Turning Points: The Role of the State Department in Vietnam (1945–1975)

By Thomas J. Corcoran and Andrew R. Finlayson

Details how the U.S. State Department attempted, and failed, to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression and the powerful domestic political influences that ultimately led to America’s defeat.

Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of US State Department policy during America’s involvement with South Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam. As an ambassador and with over 30 years of diplomatic experience—beginning in 1948 when he was assigned to Hanoi and involving other postings in Southeast Asia—he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
The result is a thoughtful, objective and well-researched study that chronicles the key policy decisions made by the US State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975; decisions that ultimately led to the first war lost by the United States. In his extensive study, Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in orthodox histories of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate
• Release date: Nov 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781636243689

Thomas J. Corcoran

Thomas J. Corcoran began his Foreign Service career in 1948. His first assignments abroad were in Spain and then, in 1950 in Hanoi and Hue in Vietnam, which was then under French control. He became the Chargé d’Affaires in Vientiane, Laos and then Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 1952. He went back to Hanoi from the beginning of September 1954 until about December 12, 1955. He was there about 14 months. He later served in Upper Volta, Haiti, and in Quebec, Canada and again in Vietnam for several years. He was Chargé d’Affaires ad interim (Laos) from August 1975 to March 1978 and he was ambassador to Burundi from 1978 until retiring from the State Department in 1980.

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TURNING POINTS

The Role of the State Department in

Vietnam (1945–1975)

Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran

Edited by

Stephen Sherman

A Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (VVFH) Book

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2023 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

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Copyright © 2023 Vietnam Veterans for Factual History

Hardcover Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-367-2

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-63624-368-9

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Front cover image: A CIA map of Indochina and seal of the U.S. Department of State.

(NCpedia and Wikimedia)

Contents

Introduction by Andrew R. Finlayson (Col., USMC, Ret.)

About the Author

Part IThe Beginnings (1945–1954)

Part IIBeginnings of United States Involvement (1955–1963)

Part IIIDeepening U.S. Involvement (1964–1968)

Part IVConclusion of U.S. Involvement (1968–1975)

Appendix A: The Path to Viet-Nam

Selected Bibliography

Endnotes

Index

To the Author, Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran, and to William Lloyd Stearman (Head of National Security Council’s Indochina Staff in 1973), both of whom saw the importance of recording and preserving this history.

Introduction

Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of U.S. State Department policy during our nation’s involvement with South Vietnam. He produced a thoughtful, unbiased, objective, and well-researched manuscript that followed in chronological sequence the key policy decisions made by our national leaders that ultimately led to the first war our nation lost. As an ambassador and with over 30 years of diplomatic experience, which began in 1950 when he was assigned to Hà Nội and involved other postings in Southeast Asia, he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam and so he embarked on an extensive study of why we made the decisions we made that led to the first lost war in our history. His work tells the story of the role played by the U.S. State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975.

For those who expect to read a story that conforms to the orthodox or conventional history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, they will be sorely disappointed since Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in these interpretations, many of which are still held as sacrosanct by some influential historians. Unfortunately, the orthodox interpretation of the war, one that attributes evil intent to the American involvement and heaps abuse upon our South Vietnamese ally, as well as describing the war as unwinnable, will not find any evidence in Corcoran’s work to support such claims. These false claims are still prevalent in much of the literature on the war and they have done lasting damage to the credibility of the United States and our ability to forge effective national strategies for dealing with aggression.

The central themes of the book are contained in the first and last pages. On the first page, he quotes from a reviewer of President Nixon’s book, Memoirs, to present a picture of Machiavellian scheming when it would be equally easy and certainly equally fair, to present a picture of bewildered men trying to find a solution to a difficult situation. What he is conveying is his opinion, while not absolving American decision makers of fault, that a careful analysis of the facts at play at the time decisions were being considered informs us that the policy blunders were made by well-intentioned and intelligent men, but they were woefully ill-informed or poorly informed when those decisions were made.

On the last page, Ambassador Corcoran sums up the dilemma that faced the American leaders, from Truman to Nixon, by identifying why the decisions taken were flawed and ultimately led to our nation’s defeat. He quotes Henry Kissinger’s assessment, … no policy could succeed unless it had national opinion behind it. While many may view this opinion as simplistic and self-serving, it echoes the injunction of Carl Von Clausewitz who warned that for any war policy to be successful it requires the support of the government, the military, and the people. In this regard, it is difficult to argue that our leaders were able to successfully align these three elements of our society in support of the war. This division, which is apparent in every policy consideration outlined by Ambassador Corcoran, led to decisions made that did not enjoy broad support in any of the three key elements of our society and were often opposed or sabotaged by bureaucratic or ideological interests within these three elements.

The book is divided into four chronological parts, beginning with 1945 and ending with 1975. In Part I, The Beginnings (1945–1954), Corcoran examines the policy debates within the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations regarding the conflict between the French and the Việt Minh. The tensions between the French desire to reestablish control over their Vietnamese colony after World War II and the anti-colonial position of the United States are explained, and he demonstrates how these were exacerbated by the fear of communist expansion in Europe, the success of the communists in China in 1949, and the Korean War. Corcoran tells us that American policy makers were clearly aware from the very beginning that Hồ Chí Minh was not the idealistic nationalist so often portrayed by many historians, but a Comintern operative and founding member of the French Communist Party who systematically and ruthlessly murdered or betrayed to the French security services other non-communist, Vietnamese nationalists.

With the defeat of the French at Điện in 1954, America found itself in a very delicate position where the French withdrawal from Indochina created a power vacuum that would only benefit the communists and threaten several other Southeast Asian nations confronting communist-led insurgencies. He also points out, The Geneva Agreements did not end the war in Indochina, nor did they impose political or territorial settlements. They were, in fact, cease fire agreements. He clearly points out the Geneva Agreements were only between two parties, the Việt Minh and the French, and were not signed by either the United States or the Republic of South Vietnam, another fact overlooked by many authors of books on the war.

In Part II, Beginnings of United States Involvement (1955–1963), Corcoran begins with an examination of the Geneva Agreements and why they posed many significant obstacles for United States policy. He provides insights into why free elections on the unification of Vietnam were impossible in 1956, since neither the leaders of North Vietnam and the Republic of South Vietnam were prepared to accept them, and he gives the reasons why. The various debates over the efficacy of President Johnson’s policy of gradual response and bombing halts, designed to show restraint and at the same time force the communists to the negotiating table, are covered. The conflicts in opinion on the proper courses of action, and the influence of public opinion and the national press on decision making, are explained, as well as the divergent views of LBJ’s (Lyndon Baines Johnson) own National Security staff, the U.S. State Department, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. The State Department role in the disastrous coup of President Diệm is somewhat glossed over by Corcoran but he clearly demonstrates the removal of Diệm was not well thought out and led to several years of instability in South Vietnam which created the situation where it was necessary to use American military forces to save our ally.

In Part III, Deepening U.S. Involvement (1964–1968), Corcoran examines the various efforts by President Johnson and his advisors to find a substitute for President Diệm and stem the tide of communist success his removal facilitated. The Gulf of Tonkin resolution is explained as well as the dilemma facing LBJ by the expanding role played by North Vietnamese Army conventional forces infiltrating down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The debate of how best to employ American military forces is covered, especially the use of bombing North Vietnam and the various bombing pauses that never led to any substantive peace negotiations. It is evident Corcoran views this period of U.S. involvement as one of failure after failure. However, he is also honest when he details the role the State Department played in approving many of the policies that led to failure during this period. No viable alternatives to the actions of LBJ were offered by the State Department, and in some cases they endorsed actions that proved to be based more on wishful thinking than a grasp of reality. Of particular note was the pig-headed insistence of the State Department (and, to a lesser extent, the CIA) to adhere to the 1962 Geneva Accords that prevented the introduction of American military forces into Laos, despite the flagrant disregard by the North Vietnamese to adhere to these accords. The State Department was instrumental in vetoing any plan to invade Laos to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail using U.S. ground forces, thus allowing the North Vietnamese to continue to use the trail to send their conventional military forces and military equipment and supplies into South Vietnam along that county’s long western border.

In Part IV, Conclusion of U.S. Involvement (1968–1975), Corcoran covers the efforts of the Nixon Administration to salvage a just peace in South Vietnam, and to do so without suffering international humiliation and the erosion of allied faith in America’s commitment to its treaty obligations. He informs us that Kissinger and Nixon did not trust the State Department and provides ample evidence to support this view. He quotes Henry Kissinger on this, Many in the State Department shared the outlook advocated by the leading newspapers or the more dovish figures in the Congress partly out of conviction, partly out of fear. This led to Secretary Rogers often attempting to thwart the policies and actions recommended by Nixon and to leak his opposition to a friendly press. Corcoran also examines the impact Watergate had on Vietnam policy, which, Kissinger explained, The one circumstance we could not foresee was the debacle of Watergate. It was that which finally sealed the fate of South Vietnam by the erosion of executive authority, strangulation of South Vietnam wholesale by reducing aid, and legislative prohibitions against enforcing the peace agreement in the face of unprovoked North Vietnamese violations.

If there is one failing in Corcoran’s story of the State Department’s role in the policy decisions made prior to and during the Vietnam War, it is his inability to explain why so many intelligent and experienced foreign-service professionals and foreign-policy experts failed to understand that the North Vietnamese communists were never going to agree to and then observe a negotiated end to their aggression against South Vietnam. This was a key mistake and the one that ultimately led to disaster for both the United States and its South Vietnamese allies.

This book is valuable since it reflects the views of a career American diplomat with many years of firsthand experience in both the State Department and Southeast Asia. The reader must keep in mind that the book was written before 1994 and since that time more information about the role of the State Department and other instruments of national policy formulation during the Vietnam War have come to light. However, that does not diminish in any way the importance of this book or the keen insights of its author. It is a compelling tale of how the State Department attempted, and failed, to save South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression and the powerful domestic political influences that ultimately led to America’s defeat. It is not an apologia, but rather a clear eyed and accurate examination of well-intentioned actions that were seriously flawed. It is a cautionary tale worthy of careful consideration by anyone interested in United States foreign policy during the Vietnam War.

Andrew R. Finlayson

Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

Tom Corcoran (right) was consul in Hué during the 1966 Buddhist Struggle movement there. He and Jim Bullington (left) were awarded Superior Honor Awards by Ambassador Lodge (middle) for their service during that time. (Nguyễen Văn Nghĩ a, FSN political assistant)

From left to right: Ambassador Larry C. Williamson, acting director general of the Foreign Service at the time; Rev. James Blackburn, interim rector of St. John’s Church, Georgetown Parish; and Ambassador Thomas J. Corcoran, secretary and chair of the Memorial Committee of Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired, at their annual Memorial Day ceremony at the DACOR Memorial Section of Rock Creek Cemetery, May 28, 1990. (Courtesy of DACOR, an organization of foreign-affairs professionals)

About the Author

Thomas J. Corcoran was born in New York in 1920. He graduated from St. John’s University. During World War II, he served in the Navy and was stationed aboard a supply ship in the Black Sea during the meeting of Allied leaders at Yalta in the Crimea.

He began his Foreign Service career in 1948. His first assignments abroad were in Spain and then, in 1950, in Hà Nội in Vietnam, which was then under French control. He became the chargé d’affaires in Vientiane, Laos, and then Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1952 before returning to Hà Nội from the beginning of September 1954 until about December 12, 1955. He was there about 14 months. Mr. Corcoran later served in Upper Volta, Haiti, and in Quebec, Canada. He was chargé d’affaires ad interim (Laos) from August 1975 to March 1978 and ambassador to Burundi from 1978 until retiring from the State Department in 1980. He talked about his career in some detail in an interview for the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, which can be found on their website: https://adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Corcoran,%20Thomas%20J.toc.pdf

Mr. Corcoran graduated from the Armed Forces Staff College in Norfolk and the National War College in Washington. He was a secretary and governor of DACOR (Diplomatic and Consular Officers Retired) and a member of the City Tavern Club. He died of heart ailments on November 27, 1994, at his home in Washington.

In his retirement, he created this manuscript. Prior to his death, he turned it over to William Lloyd Bill Stearman, a State Department colleague, with whom he had shared a villa in Sài Gòn in 1966. Before Bill passed away in 2021, he directed his wife to pass the manuscript to Vietnam Veterans for Factual History, with which he had become involved during the preceding decade.

PART I

The Beginnings (1945–1954)

Before World War II, few Americans knew or cared much about Indochina or, as the maps then styled it, French Indochina. No American university offered a course of Indochinese or, for that matter, of Southeast Asian studies.¹ When events in Indochina began to dominate the news, few Americans possessed what the 19th-century historian Lord Macaulay called knowledge of the plot of the preceding acts sufficient to permit a full understanding of these events. The plot was complicated and the players temperamental. Some of the most important action took place off stage, at least off the Indochinese stage. It is easy, as a book reviewer remarked about Indochina in 1954, to present a picture of Machiavellian scheming when it would be equally easy and certainly equally fair, to present picture of bewildered men trying to find a solution to a difficult situation.²

Americans concerned about the Far East before the war were interested in China, the Philippines and, of course, Japan, all of them in those days far away but somewhat familiar through commercial, military, and missionary contacts. The wartime alliance with China and the liberation and independence of the Philippines seemed as natural then as did the war with Japan. However, none of this knowledge went very deep. The details of how the Americans conquered the Philippines in 1898–1902 at the cost of 250,000 lives had, for example, faded from the American memory.³

The great mobilization and the massive deployment for war in the Pacific shrank oceanic distances and sharpened the interest of Americans in all the countries on the opposite shore of the great ocean. Nevertheless, those countries were still relatively far away and regarded from the point of view of distant spectators. The spectators saw colonialism as bad and the end of the European colonial empires as good. They welcomed the new governments that succeeded the former colonial regimes just as they welcomed the independence of the Philippines. They assumed relations with the new states would be good and trade with them would expand. They took it for granted that China would survive, that it would cooperate more or less with the United States, and that it would coexist with the new indigenous regimes taking form in the postcolonial era. They became aware, only slowly and painfully, of the power vacuum created in the Far East by the termination of the European colonial presence, the collapse of Japanese wartime dominance, and the consequent destabilization of the region.⁴

The effects of World War II on Indochina were considerable and lasting. However, as French scholar Bernard Fall was to point out, there were practically no American observers on the scene at the time and the French were not talking very much about developments concerning which they were neither proud nor happy.⁵ Many of the French in Indochina—having been forced to live with, and to cope with, the combined results of defeat in Europe and Japanese dominance in the Far East—were inclined to blame their troubles at least in part on the acts or omissions of their American allies or, sometimes, of the Anglo-Saxons jointly. They were quick to recall the inconclusive Anglo–French naval talks in Singapore in June 1939 (which the Americans and the Dutch did not attend), the American disinclination to act against Japanese aggression in the 1930s, the American decision not to sell aircraft to General Catroux, governor general of Indochina in 1940, and Lord Halifax’s counsel of moderation when Catroux indicated his intention to respect the Anglo–French alliance after the fall of France.⁶ They recalled their early impression that the United States understood their situation and would tolerate a certain degree of acquiescence in the face of Japanese demands for military facilities. They recalled that on June 30, 1940, Under Secretary of State Welles told the French ambassador the United States Government did not believe it could enter into conflict with Japan and that should Japan attack Indochina the United States would not oppose such action. They remembered Secretary of State Hull’s statement that America’s policy in the Far East at that time should be limited to encouraging countries like Indochina to delay and parlay.⁷

After the fall of France, the Armistice with Hitler on June 25, 1940, and Japanese recognition of the Vichy Government, the French administration in Indochina had little room for maneuver in any event. To complicate things further, the Thais, with Japanese advice and consent, attacked Indochina on June 12, 1940. Although the French won at Koh Chang, in the Gulf of Siam—what Admiral Decoux, Catroux’s successor as governor general, called the only pitched battle fought by French naval forces in two world wars⁸—the Japanese eventually imposed a settlement which cost three Cambodian and two Lao provinces. The victorious allies forced Thailand to give back these provinces at the end of the war but the United States, mindful of the importance of Asian nationalism and the appeal of anticolonialism in this case, protected Thailand from any further punishment. The French remembered that too.⁹

Americans had entertained high expectations for the postwar period in Asia and in these they were sorely disappointed. They had intended to act in the new situation in concert with a peaceful China. Failure of American efforts to reconcile the Kuomintang Government in China and the Chinese Communists completely changed the postwar situation. The United States, for all its benevolent intentions, found itself the political and propaganda target of the Chinese Communists. In the face of the new situation, the United States found it necessary to switch from emphasis on economic assistance, such as it was applying in Europe, to an effort to organize against the particular Asian threat.¹⁰ It saw this threat as an attempt to sweep United States influence out of Asia, thus making immense resources available to the Soviet Union. Great changes were going on in China but the Sino–Soviet ideological split was still in the future and the United States required a valid interlocutor and ally to replace the old China in the Far East. Japan was the obvious choice. Japan’s economic recovery, the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the United States–Japan Defense Treaty, and acceptance of United States forces stationed in Japan all consolidated this selection.

The North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950, and the United Nations’ response, tangled the broad United States role in containment of communist expansion in the Far East with its specific role as United Nations agent in containing the invasion.¹¹

As the United States sent forces to Korea, it began developing the concept of a security defense line running from the Aleutians through Japan and Taiwan to the Philippines. Not surprisingly in this context, it also began sending supplies to the French forces fighting a communist-led opponent in Indochina.¹²

United States military actions in response to both the Chinese Communist assumption of power in China and the North Korean invasion of South Korea produced a peculiar and lingering side effect.¹³

The United States’ actions, dampening the feeling of insecurity in and concerning Southeast Asia, made certain Asian nations, notably India, freer to express disapproval of aspects of U.S. policy. These Asians were disinclined to accept the American analysis of the global power situation once the situation near their own area seemed to have achieved a sort of equilibrium consequent upon the United States’ forward strategy. Their own analysis, in their own view quite objective, projected a power struggle and a simultaneous ideological conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union with neither good nor evil confined to one side or the other. They saw United States aims regarding the right of nations to determine their own destinies, and the organization of a world in which nations might live without war, as potential meddling in national affairs and potential limiting of national freedoms. Some of them, reflecting uneasily on the Japanese past, appeared to have some doubts about the choice of Japan as America’s partner in the region.¹⁴

Nevertheless, the United States’ perception of Indochina was an idealistic one flowing from the benevolent American attitude towards Asia in general. From 1945 to 1954, it pretty much remained so under three presidents and five secretaries of state. Global and European considerations impinged on Indochina policy during these years as they had during World War II. In the postwar period, these considerations operated to strengthen the negotiating position of the former colonial power and to inhibit the American effort to bring about genuine independence for the Indochina states. This delay was no doubt a key factor influencing the eventual communist victory in Indochina 21 years later but by no means the only one.

As early as August 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had decided he did not want to see a reestablishment of French colonial presence in Indochina after the war.¹⁵ He expressed his opinion in strong language to the effect that the French had milked Indochina for one hundred years, the people were worse off than they were at the beginning, and they were entitled to something better than that. Officers in the Department of State were set to work drafting and clearing position papers incorporating the president’s views and including studies of schemes for independence and self-government of the countries of Indochina to be achieved under international supervision. Various alternative timetables were suggested.¹⁶ This was the first specific American policy decision on Indochina, and it clearly remained policy until after the reestablishment of the French military and political presence at the end of 1945 and the beginning of 1946. On March 27, 1943, President Roosevelt suggested to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden the establishment of a postwar trusteeship for Indochina rather than the return of the area to France.¹⁷ Subsequently, in obvious pursuit of the same general line of policy, Roosevelt forbade the provision of American air support and air supply to French elements who began fighting the Japanese in Indochina near the war’s end.¹⁸

In January 1944, President Roosevelt told British Ambassador Lord Halifax that he had, for over a year, expressed the opinion that Indochina should not go back to France but that it should be administered by an international trusteeship.¹⁹ Roosevelt again raised the trusteeship at Yalta in February 1945, suggesting the inclusion of one or two Indochinese and even a Frenchman in the Trusteeship Council, balancing them by a Filipino, a Chinese, and a Russian.²⁰ General Claire Chennault of the Fourteenth Air Force later wrote he had had orders from Theater Headquarters (General Wedemeyer) that no arms and ammunition would be provided to French troops under any circumstances. Chennault reluctantly obeyed these orders, which he understood came directly from the War Department. He concluded it was American policy that French Indochina would not be restored to the French and that The American Government was interested in seeing the French forcibly ejected from Indochina so the problem of postwar separation from their colony would be easier …²¹ At about the same time, various United States teams made their way from Southern China into North Vietnam and established contacts with the communist-led Việt Minh. The teams included representatives of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Army Air Forces, the Army and Navy Intelligence Services, and the U.S. Combat Section of South China Command. The Việt Minh even formed a Vietnamese American Friendship Association on October 17, 1945.²² An American official who visited both Hồ Chí Minh and Bảo Đại in Hà Nội in February 1946 found them quite familiar with the Roosevelt policy.²³

Jean Sainteny, the French Government’s representative in Hà Nội in 1945–46 and again in 1954–55, told the BBC in 1974 that the American OSS Mission under Major Archimedes L. A. Patti had endorsed the 1945 takeover of power by the Việt Minh in Hà Nội by standing alongside Võ Nguyên Giáp at the takeover ceremony. Sainteny speculated that, while Patti was operating very much on his own, he was not acting spontaneously in his opposition to the French return to Indochina but in accordance with general directives issued much higher up. However, Sainteny