Crisis in Indo-China

...One would think it reasonable that we and the French should not again cut off our nose to spite our face and risk losing the rest of Indo-China and perhaps all Southeast Asia to the Communists...

...They will probably swell to more than a million by May 1, when the French leave Haiphong, the last non-Communist enclave in the North...

...As this is written, an unofficial conference is being organized in Paris to push the candidacy of none other than Bui Hoi for the Premiership of South Vietnam...

...The question naturally arises as to whether France can play both sides of the street—Communist North Vietnam and anti-Communist South Vietnam...

...the Geneva agreements last summer settled little except the fate of North Vietnam, which was surrendered to Communism...

...Apparently, no one has considered whether the U.S...

...Mendes-France arrived in Washington a few weeks later with a substitute for Diem, one Bui Hoi, a cousin of Bao Dai...

...But the International Control Commission, set up under the Geneva Agreement and dominated by the Indians, has interfered to change the nature of the forthcoming elections...

...Bao Dai has seized upon this delay, with at least moral support from the French, to rally about him the formerly strong groups in South Vietnam which owe their existence to him and the French: the Binh Nuyen, a gangster crew that Diem has shoved out of the brothel and gambling trade: and the Hoa Hao and Cao Dai, two armed religious orders which are antagonistic to Diem because he is a Catholic and may establish a strong central government which will end their petty thiefdoms...

...He has to wait for a national assembly until his government has shown more strength, until the Vietminh in the North has shown its true Communist colors...

...Since Diem took office, he has not had an easy time...

...The Indians apparently have not learned their lesson from Nepal, where they destroyed an established feudal government without being able to replace it and thus created near-anarchy and a fertile field for Communist penetration from Tibet...

...That movement, which under the Geneva Agreement still holds two northern provinces on the Laos-Vietnam-China border, is led by a dissident member of the royal family married to a Vietnamese Communist woman from Ho Chi Minh's home territory...

...But that is what some of us also thought when the chain of events began which ultimately led to Dienbienphu and Geneva...

...Meanwhile, French support in Saigon was thrown indirectly behind Nguyen Van Hinh, the son of a notorious French puppet and a French citizen...

...Diem, an uncompromising anti-colonial Vietnamese, is also a knowledgeable anti-Communist...

...The Socialists and others, bowed down by guilt over the seven-year colonial war in Indo-China and bemused by the half-truth that if the French had been decent to Ho Chi Minh he would have turned Titoist, simple nationalist or simple-minded, see negotiation with the Communists for a coalition state as a shining hope...

...After years of French hesitation and ineffectiveness while we tried to talk sense into them, the United States during the Geneva Conference "influenced" ex-Emperor Bao Dai to appoint Ngo Dinh Diem South Vietnam's Premier...

...Seven years of war in Indo-China failed to settle the political future of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia...

...But a greater number have been suggesting that, by removing the anti-Communist Diem, who inspires the Vietminh radio to its most venomous attacks, some sort of settlement might be negotiated...

...There are no natural boundaries, racial or linguistic frontiers separating Laos from Thailand...

...Federal Reserve officials...

...Diem has also had to do battle with the French colonialists...

...But that didn't stop the colonialists...

...The many-sided political conflicts continue, as Sol Sanders shows, to peril the position of the free world in Asia...

...Furthermore, Vietminh propaganda has made him the symbol of former colonial rule, and he hangs like an albatross around the Saigon Government's neck...

...Now a specialist in Asian affairs for Business Week magazine, he has also contributed to numerous other U.S...

...Diem has for some time made little secret of his wish to jettison Bao Dai...

...In Cambodia, the second most important of the Indo-Chinese states, the French have been almost completely pushed out of the picture...

...It is no accident that, at that precise moment, Ho Chi Minh's police occupying Hanoi were armed with French weapons, used in May 1946 to shoot down nationalist demonstrators protesting the Fon-tainebleau conferences between Ho and the French...

...will sit quietly by while Haiphong, now joined by railroad with Nanning in South China, becomes a port of entry for strategic materials which may find their way into Communist China...

...Nor is it likely that the U.S...

...If the French persist in forcing a "coalition" government on the King and the Prime Minister, it can only lead to the subversion of the tiny nation of 1.5 million...

...The economic independence of the country, guaranteed so many times by the French and by Washington, did not finally arrive until January1 of this year, when the influence of the notorious Bank of Indo-China and French control of the exchange and paper issue were transferred to three state banks set up under the guidance of U.S...

...This time, a new anti-Diem coalition has arisen, with French inspiration...

...It is significant that Bui Hoi, Mendes-France's candidate, not only was the "compromise" candidate of the colonialists in the Paris Ministry for the Associated States, but was hailed by the Vietminh radio for an article in L'Express, Mendes-France's Paris mouthpiece, expressing faith in a negotiated settlement with the Vietminh...

...Meanwhile, a Paris delegation headed by Jean Sainteny, a former Indo-China banker and General de Gaulle's representative in Hanoi in 1946-47, has gone to Hanoi to work out a deal with Ho Chi Minh for possible French-Vietminh economic collaboration...

...He has done little since last summer to help Diem bring the unruly warlords into line...

...His claim to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in Saigon ? He is a famous cancer expert who has not lived in Vietnam for many years...

...Less than a fortnight after the tour, matters have reached a boil in Saigon again...

...In 1946, he negotiated with Ho Chi Minh for an all-Vietnamese government representing non-Communists as well as the Communist-led Vietminh...

...But how can a national assembly be elected in areas which have so recently been liberated from French colonial rule or (as in certain areas of the South) Vietminh occupation...

...Hinh threatened Diem with a coup d'etat if he asserted civilian control of the Army...

...As a Catholic, he has faced strong antagonism in sect-dominated South Vietnam, where French colonialism has long played one element against another...

...Despite John Foster Dulles's recent tour of inspection, the strong statements at the SEATO conference in Bangkok, and little attention in the press, a grave situation has arisen on this southern front in the Asian battle to stem Chinese Communist aggression...

...Censored press reports indicate that the situation in Saigon is tense...

...It arises in no small part from the insidious working alliance which continues to exist between the remnants of French colonialism in Indo-China and the muddleheadedness of some Frenchmen of the Left...

...control of Army training and the whole program of aid to South Vietnam...

...That kind of settlement appeals to both wings of what has been so ludicrously called "the new Left" in France: The "left" Gaullists see it as a way of salvaging the Indo-China market for France when the whole country "inevitably" goes Communist...

...With this background, it is easier to understand why Secretary Dulles has been so emphatic in his endorsements of Diem, both in talks with diplomats and in public addresses?such as his television speech on March 8 reporting to the nation on his Southeast Asia tour...

...Furthermore, before an effective government had even been established in the South, he has had to deal with the problem of 600,000 refugees escaping from the Communist areas in North Vietnam...

...But it is in Vietnam, the largest of the Indo-Chinese states and the key to Indo-China and perhaps the whole of Southeast Asia, that the situation is most critical...

...Whatever his value as a figurehead to the disorganized nation, the ex-Emperor took no part in defending his country during the Geneva Conference...

...If Vientiane and Luang Prabang, the Laotian capitals, fall into Communist hands, the Thais will face infiltration, subversion and guerrilla warfare in their northeastern provinces...

...There are obviously those in France naive enough to think so...

...Sanders spent several years in postwar Indo-China and has been writing on Southeast Asian problems for The New Leader since 1950...

...Thus far, there is no indication of what Edgar Faure, the new French Premier, thinks of the situation...

...He was unsuccessful largely because Ho refused him and the non-Communists the post of Minister of the Interior, which controls the police...

...The King, who had hoped to substitute indirect for direct election in the areas so recently handed over by the Vietminh, has abdicated the throne in order to dramatize the situation...

...Hinh has been commander-in-chief of the "Vietnamese Army" —a much-talked-of body that has nominally existed since 1950 but was until recently completely controlled by the French commander of the expeditionary corps in Indo-China...

...Finally—and the whole affair was allowed to rock along for some three weeks by Paris and Washington while Diem's prestige waned —Hinh was shunted off to Paris by order of Bao Dai, still ensconced in a Riviera villa while his country faces its gravest hour...

...periodicals...

...But he believes in peace—so much so that he signed the Stockholm Peace Appeal and was once refused a visa to this country...

...But Diem cannot ditch Bao Dai until he has some state authority, such as a national assembly, from which his government can draw its mandate...

...Thus, Diem faces the dual peril of French puppets on the right and muddleheaded appeasers on the left...

...But his attitude is likely to be dominated by the same groups that have always made French policy in Indo-China...

...While Laos and Cambodia face various international pressures, the free Vietnam regime headed by Ngo Dinh Diem battles for its life against Communist and French sabotage Crisis in Indo-China By Sol Sanders While the American public's attention has been glued to the Formosa Straits, a serious crisis has arisen in Indo-China...

...will be willing to see French technical assistance, and presumably exports of machinery needed to rehabilitate the former French companies in the North, go through Haiphong port to a Communist regime...

...Furthermore, many Vietnamese intellectuals, like those in the recently organized Socialist party, believe that negotiation with the Communists for a coalition government is the policy the South should follow...

...Whether the State Department refused this "deal" because of its suspicions of Bui Hoi, or because—as Secretary Dulles put it in a speech at Bangkok—it is too late to try another candidate in South Vietnam, is not known...

...The French are still the most powerful foreign influence in the country, despite nominal U.S...

...In Laos, where French influence predominates, pressure is being exerted on the royal family to come to terms with the Communist-led Lao Isarak...