Tous les articles par indomemoires

La nouvelle historiographie sur Ngô Đình Diệm et la Première République du Viêt-Nam

Depuis une dizaine d’années, les recherches sur la Première République du Viêt-Nam (1955-1963) de Ngo Dinh Diem se sont considérablement développées. Les études américaines cherchent à comprendre l’engagement américain et le départ de la guerre au Viêt-Nam. Elles réexaminent également le fonctionnement du régime et la personnalité du Président de la Première République. Elles s’intéressent aux conséquences de la chute de Diem (assassiné avec son frère Nhu le 2 novembre 1963) et au rôle des services américains auprès du régime sudiste.

De leur côté, les récentes études vietnamiennes ou témoignages de personnalités proches de Diem tendent à revaloriser le rôle de ce leader et de son régime auparavant fortement critiqués dans les mémoires du général Do Mau (1986), lui-même impliqué dans le coup d’Etat de novembre 1963.

Notons que deux nouvelle études américaines sont à paraitre en 2013 (Chapman et Miller).

  • Chapman, Jessica M., Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2013 (à paraître).
  • Catton, Phillip E., Diem’s final failure. Prelude to America’s war in Vietnam, Lawrence, University Press of Kansas, Modern War Studies, 2003, 312 p. See presentation ; book review by Edward Miller

Often portrayed as an inept and stubborn tyrant, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem has long been the subject of much derision but little understanding. Philip Catton’s penetrating study provides a much more complex portrait of Diem as both a devout patriot and a failed architect of modernization. In doing so, it sheds new light on a controversial regime.

Catton treats the Diem government on its own terms rather than as an appendage of American policy. Focusing on the decade from Dien Bien Phu to Diem’s assassination in 1963, he examines the Vietnamese leader’s nation-building and reform efforts—particularly his Strategic Hamlet Program, which sought to separate guerrilla insurgents from the peasantry and build grassroots support for his regime. Catton’s evaluation of the collapse of that program offers fresh insights into both Diem’s limitations as a leader and the ideological and organizational weaknesses of his government, while his assessment of the evolution of Washington’s relations with Saigon provides new insight into America’s growing involvement in the Vietnamese civil war.

Focusing on the Strategic Hamlet Program in Binh Duong province as an exemplar of Diem’s efforts, Catton paints the Vietnamese leader as a progressive thinker trying to simultaneously defeat the communists and modernize his nation. He draws on a wealth of Vietnamese language sources to argue that Diem possessed a firm vision of nation-building and sought to overcome the debilitating dependence that reliance on American support threatened to foster. As Catton shows, however, Diem’s plans for South Vietnam clashed with those of the United States and proved no match for the Vietnamese communists.

Catton analyzes the mutually frustrating interactions between Diem and the administrations of Eisenhower and Kennedy, and reveals patterns in this uneasy alliance that have eluded other observers. He also clarifies many of the problems, setbacks, and miscalculations experienced by the communist movement during that era.

Neither an American puppet, as communist propaganda claimed, nor a backward-looking mandarin, according to Western accounts, Catton’s Diem is a tragic figure who finally ran out of time, just a few weeks before JFK’s assassination and at a moment when it still seemed possible for America to avoid war.

  • Hoang Ngoc Thanh & Than Thi Nhan Duc, Why the Vietnam war? President Ngo Dinh Diem and the US: His Overthrow and Assassination, Tuan-Yen & Quan-Viet Mai-Nam Publishers, 2001, 562 p.
  • Jacobs, Seth, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia, Durham, Duke University Press Books, 2005, 392 p. See the book presentation ; see the Roundtable on H-Diplo (pdf) ; and the book review by Nick Cullather (pdf). For other articles by the same author, see its own page at Boston College.

America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam rethinks the motivations behind one of the most ruinous foreign-policy decisions of the postwar era: America’s commitment to preserve an independent South Vietnam under the premiership of Ngo Dinh Diem. The so-called Diem experiment is usually ascribed to U.S. anticommunism and an absence of other candidates for South Vietnam’s highest office. Challenging those explanations, Seth Jacobs utilizes religion and race as categories of analysis to argue that the alliance with Diem cannot be understood apart from America’s mid-century religious revival and policymakers’ perceptions of Asians. Jacobs contends that Diem’s Catholicism and the extent to which he violated American notions of “Oriental” passivity and moral laxity made him a more attractive ally to Washington than many non-Christian South Vietnamese with greater administrative experience and popular support.

A diplomatic and cultural history, America’s Miracle Man in Vietnam draws on government archives, presidential libraries, private papers, novels, newspapers, magazines, movies, and television and radio broadcasts. Jacobs shows in detail how, in the 1950s, U.S. policymakers conceived of Cold War anticommunism as a crusade in which Americans needed to combine with fellow Judeo-Christians against an adversary dangerous as much for its atheism as for its military might. He describes how racist assumptions that Asians were culturally unready for democratic self-government predisposed Americans to excuse Diem’s dictatorship as necessary in “the Orient.” By focusing attention on the role of American religious and racial ideologies, Jacobs makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the disastrous commitment of the United States to “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem.”

  • Jacobs, Seth, Cold War Mandarin: Ngo Dinh Diem and the Origins of America’s War in Vietnam, 1950-1963, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006, 220 p.

For almost a decade, the tyrannical Ngo Dinh Diem governed South Vietnam as a one-party police state while the U.S. financed his tyranny. In this new book, Seth Jacobs traces the history of American support for Diem from his first appearance in Washington as a penniless expatriate in 1950 to his murder by South Vietnamese soldiers on the outskirts of Saigon in 1963.

Drawing on recent scholarship and newly available primary sources, Cold War Mandarin explores how Diem became America’s bastion against a communist South Vietnam, and why the Kennedy and Eisenhower administrations kept his regime afloat. Finally, Jacobs examines the brilliantly organized public-relations campaign by Saigon’s Buddhists that persuaded Washington to collude in the overthrow–and assassination–of its longtime ally.

In this clear and succinct analysis, Jacobs details the “Diem experiment,” and makes it clear how America’s policy of “sink or swim with Ngo Dinh Diem” ultimately drew the country into the longest war in its history.

  • Miller, Edward, “Vision, Power, and Agency: The Ascent of Ngo Dinh Diem, 1945-54”, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2004, pp. Pdf online at Viet Studies.
  • Miller, Edward, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam, Harvard University Press, 2013 (à paraître).
  • Moyar, Mark, Triumph forsaken. The Vietnam war, 1954-1965, Cambridge – New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006, 512 p.
  • Nashel, Jonathan, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War, University of Massachusetts Press, 2005, 278 p. (sur le conseiller de Diem à son arrivée au pouvoir)
  • Shidler, Derek, “Vietnam’s changing historiography: Ngo Dinh Diem and the America’s leadership”. This paper was written for Dr. Shelton’s History 5000, Historiography, in the fall of 2008: online article

 

Quelques études ou témoignages récents en langue vietnamienne :

  • Minh Võ, Ngô Đình Diệm và Chính Nghĩa Dân Tộc, California, Hồng Đức, 2008, 450 tr.
  • Minh Võ, Hồ Chí Minh, Ngô Đình Diệm và cuộc chiến Quốc – Cộng (Tâm Sự Nước Non 2), Diễn Đàn Giáo Dân/ Tiếng Quê Hương, 2011, 430 tr.
  • Ngô Đình Châu, Chính biến 1-11-1963  Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm, California, Thằng Mõ, 2009, 330 tr.
  • Nguyễn Hữu Duệ, Nhớ lại những ngày ở cạnh Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm, San Diego, cA, 2003, 270 tr.
  • Nguyễn Văn Lục, Một thời để nhớ. Những sự thật về cố Tổng Thống Ngô Đình Diệm và nền Ðệ Nhất Cộng Hòa, California, Nguyệt San Diễn Đàn Giáo Dân, 2011, 396 tr.
  • Nguyễn Văn Minh, Dòng họ Ngô Đình ước mơ chưa đạt, Garden Grove, Hoàng Nguyên xuất bản, tái bản lần thứ ba, 2-2004.
  • Phạm Văn Lưu & Nguyễn Ngọc Tấn, Ðệ Nhất Cộng Hòa Việt Nam, 1954-1963: Một cuộc cách mạng, Melbourne – Los Angeles – Paris, Center for Vietnamese Studies, 2005, 229 tr.
  • Văn Bia, Đời một phóng viên và những ngày chung sống với Chí Sĩ Ngô Đình Diệm. Hồi Ký của Ký Giả Văn Bia, Lê Hồng XB, 2001, 360 tr.
  • Vĩnh Phúc, Những Huyền Thoại và sự thật về chế độ Ngô Đình Diệm, California, Văn Nghệ, 1998, 482 tr. [réédité en 2006].

Sisouk Na Champassak : Tempête sur le Laos [1961]

[ndlr] Témoignage direct du prince Sisouk na Champassak (1928-1985) sur la guerre civile laotienne. Paru en 1961, Tempête sur le Laos retrace les événements politiques du Laos de la Seconde guerre mondiale jusqu’en 1960. La vision est celle d’un officiel du gouvernement royal alors très impliqué dans les affaires politiques et internationales de son pays. L’auteur explique sa démarche dans l’avant-propos qui suit. L’ouvrage est paru initialement en langue anglaise sous le titre Storm over Laos, a contemporary history (New York, Praeger, 1961).

Avant-propos de l’auteur

Ce livre n’est qu’une esquisse. C’est une série de témoignages et de récits vécus des événements qui ont pesé lourdement sur le destin de mon pays depuis 1945. Depuis seize ans, le royaume du Laos vit dans l’insécurité et la guerre, et pourtant l’opinion internationale n’a jamais été clairement informée de la nature que mène le peuple du Royaume du Million d’Éléphants contre les ingérences de la République démocratique du Nord Vietnam et de ses empiètements successifs d’abord, sous le couvert d’une prétendue libération des pays de l’ancienne Indochine française, et ensuite, au nom d’une croisade idéologique. Dans ce livre je me suis borné à relater les faits, surtout depuis la Conférence de Genève de juillet 1954 en essayant de les analyser sans préjugés ni passion. J’ai été mêlé de près ou de loin dans tout cet enchaînement de drames qui déchirent mon pays. J’ai collaboré avec Son Excellence Katay Don Sasorith, alors premier ministre, en tant que son directeur de cabinet et représentant du gouvernement royal auprès de la Commission Internationale de Contrôle ; j’ai servi Son Altesse le prince Souvanna Phouma, en qualité de secrétaire général du Conseil des ministres ; et j’ai eu l’honneur de faire partie du gouvernement de son Excellence Phoui Sananikone, comme secrétaire d’Etat à l’Information et à la Jeunesse, gouvernement au sein duquel le général Phoumi détenait le portefeuille du secrétariat d’État à la Défense nationale. Je connais le prince Boun Oum Na Champassak dont je suis l’un des proches parents et pour lequel j’éprouve le plus grand respect et la plus grande affection. En outre, j’ai participé à toutes les négociations et conversations avec les leaders du Pathet-Lao depuis la première prise de contact à la plaine des Jarres en janvier 1955, jusqu’à la Conférence de Vientiane, en août 1956. En passant par le rendez-vous Katay D. Sasorith-prince Souphannouvong de Rangoon.

Mon but n’est pas de faire l’apologie de telle ou telle politique de ces hommes au pouvoir depuis la naissance du Laos indépendant, mais de montrer à l’opinion publique les diverses étapes de ce qu’il convient d’appeler les « approches du communisme international pour la conquête de l’Asie du Sud-Est », et surtout les difficultés de toutes sorte qui assaillent un pays petit enclavé, né dans l’équivoque de Genève, et placé en sandwich entre les deux camps antagonistes dans une zone de tension où pressions et dépressions atteignent souvent leur maximum.

Je souhaite que ce livre puisse ramener les laotiens égarés dans la communauté nationale afin d’édifier un Laos uni, neutre, et indépendant. Je forme également le voeu que les Laotiens de quelque bord qu’ils soient fassent notre propre évolution au lieu de faire la révolution des autres.

Réf. Sisouk Na Champassak, Tempête sur le Laos, Paris, La Table Ronde, « L’ordre du jour », 1961, 266 p.

 

Couverture de l’édition new-yorkaise
(Frederick A. Praeger, 1961)

 

Prince Sisouk na Champassak (March 28, 1928 in Pakse, Champassak, Laos – May 10, 1985 in Santa Ana, California, United States). He was the eldest son of Chao Bounsouane na Champassak, who was in turn the eldest son of the last King of Champassak, Chao Ratsadanay. His brother is Chao Sisanga Na Champassak.

Prince Sisouk was a member of the Na Champassak royal family or house. He served as Secretary General of the Royal Government in the Kingdom of Laos. He is the author of Storm over Laos, a history of Laos from World War II until about 1961.

He became Minister of Finance and Minister of Defense in the pre-1975 Royal Lao Government. After fleeing Laos in May 1975, as the country fell to the communist Pathet Lao, he immigrated to France. In 1981, he became a key political leader of the resistance against the communist Lao PDR government, together with General Vang Pao. He died in Vang Pao’s house in Santa Ana, California. (source : Wikipedia – page consultée le 10 octobre 2012).

Book review :

By Gordon Leonard, in Political Research Quartely, Volume 15 (4): 738-740, December, 1962.

Book Review by Kathryn C. Statler: Triumph Imagined

Moyar, Mark, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006, xxiii+416 p.

Book Review by Kathryn C. Statler:

Triumph Imagined

In The Man in the High Castle, novelist Philip K. Dick presents an alternate outcome to World War II by envisioning a world in which the Axis powers won the war. Dick’s classic came to mind after reading Mark Moyar’s Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, as both books offer lessons on history, truth, and interpretation. In the first of a two-volume project, Moyar attempts a new look at the evolution of American intervention in Vietnam from South Vietnamese Premier Ngo Dinh Diem’s 1954 assumption of power to Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 decision to send combat troops to South Vietnam. Opening with a brief sketch of Vietnamese history, Moyar then traces the development of South and North Vietnam as Saigon (with U.S. support) and Hanoi (backed by the USSR and China) attempted to outmaneuver one another politically and militarily. As his narrative unfolds, Moyar challenges scholars of the Vietnam War to question earlier assumptions and knowledge about North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist credentials, Diem’s ineptitude, the accuracy of prominent American journalists, the Buddhist protest movement, Johnson’s escalation of the conflict, and the domino theory’s viability. Moyar concludes that Saigon and Washington could have won the war if Diem had stayed in power or if the Johnson administration had provided a stronger military response. Although encouraging us to “think otherwise” through its well-written, researched, and forcefully argued interpretations, Triumph Forsaken is, in many respects, a counterfactual explanation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and fails to revise the historical record.

The book begins with Moyar’s designation of “orthodox” and “revisionist” camps. Early scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s (the orthodox school) criticized American actions in Vietnam and insisted that the war could not be won. Revisionists typically viewed the war effort as noble and winnable if the United States had either (1) made better use of its conventional military power or (2) adapted to guerilla warfare. Identifying himself as a revisionist, Moyar dismisses the vast majority of scholarship produced in the past two decades as continued orthodoxy, claiming that it is concentrated in a “relatively small number of areas,” concerned “primarily with American policymaking in Washington and Saigon,” and dominated by one school of thought that sees America’s involvement in the war as “wrongheaded and unjust” (p. xi). These statements are easily called into question by a perfunctory survey of the interdisciplinary, multi-archival, and international literature that has emerged. Equally perplexing is Moyar’s contention that his interpretation of “the facts” differentiates his volume “from all of the existing literature in its breadth of coverage both inside and outside the two Vietnams and in its use of a more comprehensive collection of source materials” (p. xiii). This is quite a claim-and one that fails to hold up under scrutiny. [1]To the extent that Moyar forces us to rethink orthodoxies, his work is commendable; but in the end, his revisionism is unpersuasive in large part because he simply does not marshal the evidence to support his version of events. In selectively quoting and caricaturing the arguments of others, he repeatedly fails to grapple with the avalanche of scholarship that contradicts his own. [2]

Before delving into some of the book’s key flaws, its strengths deserve mention. Moyar’s descriptions and analysis of military encounters and technologies are first rate. Moreover, his chapters on peaceful coexistence and insurgency are expansive in their coverage of the evolution of South and North Vietnamese thinking, particularly Diem’s attempts to govern and guarantee stability from the national down to the local level. Moyar also gives a clear analysis of the various crises of succession in South Vietnam following Diem’s assassination. Finally, Moyar offers much greater detail about American military leaders, who emerge as the heroes of the book, in contrast to the “brainy civilians,” who, in Moyar’s opinion, had no conception of Vietnamese political, military, and cultural realities (pp. 349, 416). [3] Moyar also reminds us that the Americans and their South Vietnamese allies often fought effectively and ethically.

Unfortunately, the weaknesses of the book far outweigh its strengths. Moyar has a tendency to leave out pesky details that might derail his interpretations, committing a number of factual errors in the process. For example, he incorrectly claims Truong Chinh was a supporter of Soviet policy when in fact he had a pro-Chinese orientation, he fails to offer any evidence at all to explain how the French and Vietnamese forces were on “the verge of crushing” the Viet Minh in early 1954 (pp. 28, 297, 322), and he mistakenly concludes that congressional leaders gave united action-proposed multilateral intervention to lift the Viet Minh siege at Dien Bien Phu-their “consent” and were “willing” to send ground forces if other nations contributed large numbers of troops. Rather, Congress insisted on allied participation and immediate French independence for Indochina-neither of which was likely to materialize-before agreeing to united action. Nor did united action come down to “whether Britain would go along,” which was secondary to congressional obstructionism. Finally, the British declined united action not because the “potential danger to Malaya and other British interests was not sufficiently large to justify a possible war,” but because they wanted to give negotiations at the upcoming Geneva Conference a chance to succeed (p. 29). [4]

Readers will be forgiven for asking “what Geneva Conference?” as Moyar skims over one of the most important points in the decision-making process on Vietnam. According to Moyar, the Geneva agreements suffered from a “congenital defect” in that they lacked “the endorsement of the new South Vietnamese government and the U.S. government,” both of which were “certain” to be leading actors in the future (pp. 30-31). However, it was far from certain in July 1954 that Washington and Saigon would emerge as the decision makers. It became clear that the Geneva agreements would fail only after Diem began to consolidate his control; U.S. officials made the conscious decision to replace France in South Vietnam in the military, political, economic, and cultural realms; and London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing made other concerns a priority over implementing the accords. Moyar’s painfully one-sided depiction of the French villainy in resisting Diem’s attempts to wipe out his enemies during this period results from his heavy reliance on anti-French American and South Vietnamese sources. Like the Americans, the French were divided on Diem’s prospects for success and were not engaged in round-the-clock “plotting” and “calumny” against him (pp. 41-53).

Moyar provides valuable analysis of Diem’s rise to power and the strengths of his 1954-1963 government, although he is not the first to do so, as his book suggests. A general trend in the scholarship during the past decade has rehabilitated Diem’s image to some degree. [5] Still, Diem’s many weaknesses are almost completely absent in the book. Moyar chooses instead to blame the Buddhists and David Halberstam’s and Neil Sheehan’s press coverage for rising American and South Vietnamese hostility to Diem. However, not all Buddhists were “fanatical” and “covert communists,” and many American officials shared the journalists’ concerns about Diem (pp. 217, 228, 317). Every American ambassador from Donald Heath to Frederick Nolting left South Vietnam far more pessimistic than when they arrived. And, although not apparent in Moyar’s account, a number of military officials also held deeply negative views of the Diem regime and its successors. [6] In the end, Moyar’s claim that if Diem had lived “it is highly doubtful that the war would have reached a point where the United States needed to introduce several hundred thousand of its own troops to avert defeat” and that it was “quite possible” that South Vietnam “could have survived under Diem without the help of any U.S. ground forces” is impossible to prove and unsupported by the evidence (p. 286).

Strangely, while casting a critical eye at official American statements and documents, Moyar gives far less scrutiny to the rhetoric of non-American actors and to American military leaders. For example, in his use of translated Vietnamese sources, both communist and non-Communist, Moyar accepts at face value claims of Ho Chi Minh’s deference to the international Communist movement, the North Vietnamese dismissal of the 1956 elections, and the strength of the South Vietnamese armed forces (pp. 4, 9, 58, 181-84). [7] Moreover, in pressing his point that an invasion of the North was the best option for the United States in 1964, Moyar argues that Johnson’s rejection of the military’s proposals for “hard action” in Laos and Vietnam and his choice of gradual escalation convinced Hanoi that the United States would not put up a fight for South Vietnam (pp. 348-49). If hard action had been pursued, according to Moyar, the North Vietnamese would have retreated into the mountains and China would have abstained from the fighting, but there is little evidence to indicate that Hanoi and Beijing would have followed this script. Even worse, Moyar engages in speculative pop psychology when he explains Johnson’s unwillingness to embrace hard action through a college incident in which Johnson “did not stand and trade punches, but instead hopped onto his bed, lay on his back, and kicked frantically with his long legs to keep the would-be adversary away” (pp. 288, 331).

Finally, Moyar’s claim that American leaders and their allies believed that if South Vietnam had fallen in the 1960s, a “high probability” existed that many dominoes would have been knocked over in Southeast Asia must be addressed. In his scenario, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, and Indonesia would have toppled, with potential fallout in the Philippines, Taiwan, Burma, and Japan. Moyar also asserts that much of the international community, including SEATO and NATO members, publicly and privately supported the United States in Vietnam. There is little, however, aside from a few selected quotations from worried American officials and international leaders trying to acquire more American aid, to substantiate these arguments (pp. 138-42, 377-91). If other leaders were so concerned with the domino effect, then perhaps they would have done more than offer token troops, rhetoric, and humanitarian aid. SEATO never took an official stand asking members to assist South Vietnam, NATO countries sought ways to disengage the United States from Vietnam, and, in the end, only the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea sent troops to Vietnam, and of those, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea leveraged their aid for important U.S. economic and military concessions as well as a complete U.S. subsidy of their forces in Vietnam.

Moyar excels at creating an alternate history to American intervention in Vietnam, an exercise that undoubtedly has its uses in stimulating thinking and challenging traditional viewpoints. The problem, of course, is that we will never know the course of events if Diem had lived, or if the United States had invaded North Vietnam, or if South Vietnam had fallen in the 1960s instead of 1975. Ultimately, Moyar offers no compelling evidence that triumph was forsaken, but, by imagining that it was, his book makes for an interesting read.

 


 

[1] I refer readers to Edwin Moïse’s excellent bibliography on the Vietnam Wars, available from http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/FacultyPages/EdMoise/bibliography.html.

[2] See, for example, Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley, CA, 1999), xiii and David Anderson, “One Vietnam War Should Be Enough,” Diplomatic History 30, no. 1 (January 2006): 2-8 for the full context of their quoted comments in Triumph Forsaken (p. xii).

[3] See, for example, Moyar’s one-sided criticism of Ambassadors Elbridge Durbrow and Henry Cabot Lodge (pp. 68, 99, 115, 236-74).

[4] See Joint Resolution Draft, 2 April 1954, Dwight D. Eisenhower Library (EL), Dulles Papers, Subject series, box 8; Draft of the Congressional Resolution, 17 May 1954, Dulles Papers, Dulles-Herter Correspondence, 1953-1961, microfilm, reel 5; William Knowland oral history, EL, OH-233 (2 of 3), 1967; top-secret report, 23 April 1954, Archives Nationales, Paris, 74AP/38; 7 April 1954, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, Asie 1944-55, Indochine, vol. 290; top-secret memo of Dulles-Eisenhower conversation, 19 May 1954, Dulles-Herter, reel 5.

[5] For a sampling of this literature, see Philip Catton, Diem’s Final Failure: Prelude to America’s War in Vietnam (Lawrence, KS, 2003); Edward Miller, “Grand Designs: Vision, Power and Nation Building in America’s Alliance with Ngo Dinh Diem, 1954-1960 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2004); and Kathryn Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington, KY, 2007), chaps. 4, 5, 8.

[6] See Robert Topmiller, The Lotus Unleashed: The Buddhist Peace Movement in South Vietnam, 1964-1966 (Lexington, KY, 2002) for a counterargument to Moyar’s claims about the Buddhist movement. See Robert Buzzanco, Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (New York, 1996) for American military concerns about South Vietnam’s prospects for success.

[7] For works that address Ho Chi Minh’s nationalist credentials and Hanoi’s belief that the 1956 elections would be held, see Robert Scigliano, South Vietnam: Nation under Stress (Boston, 1964); Carl Thayer, War by Other Means: National Liberation and Revolution in Vietnam (Sydney, 1989); Robert Brigham, Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF’s Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War (Ithaca, NY, 1999); and William Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (Boston, 1995).

Review of Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. Pages: xxiii+416. $32.00.

Reviewed by Kathryn C. Statler, in Political ReviewNet – Diplomatic History, Volume 32, Issue 01, pp. 153-157.
Online date : 10/04/2008

Pour en savoir plus :

Autres avis de lecture sur le site officiel de Mark Moyar.

Voir le débat suscité par cet ouvrage sur l’historiographie américaine de la guerre, en 2007 – en ligne sur pdf : H-Diplo

US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam : Insurgency, Subversion and Public Order

Avis de parution.

Rosenau, William, US Internal Security Assistance to South Vietnam. Insurgency, Subversion and Public Order, London – New York, Routledge, Cold War History, 2012, 232 p.


Editor’s presentation

This new study of American support to the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam illuminates many contemporary events and foreign policies.

During the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, the United States used foreign police and paramilitary assistance to combat the spread of communist revolution in the developing world. This became the single largest internal security programme during the neglected 1955-1963 period. Yet despite presidential attention and a sustained campaign to transform Diem’s police and paramilitary forces into modern, professional services, the United States failed to achieve its objectives.

Given the scale of its efforts, and the Diem regime’s importance to the US leadership, this text identifies the three key factors that contributed to the failure of American policy. First, the competing conceptions of Diem’s civilian and military advisers. Second, the reforms advanced by US police training personnel were also at odds with the political agenda of the South Vietnamese leader. Finally, the flawed beliefs among US police advisers based on the universality of American democracy.

This study also shows how notions borrowed from academic social science of the time became the basis for building Diem’s internal security forces.

This book will be of great interest to all students and scholars of intelligence studies, Cold War studies, security studies, US foreign policy and the Vietnam War in general.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Einsehower, US Foreign Internal Security Assistance, and the Struggle for the Developing World

2. Shoring up America’s Man: The Origins of Police and Paramilitary Assistance to South Vietnam, 1954-56

3. The Struggle for Reform: The United States and Diem’s Internal Security Forces, 1956-58

4. Competing Conceptions: The United States, Diem, and the Civil Guard, 1955-1961

5. John F. Kennedy, Foreign Internal Security Assistance, and the Challenge of ‘Subterranean War’

6. ‘Ridiculous Representatives of Mr. Diem’: Paramilitary Forces and the Strategic Hamlet Programme, 1961-1963

7. American Universalism and the ‘Triumph of Technique’: The Kennedy Administration and Civilian Police Reform in South Vietnam

Conclusion

Appendix: Intelligence Documents Denied under the Freedom of Information Act

Notes

Bibliography

Hoàng Văn Chí : From colonialism to communism [1964]

[ndlr] L’étude de Hoang Van Chi sur l’évolution du communisme vietnamien et l’application brutale de la réforme agraire au Nord Viêt-Nam paraît en langue anglaise la première fois en 1964 (1). L’ouvrage est réédité en 1965 et 1968 chez Praeger. Il constitue un témoignage unique à cette époque sur l’emprise des méthodes chinoises adoptées et appliquées par le Parti des Travailleurs du Viêt-Nam (Lao Dong). Présentation de l’éditeur ci-après.

Combining scholarly depth with a highly readable, personal style of writing, From colonialism to Communism is the detailed inside story yet published of the establishment of Communism in North Vietnam. The author was an active participant in Indochina’s national struggle for independence from the French. Along with his fellow nationalists who believed a genuine democratic society could be brought into being by co-operation in war and peace between communists and non-Marxists progressives, he experienced the bitter disillusionment of seeing the Vietminh movement transformed into a regime modeled on Mao’s China.

Hoang Van Chi surveys the various nationalist movements in Indochina since the turn of the century and the history of the Comintern’s efforts in the inter-war period to establish a strong Communist Party in the country. The key-role of Ho Chi Minh in these developments is discussed in detail. After a brilliant description of the way in which the communists seized the initiative in the struggle against France, the author moves to his main themes: the aims and methods of Maos’s imitators in North Vietnam.

Collating his own eye his own eye-witness testimony with documentary evidence from communist sources, he traces the steps whereby Ho Chi Minh and his associates made by the Vietminh movement an instrument for achieving complete communist control of the newly independent country’s economy, political and cultural life. Presenting information hitherto unpublished in English, Hoang Van Chi examines in detail the motives, methods and consequences of the “Land Reform” campaign and its attendant terrorism. His treatment of this and of the techniques of “thought-reform”, together with his account of the Communist Party’s methods of exacting obedience from all strata of Vietnamese society, make this book a definitive study of the penetration of a South Asian society by militant communism, directed by the policies and philosophy of Mao Tse-tung. It is essential reading for all who interested in the problem of Asia and the triple confrontation of traditionalist, democratic and communist forces in former colonial territories.

L’ouvrage paru chez Popular Library, New York, 1964.

(1) La notice en langue anglaise sur Hoang Van Chi dans en.Wikipedia mentionne une première édition en 1962 mais la version en langue vietnamienne rappelle la date de 1964 : vi.Wikipedia. En outre une notice de l’ouvrage sur World Cat évoque la date de 1963 entre crochets. 1964 apparaît être la date de première édition la plus probable ce que confirme Talawas. L’ouvrage a été traduit et publié en vietnamien dans les années 1980 [1983?] aux Etats-Unis par un certain Mac Dinh qui n’est autre que le pseudonyme de l’auteur lui-même (voir ci-dessous).

La version vietnamienne est en ligne sur Talawas.

Hoàng Văn Chí, Từ thực dân đến cộng sản – Một kinh nghiệm lịch sử của Việt Nam, Mạc Định dịch. Dịch từ nguyên bản tiếng Anh nhan đề: From Colonialism to Communism, xuất bản năm 1964 đồng thời tại: Anh (The Pall Mall Press Ltd. 77–79 Charlotte Street, London W.I.), Hoa Kỳ (F. A. Praeger inc, Publisher III, 4th Ave. New York, N.Y.), Ấn Độ (The Allied Publishers, 13-14 Asaf Road, New Delhi). Cùng với bản tiếng Việt này đã có những bản dịch sau đây: Tiếng Bồ Đào Nha (Nhà xuất bản GRD, Rio de Janeiro, Brésil), tiếng I-pha-nho (Nhà xuất bản Editorial SUR, Buenos Aires, Argentine), tiếng Pháp (Nhà xuất bản MAME, Tours, Pháp).

Une édition rare : Du colonialisme au communisme. L’expérience du Nord-Vietnam par Hoàng Văn Chí

[ndlr] Très rarement mentionnée, l’édition française de l’ouvrage clé de Hoang Van Chi sur la RDVN des années cinquante existe pourtant bien (1). Alors que ce témoignage capital sur le Nord-Vietnam paraît dans plusieurs pays à la fois, une édition française voit le jour en 1965 dans une collection diffusée uniquement en Afrique au prix de 100 CFA/2FF. L’ouvrage, traduit de l’anglais par Pierre Nicolas, est paru sous le titre Du colonialisme au communisme. L’expérience du Nord-Vietnam (Tours, Mame, Coll. Dialogues #3, 1965, 345 p.) avec une préface de P. J. Honey comme pour l’édition en langue anglaise. Nous reproduisons ci-dessous le texte de présentation au dos de couverture.

Patriote nord-vietnamien et combattant de la liberté, nul n’est mieux qualifié que l’auteur, Hoang Van Chi, pour décrire la longue lutte de son pays conte l’impérialisme. Comme beaucoup d’autres nationalistes vietnamiens, Hoang Van Chi avaient cru que les communistes et les progressistes non-marxistes pouvaient coopérer pour édifier une société véritablement démocratique. Il fut amèrement déçu de voir le mouvement vietminh progressivement transformé par Ho Chi Minh jusqu’à devenir un régime satellite de la Chine rouge.

Alliant à son témoignage personnel une masse de renseignements convaincants, l’auteur relate avec précision la mainmise communiste sur le Nord-Vietnam et démontre ce que signifie pour son jeune pays le fait que sa vie économique, politique et culturelle soit contrôlée par les communistes. Il analyse sans ambiguïté les buts véritables et les méthodes des dirigeants du Nord-Vietnam. Sans passion mais sans équivoque, il passe au crible de la vérité les mobiles, le processus terroriste et les conséquences de la prétendue « Réforme agraire ». Il met particulièrement l’accent sur les techniques de « réforme de la pensée » et les méthodes qui ont permis au parti communiste d’imposer une obéissance aveugle à tous les Vietnamiens.

Du colonialisme au communisme, l’expérience du Nord-Vietnam est une étude approfondie de la pénétration d’un nouveau pays par le communisme militant. C’est un livre qui, à ce titre, mérite d’être lu avec la plus grande attention.

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Hoàng Văn Chí
(1913-1988)

“Autobiographie. L’auteur a connu très tôt des engagements politiques. Avant 1940, il est membre du Parti Socialiste français. Dès 1945, il se rallie au Viêt-Minh. La première étape de la Guerre de Résistance est plutôt enthousiasmante. Mais il vit mal l’influence chinoise, relayée par les cadres communistes vietnamiens. Il dénonce ce qui est vite devenu un “régime totalitaire”, (Chapitre III), en particulier la Réforme agraire (description des méthodes et des résultats dans le Chapitre V). Il quitte la R.D.V. [République Démocratique du Vietnam] en avril 1955 pour se réfugier au Sud, puis à l’étranger” (La Guerre “française” d’Indochine (1945-1954). Les sources de la connaissance, sous la direction d’Alain Ruscio, Paris, Les Indes Savantes, 2002, p. 437).

“Hoang Van Chi, membre du Parti Socialiste français dès 1936, avait rejoint les rangs du Viêt-Minh en 1945. Des fonctions de cadre (technique) lui furent confiées pendant la période de guerre. Il quitta la RDVN en avril 1955 pour se réfugier au Viêt-Nam du Sud, puis à l’étranger. Son témoignage constitue un apport essentiel pour mesurer l’influence et la présence de la Chine populaire dans les maquis vietminh, notamment au début de la période de réforme agraire (1953-1956)” (François Joyaux, La Chine et le règlement du Premier conflit d’Indochine. Genève 1954, Paris, Université de Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut d’histoire des relations internationales contemporaines, 1979, p. 420).

(1) L’entrée de Wikipedia sur Hoang Van Chi omet de citer cette édition française, mentionnée à juste titre par le site vietnamien Talawas lors de la mise en ligne de l’édition vietnamienne.

Two Hamlets in Nam Bo: Memoirs of Life in Vietnam by David Lan Pham

David Lan Pham, Two Hamlets in Nam Bo: Memoirs of Life in Vietnam Through Japanese Occupation, the French and American Wars, and Communist Rule, 1940-1986, Jefferson (NC) – London, McFarland & Co., 2000, 299 p.

The author was born in 1940 and spent his childhood in two small villages, the paternal and the maternal, in southern Vietnam: Binh Chuan and Tuy An (An Phu). The villages were deeply affected by the powerful political events of the next fifty years. In this memoir (first sentence: “I was born as the Japanese Troops were invading northern Vietnam”), the author writes of what he saw, heard and knew, providing an invaluable social history of the country. Readers will learn about a people who have endured separation, dictatorship, carnage, persistent suffering and poverty, all the while yearning for independence and prosperity. Included are many stories-some funny, some heartbreaking-that reveal how the Vietnamese people lived, as well as their thoughts on war, on the French, Japanese and Americans, on the Nationalist and Communist governments, and on escape. The result is a heartfelt “social painting” of the nation. [editor’s presentation]

David Lan Pham was born in Thudaumot, South Vietnam, and left the country clandestinely with his son and two brothers in 1986. He worked for the refugee program in Alabama and created the bilingual Bulletin/Tin Viet and Dac San Que Huong. He lives in Toledo, Ohio.

Aperçu sur Google Books (2008 edition)