Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
the U.S. declaration remains obscure. It can be argued that its intent was not a long-term U.S. commitment, but an attempt to deter the DRV from attacking the GVN in the two-year period prior to elections. According to this argument, the Eisenhower Administration would have accepted any outcome if assured that the voting were free. A counterargument is that Smith was throwing down the gauntlet to the Communists. An NSC action immediately following the Conference considered the Accords a "major disaster for U.S. interests" and called for affirmative political action to foreclose further loss. In other words, while the specifics of the Accords were much in line with the U.S. negotiating position, the overall U.S. evaluation of the Conference held that territory had been yielded to the Communists. In this light, the Smith declaration marks the jumping-off point for the concerted U.S. efforts to devise a collective security system for Vietnam and all of Southeast Asia, which culminated in the Manila Pact of September, 1954 (SEATO), and the aid program for Ngo Dinh Diem. (Tab 2)
Interpretations of the spirit of the Accords are as disparate as the interests of the Geneva conferees. Yet, it is difficult to believe that any of the participants expected the Geneva Accords to provide an independent and unified Vietnam. The Communist states — the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the DRV — apparently assumed that the development of a stable regime in the South was very unlikely, and that the DRV would eventually gain control of the entire country. They, in any event, had sound evidence that the GVN was unlikely to last out the two years before elections. It may well be, then, that the conciliatory posture of the Communist states at the conference can be explained by their presumption that the specific terms of agreement were less important than the detente itself — that their future successes, however slow in coming, were inevitable. Western reactions and expectations, on the other hand, were no doubt quite different. While France was interested in extricating itself from its military failure, it was no less interested in maintaining its cultural and economic position in Vietnam. Even the United Kingdom gave every indication that it wished to prevent a general Communist takeover. Hence, it would appear that these powers, like the U.S., wanted to stop the fighting, but not at the sacrifice of all of Vietnam to the Communists. Thus, the spirit of the Accords may have been much less significant than the letter of the Accords. In other words, by dividing the country at the 17th parallel, with each zone under a separate "civil administration," by providing for the regroupment of forces and the movement of people North and South, and by putting off elections for two years, the Geneva participants jeopardized, if not precluded, the unification of Vietnam. Whatever the parties intended, the practical effect of the specific terms of the Agreement was a permanently divided nation. (Tab 3)
