Page:Pentagon-Papers-Part IV. A. 5.djvu/278

Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3 NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011  "the planning stage, and the Vietnamese government is handicapped by incompetent cabinet ministers and the lack of competent administrators . While Bao Dai refuses to assume active direction of the affairs of state, he remains hostile toward new leadership and democratic activities."

"Of more basic importance in the failure of Vietnamese to rally to the Vietnamese government following the French grant of independence within the French Union in 1949 have been the following:

a. Many Vietnamese doubt the ability of French Union forces to defeat the Viet Minh and prefer to remain apart from the struggle.

b. The French Government had not dared to promise complete national independence at some future date, as demand ed by the Vietnamese, because of the fear that the French national assembly would then refuse to support a war in a 'lost' portion of the French Union.

c. The Vietnamese, despite many evolutionary steps toward complete independence since 1949, are generally inclined to believe that the French intend to retain effective control over the affairs of Vietnam.

d. The nationalist appeal and military prestige of the Viet Minh remains strong among significant numbers of the Vietnamese.""

2. Geneva, 1954

The Geneva Agreements of 1954 brought to an end nine years of open warfare between the French and the Viet Minh. In 1950, the conflict had been transformed from a purely colonial into a quasi-civil war in which the Viet Minh found themselves pitted against a non-communist Vietnamese state with nominal independence, enjoying significant U.S. support. Nonetheless, the conflict was settled by the original protagonists: France and the DRV. As of the summer of 1954, U.S. assessments anticipated that a continuing French presence in Indochina would offset the Viet Minh menace in North Vietnam. The U. S. expected its own "political action"-- e.g., forming SEATO -- further to buttress "free Vietnam." Initially, at least, the U. S. looked on Diem as an unknoym quantity with uncertain chances of succeeding against two sorts of challenges: the political turbulence within South Vietnam on the one hand, and on the other organized, communist-led remnants of the Viet Minh apparatus operating in concert with the DRV. In the years through 1960, estimates of the relative urgency of these two challenges varied. U .S. intelligence est imates rarely expressed confidence that Diem could overcome both Rh