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By Root 946 0

to American policy. Mansfield’s report to the Senate, however, was more discouraged than in the previous year. He said the situation had “seriously deteriorated” owing to a “consistent underestimating” by everyone of the political and military strength of the Viet-Minh. Because of dissatisfaction with Diem’s policies, there appeared to be “scant hope of achieving our objectives in Indochina in the near future.” If Diem fell, Mansfield believed, his successors would be even less democratic, and in that event the United States “should consider an immediate suspension of all aid to Vietnam and the French Union forces there.” He concluded with a cold dose of common sense: “Unless there is reasonable expectation of fulfilling our objectives, the continued expenditure of the resources of the citizens of the United States is unwarranted and inexcusable.”

Eisenhower hesitated. He addressed a letter to Diem in October expressing his grave concern for the future of a country “temporarily divided by an artificial military grouping” (not the “international boundary” that his successors liked to claim) but advising that he was ready to work out with Diem “an intelligent program of American aid given directly to your Government,” provided that Diem gave assurance of the “standards of performance” his government would maintain if the aid were supplied. With little confidence in promises, the President sent General J. Lawton Collins, a trusted colleague from World War II, on a special mission to work out relations with the French and the “standards” expected of Diem.

Collins’ report was negative. He found Diem “unready to assert the type of leadership that can unify this country and give it a chance of competing with the hard, effective, unified control of Ho Chi Minh.” The choices open to American policy, as he saw them, were either to support Diem for a little while longer without commitment or, if he failed to make progress, to bring back Bao Dai, and if that was unacceptable, “I recommend re-evaluation of our plans for assisting Southeast Asia with special attention to earlier proposal,” namely, “the gradual withdrawal of support from Vietnam.” This was “the least desirable [but] in all honesty, and in view of what I have observed here to date, this may be the only solution.”

Asked to stay on to work out a program of support with General Ely, the French commander, Collins reaffirmed his advice five months later. Vietnam would not be saved from Communism, he reported, unless a sound program of political, economic and military reforms were put into effect based on wholehearted coordination among Vietnamese, Americans and French, and if this were not secured, “in my judgment we should withdraw from Vietnam.”

Why, in the light of all these doubts and negatives, did the United States not take the opportunity to pull back? It did not because always the argument arose that if American support were withdrawn, South Vietnam would disintegrate and the front against Communism would give way in Indochina just when it faced a new threat elsewhere. The Quemoy-Matsu crisis over the Chinese offshore islands erupted at this time, bringing Dulles to his most paranoid and to the “brink”—in his terms—of war. with Red China. The crisis quelled any impulse to look at Vietnam with realism or to consider General Collins’ alternative.

Collins himself, though convinced of Diem’s incapacity, was working energetically to make the regime qualify as a client worth American support, and in response to his pressure a program of land reform was drawn up and a provisional assembly appointed to draft a constitution. Washington seized on these signs of progress and, motivated also by desire to frustrate French overtures to Diem’s rivals, officially confirmed American support of his government. At the same time, in February 1955, the decision to undertake the training of a “completely autonomous” Vietnamese army was taken, and with it a deep step into Vietnamese affairs.

The assumption of American responsibility had already brought with it the creeping companion