France and Indo-China
ARON, RAYMOND
France and Indo-China A Paris editor finds little hope in the struggle By Raymond Aron This article indicates the widespread feeling that prevails in France toward Indo-China. Raymond Aron is an...
...For some time now, this seven-year-old conflict, whose cost has mounted into billions of francs, has dominated French politics...
...If we handle matters on the local level with sufficient understanding, however, this much-discussed right of secession may prove less overwhelmingly important than it now seems...
...But this war has had another consequence which is even more disastrous: It adds to the conflicts which are tearing this nation apart...
...policy...
...The Navy utters empty phrases about protecting French bases...
...The French Parliament might well embrace the policy of a united Europe if this distant campaign were not diverting so much of our Army...
...Next come political arguments: A dozen divisions are pinned down in Indo-China some 8,000 miles from home, reducing France's military effectiveness in Europe by that much...
...Yet, because we are pledged to a victory over Ho Chi Minh, we go on fighting...
...The resulting disparity between the French military potential and the forces which Germany is capable of raising has the effect of paralyzing French governments and legislators...
...The political leaders talk about defending the Constitution of the French Union...
...The late Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny, almost alone, understood that the war in Indo-China no longer made sense as a part of French policy...
...I am convinced that the nationalists will not insist on availing themselves of this privilege...
...We often reproach some of our Vietnamese friends for not seeming to be sufficiently devoted to the French cause, but they have a very cogent answer: France, they point out, has not yet made a clear decision on Indo-China...
...And, meanwhile, the disproportion between the sacrifices required and the issues involved produces mounting popular discontent...
...Communists and fellow-travelers have headed the campaign against "this dirty war," but many Frenchmen who are firmly opposed to Communism also do not approve of the present policy (if the word "policy" can be applied to a succession of piecemeal decisions which always lag years behind the problems with which they are supposed to deal...
...Paris The peace feelers sent out recently by Ho Chi Minh have once more brought the war in Indo-China to the forefront of everyone's consciousness...
...Inspiring and maintaining Vietnamese patriotic sentiments against the Vietminh is by definition an exceedingly difficult task...
...Hence, in order to avoid the charge of being collaborationists, the nationalist leaders continue to proclaim their independence of the French and their right to secede from the French Union...
...The first is a humanitarian one: No conceivable strategic or other advantage, it is felt, could be worth the death of so many men...
...And are the native leaders who would receive power under the French plan actually representative of the Vietnamese people's yearning for national independence...
...The reasons why every Frenchman passionately hopes for an end to the war are clear and direct...
...The French and loyal Vietnamese units in Indo-China go on fighting heroically, and we are all, as it were, caught in a trap...
...In an incredible atmosphere of hopeless irresolution—which prevails equally in Paris and Saigon—we fight on...
...and, if the final decision should be in favor of a negotiated peace with Ho Chi Minh, it is the pro-French Vietnamese who would suffer the cruelest fate...
...he is a leading anti-Communist and has always been sympathetic to U.S...
...We have made some progress, but we are still far from our objectives...
...Hence, troubled consciences, both in Saigon and in Paris, render even more burdensome the moral weight of the whole affair...
...The aim is to make it possible for the non-Communist nationalists to rally enough support around ex-Emperor Bao Dai to create a native Vietnamese army capable of defending the country and releasing the French expeditionary forces...
...The policy which is today being enunciated—and more or less carried out—is directed toward complete independence for Vietnam...
...The fact that even a man of his views feels this way about the Indo-China struggle points up the dilemma confronting our own Asian planners as the war enters a new phase...
...Can this patriotism be developed, for example, while the French Army is still in Vietnam...
...Raymond Aron is an editor of Figaro...
...The cost of carrying it on for a single year is already more than all of France's investments in Indo-China...
...Thus far, we have been unable to find the right leaders—whatever may be the fine qualities of those who are now attempting to create a non-Communist Vietnamese state...
...The war in Indo-China is now part of the worldwide struggle to halt Communist expansion...
...This discontent has not yet resulted in ending the war...
...When it started in 1946, however, it did not have this character, and the responsibility for the original rupture did not lie entirely with Ho Chi Minh...
Vol. 37 • January 1954 • No. 1
