Crisis at Geneva
TAS, SAL & ABRAMOVITCH, RAPHAEL R.
CRISIS AT GENEVA Lack of military force to stop Indo-China Reds places pressure on the West By Sal Tas Geneva With the fall of Dienbienphu, the Geneva Conference discussions of Indo-China really...
...There can be little doubt that the Communists stalled the discussions until the fortress had fallen to the Red troops of General Vo Nguyen Giap...
...When the Radicals pressed anew for the debate, Laniel demanded a vote of confidence...
...The West will have to decide-whether it will write off all of Indo-China or take a stand...
...This tragic story began three weeks ago, when Dulles urged Britain to send troops into Indo-China...
...They are distressing and bloody, but they are not deadly and they are infinitely preferable to defeats...
...In a sense, the Assembly vote was purely negative: While the French Parliament is against the present policy and for a truce, it sees no possibility of, and fears the responsibility for, a quick, dramatic switch of policy which would mean the abdication of France as a great power...
...Eden dominated the situation...
...Here, however, we paid the penalty for the hesitations of the Eisenhower Administration...
...At that time, Indo-China could have been saved and so could Dienbienphu...
...In France, it is as difficult to form a cabinet for defeat as it is for victory...
...The experience of Korea demonstrated that the Kremlin can be compelled by determined, concerted action to halt for a time, at least its expansionist drive...
...Bidault is not yet down...
...But, if Vietnam is partitioned, Laos and Cambodia will be so exposed that only a strong Western guarantee can support these territories: and such a guarantee, beyond the powers of the French colonial armies, must include the United States...
...Chinese Communist Premier Chou En-lai has displayed no subtlety whatever at the conference, taking his cue from Molotov at every turn...
...The contending troops will have to be disengaged no easy matter in a jungle battle...
...And that is to the good...
...That is a very dangerous policy...
...What is more...
...In a way, the fall of Dienbienphu, which followed, removed a mortgage from French policy...
...As long as there was a chance of Anglo-American intervention to save Indo-China, the French parliamentarians who favor an immediate peace in Indo-China waited...
...Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai both rejected any talk of partition...
...The Russians would rush into the resulting vacuum, and for all the clumsiness of their diplomacy as evidenced at Berlin they might achieve considerable success by playing upon Western European fear and vanity...
...The defeat, and the previous refusal of Ho's officers to permit the Red Cross to evacuate the wounded, destroyed many French illusions...
...Although Eden will do his best to arrive at a compromise, his room for maneuver is clearly limited...
...The Communist strategy seems to have been aimed either at toppling the Laniel Government in Paris in the midst of this conference, or else at forcing it to embrace a dangerous compromise at the conference...
...Even if no political deal accompanies the truce (and Ho may not accept a truce without a palatable political deal), there will be plenty of room for misunderstanding and betrayal...
...otherwise, British prestige would be tarnished and the fiction of Britain as a dominant world power destroyed...
...Hence, for the foreseeable future we can expect to get only Korean wars...
...If Dulles wanted "united action," as he said at the start of the conference, then there was only one course open to him: to go it alone...
...Eisenhower has declared that the United States will not take any action in Indo-China until the diplomats have shown whether they can settle the question at the conference table...
...can prevent the Communists from destroying whether by political or by military means the section of Indo-China that remains after partition...
...Accordingly, they rejected every other approach and even refused to help the soldiers of Dienbienphu, for they wanted the French to accede to partition and do so without delay...
...The French, hamstrung by the bad strategy of their generals in Indo-China, could make no independent moves...
...For a "deal" that is loaded with booby-traps, a partition that is not maintained, will sooner or later force the U.S...
...For if Geneva does result in a truce in Indo-China, its fate will depend on its executors on the scene...
...This Communist rigidity at Geneva may help us to reforge Western unity...
...Now partition is more likely...
...If the United States takes a firm stand now, it can still save the situation...
...Western intervention would have served notice on the Communists that they could win only by defeating the entire Western world...
...There is no doubt that the British came to Geneva with the firm intention of making a deal on Indo-China probably with a plan for partition...
...But once the attempt at intervention failed, they rose to attack Laniel and Bidault...
...If anything, they have signaled their intention of "freezing" the Korean problem just like the German problem: the Communist proposal for Koreacreation of a coalition government, which would then supervise "free elections"was a carbon copy of the plan for Germany advanced at Berlin...
...They have not made a single conciliatory move on Korea...
...Eisenhower tried to feel out the Senate first and only succeeded in stirring dormant isolationist sentiment...
...So far as anyone can see...
...If Britain and America had had a common policy on Indo-China, they could probably have carried France along with them...
...Naturally, both parties started out by asking for the maximum...
...Some are already talking of overthrowing the Laniel Cabinet and replacing it with a government of capitulators, with Pierre Mendes-France most prominently mentioned to head it...
...This is clearly a warning to the Kremlin...
...Four interpellations were pressed...
...Only fear of the U.S...
...Laniel sought to delay the interpellations on Indo-China and could have done so if he had not told Radical Rene Mayer that he would accept a full-dress debate on Indo-China on May 14...
...If America had announced that it was intervening in Indo-China, the Russians and, probably, the Chinese would have had the shock of their lives...
...Yet, no one knows how to put it into effect, for there is no clear geographical line dividing the opposing forces and no unity of purpose among the native leaders and population in the non-Communist portions of Indo-China...
...The British Foreign Office follows a logical policy: If it lacks the strength or the courage to take action itself, it makes every effort to prevent others from taking action...
...When his advisers showed him how dangerous such a debate would be in the midst of the conference...
...And what they could not do in Korea they could not hope to do in Indo-China...
...Only in that way can the West salvage something from the mounting defeat at Geneva...
...Hence, Washington must make it unmistakably clear to Moscow and Peking that any violation of the prospective Indo-Chinese truce will constitute a breach of world peace and bring the gravest consequences...
...the Communists are acting as a bloca Kremlin-dominated bloc...
...Once he had asked for a truce to evacuate the wounded from Dienbienphu, however, he was cornered...
...And here is a second limitation for Eden: No Indo-Chinese deal can be put into operation without the open or tacit consent of the United States...
...The French National Assembly, for reasons we shall make clear, gave the Laniel Cabinet a vote of confidence...
...If it decides to take a stand, it will have to underwrite any agreement made in Geneva, and such a guarantee will have to be armed...
...It is, therefore, sad that such a guarantee was not made explicit before the conference, as Dulles proposed...
...Some observers have suggested that the United States retire into isolationism for a time in order to shock the Western nations out of their present mood of defeatism and capitulation...
...initiative...
...Moreover, no one knows how to counteract the political and military infiltration which the Communists have employed so successfully heretofore...
...Insofar as the first aim is concerned, it can be said that the Communists failed...
...I do not believe that matters have reached so critical a stage, however...
...But what can one think of the interpellation of the Gaullists, who (a) have representatives in the Laniel Cabinet and (b) are the most colonial-minded element in France...
...The disunity even in the ranks of those who would compromise with Ho Chi Minh was shown in the debate which gave Laniel a vote of confidence...
...A feeling of frustration and bitterness pervades American circles here, with precious little remaining of Western unity...
...Truman sent troops into Korea without asking anybody's advice...
...The most logical of these was that of the Socialists, who have consistently criticized Laniel's policy in all fields...
...Moreover, there are innumerable cross-currents in the French political stream...
...If he brings an Indo-China truce back with him from Geneva, he will be able to stand off all the Mendes-Frances in Parliament...
...Bidault is certainly not the man to favor partition or any other compromise with the Communists...
...But a coalition government, as everyone now knows, is a Communist front at the highest level...
...He got it by a handsome majority...
...each group has its own private prejudices...
...If a demarcation line is drawn, it will have to be respected...
...The Paris crisis arose as a result of the diplomatic defeat of Dulles and Bidault on the question of Anglo-American intervention in Indo-China...
...CRISIS AT GENEVA Lack of military force to stop Indo-China Reds places pressure on the West By Sal Tas Geneva With the fall of Dienbienphu, the Geneva Conference discussions of Indo-China really begin...
...Nevertheless, all is not lost...
...Further Communist arrogance will, in turn, stiffen the attitude of both France and the United States...
...to intervene full-scale...
...On another level, they have circulated the rumor that they will seek a coalition government...
...Nevertheless, negotiations for a deal have begun...
...Even the capitulards do not agree among themselves, and the capitulation of one will taste bitter in the mouth of another...
...No will not get that at Geneva...
...Preoccupied with their fading imperial prestige, they would obviously have had no choice but to join in lest they lose influence to America in the Commonwealth...
...the decisions that were shunned then will have to be faced sooner or later...
...Thus, the American initiative was still-born...
...In the light of the Communist altitude toward the Dienbienphu wounded, one must be skeptical of the future of any deal made on Indo-China...
...It could hardly act otherwise...
...He will not get Laos or Cambodia either...
...One limitation is the insolence of the Communists, who may be overconfident after Dienbienphu...
...Britain, which refused to send troops to Indo-China along with American troops, will certainly not send them on its own...
...The French Deputies who consider Bidault's policy insufficiently conciliatory in connection with the present negotiations knew very well that a Cabinet crisis would compromise the Geneva discussions and delay any chance of negotiations with Ho Chi Minh...
...The desperate situation in Indo-China made it impossible to hold out against inviting Ho Chi Minh's men to sit down at Geneva...
...What this means is that the so-called British "victory" over Dulles a fortnight ago is a very temporary one...
...France is now about to pass through an extremely dangerous political period...
...The Russians have offered no quid pro quo for the gains they are making in Indo-China...
...What would the British have done then...
...The French troops will have to be safely evacuated, the French population safeguarded, and anti-Communist Vietnamese protected from the revenge of the Vietminh...
...Australia and New Zealand, whose security is directly affected, would have been forced to support the U.S...
...He may getde facto if not de jure part of northern Vietnam...
...Ho Chi Minh's delegates also declared themselves the spokesmen for Laos and Cambodia, which means that they will seek the whole of Indo-China...
...If they want to avoid a third world war, therefore, the Russians would be wise to curb their appetites and not hold out for unacceptable terms...
...Laniel withdrew his promise...
...It means that the United States will not accept an unacceptable deal at Geneva, that it will not permit the loss of all Indo-China to the Communists...
...No longer can the French delegates here be bullied with the sufferings of the Dienbienphu soldiers...
...As a result, these same men who consistently lacked the courage for a vigorous policyshowed that they also lacked the courage to capitulate before Ho Chi Minh...
...From that moment on...
...Acheson was right when he said that we can only afford Korean wars, but the same applies to Russia...
Vol. 37 • May 1954 • No. 20
