Friday, April 11, 2008

Alternate History #4: There is no viet nam but Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh is its President

When I read William Duiker's amazing Ho Chi Minh: A Life, I was not only adding to my collection of communist leader biographies, I was also constantly looking for alternate histories. Duiker's work, the best English biography of Ho, and the first to use Vietnamese-language sources that aren't full of suspicious propaganda, portrayed Ho in a way that most Americans would not be familiar with.

He wasn't a communist radical, but he was a communist. He wrote to expand Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory. He was very important in the 1920s in getting the Vietnamese communist movement off the ground, but his school of thought fell out of favor. It was only a very lucky change of theory by the Communist International that catapulted Ho Chi Minh to the leadership of the 1940s resistance against Japan. By 1946, his Viet Minh had managed to securely control all of northern Vietnam. France, which had ruled the area before Japan took it, wanted the colony back. A series of autonomy measures were proposed, but constant governmental changes in France and a stubborn colonial attitude caused all these to fail.

France tried again to assert control, and at this point Ho begins to fall out of power. His military role is taken mostly by General Vo Nguyen Giap (who is still alive, amazingly), his political role taken over more and more by Truong Chinh. The reason for this is that both new men were fiery, passionate. They were full of vitality, whereas Ho was by that point much more laid-back.

Most important was where they differed. Ho lost clout and leadership powers as he failed to secure South Vietnam. By the time the US arrived, Ho was very old and had no powers beyond meeting with Chinese leadership. He cared more about a united, free Vietnam than about a communist Vietnam.

How might things have gone differently? The main reason that Ho's control never reached all the way south was because the Party apparatus there had decided to rise up in 1940. It was easily crushed by Imperial Japan, which at this point was at its most vital in history. In fact, the Japan which South Vietnam attempted to dislodge was the most powerful state in Asia, and the most powerful Japan in history. The Japanese put down the nationalist-communist rebels easily, and this basically killed Party power in the south. By revolting earlier (the north took over in 1945, and succeeded against a terribly shattered Japan) the south fell far behind in terms of organization.

But what might have happened if the south had, like the north, allowed resentment to build against the Japanese and waited until the US wore the Empire down? Ho Chi Minh favored this tactic, and it worked marvelously. A more patient south might have been able to join the successful revolt against the crumbling Japanese power. This would leave one unified Vietnam under the main leadership of Ho Chi Minh, now with extra credibility for having united the land with a relatively short military struggle. With this extra political capital, Ho might have remained the center of Vietnamese politics with Giap as his arms and Truong Chinh as the liaison with staunchly communist China and Russia.

France would not want to give up claims in Indochina, since it was losing Vietnam that turned France from being an imperial power. However, Ho would be in a very stable position to negotiate. France used the weaker south to gain currency as imperator; here a strongly-held south would give France no easy way in. From Duiker's analysis, Ho seemed to have been ready to sacrifice total autonomy in exchange for guarantees of local control and good conditions for the Vietnamese people. In this alternate history, he would not have to give up even so much. France could either fight (a more difficult option than in our history) or allow for a very loose colonial framework. Maybe France would agree to limited input on Vietnamese foreign policy and no trade barriers, as well as property rights guarantees for white Europeans in the country. This would establish a very loose connection, much like the one between Canada and Great Britain.

It is my personal opinion that Ho would have accepted this measure, seeing as he said something along the lines of, "Better to eat French shit for fifty years than Chinese shit for one thousand." France would serve as a protector from undue Chinese influence, and from overreaching by the Comintern or USSR.

The major effect of a united, protected, moderate-nationalist-socialist Vietnam relates to the US. The US would never need to get involved, since the issue would have been settled by 1955, just as the US came out of Korea. To image that the US would jump from Korea directly into Vietnam, which would have been solidly under control since 1945, is ludicrous.

It is also my opinion that a Vietnam united earlier would have been more heavily influenced by Ho Chi Minh. It would have indeed been Communist, but French cultural influence along with Ho's moderation would likely have guided it down a less repressive path. It might have emerged into the modern world much like South Korea did. It's strange to imagine that a more decisive Communist victory would have been nearly all positive (compared to our timeline) for the country, but as I see it this is true.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

if we only had a time machine for peaceful solutions

baby boomer

Anonymous said...

if we only had a time machine for peaceful solutions

baby boomer

Anonymous said...

i agree that the US probably would not have jumped from korea to vietnam that quickly. what an eye-opening account of Ho Chi Minh. Do you think, then, that this is the most accurate and informative biography of his "career?" Your alternative history seems well reasoned, but can you comment on why the US went into the actual Vietnam war that did develop? What exactly did our politicans want to gain?

curious reader