Vietnam expects only a brief peace

Press, 14 September 1976, Page 20

Vietnam expects only a brief peace

Denis Warner, an Australian journalist and political writer, has been a close observer of Indo-China for more than 20 years. Here he discusses the strategy by which North Vietnam overran the South after the Paris Agreement was signed in 1973. The implications for the future of Indo-China will be discussed in a further article tomorrow. The extracts are taken from an essay. “Inside the New Vietnam.” which appeared in the June issue of “South-East Asian Spectrum.”

I was in my room at the Hotel Metropole in Hanoi on July 21, 1954, when the 8.8. C. broadcast the details of the Geneva Agreement. I passed on the news to the Chef de cabinet, a pharmacist named Quang, who, in his former capacity as deputy mayor of Hanoi, had been a good and useful friend.

He gripped the table and stood with tears in his eyes. “It is finish, my friend,” he said. “Finish. Finish. Finish. I shall go to Saigon, but what is the use? All we will have there will be a sentence deferred for two years.”

Because of circumstances that neither Quang nor anyone else could have envisaged, the two years stretched into nearly 21, and the South Vietnam Hanoi acquired when its tanks rolled into the presidential palace in Saigon on April 30 last year is similar to the South Vietnam of 1954 only in name.

Hanoi might have digested unsophisticated South Vietnam in the mid-1950s with relatively little difficulty. How will it fare in 1976? And what sort of neighbour may we expect the new Vietnam to be?

In attempting to answer these questions, the techniques and the nature of the campaigns, political and military, that were initiated by North Vietnam to win the war are of direct importance, not merely because of what they have achieved, but because they are immediately relevant to the sort of State that is now in the making in Vietnam.

In the closing days of the war, in Saigon there was a pathetic belief (sedulously cultivated by Hanoi) that there would be an interregnum after the shooting stopped, a period variously believed likely to last months, or even years, in which a sort of half-way house to communism would be established. The Paris Agreement would be fully implemented.

Big Minh would be acceptable to Hanoi as the leader of one of the three parties to the National Council of National Conciliation and Concord, and, together with the Third Force and the Provisional Revolutionary Government, would help to introduce the Vietnamese people slowly to the joys of Socialism.

Even members of the National Liberation Front were hoodwinked. No-one has tried to estimate how many people, who would otherwise have tried to leave South Vietnam during the last weeks of the war. stayed behind because they were lulled into this false sense of security, but certainly they would run into hundreds of thousands.

All of this was a gigantic, carefully conceived hoax. It was expedient in the face of the failure of the Easter offensive in 1972 for Hanoi to settle down to what the United States accepted as serious negotiations. It was expedient again in the face of the intensive bombing of the North to sign the Paris Agreement in 1973. But anvone who failed to understand that this was all part of the protracted war did not understand the nature of the war. or Hanoi’s goals.

The National Liberation Front, the People’s Revolutionary Party and the Provisional Revolutionary Government all had important parts to play in the war effort, but as agents of Hanoi, not as separate institutions, not certainly as the representatives of Southern national communism. The intention was to conceal Hanoi’s role in the war and to give the illusion not only that the struggle commanded widespread Southern support, but that the impetus and the motivation all came from the South.

Negotiations demanded the formation of the P.R.G. After its creation in 1969 it served an important function in the diplomatic and political struggle against the United

States and the Saigon Government. It appealed for, and won, international recognition in communist and Third World countries, but in no sense was it a government, nor did it perform the functions of government. With the war won, it was denied even the chance of playing any sort of role in the National Council of National Conciliation and Concord, which was conveniently thrown into the dustbin, along with the rest of the Paris Agreement. There was no longer any need for subterfuge. Control everywhere in the South passed into the hands of the Military Revolutionary Committees, which were both army and party, and therefore under absolute Northern control. The war had not ended in victory for the P.R.G., but in outright Northern conquest, which is being confirmed by elections to unify North and South this year.

This was always the intention. While the nonCommunist world was beguiled by World Peace Council and other propaganda at the beginning of 1975 with demands for the full implementation of the Paris Agreement, the North Vietnamese Politburo had already thrown the agreement into the wastepaper

basket and had decided on a major military offensive to win the war. The Paris Agreement propaganda was designed to serve as a smokescreen for the offensive and it achieved its purpose very well.

There was nothing new in this tactic. For years the manipulation of international public opinion had been an essential part of Hanoi’s campaign. Hanoi understood the weaknesses in the democratic system and worked on them.

“Giap’s own best contribution to the art of revolutionary war was probablv his estimate of the politicalpsychological shortcomings of a democratic svstem when faced with an inconclusive military operation.” wrote Bernard Fall as long ago as 1963. It is nevertheless cause for surprise that Hanoi should feel, with the victory won. that it can afford to admit the truth: that the Paris Agreement was regarded as a scrap of paner, and that the Spring Offensive last year was not a hastily improvised campaign to take advantage of the Thieu Government’s military and psychological blunders in Central Vietnam and the Central Highlands. This unique admission bears the joint signatures of

the Minister of Defence (General Vo Nguyen Giap) and General Van Tien Dung, Chief-of-Staff of the North Vietnamese Army. It appeared in the "Vietnam Courier” late last year.

“The greatest surprise for the enemy was the timing of the general offensive,” the two generals wrote. “This is one of the essential points which made them completely passive strategically. The United States imperialists and their henchmen wrongly reckoned that they might have another two years to carrv out their sabotage of the Paris Agreement.” The Giap-Dung analysis is much more than an account of past events. As its title, “A New Development of the Art of Leading a Revohitionarv War,” suggests, it is a recipe book for revolutionary war, a new primer for liberation forces everywhere. Mao Tse-tung may have known how to organise a peasant revolt: Giap and Dung found the way to engage the most powerful country in the world and still emerge victorious. At no time, the article reveals, was the Spring Offensive last year intended to be limited. It was always the offensive to win the war.

The great road - building programme through South Vietnam that facilitated the

rapid deployment of Northern forces had already been initiated by North Vietnamese Army engineers long before the signing of the Paris Agreement. It continued rapidly thereafter.

In fact, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the decision to embark on the major war-winning offensive must have been made before the Paris Agreement was signed, and may well have been the underlying motive in the North Vietnamese negotiations. Once the Americans were finally out of the way, the road to Saigon was open. It is against this background that General Dung's separate article on "Some Problems of Combining Economic Development with the Consolidation of National Defence” must be read. This appeared in December, 1974, when the Northern forces were already moving into position for the Spnng Offensive.

It was essentially forwardlooking. with the coming military campaign quite peripheral to the main theme—the post-war creation of a major industrial and military power in Vietnam Dung admits freely the debt that Hanoi owed to “fraternal” Socialist countries for their military and economic assistance. From this he draws the conclusion that Vietnam must now accept similar responsibilities. “In the course of receiving and using the fraternal countries’ assistance, our people are bound to contribute to consolidating and developing international solidarity and unity among the fraternal countries and parties, to defending the Socialist system and increasing its strength and to accelerating the world revolutionary trends . . .”

There is to be no reduction in force strength. Army units are told that they must “eliminate the bad habit of considering their participation in labour ana economic development as a temporary task.”

They must organise their production activities in accordance with their labour task, “while meeting the Army’s requirements for building, achieving combat readiness and engaging in combat.” New arsenals will be built to produce modem weapons.

Since Dung, like Giap, began the 1975 offensive absolutely confident of victory. and this article is longterm, not short, it is significant that he anticipates only a limited period of peace. (To be concluded.)