A War for Empire or a War against Communism?

During World War II, Japan occupied the French colonies of Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. After Japan’s defeat, a communist-led movement known as the Viet Minh declared Vietnamese independence. France’s war with the Viet Minh was, on the one hand, a colonial war—an attempt to regain control over its former territory. On the other hand, it was a war against communism—an attempt to contain its spread like the war the United States would later fight in Korea. Although France had granted Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia limited autonomy as Associated States within the French Union in 1949, the colonial aspect of the French-Indochina War represented a significant barrier to American participation.

Eisenhower’s first use of the domino metaphor probably came in a March 1951 diary entry while he was in Paris serving as SACEUR. “The French have a knotty problem on that one,” he wrote. “If they quit and Indochina falls to the Commies, it is easily possible that [all of] Southeast Asia and Indonesia will go, soon to be followed by India. That prospect makes the whole problem one of interest to us all.” Although he hoped the French would prevail, he had his doubts even then. “I’m convinced that no military victory is possible in that kind of theater,” he wrote. “Even if Indochina were completely cleared of Communists, right across the border is China with inexhaustible manpower.”⁹

Less than two years after confiding to his diary that military victory was not possible in Vietnam, Eisenhower became president of the United States. In his inaugural address he defined the French-Indochina War as part of the global struggle in which “freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.” The faith of the free world, he said, “confers a common dignity upon the French soldier who dies in Indo-China, the British soldier killed in Malaya, the American life given in Korea.”¹⁰ In his State of the Union address the following month, he continued to link Indochina and other areas of U.S. interest in East Asia, claiming that the war in Korea was part of the “same calculated assault that the aggressor is simultaneously pressing in Indochina and Malaya, and the strategic situation that manifestly embraces the island of Formosa and the Chinese Nationalist forces there.”¹¹

Just six days after the inauguration, Secretary of State Dulles made a nationally televised speech on the foreign policy challenges faced by the new administration. Criticized by the New York Times for its “off-cuff” imprecision, Dulles’s speech noted the importance of Indochina in the global struggle against communism.¹² “The Soviet Russians are making a drive to get Japan, not only through what they are doing … in Korea, but also through what they are doing in Indo-China. If they could get this peninsula of Indo-China,” he warned, plus “Siam, Burma, Malaya, they would have what is called the rice bowl of Asia… . And you can see that if the Soviet Union had control of the rice bowl of Asia that would be another weapon which would tend to expand their control into Japan and into India.”¹³

Although Dulles spent relatively little time on Indochina in his televised speech, two months later, after a meeting with Eisenhower, Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, and Director of Mutual Security Harold Stassen, he wrote that it had “probably” become the “top priority in foreign policy.” It was, he wrote, “in some ways more important than Korea because the consequences of loss there could not be localized, but would spread throughout Asia and Europe.” The group had agreed that the United States would have to “step up considerably” its aid to France “if there was a plan that promised real success.” China, however, would have to be deterred, “so they would not send their forces openly into Vietnam as they had done in Korea.”¹⁴

Eisenhower had the opportunity to judge for himself whether such a plan was in place just two days later. On March 26, Eisenhower, Dulles, and several others met with a visiting delegation from France aboard the presidential yacht Williamsburg, as it cruised the Potomac to Mount Vernon and back. Included among the French dignitaries were Prime Minister René Mayer, Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, and Minister to the Associated States Jean Letourneau. Eisenhower sought assurances that France was committed to the defeat of communism in Indochina. He said that the United States was “very sympathetic” regarding the French problem in Indochina and was “interested in hearing of any French program” for its solution. “Knowledge of such a program was necessary to the United States so that it could see where and how it could be of assistance.”¹⁵

When pressed for his plan to defeat the Viet Minh, Letourneau had said that “it is not a question of winning the war”; the goal was “to maintain a position of strength from which an honorable settlement could be negotiated,” much like the United States was doing in Korea. In any event, he added, “victory was probably unattainable because of the likelihood that the Chinese would intervene in Indochina to prevent such an outcome, just as they had done in Korea.”¹⁶ Eisenhower later shared his doubts about the French commitment in Indochina with the NSC. Only two developments could save the situation, he said. The first was “a firm official statement by France as to the future independence of the Associated States when the internal conflict was over.” The second was the appointment of a competent military commander. “Most of the French Generals sent out to Indochina,” he said, “were a poor lot.”¹⁷ Despite his reservations, Eisenhower told Congress that in the coming year he proposed to make “substantial additional resources available to assist the French and the Associated States in their military efforts to defeat the communist Viet Minh aggression.”¹⁸

The Navarre Plan

Later that same month, General Henri Navarre assumed command of the French forces in Indochina. Navarre, a decorated veteran of both world wars, spoke confidently of victory. “We will take the offensive,” he declared, and “give back to our troops the mobility and aggressiveness they have sometimes lacked.” This attitude pleased Eisenhower but put Navarre at odds with his superiors who reminded him that his primary mission was “not to destroy the Viet Minh or win an outright victory, but merely to create the conditions for an ‘honorable’ exit from the struggle.”¹⁹

The JCS sent General John “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, also a veteran of both world wars—and Korea—to assess Navarre’s strategy. O’Daniel was initially encouraged by the Navarre Plan. Navarre sought to “retake the initiative immediately” by carrying out local offensives in the summer of 1953. Then, beginning in September, he would lay the groundwork for a major battle that would take place in the fall and winter of 1953–54. By attacking the flanks and rear of the enemy he hoped to forestall a Viet Minh attack in the Red River Delta region where France still held the capital of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong. O’Daniel believed that Navarre was “honest and trustworthy” and would do everything possible to carry out his “aggressive” plan. O’Daniel concluded that if Navarre could get the support he needed from Paris, “he will do much toward bringing the war here to a successful conclusion.”²⁰

On July 3, France invited the Associated States of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to begin talks to finalize their independence. Secretary Dulles used this invitation as a way of rejecting criticism that the war was a colonial one. “The pretext, until now, has been that the Associated States of Indochina were mere colonies and that the Communist war was designed to promote ‘independence’ rather than to expand by violence the Soviet camp,” he told the UN General Assembly in September. “It is no longer possible to support such a pretext… . The communist-dominated armies in Indochina have no shadow of a claim to be regarded as champions of an independence movement.”²¹

So, by the summer of 1953, the two developments that Eisenhower had said were necessary for France to “save the situation” had now come to pass—at least nominally. Adding to American optimism was the selection of Joseph Laniel as French prime minister in June. He and Foreign Minister Georges Bidault pledged an early and victorious conclusion to the war and called Navarre to Paris for consultations. Laniel accepted Navarre’s plan and promised him: “I shall not make the same mistakes as my predecessors.”²² By the end of July, Laniel had put a price tag on the Navarre Plan. France would request an additional $400 million from the United States. This was on top of the $1.3 billion the United States had already planned to give France for the Indochina war.

On September 4, the day before the NSC met to begin consideration of this request, Eisenhower spoke to the National Governors’ Conference in Seattle and, in a preview of the domino theory, prepared them for what he considered a necessary expense. Whether or not the war had begun as a colonial undertaking no longer mattered, he said. What did matter was that American security was being threatened by the expanding communist empire. He began with the question he assumed was on their minds: “Why is it” that we are we so concerned with the distant southeast corner of Asia? If Indochina fell to communism, he explained, several things would happen right away: Burma, Malaya, and possibly India would fall. And if the free world lost all of that, he asked, how would it hold Indonesia? “Somewhere along the line,” he warned, communist expansion must be stopped. “That is what the French are doing. So, when the United States votes $400 million to help that war, we are not voting for a giveaway program. We are voting for the cheapest way that we can to prevent the occurrence of something that would be of the most terrible significance for the United States.”²³

At the August 6 meeting of the NSC, the State Department presented the French request for an additional $400 million for calendar year 1954 as a near emergency situation. For the last seven years, France had been spending $1.2 billion a year on the war in Indochina and had little to show for it but 148,000 casualties. The Viet Minh held the strategic initiative, and aid to the Viet Minh from Communist China was increasing—a trend that was expected to accelerate with the Korean Armistice. Not surprisingly, the war had become very unpopular in France, and there were increasing demands for withdrawal. Furthermore, the cost of the war, in both money and manpower, had made France unable to meet its commitments to NATO, which was of paramount importance to the United States.

There were signs, however, that the French request came at an important turning point. “The Laniel government,” the State Department argued, “is almost certainly the last French government which would undertake to continue the war in Indo-China. If it fails, it will almost certainly be succeeded by a government committed to seek a settlement on terms dangerous to the security of the U.S. and the Free World.” Based on these considerations, the State Department recommended that the additional $400 million to France be approved.²⁴ The NSC trimmed the figure slightly and approved $385 million in additional funds.²⁵

Dien Bien Phu

In late November, five battalions of French paratroopers jumped from American transport planes into Dien Bien Phu, a remote valley near the Laotian border in extreme northwest Vietnam. The paratroopers established a base there from which they hoped to strike the supply lines of Viet Minh troops on their way to Laos. The mountains and jungle that surrounded the valley prevented the overland movement of men and supplies, making it dependent on its airfield for survival and, therefore, a difficult location from which to conduct offensive operations. Despite Dien Bien Phu’s drawbacks, Navarre believed it was impossible for the Viet Minh to place heavy artillery and antiaircraft guns in the mountains surrounding it. On December 3, he gave the order to hold the position at all costs. Three days later, Viet Minh General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to concentrate his forces around Dien Bien Phu.²⁶ The stage had been set for a major confrontation.

By January 8 the situation at Dien Bien Phu was bad enough that the NSC spent most of its meeting discussing the possibility of American intervention. DCI Allen Dulles reported that the French garrison was surrounded and outnumbered approximately three to one, but it was unclear whether the Viet Minh would launch an attack. Admiral Radford, now chair of the JCS, said that the Viet Minh may be able to take Dien Bien Phu if they launched an all-out attack and were willing to take heavy losses, but he did not believe they would do so because it would prevent them from carrying out their objectives in Laos. Allen Dulles added that the only reason for a Viet Minh attack was the political and psychological damage it would do to the French war effort.

Robert Cutler then turned the discussion to the question of U.S. involvement. Eisenhower asked why the French were unwilling to allow the Associated States to take their case to the UN, which might lead to the formation of an international coalition such as the one that had fought in Korea. The question raised the important issue of whether France saw Indochina as a colonial war or part of the international struggle against communism. Foster Dulles responded that the French feared UN involvement because of the precedent it would set for their other colonies. In the absence of a coalition, Eisenhower said that he “simply could not imagine putting ground forces anywhere in Southeast Asia.” Regarding the United States replacing the French in Indochina, he was even more vehement. “I cannot tell you, how bitterly opposed I am to such a course of action. This war in Indochina would absorb our troops by divisions!”

Later in the meeting, Cutler pursued the question further. What would we do, he asked, “if the French turn to us and request the participation of U.S. forces?” Radford responded that the United States “should do everything possible to forestall a French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.” This included, in his opinion, sending an aircraft carrier. He argued that the situation was serious because, contrary to French expectations, the Viet Minh had succeeded in placing heavy artillery and antiaircraft weapons on the high ground surrounding the French garrison. Radford believed American pilots could take them out. Secretary Humphrey opposed direct involvement. He said he “appreciated how serious the loss of Dien Bien Phu could be,” but “it could not be … bad enough to involve the United States in combat in Indochina.”

Eisenhower, who had spoken so adamantly earlier in the meeting, slipped into the role of mediator. He seemed to be looking for a position somewhere between Radford and Humphrey. To Radford he said it was “certainly going to be necessary” to get American planes involved, but “obviously, we couldn’t just fly them into combat off the carrier.” Then he reminded Humphrey that “no one was more anxious” than he was to keep Americans out of the jungles of Vietnam, but we could not “forget our vital interests” there. Radford then began to speculate: “If we could put one squadron of U.S. planes over Dien Bien Phu for as little as one afternoon, it might save the situation. Weren’t the stakes worth it?” The president, for a moment, seemed to go along. “A little group of fine and adventurous pilots,” he mused, “we should give these pilots U.S. planes without insignia and let them go.” It could be arranged, Radford said. But then the president came back to reality. The responsible council members should study what additional steps could be taken to assist the French, he said, and make concrete proposals at a future council meeting.²⁷

The Search for a Response

By the following week’s NSC meeting, the planning board had completed work on a draft of “United States Objectives and Courses of Action with Respect to Southeast Asia” for the council’s consideration. The document defined the Indochina war as one in which the “Communist and non-Communist worlds clearly confront one another on the field of battle.” The loss of Indochina, in addition to its impact on South and Southeast Asia, would have “serious repercussions on the U.S. and free world interests in Europe and elsewhere.” The “most urgent threat” to a free world victory in this war came from the “strong possibility” that the situation could deteriorate due to a “weakening of the resolve of France and the Associated States of Indochina to oppose the Viet Minh.” If American aid continued, the document predicted, French forces were “not in danger of being militarily defeated by the Viet Minh unless there is a large-scale Chinese Communist intervention.” Such an intervention was not expected unless the United States were to engage in combat. After approval by the NSC and Eisenhower, the draft became NSC 5405.²⁸

Eisenhower’s earlier request for concrete proposals resulted in two further developments. First, he established a “special committee,” consisting of Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roger Keyes, Special Assistant C. D. Jackson, Allen Dulles, and Radford, to report directly to the president on the “Southeast Asian problem” and produce a plan of action. Second, the JCS, in consultation with the CIA, undertook a study on how the United States might “assist in achieving the success of the Navarre Plan.” Eisenhower was disappointed that despite the urgency of the situation, neither group had developed a proposal by the time of the next NSC meeting. Indochina, he said, “must not be allowed to go by default.”²⁹

At its first meeting, the special committee, rather than looking at the big picture as Eisenhower had intended, spent much of its time considering a French request for additional assistance. Specifically, they requested forty-seven B-26s and four hundred personnel trained to maintain them. Eisenhower approved the committee’s recommendation to provide only twenty-two B-26s and two hundred maintenance personnel.³⁰ The French request for maintenance personnel set off alarm bells for some. Consequently, Eisenhower began to field additional questions on the matter at his weekly press conferences. When asked on February 3 about the presence of American military personnel in Indochina, he explained that they were engaged in “training and technical” activities but there were no “fighting units.” Impatiently, he added “that is all there is to say on the subject.”³¹

Some members of Congress were also concerned. In a letter to Defense Secretary Wilson, Senator John Stennis (D-MS) feared a slippery slope. “First we send them planes, then we send them men… . We are going to war, inch by inch.”³² When asked about Stennis’s concerns at his next press conference, Eisenhower replied: “no one could be more bitterly opposed to ever getting the United States involved in a hot war in that region than I am; consequently, every move I authorize is calculated … to make certain that that does not happen.” In response to a follow-up question, Eisenhower said he could “not conceive of a greater tragedy for America” than to get involved in a war in Indochina. America’s role was to help the Vietnamese and the French resist the “encroachment of communism.”³³ Stennis, however, continued to criticize the presence of American support personnel in Indochina, warning that it put the United States “in danger of becoming involved in World War III.” Asked for comment, Eisenhower insisted that the United States would only go to war as a “result of the constitutional process,” which was in the hands of Congress. “Let us have that clear,” he added, “that is the answer.”³⁴

During his trip to Berlin for a four-power conference with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and the Soviet Union, Secretary Dulles wrote Eisenhower that he planned to urge Bidault to “ignore any suggestion of negotiation over Indochina.” Negotiations, he warned, were “slippery ground” and would “lead to further deterioration of morale in Indochina and France.”³⁵ Above all, Dulles hoped to avoid a five-power conference, which would bring China into the discussions. Ultimately, Dulles had to give in. His fellow foreign ministers supported such a move, and Dulles feared that if he vetoed it, the Laniel government would fall and be replaced by a new government that would abandon Indochina. While disappointed, Dulles did not expect that France would push too hard for a negotiated settlement as long there was not a “military disaster in Indochina.” The parties agreed to schedule the five-power conference in Geneva, Switzerland, beginning in late April.³⁶

The Situation Worsens

On the afternoon of March 13, the anticipated attack on Dien Bien Phu began with a Viet Minh artillery bombardment that the French had not believed possible. “We are all surprised and ask ourselves how the Viets have been able to find so many guns capable of producing an artillery fire of such power,” wrote a French Foreign Legionnaire. “Shells rained down on us without stopping, like a hailstorm on a fall evening. Bunker after bunker, trench after trench, collapsed, burying under them men and weapons.”³⁷ Colonel Charles Piroth, the French artillery commander, could not silence the onslaught. When the bombardment turned to the airstrip, the isolated post’s lifeline, French planes took off to avoid being destroyed on the ground. It was then that well-camouflaged Viet Minh antiaircraft batteries opened fire from the hills just beyond the runway, establishing air superiority without a single plane. As night fell, Viet Minh infantry attacked the French position known as Beatrice. The Viet Minh took tremendous casualties but overwhelmed the position in an hour’s time.

The next day Viet Minh artillery rendered the airstrip unusable, and that night the French position known as Gabrielle came under attack from Viet Minh infantry. The Algerian forces defending Gabrielle were outnumbered eight to one but held off wave after wave before succumbing. That night Colonel Piroth told a fellow officer, “We’re done for… . We’re heading for a massacre, and it’s my fault.” Returning to his quarters, he held a grenade in his only hand—he had lost an arm in World War II—and pulled the pin with his teeth, taking his own life.³⁸ In the first two days of fighting both sides took heavy losses. Approximately 1,350 French Union forces died defending Beatrice and Gabrielle. Viet Minh losses are less clear but have been estimated at approximately double those of the French.

When the NSC met on March 18, the extent of the devastation was not yet apparent. After giving a casualty report, Allen Dulles said that the French were outnumbered two-to-one. Although he believed the outcome was “impossible to predict,” he ventured that the French had a “fifty-fifty chance of holding out.” Eisenhower was somewhat critical of the French effort, saying it was difficult for him to understand why Navarre had been so optimistic, but he did not think that being outnumbered two-to-one was as bad as it sounded, “in view of the fact that they [the French] were fighting from prepared and heavily fortified positions.” Secretary Dulles confirmed that this was the biggest commitment that the Viet Minh had made so far and believed that “the whole operation was obviously a Vietminh preparation for the Geneva Conference.” He said that he had warned the French foreign minister that if Indochina were put on the agenda for the five-power conference in Geneva, “it would be the signal for violent Vietminh attacks… . This was precisely what had happened.”³⁹

What had been unclear at the March 18 NSC meeting became increasingly so over the next few days. On March 20, Eisenhower held a ninety-minute “off the record” meeting at the White House with his senior national security team, Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, Wilson, and Radford. The same group, minus Radford, met again the next day for another off-the-record meeting. No evidence of these meetings, other than notations in the White House daily appointments book, have been found, but James Hagerty’s diary indicates that their subject was Indochina.⁴⁰ Radford likely missed the second meeting because he was with his counterpart, Chairman of the French Chiefs of Staff General Paul Ely, who had stopped in Washington for talks on his way home from Vietnam. It was Ely, more than anyone, who convinced American policymakers of the desperate situation in Dien Bien Phu and Indochina in general.

In several meetings with top-level policymakers while in Washington, General Ely indicated that although the present French government was determined to defeat the communists, the French people were weary of the war in Indochina. Ely shared Secretary Dulles’s belief that the Viet Minh assault on Dien Bien Phu was “undoubtedly for the purpose of achieving a major political victory.”⁴¹ The military value of Dien Bien Phu was not great enough to justify the sacrifices necessary for the Viet Minh to take it. They were attempting to do so only to influence French public opinion and to achieve “a position of strength from which to negotiate at Geneva.”⁴² When Secretary Dulles discussed Ely’s visit with the president, Eisenhower reiterated that the United States could not get involved in the fighting unless the political preconditions for a successful outcome were in place. “He did not, however, wholly exclude the possibility of a single strike, if it were almost certain this would produce decisive results.”⁴³

By the time that the NSC met on March 25, its members were more pessimistic about the chances of a French military victory. Eisenhower, who had become increasingly critical of French strategy, proclaimed that the current situation was “sufficient indication that the population of Vietnam did not wish to be free from Communist domination.” In a similarly pessimistic vein, Secretary Dulles said that what they were witnessing was “the collapse or evaporation of France as a great power.” The question that remained was “Who should fill the void? … Would it be the Communists, or must it be the U.S.?” Finding the answer to that question occupied the council for the remainder of the meeting. Cutler pointed out that NSC 5405 had not contemplated the withdrawal of France. Consequently, the council instructed the planning board to consider what actions the United States would take in Southeast Asia if France withdrew. Eisenhower made clear that the planning board should consider the possibility of deploying American ground troops.⁴⁴

Admiral Radford had one final day with General Ely following the NSC meeting. What transpired between them on March 26 remains unclear and has been the subject of much speculation. Ely was anxious to know what specific actions the United States was willing to take to relieve the desperate situation at Dien Bien Phu. Both men were aware of a plan—code-named Operation Vulture—that had been created by U.S. and French personnel in Saigon. The plan involved nighttime attacks on Viet Minh positions surrounding Dien Bien Phu by U.S. carrier-based aircraft and B-29s based in the Philippines. Radford said that 350 planes could be over Dien Bien Phu with two days’ notice. Ely later claimed that Radford strongly supported the plan and said he could get Eisenhower’s approval. Radford, on the other hand, claimed that he had only meant that the plan could be enacted within two days if it was approved. It may have been a simple matter of miscommunication. No translators were present and neither man was fluent in the other’s language. As historian Fredrik Logevall has pointed out, however, both men wanted to implement Operation Vulture. While Ely may have heard what he wanted to hear, Radford likely conveyed the impression that he wanted to convey.⁴⁵ Several days later Radford called a meeting of the JCS to pose a question: Should the JCS recommend to the secretary of defense and the president that an offer be made to the French to render assistance at Dien Bien Phu with U.S. naval and air forces? The three chiefs of staff and the commandant of the Marine Corps all voted “no.” Only Radford, the chairman, voted “yes.”⁴⁶

Setting Conditions

While making contingency plans, Eisenhower wanted to line up support from Congress, American allies, and the American public. “Congress would have to be in on any move,” Eisenhower said, and “this might be the moment to begin to explore with the Congress what support could be anticipated in the event that it seemed desirable to intervene in Indochina.” Eisenhower also wanted the UN involved. Although he knew France was opposed to UN involvement, he “did not see how the United States or other free world nations could go full out in support of the Associated States without UN approval and assistance.” The president also raised the question of what other nations might be willing to participate. “Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Formosa, the free nations of Southeast Asia, the British, and the French,” he suggested. “That was enough, wasn’t it?”⁴⁷ Finally, on March 29, Secretary Dulles made a speech, preapproved by the president, titled “The Threat of a Red Asia” to the Overseas Press Club of America. The New York Times called it the beginning of “a campaign to tell the United States public clearly and dramatically what is at stake in Indo-China.” Communist domination of Asia, he warned, “was a possibility that should not be passively accepted, but should be met by united action.”⁴⁸

In anticipation of Secretary Dulles’s meeting with congressional leaders, Eisenhower met briefly with Dulles, Wilson, and Radford on April 2. Dulles had drafted a possible congressional resolution on Indochina. It authorized the president “to employ the Naval and Air Forces of the United States to assist the forces which are resisting aggression in Southeast Asia.”⁴⁹ It would expire on June 30, 1955. Eisenhower said that the draft reflected what he believed was desirable but thought that the meeting should be used to “develop the thinking of the congressional leaders” rather than presenting them with a resolution drafted by the administration. Dulles agreed and said that, personally, he thought of a resolution as more of a deterrent—one that would give the United States a strong position from which to put together a coalition of nations that would prevent the spread of communism in the area. Radford, Dulles believed, saw the resolution as the immediate authority to launch a strike to save Dien Bien Phu. Radford said that had been true, but he now believed that it may be too late to save Dien Bien Phu, the fate of which could be determined in “a matter of hours.”⁵⁰

The next day, Secretary Dulles and Radford met at the State Department with congressional leaders from both parties. After Radford gave an extensive briefing on the situation in Indochina, focusing on Dien Bien Phu, Dulles said that he thought the “president should have congressional backing so that he could use air and sea power in the area if he felt it necessary in the interest of national security.” Senate majority leader William Knowland (R-CA) initially gave his approval, but after further discussion, the congressional leaders unanimously agreed that there should be no congressional action until the administration had “obtained commitments of a political and material nature from our allies.” Dulles and Radford both pointed out that the president was not contemplating the use of ground forces, but the senators and congressmen were undeterred. “Once the flag was committed,” they said, “the use of land forces would inevitably follow.”⁵¹ Chalmers Roberts, a journalist for the Washington Post, would later refer to April 3, 1954, as “the day we didn’t go to war.”

Roberts’s characterization was an exaggeration, but the legislative leaders’ meeting did represent a turning point. From then on, Secretary Dulles’s efforts were devoted primarily to building a coalition of nations willing to intervene with the United States. On the following evening the president held an off-the-record meeting in the residence at the White House. According to White House Chief of Staff Sherman Adams, Eisenhower “agreed with Dulles and Radford to send American forces to Indochina under certain strict conditions.” The first of those conditions was that it be a joint action to include Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and if possible, the Philippines and Thailand “so that the forces would have Asiatic [sic] representation.” Second, the French would have to continue to fight and “bear the full responsibility until the war was over.” Finally, the independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia must be guaranteed.⁵²

Late that same night Secretary Dulles received a cable from the U.S. ambassador to France, Douglas Dillon, who had been summoned to a late-night meeting in Paris with Prime Minister Laniel and Foreign Minister Bidault. They told Dillon that “immediate armed intervention of U.S. carrier aircraft at Dien Bien Phu is now necessary to save the situation.” They based their request on General Ely’s report that Radford had given his assurance that if the French requested such an intervention, he would “do his best” to overcome opposition to it.⁵³ Eisenhower, in a phone conversation with Dulles the next day, turned down the request. “Such a move is impossible,” he said. “In the absence of some kind of arrangement getting support of Congress, [it] would be completely unconstitutional and indefensible… . We cannot engage in active war.”⁵⁴

Reading the minutes of the NSC meeting on April 6, it is clear that events had overtaken the usual procedures of the council. The meeting began with an intelligence briefing. The situation at Dien Bien Phu was grim. The French had sufficient food to last for three days and ammunition to last for four or five. The airstrip was unusable, and it had become very difficult to drop supplies by parachute due to the closeness of the enemy’s perimeter and the accuracy of their antiaircraft fire. Meanwhile, twenty thousand troops were on their way to replace Viet Minh losses. Cutler, unaware of Secretary Dulles’s meeting with congressional leaders, then posed the question that the planning board had prepared for the meeting: Should the United States “intervene with armed forces in Indochina in the event that there was no other means of saving the area from Communist control”? Dulles told the council about his meeting and the three conditions that Eisenhower had subsequently outlined for any U.S. intervention. He concluded by saying, “We should, therefore, place all our efforts on trying to organize a regional grouping for the defense of Southeast Asia prior to the opening of the Geneva Conference.”

Eisenhower’s position is difficult to ascertain during this meeting. In his earlier discussions with Secretary Dulles and Radford he had set a very high bar for U.S. participation in the war, but he was easily provoked by those who suggested that the United States should accept France’s fate. He dismissed Harold Stassen’s prescient suggestion that the United States should accept the loss of northern Vietnam and focus instead on saving the south. And he “spoke sharply” to Humphrey when the treasury secretary suggested that the United States was trying to police “all the governments of the world.” When Humphrey persisted, Eisenhower said that “Indochina was the first in a row of dominoes. If it fell, its neighbors would shortly thereafter fall with it, and where did the process end? … We cannot afford to let Moscow gain another bit of territory. Dien Bien Phu itself may be just such a critical point.”⁵⁵ The president’s comments anticipated those he would make in his press conference the following day, quoted at the beginning of this chapter.

Secretary Dulles spent most of his remaining time before departing for the Geneva Conference trying to put together a coalition of nations to contain communism in Southeast Asia. His efforts began with a trip to London where he attempted to persuade Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden to join the United States in a coalition to prevent the loss of Indochina. Dulles’s arrival was preceded by a letter from the president to Churchill that played on his wartime colleague’s appreciation for the lessons of history. “We failed to halt Hirohito, Mussolini, and Hitler by not acting in unity and in time. That marked the beginning of many years of stark tragedy and peril. May it not be that our nations have learned something from that lesson?”⁵⁶ Churchill and Eden were unmoved by Eisenhower’s appeal and Dulles’s attempts to persuade them. They did not share Eisenhower’s belief in the domino theory, and they feared that escalation would risk the intervention of China and the onset of World War III. They believed it best to wait and see what could be achieved at the Geneva Conference.⁵⁷

Dulles’s trip to Paris was similarly unproductive. Just days before, Prime Minister Laniel had asked the United States to launch a carrier-based airstrike to save Dien Bien Phu and put France in a better bargaining position at Geneva, but this did not mean that France was interested in an international coalition. “France must have an opportunity to negotiate an honorable peace,” Foreign Minister Bidault said. “If Geneva fails, collective security is a possibility, but nothing can be done before Geneva which would allow it to be said or thought that anything had been decided beforehand about what was to be done if Geneva failed.”⁵⁸

Dulles had one last chance before the Geneva Conference began—a meeting with Bidault and Eden in Paris beginning on April 22. By this time Bidault had altered his position. The situation in Dien Bien Phu, he believed, remained so “hopeless” that only a “massive” air strike by the United States could save it. Although he had been against an international coalition, he would support one now if that was what it would take for the United States to act. If Dien Bien Phu fell, however, he did not think France would have any further interest in a coalition. In that case, France would get out of Indochina entirely.⁵⁹ Dulles was encouraged by Bidault’s willingness to consider united action but was troubled that Bidault was placing such great importance on Dien Bien Phu. “The situation here is tragic,” he wrote to Eisenhower the following evening. “France is almost visibly collapsing under our eyes,” and “Dien Bien Phu has become a symbol out of all proportion to its military significance.”⁶⁰ Dulles attempted to shame Laniel into keeping up the fight. “Many people in the world,” Dulles told the French prime minister, believed that France “could no longer be counted among the great powers.” The way that France reacted to the fall of Dien Bien Phu, he said, would have “a tremendous influence on world opinion,” and he hoped that France would “show that she still had the spirit of a great power.”⁶¹

Dulles explained that the United States could not launch the kind of air strike that Bidault was asking for without congressional approval—and approval would require participation of the United Kingdom. Eden expressed “grave doubts that Britain would cooperate in any active fighting to save Indochina,” but agreed to return to London to meet with Churchill.⁶² Ultimately, neither the British nor French governments would agree to the conditions for U.S. involvement. France wanted a U.S. airstrike to improve its bargaining position at Geneva without the complications and long-term commitments that internationalizing the war would create. Britain feared that if it intervened with the United States then China would get involved, risking World War III. Both countries were prepared to take their chances at Geneva. Their responses also betrayed vestiges of colonial thinking. France feared that internationalizing the war on American terms, which meant granting full sovereignty to the Associated States, would set a bad precedent for its North African colonies. Churchill, when pressed on the issue, “repeatedly referred to the loss of India” and made the point that “since the British people were willing to let India go, they would not be interested in holding Indochina for France.”⁶³ It seems that neither European ally could see the war in Indochina solely as a war against communist aggression, as the United States preferred to see it.

The Geneva Conference

The Geneva Conference began on April 26, 1954. The United States entered the conference, as Walter Bedell Smith pointed out, “with a lesser degree of common understanding with its allies than it had entered any previous international conference.”⁶⁴ Asked at his April 29 press conference about American objectives in Geneva, Eisenhower displayed his pessimism. He said that the United States was “steering a course between two extremes, one of which, I would say, would be unattainable, and the other unacceptable.” The unacceptable would be to let the anticommunist forces in Southeast Asia “crumble and disappear”; the unattainable would be to arrive at a “completely satisfactory solution.”⁶⁵ Pessimism spilled over into the NSC meeting later that day. “A brief interval of silence” followed Radford’s summary of the bleak situation at Dien Bien Phu, where he said the French were taking 150 casualties a day. In the past, Radford had offered the invincibility of American airpower as the answer to the most desperate situations, but he did not do so on this day. It was left to Stassen to make an attempt. It would be “impossible to let the communists take over Indochina and then try to save the rest of the world from a similar fate,” he argued. “This was the time and place to take our stand.” Eisenhower’s response conveys the tremendous responsibilities of the presidency. He had already made the point that “if the United States went into Indochina alone it would mean a general war with China and perhaps with the USSR, which the United States would have to prosecute separated from its allies.” In his reply to Stassen, the president said that “before he could bring himself to make such a decision, he would want to ask himself and all his wisest advisors whether the right decision was not rather to launch a world war. If our allies were going to fall away in any case, it might be better for the United States to leap over the smaller obstacles and hit the biggest one with all the power we had.” The tenor of the discussion that followed these remarks demonstrates that Eisenhower was not engaging in hyperbole. He had expressed the alternatives as he saw them.⁶⁶

Later that same day, the NSC Planning Board discussed the potential use of nuclear weapons (which they referred to as “new weapons”) in Indochina. The board came up with several questions that could be discussed at a future NSC meeting: “Should [the] decision be made now as to U.S. intention to use ‘new weapons’? … Would one ‘new weapon’ dropped on Vietminh troop concentrations in reserve behind DBP be decisive? … Could one ‘new weapon’ be loaned to France for this purpose?” The board concluded that the “use of a ‘new weapon’ in Vietnam would tend to deter Chinese aggression … and that failure to use the ‘new weapon’ in Vietnam would tend to increase [the] chance of Chinese aggression.” It is interesting to note that this discussion, which took place just two months after the first test of a deployable H-Bomb, made no mention of the type of nuclear weapon being considered. Robert Cutler had the opportunity to discuss these questions with Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon the following morning. Eisenhower did not believe that a “new weapon” could be used effectively in the jungles surrounding Dien Bien Phu. He did think that the United States “might consider saying to the French that we had never yet given them any ‘new weapons’ and if they wanted some now for possible use, we might give them a few.”⁶⁷ Eisenhower and Dulles would later conclude that the use of atomic bombs on an Asian country for the second time in a decade would cause “very serious problems” for the United States and was not a realistic option.⁶⁸

Dien Bien Phu fell to the Viet Minh on May 7, just one day before the Geneva Conference turned its attention to Indochina. Its collapse freed the Viet Minh for offensive action in the Tonkin Delta, putting the capital of Hanoi and the port of Haiphong at risk. The Eisenhower administration’s main fear was that defeat at Dien Bien Phu would destroy what remained of the French will to fight. At the NSC meeting on May 8, the administration agreed on its position at the Geneva Conference. The United States would not associate itself with any proposal for a cease-fire before an acceptable armistice agreement had been reached. During the armistice negotiations, France should continue to oppose the Viet Minh “with all the means at their disposal.” The United States would continue its aid to France and its efforts to create a coalition of nations to prevent further communist expansion in Southeast Asia.⁶⁹

A few days later, Dulles communicated the conditions that would have to be met before Eisenhower would be willing to ask Congress for the authority to intervene in Indochina: (1) U.S. participation would have to be formally requested by France and the Associated States. (2) Thailand, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom would have to receive similar requests. (3) The matter would have to be presented to the UN by one of the Associated States or Thailand. (4) France would have to grant the Associated States complete independence including the right to leave the French Union. (5) France would have to continue fighting in Indochina—U.S. forces would supplement those of France, not replace them, and U.S. forces would be principally naval and air. (6) An agreement would have to be reached on the command structure for participating nations and on the training of indigenous forces.⁷⁰

Since Britain had rejected the possibility of united action in Indochina until after the Geneva Conference, Dulles focused on Australia and New Zealand. If these two British Commonwealth nations would participate, then perhaps the United States could proceed without Britain itself. On June 4, the Australian government declined to participate, preferring instead that a diplomatic settlement be concluded at Geneva. New Zealand soon followed suit. With its last real hope of building a coalition dashed and the situation in Indochina getting worse by the day, the U.S. attitude toward a negotiated settlement softened. “France would have to accept whatever terms they would get if they were to obtain a cease-fire,” Dulles told the Australian ambassador.⁷¹

On June 12, the Laniel government lost a vote of no confidence, becoming the final casualty of Dien Bien Phu. On June 18, Pierre Mendès France was elected prime minister. Mendès France pledged to resign if he were unable to obtain a cease-fire in Indochina on reasonable terms by July 20. Meanwhile, believing there was no longer a chance that an agreement could be reached that the United States would be willing to sign, the U.S. delegation took on the role of “observers.” Dulles told the NSC that he “thought it best to let the French get out of Indochina entirely and then try to rebuild from the foundations.”⁷² As his self-imposed deadline grew near, Mendès France requested that the United States send Dulles or Smith back to Geneva. He was able to convince a reluctant Dulles that communist participants at the conference would interpret the American absence as a rift in the Western alliance and would try to exploit it. Not wanting to strain relations with Britain and France further, Dulles conceded, and Eisenhower agreed to send Smith back.⁷³ “Your role at the conference,” Dulles told Smith, “will be that of the representative of a nation friendly to the non-communist states … which desires to assist … in arriving at a just settlement. You will not, however, go beyond this role.”⁷⁴

A few hours past Mendès France’s deadline, in the early morning hours of July 21, the conference completed the Geneva Accords on Indochina. They called for a cease-fire that would be monitored by an international control commission consisting of Poland, India, and Canada. France was required to evacuate the Tonkin Delta region and withdraw south of the seventeenth parallel, where Vietnam was to be temporarily partitioned. A three-mile-wide demilitarized zone was established on either side of the seventeenth parallel. Free movement of people between the two sides was allowed for three hundred days. Neither side was allowed to join a military alliance or seek military reinforcements. A general election would be held in June 1956 to unify the country. Separate agreements were signed with Laos and Cambodia granting their independence from France.

Bedell Smith did not sign the Geneva Accords but made a declaration stating that the United States “takes note” of the agreement and “will refrain from the threat or use of force to disturb them.” The statement also said that the United States would view the renewal of aggression in violation of the agreement “with grave concern.”⁷⁵ In his own statement later in the day, Eisenhower said that the United States was not “a party to or bound by the decisions taken by the conference” but hoped that they would “lead to the establishment of peace.”⁷⁶ Despite the noncommittal nature of its public response, the United States was not entirely displeased with the outcome at Geneva. The biggest disappointment was the loss of the Tonkin Delta region, which included the capital city of Hanoi and the port city of Haiphong. The Eisenhower administration considered this region the key to the security of Southeast Asia. However, given the fact that the Viet Minh had dealt France a humiliating defeat at Dien Bien Phu and had two powerful friends on its side in Geneva—China and the USSR—the Western powers had done well to keep as much of Vietnam out of communist hands as they did. The United States would now, for better or worse, dedicate itself to the goal of maintaining a viable noncommunist state in South Vietnam.

Chalmers Roberts had referred to April 3, 1954, as “the day we didn’t go to war.” In doing so he gave the congressional leaders who met with Foster Dulles on that day credit for keeping the United States out of war by requiring the participation of a coalition of nations, preferably including the United Kingdom, before they would give the Eisenhower administration the authority to intervene in Indochina. This version gives the congressional leaders too much credit for preventing U.S. intervention. Before this meeting, Eisenhower was already determined to assemble a coalition of nations that would include not only Britain, but regional powers like Australia and New Zealand, and Asian nations like the Philippines and Thailand.

Another requirement that Eisenhower maintained throughout the months that he considered intervention was that France must grant independence and national self-determination to the Associated States of Indochina. Eisenhower believed this was the only way to impress upon the world that the war was not an effort by France to reestablish its colonial domination over the region but an attempt to stop the spread of communism. More importantly, an unequivocal grant of independence was the only way to deny the Viet Minh the source of their greatest hold over the Vietnamese people—that they were fighting a nationalist war against a colonial oppressor.⁷⁷ As Foster Dulles said two days after the Geneva agreement, “One of the lessons of Geneva was that resistance to communism needs popular support, and that in turn means that people should feel that they are defending their own national institutions.”⁷⁸

Arguing that it was Eisenhower, rather than Congress, who kept the United States out of war is not to argue that he was determined to keep the United States out. Eisenhower’s national security team went to great lengths to satisfy his conditions; if they had been successful, it is likely that the United States would have intervened. But Eisenhower was unwilling to do so otherwise. “No Western Power,” he wrote to SACEUR Alfred Gruenther, “can go to Asia militarily, except as one of a concert of powers, which must include Asiatic [sic] peoples. To contemplate anything else is to lay ourselves open to the charge of imperialism and colonialism or—at the very least—objectionable paternalism.”⁷⁹ Eisenhower’s policy in Southeast Asia was an attempt to find balance between the “unattainable” and the “unacceptable.” Although the settlement in Geneva leaned toward the unacceptable, it bought Eisenhower time during which he would attempt to prevent the domino from falling.

The United States did not go to war in Vietnam during the Eisenhower presidency. This fact takes on added significance because during the next three presidential administrations, more than fifty-eight thousand Americans died fighting there. It is tempting to conclude that this alone makes Eisenhower’s cautious approach to the Indochina crisis a valuable lesson for our time. Doing so, however, would be an oversimplification. The partition of Vietnam gave Eisenhower the opportunity to turn South Vietnam into a bulwark against communism, one that he hoped would prevent subsequent dominoes from falling. By providing substantial monetary and military support for the corrupt regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem and participating in the circumvention of the unification election stipulated by the Geneva Accords, however, the Eisenhower administration contributed to the crises that Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson later confronted.

In addition to independence for the Associated States and the participation of a broad coalition that included both regional and European allies, there were several other conditions Eisenhower insisted on before he was willing to intervene in the French-Indochina War. These included congressional support and submission of the conflict to the UN Security Council. Although a Security Council resolution could not be counted on because of the likelihood of a Soviet veto, submitting the conflict to the UN would have required the articulation of a clear rationale and achievable objectives for the conflict. Although public opinion was not a major consideration, Eisenhower also began preparing the American people for the possibility of war with public statements about the domino theory. One might speculate that, if he had insisted upon the same conditions, Johnson would have decided against Americanizing the Vietnam War in 1965. Johnson did secure congressional support in the form of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and his administration ultimately convinced five other nations to participate, including four that were proposed by Eisenhower in 1954: Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, and the Philippines. Johnson, however, was never able to successfully articulate a clear rationale or achievable objectives. This cost him the support of a broader coalition and the American people.

Despite the lack of an easy lesson to be learned from Eisenhower’s decision not to intervene in the French-Indochina War, the example he set by insisting that difficult conditions be met before committing American troops to battle remains relevant to our time. More recent examples are worth considering. In 1990, Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, invaded and occupied Kuwait, its neighbor to the south. Fearing for the safety of Saudi Arabia and two-thirds of the world’s petroleum reserves, President George H. W. Bush sought and received the support of the UN Security Council, the U.S. Congress, and the majority of the American people for military action in the Persian Gulf. The United States then led a coalition of thirty-five nations that in less than seven months, liberated Kuwait and assured the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia. Although it received its share of criticism, Operation Desert Storm was widely hailed as a model for post–Cold War conflict.

In 2003, the United States went to war in Iraq for the second time in a generation. In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States had launched a “war on terror,” and President George W. Bush was determined to remove Saddam Hussein, who remained in power. Believing that Hussein’s government possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and had ties to al-Qaeda, George W. Bush launched a preemptive strike against Iraq. Like his father, he convinced Congress to authorize force. He also put together a small “coalition of the willing” that included the United Kingdom. He failed, however, in his attempt to win support of the UN and key allies such as Germany, France, and Canada. A slim majority of Americans supported the invasion just before it occurred in March. That majority grew during the major combat phase of the war, but by the fall of 2003, unforeseen complications and the failure to find WMDs caused support to drop. It remained low, and the war dragged on for another eight years. Satisfying a set of conditions before engaging in armed conflict does not assure victory, but comparing the experiences of George H. W. Bush with those of Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush suggests that conditions like those Eisenhower set for intervention in the French-Indochina War create a greater chance for success.