestic pressures for unilateral withdrawal, which were accelerating by the month, we were telling the Vietnamese that they had better agree to mutual withdrawal now lest we punish them by withdrawal unilaterally later . . . “

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 97, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

Vietnam history and communist ideology combined to produce the most morbid suspicion and self-righteousness.  This was compounded by a legacy of Cartesian logic from French colonialism that produced an infuriating doctrinaire technique of advocacy.  Each North Vietnamese proposal was put forward as the sole logical truth and each demand was stated in the imperative (the United States “must”).  By 1971 we had been so conditioned that when the North Vietnamese substituted “should” for “must”, we thought great progress had been made.

Henry Kissinger, Quoted in Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 99, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

Throughout the war we were taunted by the appearance of great reasonableness by the North Vietnamese towards visitors, especially those opposed to the Administration.  These guests were treated with great civility and catalogue of skillful and intriguing code words that permitted a variety of interpretations, none of them so clear or firm as to be reliable or meaningful as the visitor imagined.  All of them evaporated as soon as we tested them in a serious forum.

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 100, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

I grew to understand Le Duc Tho considered negotiations as another battle.  Any settlement that deprived Hanoi of final victory was by definition in his eyes a ruse.  He was there to wear me down.  As the representative of truth he had no category for compromise . . . no category for our method of negotiating;  trading concessions seemed to him immoral unless a superior necessity supervened, and until that happened he was prepared to wait us out indefinitely . . . Luckily for my sanity, the full implications of what I was up against did not hit me at the first meeting . . . or I might have forgone the exercise.

Ton That Thien, “Negotiation Strategy and Tactics of the Vietnamese Communists”, p. 102, in “Negotiations in Asia”, Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, Geneva, 1984

 

 

 

In 1963 the US dealt its ally South Vietnam a fatal blow.  In this, Kennedy’s policies played a decisive role.  This bitter truth has been underscored by the leaders of North Vietnam.

 

On hearing the news of Diem’s overthrow, Ho Chi Minh said:  “I could hardly believe that the Americans would be so stupid.”

 

When General Vo Nguyen Giap and his surviving colleagues met with Robert McNamara in Hanoi in November 1995, they argued that “Kennedy’s policies in Vietnam were terminally mistaken.  Ngo Dinh Diem was a nationalist who would never have allowed the Americans to take over Saigon’s war effort, leading the Americans and their hapless allies to costly defeat.  Therefore the coup that overthrew Diem in 1963 was the surprisingly early end for the United States in Vietnam.

 

Hanoi radio said:  “By throwing off Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu, the US imperialists have themselves destroyed the political bases they had built up for years.”

 

The leaders of the South Vietnam Liberation Front also could hardly believe their luck.  “The fall of Ngo was a gift from heaven for us”, Nguyen Huu Tho, the president of the Liberation Front told Nhan Dan.  And his vice-president Tran Nam Trung:  “The Americans decided to change horses in mid-stream.  They’ll never find anyone more effective than Diem.”

Ton That Thien, “The Year of the Hare:  New Light on the Anti-Diem Coup”, in World Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 4, October-December, 1999, p. 116 – 117

 

 

 

For Ngo Dinh Diem Winters showed great understanding.  To him, “Diem was no enigma but an embattled autocrat struggling for survival.”

 

“The odds against Diem were indeed daunting . . . Diem had been besieged for almost a decade by both foreign and internal forces.  Under such circumstances, South Vietnam’s slow progress toward a modern political structure was comparatively impressive.”

Ton That Thien, “The Year of the Hare:  New Light on the Anti-Diem Coup”, in World Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 4, October-December, 1999, p. 116 – 117

 

 

 

What lesson to draw from it all?  As Winters sees it:

“The lesson of Vietnam is now increasingly inescapable:  the fate that befell the American intervention in Vietnam was the ever-bitter fruit of colonialism.  For the self-complacent American rush to remake Vietnam’s government in a Western democratic image was a blind violation of the prerogative of sovereignty, the right to self-determination.  Less abstractly, Kennedy’s coup vainly sought to extinguish in Vietnam the flame of freedom in the name of an alien political ideal, democracy. “

 

Viewed from an Asian angle, “the tragedy of Vietnam” would look as follows.  Ngo Dinh Diem had accomplished the extraordinary feat of achieving the status dreamed of by every Vietnamese aspiring to national leadership:  recognition as an equal of Ho Chi Minh.  This was evident when Ho told the famous Australia-born Communist journalist Wilfred Burchett that “Diem is a patriot in his own way” and to “shake hands with him for me.”

 

For New Year’s Day, through the International Control Commission (ICC) Ho sent Diem a blossoming cherry branch, which the latter displayed in the hall of Gia Long Palace for the diplomatic corps to see.  The diplomats were puzzled because they missed the profound symbolic meaning of the gesture:  it was a public tribute Ho to Diem.  Furthermore, though M. Maneli, the Polish representative on the ICC, Ho sent a message to Diem that he would not be challenged as head of a southern government in a federated Vietnam.

Ton That Thien, “The Year of the Hare:  New Light on the Anti-Diem Coup”, in World Affairs, Vol. 3, No. 4, October-December, 1999, p. 120-121

 

 

 

Since the sixteenth century, except for a brief span of forty-six years (182-65), the two parts of the country had lived under different governments.  Since 1866, when Cochinchina, the main part of South Vietnam, was ceded to France by Emperor Tu-Duc, those two parts had lived under different political systems.  And for thirty years prior to 1975, they had lived under two mutually hostile and diametrically opposed regimes.  It would be difficult to unify them.  It would require opposed regimes.  It would be difficult to unify them.  It would require time and much patience and sensitivity.

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 86

 

 

 

The CPV leadership had ignored the limits of human endurance.  They wanted everyone to be a “revolutionary” to the utmost, and a hero all the time.  They believed that with revolutionary fervour, every problem can be solved.  “The first quality of a citizen is not effectiveness.  He must, even if he is stupid, be above all revolutionary” wrote the AFP correspondent from Hanoi in September 1977.  And he added, “that is not a journalist’s metaphor, but a statement by an official.”  They ignored the fact that there are limits to man’s endurance, to his capacity to make sacrifices, that, at some point, heroes get tired, and the population no longer wants to live in order to fight.  As a Vietnamese in Hanoi said, “For forty years my head has commanded my stomach, but I confess that today my stomach commands my head.”

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 90

 

 

 

In theoretical terms, the Hanoi leadership has acted in conformity with their leadership of doctrinaire Leninism, that is, with the Leninism of over half a century ago, and which had been intended for the Soviet Union.  “Hanoi had even prepared for its victory in the South by reprinting the Vietnamese translation of Lenin’s April 1918 treatise on the immediate tasks of the Soviet government . . . The Mekong delta peasants, after 1975, were thus invited to buy their chickens according to procedures which Lenin had improvised six decades earlier.”

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 90

 

 

 

A Buddhist priest who escaped in 1979 said, on arriving in Indonesia, that many communist soldiers had become as corrupt as the Thieu regime soldiers they replaced and often sold their weapons.  “If you have gold, you can buy anything in Vietnam now” he said.  A refugee arriving in Singapore in June this year said that “corruption in Vietnam is at its worst.  Soldiers and officials now accept bribes openly” to look the other way while he and his companions escaped.

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 92

 

 

 

It seems undeniable that discontent largely overflows the urban population of Ho Chi Minh City and Cholon.  The impression one gets from a visit to the South is that a significant proportion of the population feels that it is subjected to a regime of politico-military occupation.  There is no integration into the new Vietnamese state of non-communist political elements in the South who had fought the pro-American military dictatorship.  Nor even all the communists of the South.  Even if, deep in their minds, the great majority of the population of the South dreaded a face-to-face with the “northerners” in 1975, they sought comfort in the thought that, after all, between Vietnamese it would be possible to mutual understanding provided the Americans go away.  Today, disenchantment has replaced hope and resentment is discernible in certain utterances;  it encompasses the leaders of the NLF-PRG, and the activists of the “third force” incur the reproach of having paved the way for communism.  A deep chasm separates the population from the leaders and agents of the regime, no matter who they may be.

Brocheux and Hemery, Quoted in Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 93

 

 

 

. . . there is little likelihood that the root causes of Vietnam’s troubles will disappear in the foreseeable future.  The CPV leadership will continue to cling stubbornly to their ideas and methods, and the cadres will remain just as incompetent and corrupt.

 

There is no indication that the leaders are prepared to abandon or modify their approach – doctrinaire Leninism and militant militarism – because they had been used to it for half a century, and especially because it had carried them to victory, glory and power.  Besides, by choice as much as by necessity, they had become acquainted with little else:  they had neither need nor time for other things.  For over thirty years, they singlemindedly pursued only one aim – the seizure of power by military and revolutionary means.  The overcoming of tremendous odds, and victory over two very powerful nations had strengthened their conviction that they had adopted the right ideas and the right methods, and they refused to entertain even the suggestion that they might be wrong, or that there could be anything better.

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 103

 

 

 

The Vietnamese people have a strong penchant for the absolute, and reasonableness and readiness to accept compromises are not among their national traits.

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 103

 

 

 

To them, war is not something repulsive, a means of the last resort, to be discarded and forgotten as soon as victory has been achieved, but something lofty, an intrinsic part of a society’’ life, a fine element of a nation’s culture.  To Gen. Van Tien Dung, “War is the highest and most comprehensive test for a nation and a social system.  Our forefathers have established a unique military tradition of using a great cause to defeat cruelty, wisdom to overthrow tyranny, and a small force to oppose a large one.  This can be said to be the concentrated manifestation of Vietnamese culture and the source of our invisible strength.”  There is a Hitlerite ring to such a kind of speech, and many historians and sociologists will find it hard to accept this interpretation of Vietnam’s history and culture.

Ton That Thien, “Vietnam, 1975-1980:  Reflections on a Revolution,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol.2, No. 2, September 1980, p. 104

 

 

 

For their part, the Vietnam CPV leadership has clung fast to Marxism-Leninism.  Improvement of relations with its neighbours is just a means for ensuring the success of “building socialism.”  The Politburo’s political report to the Seventh Party National Congress made that quite clear.  It says:  “Doi Moi (renovation) does not mean changing our aim – socialism – but using appropriate concepts and forms . . . to ensure the successful achievement of that ism.”  With regard to foreign policy, it says:  “The task of foreign policy is . . . to create the favorable conditions for the building of socialism . . .”

Ton That Thien, Southeast Asia’s Post Cold War Geopolitics:  The New Realities”, in Global Affairs, Winter, 1993, p. 52

 

 

 

In December 1978, on French television, to a question on the “vanishing” of the NLF after their victory, Nguyễn Khác Viên, the Paris-based chief propagandist of Hanoi abroad, who for years had told foreign correspondents that the NLF was a purely South Vietnamese organization and not a creation of Hanoi, answered without the slightest embarrassment that the Provisional Revolutionary Government (or PRG, official name of the NLF after 1969) “was always simply a group emanating from the DRV (Democratic Republic of Vietnam.  Official name of the Hanoi government).  If we the DRV had pretended otherwise for such a long period, it was only because during the war were not obliged to unveil our cards”, and that “in its struggle, the Vietnamese revolution was entitled to strategic lies”.

Tôn Thắt Thiện, “Sober thoughts on April 30:  The South Vietnam Liberation Front and Hanoi, Myth and Reality”  Unpublished address to the Vietnamese Canadian Federation, Ottawa, Canada, April 29, 2000

 

 

 

On 20 December 1960 the representatives of all social classes, political parties, religious sects, ethnic minorities and strata of the people in South Viet met…and set up the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam”.  The meeting approved a 10-point working programme whose fundamental point was to overthrow the Ngô Dình Diêm administration “in order to turn South Vietnam into an independent, democratic, peaceful, and neutral country…”

 

We know that, except for the destruction of the South Vietnam government, none of the [National Liberation Front] 10 – point program was implemented after the communist victory in 1975.

Tôn Thắt Thiện, “Sober thoughts on April 30:  The South Vietnam Liberation Front and Hanoi, Myth and Reality” Unpublished address to the Vietnamese Canadian Federation, Ottawa, Canada, April 29, 2000

 

 

 

Gia Long missed the great opportunity for change to prepare the country for successfully meeting the new challenge.  Instead of Westernizing, he chose to revert resolutely and fully to the past, resumed the Chinese connection, and clamped the Chinese mold firmly on his country . . . the emperors and their courts stubbornly clung to the Chinese model in spite of the warnings and the repeated pleadings of Vietnamese who had been abroad and seen the world.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 23, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

 

 

 

The upshot of the stimulation by China and Japan was the founding of the Duy Tan modernization movement with its twin manifestations:  the Dong Du (the Go East school) and the Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc (the Modern school).  Both reached their high point in 1906 and 1907.  The Dong Du, brainchild of Phan Boi Chau, aimed at giving young Vietnamese military training by sending them to Japan.  The Dong Kinh Nghia Thuc, brainchild of Phan Chu Trinh, aimed at introducing the country to the modern world through modern education including, among other things, commerce and industry.

. . . As Phan Chu Trinh saw very clearly from the beginning, and as Phan Boi Chau recognized late in his life during his house arrest, nothing could be accomplished unless the educational, moral and civic levels of the people were raised.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 24, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

 

 

 

The Vietnamese were drawn to the national and colonial questions raised at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920.  Vladimir Lenin said in that thesis:  “The Communist International should advance the proposition, with appropriate theoretical foundation, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.”

 

Those words are said to have made Ho Chi Minh cry in his room in Paris and become an unconditional Leninist.  Ho had joined the French Socialist Party in 1918 because it was anticolonial, but he had to grapple painfully with the insoluble problem of how a pre-capitalist country like Vietnam could become even socialist.  In Lenin’s thesis he thought he had found the solution.  He did not pay attention at all to the sentence following the above statement.  In it, Lenin said, “The necessary means for this cannot be indicated in advance.  These will be prompted by experience.”  In other words, Lenin did not tell Ho and his followers in Vietnam how to move to communism directly from precapitalism without passing through the capitalist stage.  This problem seemed minor to Ho then, but it was to plague the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) after 1975, especially after the spectacular demonstration that the Soviet experiment had proved a dismal failure.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 25, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

 

 

 

The basic decision to embark fully on a Marxist-Leninist course was taken at the party’s Fourth National Congress in December 1976.  This congress decided to move “directly from small-scale production to large-scale production without passing through the capitalist stage,” to give priority to heavy industry, and to turn Vietnam into a socialist country with modern agriculture and industry “within twenty years.”  Very ambitious targets were set, although, as party leader Le Duan admitted, “War has destroyed practically everything built by the people at the cost of very great efforts, retarded our development by three five-year plans, and wrought havoc on management.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 26, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

 

 

 

By 1980 it had become obvious that the course pursued by the party had led to disaster.  This was acknowledged by the party leadership at the Fifth National Congress in March a1982.  At this congress, Pham Van Dong, who had been full of self-confidence when he presented the plan in 1976, asked, rather bemusedly:  “The socialist revolution line and the socialist economic construction line put forward by the Fourth Congress were correct.  Why is it that after five years of implementation we have not achieved the economic results which the country demanded and which the potential of the country should make possible?”  And he gave the answers:  subjectivity; hastiness; setting tasks that were too big with targets that were too high; clinging to policies after they had ceased to be suitable, in particular those of bureaucratic command and state subsidy; and above all, giving first priority to heavy industries.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 27, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

 

 

 

The questions of whether to make changes, what those changes should be, how far to go, and who should carry out those changes, naturally caused deep divisions inside the party leadership.  In the late 1980s the party leaders in Vietnam were determined to drag the country down the road to socialism, even though socialism had proved a failure even in its original home.  Indeed, at a key plenum of the party’s Central Committee in December 1990, with the collapse of socialism in Europe in mind, Tran Bach Dang, who was later expelled from the Politburo, asked, “What are the characteristics of socialism?” and the answer was, “The plenum found that we do not have sufficient conditions yet to argue this issue scientifically.”

 

Thus the nation’s Communist Party leaders have learned nothing from Vietnam’s painful experience.  Like the Confucianist mandarins 150 years earlier, at the time of Gia Long and Tu Duc, and the same reasons, they chose an obviously wrong path and persisted in pursuing that path, thus wasting the country’s precious time.

Ton That Thien, “Cultural Issues in Vietnam’s Transition” p. 28, in The Vietnamese Economy and its Transformation to an Open Market System. Wm. T. Alpert (ed.). M.E. Sharpe, New York, 2005

The Comintern’s instructions, set out in a letter dated October 27, 1929, were quite specific and peremptory.  The letter said that a party must be set up “urgently” in Indochina, and this party must be the only one in the country.  It stressed that “only the organizations which totally recognized the decisions of the Communist International shall be recognized as organizations belonging to the Communist party of Indochina and having the right to attend the coming National Congress of the Communist party,” whereas the organizations that did not recognize the decisions of the Communist International “must be expelled.”

 

. . . . The letter finally enjoined the CPI to “stay in constant touch with the Communist International,” to “establish contact” with the members of the Chinese Communist party in Indochina and “ensure their participation in practical and revolutionary work in Indochina,” and “to maintain liaison systematically with the French Communist party and keep the latter informed of its activities.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 47-48

 

 

Upon receiving his instructions from Moscow, Ho Chi Minh proceeded posthaste to Hong Kong and convened a conference there on February 3 – 7, 1930.  He had the full authority of Moscow behind him.  As Milton Sachs put it, he had “a mandate from Moscow.”  The result was the establishment of a single party.

 

In October of the same year, on order from Moscow, the name was changed to Communist party of Indochina (CPI), to make clear that the party covered Laos and Cambodia as well.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 48

 

 

The growth of the party was rapid.  When it was founded in 1930, it had a membership of 211.  When it seized power in 1945, it had a membership of 5,000.  In 1976, one year after it had taken South Vietnam, it had a membership of 1,500,000.  Five years later, at its fifth National Congress in 1982, the party had 1,727,784 members.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 49

 

 

When the Vietnamese analyze the world, like Asians with a long tradition of Chinese culture behind – or rather inside – them, they take a historical, long view.  The Vietnamese Communists have followed this tradition.  One can say that, partly at least, they were drawn to Marxism-Leninism because of this tradition.  In addition to giving explanations that seem quite illuminating about imperialism and its connection with the wretched conditions of the colonial peoples, Marxism-Leninism takes a historical, long view of the world.  It is thus with great intellectual, as well as emotional, comfort that the leaders of the CPV looked at the world through the Marxist-Leninist prism.  Marx’s view of history, with its emphasis on the inevitable evolution of mankind from feudalism to capitalism and socialism, and Lenin’s view of the history of our epoch, with his prediction of the ineluctable collapse of imperialism, were sweet music to the ears of the leaders of the CPV . . . Thus Lenin’s statement that “Without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement” has been elevated by the CPV to the status of “an immortal statement.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 52

 

 

 

It is not for us that we fight, but for peace and democracy and national independence in the world . . . the Vietnamese people have become aware of their international obligations in the post-war period.  They are determined to fulfill these obligations to the end, in spite of obstacles.

Truong Chinh, September, 1946

Quoted in Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 54

 

 

The world is divided into two camps:  the camp of peace and democracy and the camp of war-mongering imperialism.  The Democratic Republic of Vietnam stands on the side of peace and democracy against the war-mongering imperialists.  The Vietnamese revolution is an integral part of the world movement of peace, democracy, socialism.

Truong Chinh, 1951

Quoted in Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 54

 

 

The Vietnamese Communists thus considered themselves essentially internationalists, proletarian internationalists to be exact.  They never used the word “nationalist” when referring to themselves among themselves, but they did use “patriotism,” which was always accompanied by “true.”  And to them “true patriotism” was equated with socialism.  “True patriotism is totally different from the ‘chauvinism’ of the reactionary imperialists.  True patriotism is an integral part of internationalism,” so said Ho Chi Minh.  In 1976 after the reunification of Vietnam under Communist rule, Le Duan declared in his report to the Fourth National Party Congress:  “Now that our country has become completely independent, nation and socialism are one and the same thing.”

 

In the eyes of the CPV leaders, since socialism and patriotism are one and the same, a Communist is perforce a patriot, and a genuine one, compared to Vietnamese who are not Communist.  Thus Pham Van Dong said in 1960:  “In our country to be a patriot means to love socialism;  patriotism is closely linked to socialism, and the communist is the most genuine patriot.”  It follows from the CPV’s assertion that, since patriotism is socialism and to love one’s country is to love socialism, and since the Soviet Union is the fatherland of socialism, for a Vietnamese real patriot, who ipso facto must be a Communist, the Soviet Union must therefore also be his or her fatherland.  Indeed, the resolution of the First Congress of the party at Macao in 1935 said that “it is necessary to make the masses understand that the Soviet Union is the Fatherland of the proletarians and the oppressed peoples of the whole world.”

 

Not only did the CPV leaders reject nationalism, but they took resolute steps to fight it, both inside and outside the party.  The political platform adopted in October 1930 noted with satisfaction that the most important development in the revolutionary movement in Indochina was that the struggle of the masses of the workers and peasants was “no longer subject to the influence of nationalism as previously.”  The same platform enjoined party members to fight “the narrow nationalism” that was prevalent in other organizations.  The resolution of the First National Congress in 1935 called for “the extirpation of the influence of nationalism among the peasants.”

 

Nationalism had to be fought and extirpated because it is “bourgeois,” and bourgeois nationalism “cares only about the resistance of one’s own nation and remains indifferent to the movement in favor of peace, democracy and independence in the world,” said Truong Chinh.  In a party document dated October 30, 1936, members were reminded that they must consider themselves internationalists and not nationalists.  It said”  “We follow internationalism, not nationalism . . . the form of our struggle is nationalist, but the content of this struggle is internationalist.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 55-56

 

 

All CPV leaders believed firmly that “the only correct way” to conquer power is the use of violence.  Said Truong Chinh:

 

“Since its foundation . . . our Party has asserted that violent revolution is the only correct way . . . Our Party has understood very early and deeply the theory of violent revolution of Marxism-Leninism, and has consistently followed the path of violent revolution, which is the only correct way not only for the conquest of power but also for the defense of revolutionary power.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 57

 

 

. . . since 1945 CPV leaders have constantly talked about peace, but since 1945, of all the nations of the world, Vietnam under their rule has been constantly at war.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 60

 

. . . peaceful coexistence does not mean accepting to live peacefully together, to recognize other peoples’ right to exist, to live and let live.  It only means creating the conditions that make general war between the camps of socialism and capitalism impossible, at the same time seeking to destroy capitalism by pushing forward revolution in different countries . . . Peaceful coexistence thus does not contradict Lenin’s thesis on the inevitability of war, and makes possible the continuation of the struggle against imperialism, more exactly “imperialism headed by Yankee imperialism,” without putting the Soviet Union at risk;  it is another form a safer way of achieving the ultimate aim, which is “to build socialism and communism throughout the world.”  The relentless pursuit of this aim, although it may not lead to general war, means involving Vietnam in ceaseless warfare.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 61

 

 

Vo Nguyen Giap, for his part, was unmoved by the thought of large number of lives lost and the length of time required for the achievement of his ends.  To a French officer, Major F.F. Fonde, he said:  “Destructions . . . what does it matter! . . . Losses . . . a million Vietnamese, no importance at all . . .”  And to Socialist Marcel Ner, he said “Every minute, hundreds of thousands of men die on earth.  The lives and deaths of one hundred, one thousand, tens of thousands of human beings, be they our compatriots, represents little.”  In 1969 in his interview with Oriana Fallaci, he was asked:  “How long will the war go on?  How long will the people be asked to sacrifice, to suffer and die?”  Giap replied:  “As long as necessary:  ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty years.  Until we achieve total victory, as our President Ho Chi Minh has said.  Yes!  Even twenty, even fifty years!  We’re not in a hurry, we’re not afraid.”  This is national “kamikaze,” but it could be very effective in a war against a nation with little patience and with a high price put on the lives of its citizens.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.62

 

 

 

In 1927 in Duong Cach Menh, after analyzing the American Revolution, he told his students to reject it because it was a capitalist revolution, and a capitalist revolution could not be “a completed revolution,” because “nominally it was republican and democratic, but in fact, it was exploitative.”  In 1945 Ho talked about the United States in glowing terms, but only with Americans and in private conversations;  this obviously formed part of his efforts to seduce Americans to win U.S. support and recognition at the same time for the Viet-Minh, his front organization.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 66

 

 

In August 1945 and thereafter, the CPV was in control of a government of Vietnam.  What remained for it to do was to transform this government into the government of Vietnam.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 68

 

 

In his dealings with Americans, Ho Chi Minh exploited several factors to the fullest:  (1) the Americans’ instinctive anticolonialism, (2) their antagonism toward the French and their opposition to the restoration of French rule in Indochina – and hence to the return of French forces there, (3) their pride in their country’s history and institutions, (4) their inclination to trust their fellow men and to consider a man innocent unless proved otherwise, (5) their pragmatism, and  (6) their lack of political sophistication.

 

Ho worked very hard to plant firmly in the minds of the Americans with whom he came into contact that he was not a Communist, but simply a nationalist seeking the independence of his country and the betterment of the lot of his people.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 71

 

 

Fenn [American OSS agent] has recorded the following story by a Vietnamese witness about the effect Ho made on other Vietnamese at a meeting thanks to his American connections and weapons:

 

“Since Ho was away so long there were rumors he had died.  Others said he had gone to America.  Then suddenly we heard he had arrived in Ching Hsi in an American plane.  We could hardly believe it.  Then when he arrived at base he had with him this Chinese-American [Frankie Tan] as well as a radio operator and all sorts of weapons, better than anything the French or Japanese had.  Uncle Ho arrived very ill after his long hard walk . . . over two weeks, walking only at night, raining most of the time.  When he got well enough, he invited all the top leaders to a conference, not his own people, but rivals working for other groups, who had used his absence to push themselves forward.  Ho told them he had now secured the help of Americans including Chennault.  At first nobody really believed him.  Then he produced the photograph of Chennault signed “yours sincerely.”   After this he sent for the automatic pistols and gave one to each leader as a present.  The leaders considered Chennault had sent these presents personally.  After this conference there was never any more talk about who was the top leader.”

 

Fenn added that, soon after, the OSS dropped a load of supplies;  radio sets, medicines, gadgets, weapons.  According to Frankie Tan, an OSS member who was then at Ho’s base, “this drop caused a sensation and Ho’s stock went up another ten points.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 73

 

 

Through Patti, Ho sought to have the American authorities pursue their anticolonial policy in regard to Indochina.  For this he must make them believe that he was not a Communist.  Thus in several intimate conversations lasting well into the night, he sought, through Patti, who was willing to listen,

 

“to dispel the “misconception” that he was “an agent of the Comintern” or that he was a Communist.  My willing attention provided him with the only channel to Washington available, and he took full advantage of it.  He admitted quite candidly that he was a socialist, that he had associated and worked with French, Chinese and Vietnamese communists, but added, “Who else was there to work with?”  He labeled himself a “progressive-socialist-nationalist” with an ardent desire to rid his country of foreign domination.  He spoke eloquently, not making a speech, but with sincerity, determination, and optimism.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 77

 

 

The really big piece in Ho’s scheme aimed at winning American goodwill and support, however, was his insertion into Vietnam’s declaration of independence the famous sentence from the American Declaration of Independence;  he showed it to Patti on the eve of its proclamation.  Nothing was more convincing that Ho Chi Minh was not with Moscow, and nothing more flattering, even overwhelming to Patti, than the tangible, spectacular gesture of worship of American ideals.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 78

 

 

The Philippines was a theme that Ho had frequently discussed at his jungle headquarters with the men of the Deer team.  He said then what he was going to say later to Patti, that he had “always been impressed” with U.S. treatment of the Philippines.  “You kicked the Spanish out and let the Philippinos develop their own country.  You were not looking for real estate, and I admire you for that,” he said.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.79

 

 

The CPV deliberately made use of the Chennault autographed photo and the other American connections in a big way in their nationwide propaganda, stretching all the way to southern Vietnam.  Madame Le Thi Anh, who joined the resistance movement in southern Vietnam in 1945, recalled the events of that time as follows:

 

“At that time we believed that Ho Chi Minh had the support of the Allies, especially the United States . . . Ho had a photograph of the American general Chennault, with the general’s autograph addressed to him which Ho reproduced to show everyone.  And even more important, Ho had several photographs of an American OSS team providing weapons and training to Ho’s guerrillas in North Vietnam.  We had been shown whose photographs by Ho’s communist guerillas in the south . . . In the South we had heard that Ho had formed a government of national union in Hanoi and called upon all of the other nationalist parties to join him.  We all believed that he had the support of the U.S. because of the photos . . . . Ho had sent these pictures south and his agent told us:  “Do you want independence?  We have to go with the victorious Allies.  And Ho is the person who has the Allies’ blessing.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 83

 

 

What is it, that Viet Nam Independence League, which has been able to mobilize crowds, give concrete form to their aspirations, and dictates my conduct?  I do not know any of its leaders.  And yet . . . They have contacts with the Chinese, American, French Allies, whereas my appeals to President Truman, to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, to the King of England, to General de Gaulle have drawn no response . . . . They have arms, means;  I cannot even rally my faithful, and people around me are hiding or intriguing against me.”

Bao Dai, August, on the events of August 1945,

Quoted in Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 84

 

 

. . . why did Ho Chi Minh give so much play to his American connections and to the anti-Japanese character of his organization?

The answer is rather simple:  because Ho knew that the Americans were very popular in Vietnam at that time.  The overwhelming majority of the Vietnamese had their eyes and their minds turned toward the United States.  They felt that their hope for freedom and for a better life lay in that direction.  With the exception of the members of the CPV, few, if any, Vietnamese looked to the Soviet Union, or even thought of the Soviet Union.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 86

 

 

. . . they (the CPV) exploited to the fullest also their participation in the fight against Japan, although, in fact, there was little active participation on their part.  “Rather than using his newly-acquired weapons to fight the Japanese, Ho Chi Minh saved them for future action against the French,”  says Turner.  And their action against the Japanese was limited to a raid against the post of Tam Dao on July 17.  According to Devillers, “it was merely an attack carried out with difficulty by 500 assailants against a Japanese post of 40 men, eight of whom were massacred after 24 hours of fighting.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 87

 

 

They [the Americans] were hostile to the other nationalist groups and organizations, thinking that the latter were pro-Japanese, and therefore anti-American, and supported Ho Chi Minh and his organization, thinking that they were anti-Japanese and therefore pro-American.  This was a big error.

 

But the error enabled Ho Chi Minh and the CPV to accomplish more easily in 1945 two feats of which they were very proud, and which they frequently cited:  the establishment of “the first workers’ and peasants’ state in Southeast Asia,” and “the first victory of Marxism-Leninism in a colony.”  By inventing a special friendship and putting to good use, Ho Chi Minh served the cause of Marxism-Leninism well.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 88

 

 

Pham Van Dong has said:  “we can have socialism only if we first have independence and freedom.”  If the CPV wanted to follow the Communist road, it would have to try hard to recover Vietnam’s national independence first; otherwise it could not freely practice communism and take Vietnam into the international Communist camp.  That is why the Vietnamese Communists had to be fierce nationalists and stand visibly in the forefront of the fight against France for their country’s independence.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 89

 

 

Sainteny believed that the signing of the agreement [in 1946] was evidence of Ho’s desire for an entente with France and his acceptance of the French Union.  He made a distinction between Ho’s position and that of the “irreducible” of the “Tong Bo” (the politburo).  But Sainteny was only deluding himself as Ho was the undisputed leader and strategist of the party.  Ho himself explained to the party members afterward, in 1951, when, with the victory of Mao Tse-tung in China and the availability of massive Chinese Communist aid, he no longer feared defeat, that the agreement,

 

“caused concern among many people who considered it a too rightist policy.  But our comrades and compatriots in the South considered it a correct policy.  And correct it was, for our comrades and compatriots in the South skillfully used that opportunity to rebuild and expand their forces.

Lenin has said:  if it serves the Revolution, we must not shrink from concluding agreements with bandits.

We needed peace to build up our country.  So, we had to make concessions to maintain peace.  Even if the French had violated the agreement and provoked war, almost a year of temporary peace has given us time to build up our basic forces.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 103

 

 

“If the Fontainebleau Conference ended in failure, Ho’s sojourn in France was a great success,” said Sainteny in his memoirs.  “His personage broke down many reservations, rallied many hesitants, even adversaries.  The persuasion and seduction operation which he performed single-handedly, the one man show succeeded beyond his hopes.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 107

 

 

We have only two real allies in whose successes we can rejoice:  the Soviet Red Army and the Chinese Red Army.

Ho Chi Minh, 1940

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 111

 

 

Chang Fa-kwei [Nationalist Chinese leader] had more than a military plan for defeating  the Japanese.  He also had a definite political ideas about the future of Indochina.  He wanted a Vietnam liberated from French colonial control, but ruled by a government under the influence of China.  For the implementation of his “grand plan,” Chang Fa-kwei created a special training class for the military training of Vietnamese recruited by him, and sponsored the formation of a political organization, the Dong Minh Hoi, from whose ranks the future pro-Chinese government of an independent Vietnam was expected to emerge.

 

. . . While in jail Ho put his extensive knowledge of Chinese and of international affairs to good use.  In his contacts with Chang Fa-kwei and Hsiao Wen, he carefully concealed his real identity and especially his real aims, and sought to impress the two men that he was a great admirer of Sun Yat-sen and was well versed in world affairs, and capable of helping them achieve their objectives in Vietnam.  He translated Sun’s Three Principles into Vietnamese to prove that not only did he know about the Chinese great leader and his ideas, but he admired him to the point of wanting to preach those ideas among his followers, just as, later, he would show “admiration” for Jefferson when dealing with Patti, and for de Gaulle when dealing with Sainteny.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.112-113

 

 

Concerning his communism, Ho told Chang Fa-kwei in August 194:  “I am a Communist, but my present concern is for Vietnam’s freedom and independence, not for communism.  I give you a special assurance that communism will not work in Vietnam for fifty years.”

 

Later, in May 1946, Ho was to repeat to General Hsiao Wen what he had told General Chang.  He told Hsiao that he also had “three principles of national policy,” which were:  (1) to adopt a pro-Chinese line, (2) not to surrender to France, (3) not to carry out the communist program for 50 years.  He explained to Hsiao that communism was “unsuitable” for industrially backward Vietnam, that his government was “not a Communist government,” and that the main policy of his government was “the same as China’s as announced by Generalissimo Chiang – “People first, nation first.”  This is not what Ho told the French in Paris a month later, (he told the French he wanted an agreement with them and had adopted a “pro-French” attitude because he feared the Chinese . . . )

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 117

 

 

On November 11, the party’s central committee announced that it had decided to “voluntarily” dissolve the CPI “to destroy all misunderstandings, domestic and foreign, which can hinder the liberation of our country.”  Six years later, explaining the real motives of this spectacular act, Ho said that the party then faced a “very difficult and pressing situation,” and for that reason it had to “resort to all means in order to survive, to act and to develop,” to continue to lead “less conspicuously and more effectively,” to gain time in order “to consolidate the forces of the people’s government power” and the United Front.  At that moment, the party had to resort to “even the most painful means” to save the situation.  However, “although the party had declared its dissolution, in fact it continued to lead the government and the people.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 117-118

 

 

China is a hungry stomach, the Kuomintang a gang of rogues, war lords, vultures.  All that means an insatiable appetite . . . Only one man is usable;  he is Hsiao Wen.  But he is a rascal, and he is very costly, but I think he has understood what we wanted and his schemes can serve our purposes.

Ho Chi Minh, to Bao Dai, 1945

 

 

In 1950, the Military Advisers’ Mission, dispatched to Vietnam by China at the request of President Ho Chi Minh, helped the Vietnamese win a series of battles including the boundary battle.  Between December 1953 and May 1954, the Mission helped the Vietnamese army and people to organize and carry out the world-famous Dien Bien Phu campaign.  All the arms and ammunitions, communication equipment, food and medicine used and expended during this campaign were supplied by China . . . The Vietnamese authorities in the White Book do not mention at all the role of China’s assistance in this campaign.  Nor do they mention how they made up their mind and how the campaign was won.

Chinese government, commenting on Vietnam’s 1979 White Paper which criticized China’s role in Vietnam

Quoted in Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 123

 

 

In a remarkable study of the position of China in the Geneva negotiations in 1954, Francois Joyaux has noted the following significant occurrences:  at the first secret meeting between the French and the Chinese delegates on May 16, the latter told the French:  (1) We are not here to support the Viet-Minh point of view, but to make every effort to restore peace, (2) China does not necessarily encourage the Viet-Minh to move toward the delta, (3) at a meeting with Eden on June 15, at a very critical point in the conference, Chou En-lai told the British foreign secretary that he believed he could “persuade” the Viet-Minh to withdraw from Laos and Cambodia.

 

As the conference proceeded, China would further agree to the separation of the military from the political questions and to the settlement of the military questions first, to the partition of Vietnam at the 17^th parallel, to a two-year delay for the elections that were to reunify Vietnam, and to rather loose conditions regarding the holding of these elections, and to an international armistice supervisory commission composed of Canada, India, and Poland.

 

All the above provisions were distasteful to the CPV, but the latter accepted them because it had no choice:  it was accepting or going it alone, and the CPV knew very well that the latter course was unthinkable.  Thus the CPV had to renounce what it considered to be the achievement of its most cherished aims because these aims did not coincide with those of the Chinese leaders.  But there was nothing the CPV leaders could do;  the Chinese leaders could not be manipulated or bribed like the Kuomintang generals from Yunnan.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 124

 

 

Thus from 1954 to 1969, the CPV leaders found the Chinese “blocking the Vietnamese’s struggle for reunification,” resorting to “tortuous allegations” to hide their real intentions of “maintaining the political status quo in Vietnam,” and recognizing the “parallel existence” of the DRV government and “the Saigon administration.”  The paper says that the “irrefutable evidence” of this was Chou Enl-lai’s suggestion to Ngo Dinh Luyen, Ngo Dinh Diem’s brother, only 24 hours after the conclusion of the Geneva Conference, that South Vietnam open a legation in Peking.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 125

 

 

When the CPV decided to resort to military action in 1957 and started their tactic of “chain uprisings,” that is, partial insurrections, the Chinese leaders did not approve.  They advised the CPV to “abstain from all aid,” refused to help the Vietnamese set up a regular army, and supplied only light weapons and logistic equipment.  What Peking wanted was “a long struggle,” for even if Diem were overthrown, “reunification would still not be achieved immediately because the Americans would not tolerate it.”

 

. . . the CPV leaders charged, the Chinese leaders were interested in “helping the United States rather than the Vietnamese revolutionaries,” and from 1965 to 1969, in “weakening and prolonging the resistance of the Vietnamese people.”

 

According to the white paper, the United States attacked North Vietnam because “it had received assurances from the Chinese leaders.” Mao Tse-tung, through Edgar Snow, had told Washington that Chinese troops would not cross the frontiers, and if China was not attacked, it would not fight the United States.  Thus the Chinese had revealed their “perfidious aims.”  They encouraged the United States to “get mired” in the war of aggression against Vietnam, so that they could in all tranquility carry out their cultural revolution “while weakening both the United States and Vietnam.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 126-127

 

 

In 1975, with the war finally ended, total victory achieved, and all of Vietnam under their control, the CPV leaders felt that Chinese aid and goodwill was no longer imperative.  On the other hand, now that the screen of American danger had been removed, the Chinese danger appeared more clearly.

 

The danger signals were already visible before 1975.  The momentous realignment of China’s foreign policy, dramatized in 1972 by its redefinition of the Soviet Union as the most dangerous enemy, by the warm reception extended to Nixon, and by the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations, had made it clear that China no longer belonged to the same camp as the DRV.  Clearer and more direct signals came in 1973:  the cessation of military aid to Vietnam;  incidents on the Sino-Vietnamese border resulting from conflicting claims;  military occupation of the Paracel Islands by Chinese forces;  support for the Pol Pot-Ieng Sary faction in its actions to liquidate pro-Vietnamese elements in the Cambodian Communist party.

 

From 1975 onward, China and Vietnam were increasingly on a collision course.  The causes for conflict were a frontier dispute growing in intensity;  China’s indignation at what it considered to be mistreatment of the Hoa (Vietnamese of Chinese origin) by Vietnamese authorities, and its stopping of all aid to Vietnam as a result;  Vietnam’s strong determination to bring Cambodia under its control and China’s equally strong determination to prevent it.  The last dispute, more than anything, was to lead to armed conflict between the two countries in 1979.  Ho Chi Minh used to compare China and Vietnam to “lips and teeth.”  After 1975 the teeth were going to feel very cold.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.  131

 

 

 

The Vietnamese Communist party first took the name of Communist party of Vietnam, then changed it to Communist party of Indochina.  The first decision was logical:  there was no known non-Vietnamese Communist at the time.  The change of name was also logical:  the various parts of Indochina had been welded into one single political unit, and a Communist movement in  Indochina should operate as a unified unit and under unified direction.  Besides, that was the order of the Comintern.

 

From the start, the direction was Vietnamese, and it has always remained Vietnamese.  If separate Laotian and Cambodian Communist parties were created in later years, these parties were only front organizations operating in fact as units of a single movement, whose direction remained under the control of the CPV.  As a Pathet Lao cadre commented on the foundation of the Lao Workers party in 1952 following the appearance of the Vietnamese Workers’ party:  “The Tonkinese dragon has taken the form of a snake with three heads.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 133

 

 

A plenum of the central committee in November 1939 decided to “strengthen the bases of the party in Laos and Cambodia.”  Two years later at the important plenum of May 1941, it was decided to assign to the Viet-Minh “the task of supporting the Laotian and Cambodian peoples to set up the Ai Lao Doc Lap Dong Minh (Lao Independence League) and the Cao Mien Doc Lap Dong Minh (Cambodian Independence League) as steps toward the creation of an Indochinese front against the Japanese and for the reconquest of independence in each country.”  These Laotian and Cambodian fronts were exact replicas of the Viet Nam Doc Lap Dong Minh (Vietnam Independence League – Viet Minh).  Basically, these three fronts, with appropriate changes of names at different periods to fit new circumstances, were to be the instruments used by the CPV for carrying out its policy regarding Indochina and Southeast Asia after 1975.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 135

 

 

From 1950 onward, with massive help from the Chinese Communists, the CPV was in a position to take the offensive.  The tempo of military operations was stepped up not only in Vietnam but throughout Indochina.  In the eyes of the Hanoi military strategists, Indochina was a single war theatre, in which they could resort to the strategy of dispersion of the French forces.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 136

 

 

In Laos the CPV enjoyed favorable conditions.  The Geneva agreement on Laos had allowed the Pathet Lao to retain temporary control of the provinces of Sam Neua and Phong Saly, which adjoined North Vietnam.  The Pathet Lao was also left in temporary control of its armed forces.  But the Pathet Lao itself was under the control of the CPV, through two men, Prince Souphanouvong and Kaysone Phomvihane.  Both were reliable.  Through them, the CPV had a firm grip on the Pathet Lao and the Lao revolutionary forces, and could achieve it purposes in Laos and through Laos with relative ease.  It had secure bases, reliable allies, an effective political organization, and army.  All it needed now was a favorable international situation.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 138

 

 

. . . Ho Chi Minh, always mindful of the necessity to ensure absolute physical security for his men, ordered the Communist troops and cadres to move to North Vietnam for safety [after the 1954 Geneva agreement].  Different estimates put this number at 2,000- 4,000 or 5,000.  Not all Cambodian Communists followed Ho’s orders;  a few hundred remained in Cambodia to carry on the struggle.  This would be a source of much trouble for the CPV later.

 

Among those who remained behind were Saloth Sar (the future ill-famed Pol Pot), Khieu Samphan, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, Hu Nim, and Hou Youn.  They created the Pracheachon party to carry out the struggle, first through open legal activities.  Then, on September 30, 1960, they created the Communist party of Kampuchea (CPK), a clear sign of their dissociation from the CPI and especially of their refusal to accept the CPV’s leadership.  In 1963 Saloth Sar, Ieng Sary, and Hu Nim abandoned the legal struggle and went underground after a revolt they staged against Sihanouk failed.

 

The CPK’s open opposition to the Phnom Penh government was contrary to the CPV line, which at this time was to court Sihanouk in order to obtain his authorization to use Cambodian territory for its operations against South Vietnam.  The action of the Cambodian Communists obviously complicated the CPV’s diplomatic maneuvers.  Thus, in Cambodia, the CPV did not have a safe base, sure allies, a reliable and pliable political organization, or an army under its control.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 139

 

 

There is little doubt that the agreement on Laos in 1962 opened the way to the conquest and control of both South Vietnam and Laos by the CPV in 1975, through the Paris agreement of January 27, 1973 on Vietnam, and the Vientiane agreement of January 27, 1973 on Vietnam, and the Vientiane agreement of February 21, 1973 on Laos.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.141

 

 

The CPV’s intent to strengthen its control over Laos had been made plain in a resolution of the plenum of the CPV central committee in April 1973 more than two years earlier, and just two months after the signing of the Vientiane agreement.  The resolution said that the party had decided “to carry out its internationalist obligations toward the Laotian and Cambodian revolutions.”  Thus, by the end of 975, the lever had been firmly put in place. All that remained for the CPV was to activate this lever to bring Laos under its total control.   This would be accomplished by July 1977.  It was not difficult with the presence of three PAVN divisions deployed on Laotian territory.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 143

 

 

In Cambodia the CPV followed a different tactic.  Their main lever there was not the Cambodian Communists, but Sihanouk, who cooperated with the CPV partly out of Indochinese solidarity and “to deserve the gratitude of the Viet-Minh,” and partly because the Chinese “encouraged” him to do so.  Sihanouk had no illusions about Vietnam, but he counted on China to protect his country from being “Hanoi-ized.”  To him, compared to Vietnam, Cambodia was just a “kitten” compared to a “lion,” but “over the head of the lion, the Cambodian kitten will have its eyes fixed on the Chinese dragon.”

 

For ten years after the Geneva Conference, Sihanouk pursued a policy of neutrality in the Vietnam conflict.  This policy was inaugurated at the Bandung Conference in April 1955.   There, he accepted the “pipe of peace” offered by Pham Van Dong, who became “his best friend and most powerful support in the coming years.”  There, he was also “charmed” by Chou En-lai.  His neutrality was rather formal, as he made no secret of his hostility toward Ngo Dinh Diem and the Americans, but it kept his country from dangerous involvement in the war.

 

In 1965, however, Sihanouk took the momentous decision of abandoning neutrality.  In February of that year, he hosted a Conference of the Peoples of Indochina to set up a common front in support of the “Vietnamese patriots,” i.e., the Liberation front of South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, against the United States.  A year earlier, he had already formally allowed the Vietnamese Communists the free use of Cambodian territory as a sanctuary.  In 1969 he made a number of decisions that were to have far-reaching consequences for his country and for himself.

 

One was to allow North Vietnam to send the Khmer-Vietminh back to Cambodia.  These were the Cambodian Communists who had regrouped in North Vietnam in 194 after the Geneva Conference.  This decision would lead to the internal fight among pro-Vietnamese and anti-Vietnamese Cambodian Communists, which was but a prelude to the Cambodian-?Vietnam conflict after 1975.  Another was to raise the status of the representation of the provisional revolutionary government of the Republic of South Vietnam (South Vietnam Liberation Front) to that of embassy.  This followed a decision he made two years earlier in favor of the representation of the DRV.  Cambodia was now completely, in fact as well as in law, on Hanoi’s side.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 143 – 144

 

 

The Cambodian Communists accused the Vietnamese (CPV) of wanting to create in Indochina “a powerful military base from which they can realize their ambitions in Southeast Asia.”  In Kampuchea from 1946 to 1954, they had “several times” created a separate army composed of Khmers paid by them to be used as an “instrument of their policy of annexation”;  when they came back in 1964 they resumed their activities “to the same end.”  The paper described the various attempts of the CPV to force the Communist party of Kampuchea (CPK) to accept the policy laid down by it, in particular, to give up armed struggle and wait for Vietnam to liberate Kampuchea until after Vietnam had liberated itself.  From 1965 onward the struggle was very “difficult and bitter,” and tensions reached a peak in 1969 when words such as “friendship” and “solidarity” were “nothing more than empty formulas.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 145

 

 

Contrary to what it advocated for Laos, the CPV did not want the Cambodian Communists to resort to armed struggle because it had in Sihanouk’s government an ally willing to put Cambodian territory at the CPV’s disposal, and to give it full political and diplomatic support.  It was therefore in the CPV’s interest not only to see to it that this government remained in power in Phnom Penh, but also that it should rule over a Cambodia enjoying maximum peace and quiet so that the Vietnamese revolutionary forces could have a perfectly safe rear for their assault on South Vietnam.

. . . On the other hand, if Cambodia was liberated by Vietnamese forces, then the CPV could claim that the Vietnamese, and not the Cambodian revolutionaries, were the liberators of Cambodia, and the CPK would be relegated to an insignificant position.  In any case, if the Vietnamese Communists entered Phnom Penh first, they would be in a position to put in place a Cambodian government of their choice owing them a debt and obedience.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 146-147

 

 

The CPK leadership also adopted strong measures to prevent the establishment on Cambodian territory of a “parallel state.”  These measures affected not only the “locally manufactured Vietnamese” (local Vietnamese armed by Hanoi), but eventually were extended to the troops from North Vietnam.  As a Vietnamese commentator remarked, following the Indochinese summit of 970, one would expect full cooperation between the Vietnamese and Cambodian parties, yet

 

“soon, unusual signs became visible:  Vietnamese fighters were forbidden to have any contact with the Khmer population in spite of moving expressions of hospitality.  What is more serious is that entire Vietnamese columns were ambushed in areas where all Lonnolian forces had been swept clear, and the attackers could be no one else than the Red Khmers.  These Khmers did not hesitate to seize food, weapons, and other equipment from their Vietnamese comrades.”

 

The CPK explained their attitude as reaction to the behavior of the Vietnamese troops and cadres.  They said that although these troops and cadres were given hospitality by the Cambodians on their arrival on Cambodian territory, they behaved “like a great power, like colonialists, lords and masters of Kampuchea . . . worse than the French colonialists.”  They said that, worse still, in November 1970 the CPV attempted to assassinate Pol Pot and Nuon Chea (deputy secretary of the party) during a meeting between these two men and Nguyen Van Linh (future secretary general of the CPV) and Tran Nam Trung (a general and well-known leader of the NLFSVN) at Stung Chinit, near the Vietnamese headquarters.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 148-149

 

 

According to the confession of a North Vietnamese prisoner captured by the Khmer Rouge, Vietnamese cadres had been told that Cambodians must be forced to accept the Paris agreement and that “after finishing the war in Indochina, we will become the big brother of Indochina . . . As a big brother we shall have to govern the younger brothers and not allow them to do anything at will.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 149

 

 

The CPV’s total control of Laos, both de facto and de jure, was achieved smoothly, without generating waves, by the sue of special tactics:  the fashioning of a pliable instrument, the Pathet Lao, and the application of the technique of “special relationship.”  But when it tried the same in Cambodia, the CPV ran into strong resistance.  To overcome this resistance, it first tried diplomacy, then political subversion, and when these methods failed, it resorted to war.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 151

 

 

In a massive military offensive involving 180,000 troops, Vietnam invaded Cambodia, and on January 7 it “liberated” Phnom Penh and installed a Cambodian government headed by Heng Samrin.  On February 17 Pham Van Dong landed at Phnom Penh with a delegation.  The next day Heng Samrin and Dong signed a Treaty of Peace, Amity and Cooperation on the pattern of the Viet-Lao Treaty of July 17, 1977.

The rapidity of the signing suggests that the text had already been prepared by the Vietnamese, and all the Cambodians had to do was to append their signatures to it.  In this they had little choice, as they owed their lives, their positions and their protection to the Vietnamese.

The treaty legalized the presence of some 180,000 Vietnamese “volunteers” and Vietnam’s preeminent position in Cambodia . . . .Like Laos, de facto as well as de jure, Cambodia was now squarely aligned on Vietnam.  In another form, the Federation of Indochina and the CPI had now been fully reconstituted.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 154-155

 

 

By its action in Cambodia, Vietnam was going to get mired in a people’s guerrilla war against Cambodian nationalist forces supported by a powerful and determined neighbor – China – and enjoying in a neighboring country – Thailand – the same kind of sanctuary and bases that North Vietnam once enjoyed in Cambodia in its war against South Vietnam, and that made it unbeatable.  At the same time, as a result of its blatant invasion and occupation of Cambodia, it was to be isolated internationally by skilled diplomatic maneuvering by China and the ASEAN countries.  All the international goodwill it had earned during its fight against France and then the United States were quickly dissipated.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.155

 

 

 

In a speech to the cadres of the party in January 1949, he said:  “We are an Indochinese party, but we have also the task of contributing to the liberation of Southeast Asia.  This is because we are the largest party in Southeast Asia, and the first party to have conquered power in Southeast Asia.  At the Third National Congress of the party in September 1960, he said to view Vietnam as “the outpost of socialism in Southeast Asia,” thus making clear that the CPV had a special interest in the region.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 156

 

 

In conversations with foreign officials, the CPV leaders took no trouble to conceal their view.  Thus Le Duc Tho, the chief CPV negotiator at the Paris peace negotiations in 1968-1973, told Kissinger that it was “Vietnam’s destiny to dominate not only Indochina but all of Southeast Asia.”  And Pham Van Dong, speaking of Vietnam in the future, told William Sullivan, who accompanied Kissinger during a visit to Hanoi in 1973, that “’We are the Prussians of Southeast Asia.  We are a people of greater zeal, greater energy, greater intelligence than our neighbors.”  And referring specifically to the Thais, the Malays, and the Philippinos, he said:  “We don’t have to take military action to expand our sphere of influence,” people will join us “merely because of our attraction.”

 

. . . Truong Nhu Tang, a former minister in the South Vietnam revolutionary government, has reported that during his visits to Hanoi before 1975, he frequently heard high cadres of the Nguyen Ai Quoc School (which trained Southeast Asian revolutionary cadres) talk openly about the establishment of a “Federation of Southeast Asian Soviet Republics” by the year 2000.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 156-157

 

 

The CPV leaders did not wait very long before bringing pressure to bear on their neighbours.  Thus on June 6 [1975] Le Duan said that the defeat of the United States had ushered in “a new period with promising perspectives for Southeast Asia.”  A few days later, a commentary in Saigon Giai Phong (Liberated Saigon) told Thailand that the basic condition for normalization of relations was the termination of all American military presence on Thai soil, for “it is obvious that the Thai population will know how to force government to adopt a resolutely anti-imperialist policy and to throw out the spies paid by the Americans.”  The Philippines were told to “free themselves from the tutelage of Washington” and to “stop serving American interests,” and the Marcos government was warned that it must take the aspirations of the Filipino people (for independence) into account “if it does not want to be eliminated.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 158

 

 

It was during this period that the CPV leaders had plans for a “Laosization “ of Thailand.  A French delegation visiting Laos in February 1976 was told by Premier Pham Van Dong that “Thailand will go the same way as Laos.”  A member of the SRV’s national assembly who defected in 1978 revealed that Tran Quynh, personal secretary of Le Duan, had told him that “the liberation of Thailand will be next” and that “it is a historical necessity and a responsibility of ours.”  The existence of the plan was confirmed in August 1977 by a Pathet Lao officer who defected to Thailand . . . preparations were started in May 1976 for the uprising of the population of Lao origin.  In parallel, by May 1976 seven PAVN divisions had been deployed from the north to the south along the Mekong River in the areas of Huei Say, Oudomsay, Luang Prabang, Thakhet, Savannakhet and Champassak.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 159

 

 

Singapore’s leaders had no illusion about the intents of the new Vietnamese leaders.  Prime Minister Lee Kwang Yew of Singapore declared that he believed in the “domino theory” and did not doubt that after catching its breath the new Vietnam would “actively step up insurgency.”  In December 1978 he welcomed the Communist break of unity as it would give the ASEAN countries five to ten years in which to strengthen their defenses.  He was acutely aware that “for at least ten years there is not combination of military forces that can stop or check the Vietnamese in any conflict.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 171

 

 

As in the case of China, the CPV could not make much headway with the ASEAN countries.  Unlike France or the United States, these countries could not be easily manipulated because their governments were not subject to the same kind of pressures as were the French or American government;  their officials were more sophisticated in dealing with Vietnam and quickly saw through Hanoi’s schemes;  these countries were not wide open to Communist infiltration and propaganda and could thus not be divided;  their public opinions were either opposed to Hanoi’s schemes or could not be mobilized – no “teach in,” no “sit in,” no street demonstration – against their governments;  and the government of ASEAN were united and prompt in countering Hanoi’s moves effectively.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 173

 

 

 

. . . Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia was a costly affair, and especially it promised to be a long drawn-out one.  This was realized clearly by its leadership.  As General Tran Cong Man, editor of Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the army’s paper, admitted to Francois Nivolon of the Figaro, after the Vietnamese big offensive of March 1985 against the Cambodian resistance bases in the Phnom Malai area:  the big bases had been all destroyed, “but there are still small ones which we will have to clear up.  And it will take time.”  This sounded like a statement by the French high command in Indochina in 1947.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p.176

 

 

 

In its approach to the Soviet Union, the CPV’s attitude was different from its attitude toward all other countries, whether colonialist or imperialist enemies (France, the United States), traditional enemies or rivals (China, Thailand), traditional victims (Laos and Cambodia), or potential victims (ASEAN countries).  Towards the Soviet Union, the CPV was never antagonistic, inimical, or critical.  Its fundamental attitude was one of admiration, gratitude, trust, full acceptance of the USSR as head of the international Communist camp, firm support for its policies, and great reliance on its aid.

 

Much of the CPV’s attitude stemmed from its strong determination to be a pure Marxist-Leninist party and an exemplary member of the international Communist movement, during the lifetime of the Comintern as well as after the dissolution of that organization in 1943.  Indeed, the CPV behaved as if the Comintern never ceased to exist.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 177

 

 

Lenin’s reflections on the development of capitalism had led to the conclusion that capitalism had reached a new – its highest – stage, which was imperialism.  This imperialism was spreading its nets over the whole world.  It was decaying, “moribund,” but while it existed, it was parasitic and oppressive on a world scale.  The fight against capitalism had therefore to be waged on a world scale.  The fight against capitalism had therefore to be waged also on a world scale. For this fight to be successful, the world proletariat needed an effective organization, which must be patterned on the Russian Bolshevik party.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 178-179

 

 

When Lenin surveyed the European scene at the end of September 1917, he believed that, for the Russian revolution as well as the world revolution, “the crisis has matured.”  The troop mutinies in Germany convinced him that there were “undisputable symptoms that a great turning point is at hand, that we are on the eve of a worldwide revolution.”

In November, with the prospects of the Russian revolution brightening, Lenin became still more convinced that “the Socialist revolution will triumph all over the world for it is maturing in all countries.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 179

 

 

Lazitch and Drachkovitch have pointed out that in 1906, at the Stockholm Congress of Reconciliation and Reunification of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, Lenin had defined the principle of “democratic centralism” as “election of the top party leaders from below, the essential and unconditional obligation to obey orders and regulations from above, and the existence of a strongly centralized party administration whose authority shall be generally recognized and respected during the period between congresses.”

 

At the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920, Lenin, however, omitted one of three essential parts, the one relating to election of top party leaders. Thus the new definition of “democratic centralism” read as follows:  “The Communist party will be able to do its duty only if it organization is as centralized as possible, if it maintains iron discipline internally, and if its central organization, fortified by the confidence of the members, is equipped with all necessary powers and authority.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 181

 

 

Considering that 6the ECCI [the Comintern] was dominated by the presidium and that the presidium was headed by a Russian (successively;  Zinoviev, Bukharin, Molotov, Manuilsky, Dimitrov) who himself took orders from Lenin or Stalin, a Vietnamese who joined the CPV would in fact have to execute policies and directives emanating from Moscow and geared to Russian rather than to Vietnamese needs.  This follows logically from conditions of admission 12 and 16 and the principle of “democratic centralism,” as well as condition 17, which Lenin had wanted to be “not simply a gathering of separate national sections, but a united world organization.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 182

 

 

It is thus clear that in adhering to the Comintern in 1930, not only did the CPV as a body automatically lose all strategic freedom and retain only tactical freedom – it could choose the means of its actions, but the ends (Vietnam’s ends) were decided in Moscow, and by non-Vietnamese using criteria not dictated by Vietnam’s interests – but also, each Vietnamese as an individual on joining the CPV would lose both strategic and tactical freedom in his life.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 184

 

 

On joining the Comintern, a Communist party had to renounce certain paths and commit itself to follow certain others.  On the negative side, it must reject any idea of reform, peaceful change, and nationalism.  The condition of admission 2 stated that every organization desiring to join the Communist International must remove from all responsible posts in the labor movements . . . “all reformists and followers of the “center,” and to have them replace by Communists.”  Lenin’s obsessive determination to bar reformism from the organization was so strong that he had it repeated in condition 7 (resolute break with reformism).

 

Next, condition 17 stated that the Communist International “has declared a decisive war against the entire bourgeois world, and all the Yellow Social Democratic parties . . . “   And under condition 6 a Communist party seeking affiliation with the Comintern must “renounce not only avowed social patriotism, but also the falsehood and hypocrisy of social pacifism.”  Communists must therefore reject what Lenin considered “petty bourgeois democracy,”  and no revolutionary (nonviolent) methods.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 184

 

 

In place of bourgeois democracy, Lenin would establish the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”  To him, “dictatorship presupposes and implies . . . revolutionary violence of one class against another,” and “Dictatorship is rule based directly on force and unrestrained by any law.  The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 185

 

 

To Lenin, nationalism, more specifically “petty bourgeois nationalism,” was one of the greatest obstacles to the development of the proletarian movement, at both the national and the international levels . . . “the proletarians are opposed to nationalism of any kind,” and successful struggle against exploitation requires that the proletariat be free from nationalism . . .”   To him the proletarian must be a true internationalist.

 

. . . proletarian internationalism demands first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any country should be subordinated to the interests of that class struggle on a world wide scale, and second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 186-187

 

 

The corollary of the necessity of world revolution is naturally the establishment of a world Soviet republic.  Indeed, Lenin clearly thought in terms of such a Soviet republic, a Communist state embracing the whole world.  In a letter to the workers and peasants of the Ukraine in 1919, he said:  “We are opposed to national enmity and exclusiveness.  We are internationalists.  We stand for the close union and the complete amalgamation of the workers and peasants of all nations in a single Soviet republic.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 187

 

 

Lenin expressly discussed the problem of Communist morality in a speech to the youth leagues in Moscow in 1920.  To him, class struggle was the criterion in questions of morality . . . all morality lies in this united discipline and conscious mass struggle against the exploiters.  We do not believe in any eternal morality, and we expose the falsehood of all fables about morality,”  Lenin said.  “Communist morality is based on the struggle for the consolidation and completion of communism.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 189-190

 

 

As regards truth, Lenin said that “there is no such thing as abstract truth.  Truth is always concrete.”  To him, “all things are relative, all things flow, all things change.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 190

 

 

On the other hand, for Lenin, it is impossible to be politically natural.  The very term “apolitical” or “nonpolitical” (education) is “a piece of bourgeois hypocrisy,” he said.  In particular, on the issue of the dictatorship of the proletariat, “each man must choose our side or the other side.  Any attempt to avoid taking sides must end in fiasco . . . There can be no alternative” and “dreams of some third way are reactionary, petty bourgeois lamentations.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 190

 

 

One important Leninist tactic, and for a party in a colonial country, perhaps the most important one, is the “minimum program,” two-stage tactic, which consists of achieving the proletarian dictatorship in two stages:  (1) a bourgeois democratic revolution, and (2) a Socialist revolution.  The first stage was considered by Lenin to be “absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat.”  During this stage, the Communist would fight only for a minimum program and demand immediate political and economic reforms.  These, however, are transient Socialist aims.  Their purposes are to “extend the boundaries of bourgeois democracy” and pave the way for the next stage, which is the Socialist stage, the one in which the Communists would seize power and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.

 

. . . The communist, however, would say nothing about their plan for the next stage.  They would not wave the two flags – national independence and proletarian dictatorship – at the same time.  Indeed, the second flag would be carefully hidden first, to be unfurled only after stage one has been completed.  Thus those inside and outside the country who have no inkling of the Communists’ plans would cooperate with them and carry them to power.  Once in power, the Communists would immediately implement Lenin’s ideas on the dictatorship of the proletariat.  It would then be too late for those who realize that they have been deceived to do anything about it.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 191

 

 

In time of war, said Lenin, it is not only of the utmost importance to imbue one’s own army with confidence, but it is important also to convince the enemy and all neutral elements of this strength, for “friendly neutrality may sometime decide the issue.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 193

 

 

With regard to Vietnam, the man who served as “umbilical cord” and ensured discipline and the “unconditional fidelity” of the CPV to Moscow, the Stalinist Cominternian who made the present generation of Communist leaders “the grandsons of the Comintern,” was undoubtedly Ho Chi Minh.

 

Ho had declared absolute faith in Lenin and in Leninism.  He was trained at both the KUTV and the Lenin School.  He had spent more time in Moscow than any other Vietnamese Communist.  He had worked for the ECCI.  And he was Stalinist enough to be allowed by Stalin to be a representative of the Comintern with the CPV and a Comintern agent in China and Southeast Asia.  His credentials as “man from Moscow” were impeccable.  And he was the man who ensured strict Leninist/Stalinist orthodoxy during the lifetime of the Comintern and after its dissolution.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 194

 

 

In the light of what has been said about Leninism and the basic thinking of the CPV, it is now possible to give an answer to the question of whether the terms “nationalism,” “independence,” “moderation,” “peaceful coexistence” can be used when speaking of Ho Chi Minh and the CPV leaders.  The answer is both yes and no.  It is yes if one proceeds from a static and tactical viewpoint, that is, from the view of a particular moment in time and excluding from consideration the boarder picture.  If such a viewpoint is adopted, then in 1945, or 1954, or 1968, or 1973, Ho Chi Minh and the CPV would inevitably appear as nationalists fighting for the independence of Vietnam, prepared to sit down and talk about the conditions for an honorable peace based on a reasonable compromise.  That was what they said, and what they seemed to be doing.

 

However, if one looks at the situation from a dynamic and strategic point of view, that is, from the point of view of a whole period, and taking into consideration the ultimate aims of Ho Chi Minh and the CPV, what Ho and his disciples would call “the revolution,” that is, the world revolution, the picture then changes completely.  The answer to the question is then no, because what Ho and his disciples said to non-Communists was only a small part of what they told their fellow Communists to achieve by all means and at all costs in the name of pure Leninism.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 195

 

 

Other authors have offered more subtle interpretations.  Huynh Kim Khanh has put forward the thesis of “grafting” of Leninism onto Vietnamese nationalism by Ho Chi Minh, and called the period 1939-1940 “the final glory of the Moscow-oriented Communists.”  William Duiker has written about the “symbiotic relationship between nationalism and communism,” and from 1940 on, of a “deliberate shift of emphasis from ideology to nationalism.”  Douglas Pike has said of Vietnamese communism that the system that communism has brought to Vietnam “in spite of its alien genesis has now become authentically Vietnamese and well rooted in the soil of earlier culture,” and that the CPV retained power and popular support “with policies contradictive to international advice”:  their success was achieved “in spite of, and not because of, their ties with international communism.”

 

All the above interpretations have one thing in common:  they are blatantly contrary to the interpretations given by Ho Chi Minh and by the CPV leaders concerning themselves, and they contradict what we know now about the relationship between Leninism and Vietnamese communism as explained by the Vietnamese Communists.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 196

 

 

 

To judge the CPV in the light of its own words and deeds of the past fifty-five years, it was certainly the purest Marxist-Leninist party of the whole international Communist movement, as well as its most contented prisoner.  Once it had jumped in with both feet, there was no way out.  Being true believers in Marxism-Leninism, these Communists, however, did not give any indication that seeking a way out was necessary, desirable, or even thinkable.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 197

 

 

One of the main reasons for the international isolation of the SRV was its obviously expansionist policy after 1975 at the expense of its immediate neighbors, Laos and Cambodia, and the threat represented for Southeast Asian countries by its Communist messianic.   From 1975 and especially from 1978 onward, the Vietnamese Communists were considered by international public opinion no longer as nationalists fighting for the independence of Vietnam, but as expansionists.  Whether this expansionism was motivated by nationalism or communism, or both, was irrelevant.  It was fiercely denounced by current or potential victims like, and universally condemned by international public opinion.  One of the major ingredients of Leninism/Bolshevism – an outwardly just cause – was thus missing.  The CPV could not apply Leninism/Bolshevism with full success because mass support in the opponent camp was lacking.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 199

 

 

During a secret visit to Moscow sometime between 1950 and 1954, Ho tried the autographed photograph technique with Stalin.  But unlike the innocent American General Chennault, Stalin was not so unsuspecting.  As Khrushchev told it:

 

“I first met [Ho] when Stalin was still alive . .  . During our conversation, Ho Chi Minh kept watching Stalin with his unusual eyes . . . I remember once he reached into his briefcase and took out a copy of a Soviet magazine – I think it was The USSR Under Construction – and asked Stalin to autograph it . . . he liked the idea of being able to show people Stalin’s autograph back in Vietnam.  Stalin gave Ho the autograph but shortly afterward had the magazine stolen back from him because he was worried how [Ho] might use it.

 

Obviously it takes a Communist to understand the hidden motives of another Communist, and Stalin was too experienced for Ho Chi Minh to outwit him!

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 200

 

 

. . . of the CPV’s war against the United States, he [Khrushchev] said:  “There is more at stake in this war than just the future of the Vietnamese people.  The Vietnamese are shedding their blood and laying down their lives for the sake of the world Communist movement.”  If one modifies this sentence to read:  “The CPV is making the Vietnamese people shed their blood and lay down their lives for the world Communist movement,” then, in retrospect, this is the stark truth about Vietnam, not just between 1945 and 1975, but also since then.  After making the Vietnamese people fight two bloody and devastating wars, against France, then against the United States, from 1975 onward the CPV made the Vietnamese people fight a third war, apparently against Cambodia, but in fact against China.  This was the third permanent member of the United Nations’ Security Council against which the CPV had led Vietnam to war.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 200

 

 

 

What has been gained by Vietnam and the Vietnamese people from their CPV-led wars?  If one is to judge by the fate of the Vietnamese people since 1975, the answer is nothing, or even less.  Vietnam in 1984 was among the poorest countries of the world;  in terms of income per capita it occupied the 162^nd rank among 170 countries;  according to Le Monde, this income was only 100 dollars per year.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 201

 

 

 

Was it necessary for the Vietnamese people to resort to war to achieve national independence and improve their living conditions?  To give a firm answer, again one would have to look at Vietnam’s Southeast Asian neighbors.  All these countries achieved national independence and improved their living conditions without war.  Indeed, they were able to do so sooner and faster than Vietnam precisely because they had achieved independence with rather than against the colonial nations, and had not followed the Communist road.

 

As Brimmell has pointed out, the real, though unwitting, liberator of Southeast Asia was Japan.  It had demonstrated the mythical nature of European superiority and removed Europe from the Asian scene in 1942, and in the process made any return of Europe impossible.  After having performed its historical mission, Japan was itself removed from the scene.  The final stage of the resurgence of Southeast Asia began in 1943 and was over in essence by 1948.  “The battle had been won by then, and with no assistance from communism.  In fact, communism was irrelevant, save as a complicating and delaying factor, in the achievement of independence.

 

The view expressed by Brimmell applies in the case of Vietnam in the light of what we know now about General de Gaulle’s plans in December 1945, that is, a full year before the outbreak of the war.  From the revelations of General de Boissieu and others at a workshop on Indochina at the Institut Charles de Gaulle in February 1981, and from those made by Admiral D’Argenlieu in his memoires, it is clear that what Ho Chi Minh found necessary to fight a war to obtain, namely national independence and reunification, de Gaulle was already prepared to concede to Prince Vinh Sang, ex-Emperor Duy Tan, in the autumn of 1945. Indeed, there was an agreement between the prince and the general, and the agreement was firm enough for the ex-emperor to draw up a program, which he expected to carry out after his return to Vietnam in the company of De Gaulle himself sometime in early 1946.

 

But if de Gaulle was prepared to give ex-Emperor Duy Tan what he steadfastly refused to concede to Ho Chi Minh for any years, it was because the ex-emperor, like Sihanouk of Cambodia, wanted to achieve his nation’s independence with France and not against France.  We noted earlier how warmly de Gaulle had received Sihanouk in the summer of 1946 while firmly refusing to see Ho Chi Minh.  De Gaulle’s attitude was summed up in a sentence that he constantly repeated to Henri Laurentie, director of political affairs at the Ministry of Overseas France, in August 1946:  “Laurentie, do not give Cochinchina to Ho Chi Minh.”

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 205?

 

 

 

. . . in a French union led by a capitalist and bourgeois France for which the Soviet Union was a potential enemy , there was no room for a Communist member state, whatever Ho Chi Minh might say to Sainteny and whatever the latter might think, believe, or hope at the time.  Alfred Georges put this very well in Charles de Gaulle et la guerre d’Indochine:

 

“Let us look squarely at the truth:  a Communist system could not conciliate the total planning of its economy with the respect of the private property of the colonists.  Between a Communist state which subordinates individual freedom to the reason of state and a western nation where individual had primacy over all the rest, the opposition is irreducible.  The one could not prosper if it had not eliminated the other from its field of action.”

 

On the other hand, “a Communist government could not accept to leave its diplomacy in the hands of a non-Marxist nation, or accept to see its army and its diplomacy teleguided by a so-called capitalist state.”  And conversely of course.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 205

 

 

 

If in the first Vietnam war the CPV made the Vietnamese shed their blood and lay down their lives primarily not for national independence but in the interests of the world Communist movement, so in the second Vietnam war, they again made the Vietnamese shed their blood and lay down their lives to prove that imperialism headed by the United States could be attacked and defeated without the risks of a general war, that is, of involving the Soviet Union in a direct military confrontation with the United States.  This was the CPV’s interpretation of the reference to peaceful coexistence in the resolutions adopted by the world congresses of Communist parties in 1957 and 1960.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 205

 

 

President Kennedy’s policy of acceptance of a coalition government for Laos, and his sounding out of Hanoi on agreeing to the same for South Vietnam encouraged the CPV leaders in their conviction that the United States was not really determined to go all the way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam.  Moreover, at the Vienna Soviet-American summit in 1961, Kennedy’s failure to make the status quo in Vietnam a major condition of détente between the Soviet Union and the United States strengthened Hanoi’s position in resisting Khrushchev’s pressure against the taking of South Vietnam by escalating military action.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 206

 

 

 

What would have happened if France, the United States, and China had not intervened in Indochina?

 

Regardless of how one would judge French and American motives, the answer to the question is obvious.  The CPV leaders would have achieved their aims thirty years sooner, and in much better condition.  With regard to Vietnam, they would have imposed communism on Vietnam thirty years sooner, and more easily – without encountering any resistance.  Millions of Vietnamese would have lived under Communist rule, accepted communism, and served international Communist purposes instead of enjoying economic well-being and relative freedom for thirty years.

 

As regards Southeast Asia, the CPV leaders would have a unified Vietnam, with all its resources intact at their disposal, free access from Vietnam’s southern coast to all Southeast Asian countries, in particular Malaysia, and free access by land to Thailand.  They would have started their “revolutionary mission” for the establishment of the Federation of Soviet Republics of Southeast Asia sooner, at a time when none of the Southeast Asian government could offer the national independence, the necessary political freedom, and especially the economic well-being and social reforms that would divert their people from revolutionary thoughts and save them from becoming easy preys of Communist propaganda and agitation.  Popular discontent resulting from insecurity, poverty, social inequality, and stringent limitations of personal freedom necessitated by the need for government to maintain public order would have produced political and social unrest, which would have made rapid political, economic, and social progress, and hence effective resistance to communism, impossible.

 

Whatever one may think about the three wars, then, one must admit that one of their major results was that the peoples of Vietnam, and especially those of Southeast Asia, had been given a very precious breathing space.  The stark contrast between the growing economic prosperity of non-Communist Vietnam is the most eloquent demonstration of the truth that communism is not a cure but a cause of poverty.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 206-207

 

 

 

Has Vietnam achieved what so many Vietnamese had given their lives for, and what so many generous people in the world had wished that they would obtain – national independence?  The answer is a clear no.  Whoever one may think is responsible for it, Vietnam is today in fact a dependency of the Soviet Union.

 

. . . Militarily since 1975 and especially since 1978, the SRV has been integrated more and more tightly into the Soviet defense system.  Many features of this integration recall the pattern of dependence of South Vietnam on the United States between 1954, and especially between 1965 and 1973.  Reports about the Soviet military presence in Vietnam have centered on the use of Cam Ranh Bay as a major Soviet forward naval base.  But, in fact, the whole of Vietnam, and indeed Indochina, has become a Soviet military base ominously flanking China, casting a huge shadow over Southeast Asia and the southwestern Pacific, and threatening the sea lanes of the whole area.

 

. . . As Thai Quang Trung puts it neatly:

 

“As Cam Ranh Bay has become the largest Soviet forward base outside the Soviet Union, Socialist Vietnam has been smoothly integrated as a bulwark State in the encirclement security policy against China, as well as a kind of relay-State in the Soviet global system, the major objective of which is to acquire supremacy upon the seas.  Furthermore, as “a reliable impregnable outpost of socialism in Southeast Asia,” Vietnam is assigned today to play the role of a guardian-State of the Soviet system in the region as well as a legionnaire-state, carrying out a policy of selective regional destabilization.  In sum, because of its multiple functions, Socialist Vietnam is perhaps of greater strategic value than any other Soviet footholds in the Third World, and even more vital than Cuba.”

 

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 209-210

 

 

 

In 1945-47 the negotiations between Ho Chi Minh and France broke down on the question of Vietnam’s right to independence.  Ho Chi Minh then appealed to the Vietnamese to endure sacrifices, shed their blood, lay down their lives, and fight hard for this sacred right.  Now, after two wars and thirty years of fighting, suffering, and dying, the Vietnamese people found themselves tied to another power by bonds not much different from those they had wanted to shake off from their French colonial master.  But there is one very big difference:  the lot of the Vietnamese people as different from that of the CPV leadership, had become worse than under French rule.

 

Vietnam in 1985 was not more independent than it was in 1945.  The Vietnamese people had fought hard, but gained nothing, except new and worse masters, domestic and foreign.  The only winners were the CPV, who had retained, reinforced, and extended their power, and the soviet Union, which had gained a first-class military base, replaced France as the dominant power in Indochina, and become the major factor in the strategic picture of Southeast Asia in place of the United States.  This was surely not what the Vietnamese people had sought or wanted.  But, in terms of pure Leninism, this was certainly a great success.  And to the CPV leaders, that was what really mattered, for it proved that in their foreign politics they had thoroughly grasped Leninism and applied it fully and “creatively,” in the interests of the international Communist movement and the world revolution.

Ton That Thien, The Foreign Politics of The Communist Party of Vietnam:  A Study of Communist Tactics, p. 211

That Ho was a communist of the Bolshevik brand, totally committed to Lenin and the Comintern (before as after its official demise in 1943), a total believer in Leninism and in proletarian internationalism who fought hard all his life for the triumph of world revolution, has been stressed over and over again by his disciples as well as by himself in the various statements of the CPV.  There would be no need to emphasize  it today, except because so many people, including experts and scholars, who ought to revise their views in the light of the mass of documentation published by Hanoi since 1975, continue to tell the same old story about Ho and Vietnamese communism:  Ho and his disciples were nationalists first and communists second.  This view is totally untrue and untenable today in view of the growing body of available evidence.

 

To say that Ho was not “a nationalist first and a communist second” does in no way imply a refusal to recognize that Ho was a great revolutionary, one of the greatest of our time.  The two propositions are distinct and different, and by no means mutually exclusive.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist?  Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern, p. 9 – 10

 

 

. . . in the first week of January 1950 Ho went secretly to Moscow to have a meeting with Stalin.  Khrushchev has said in his memoirs that Ho had a meeting with Stalin while the latter was alive, but gave no specifics.  We now know, from Hoang Van Hoan’s memoirs, that in the first days of January 1950, three weeks before China’s recognition of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, and one month before that of the Soviet Union, Ho made a secret visit to Peking to discuss Chinese recognition and aid.

 

Ho had definitely chosen sides.  This was one month before the United States recognized the State of Vietnam, two months before it gave economic aid to the Saigon government, and six months before President Truman decided to give full military aid to the French for their war in Indochina following the outbreak of the Korean War.  The prevalent view in current literature on the Vietnam War is that June 1950 marked the American involvement in Indochina, and was the start of the train of events leading to Vietnam being dragged into the Cold War, and to America’s woes in the following years.  That view must be abandoned today, because it is undisputable that it was Ho who has plunged Vietnam into the East-West confrontation by being the first to choose sides.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist?  Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern, p. 48

 

 

David Marr, who has spent years studying Vietnamese affairs and who is a known sympathizer of Ho and the Vietnamese communist revolutionaries has said:  “It would be wrong to characterize Ho Chi Minh or any major Vietnamese Communist leader as a nationalist.  As early as 1922, Ho Chi Minh considered nationalism to be a dangerous siren capable of luring colonized people away from colonialism”.    And key members of the Communist Party of France, among whom Jacques Duclos and J. Thorez Vermeersch, have testified to Ho’s “fervent internationalism”.

 

. . . Paul Mus, the greatest admirer and apologist of Ho Chi Minh, has said that Ho Chi Minh could not be considered “a marginal, operational communist, a nationalist dressed in red” . . . Mus cited as example Ho’s acceptance of the Geneva agreement which better served the immediate interests of world communism than those of his Vietnamese fatherland.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist?  Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern,  p. 49

 

 

Ho Chi Minh was a fierce fighter for Vietnam’s independence.  That is undeniable.  But he certainly did not seek Vietnam’s independence for its own sake, but only as the first phase in the bringing of Vietnam into the communist camp as a service to the cause of World Communist Revolution.

. . . Ho always took pride in being a true Leninist.  That is a historical fact.  To recognize this fact by no means reduces the admiration we have for the revolutionary spirit of the man, or as Hendache has put it, for his “revolutionarism”.  But we must question his wisdom and honesty for having chosen the Leninist/Bolshevik road and taken the Vietnamese people along with him without telling them this explicitly and clearly at the beginning.  The terrible plights befalling the Vietnamese people since the communist “victory” in 1975 certainly warrant or even compel such a conclusion.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist?  Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern, p. 51 – 52

 

 

Within a year of Ho’s arrival in Canton, Phan Boi Chau (the greatest Vietnamese revolutionary of the time) was arrested by the French police in Shanghai and brought back to Vietnam for trial.  As a result the Phan Boi Chau movement collapsed, and Ho took over the network mounted by Phan.  It is a fact that Phan had been betrayed to the French while going to a rendezvous with Ho Chi Minh in June, 1925.  He was arrested, but Ho was not.

 

. . . The full truth about this murky affair can perhaps never be known because the crucial police reports concerning Phan’s arrest have been missing from the archives of the French Overseas Ministry.  But there is a very strong presumption that the Communist Party of Indochina was behind the move, and the party obtained a reward of 100,000 or 150,000 piasters.

 

. . . One thing is indisputable:  once Phan Boi Chau was out of the way, there was no more major obstacle to the emergence of a communist party aspiring to play a dominant role in the Vietnamese nationalist movement, and the prospect of the emergence of a Vietnamese Sun Yat-sen also vanished completely.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist? Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern,

1. 27 – 28

[note:  Phan Boi Chau was a former classmate and friend of Ho’s father.  As a boy Ho had met him several times.]

 

 

Ho left no stone unturned to ensure that his disciples strictly adhered to the Stalinist anti-Trotskyite line.  The resolutions of the CPI from the day of its foundation were full of reminders to Party members to pay special attention to bolshevization, to eradicate all Trotskyite tendencies, and to avoid absolutely any cooperation with the Trotskyites

. . . On the other hand, the resolutions of the Party contained frequent praises of the wisdom of Stalin.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist? Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern, p. 40

 

 

It is a remarkable, and remarked, fact that Ho Chi Minh survived the Stalinist wave of liquidation of foreign agents of the Comintern of the mid-1930s, whereas most of the well-known figures of the organization were murdered, sent into exile in Siberia, jailed, or saved themselves by deserting this organization and somehow leaving the Soviet Union alive.  Many of Ho’s early protectors or co-workers . . . and of course the big names – Trotsky, Zinovivev, Radek, Bukharin . . . who had been faithful followers of Lenin were liquidated by Stalin.  Only Manuislky managed to survive unscathed until the end of World War II and beyond.

. . . .instead of having fallen out with the Comintern, being in disgrace, being in preventive detention, or being shoved aside, not only was Ho a member of the cream of the Comintern and moved in the innermost circles of the ECCI, but was also privy to discussions of high strategy at the highest level.

Ton That Thien, Was Ho Chi Minh a Nationalist?  Ho Chi Minh and the Comintern, 

p.38 – 39