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Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  1958, in the developing Sino-Soviet dispute, the DRV tended to indorse Chinese doctrine and methods, but was careful to avoid Peking-style abuse of the Russians. Ho, on occasion, served as mediator in the dispute, but on such central issues as disarmament, "peaceful coexistence," and Moscow's call for "democratic centralism" in the world communist movement, HoTs view by 1960 approximated that of Mao: independent, activist and bellicose) at least insofar as Diem's GVN was concerned. 94/ Nonetheless, DRV support for the Soviet Union) qualified though it was, paid off. In the period 1954 to 1960, the USSR supplanted the CPR as its prime foreign aid donor:

Communist Economic Aid Extended DRV (Millions of U.S. Dollars) 95/ China 1955-1957: Grants 200 Cr edits Total 200 1958 -1960 : Grants 25 Credits ~ Total 100 USSR & East Europe 100 19·5 119·5 159 159

4. Vietnamese Hegemony

The foregoing discussion has been confined to the immediate foreign policy goals of the DRV in the aftermath of Geneva. There remains, however, a more far-reaching objective: Vietnamese domination over Indochina. As mentioned, modern Vietnam is the product of conquest. 96/ The Khmers (Cambodians) and the tribes along Viet Nam's Laotian frontier have historic cause for apprehension over Viet forays westward. In the nineteenth century, just ahead of French imperialism in Indochina, Vietnamese forces occupied and annexed contiguous Laotian frontier provinces (those which were roughly the territory controlled by DRV-linked Pathet Lao in 1963). 97 / But in current era, the furthest reaching of all Viet expansionist aspirations were those of the Communist Party of Indochina (ICP)) which from its foundation aimed at the establishment of political control over Laos and Cambodia as well as Vietnam) and which regarded a workers and peasants government over a unified Indochina both feasible and necessary. According to a l "'io Dong Party history published in Hanoi in 1960: "The Vietnamese) Cambodian) and laotian proletariat have politically and economically to be closely related in spite of their differences in language, custom, and race." 98/ The history quoted echoes the sense of one of the earliest known Lao Dong Party directives) captured in South Vietnam, dated November, 1951; entitled: "Remarks on the Official Appearance of the Vietnamese Workers Party." In a section labeled "Reasons for the Rh