Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
- 9. Ho, Realist
As a political realist, Ho must have been impressed that the DRV was as unlikely to rise in priority over France in U.S. foreign policy, as Vietnam was to assert claims on Soviet support over Russian preoccupation with Europe. In 1946 he put his plight in these terms: "We apparently stand quite alone; we shall have to depend on ourselves."37 After 1947, events conspired to alter Ho's isolation, for while prospects for U.S. support dimmed, and in 1950, vanished, Mao Tse Tung — in whose service Ho had spent eight years — was moving from triumph to triumph, and by late 1949, was in a position to render direct assistance to Ho across his northern border.38 Faced with an increasingly serious military threat, Ho gravitated quickly toward the Bloc. From Viet Minh jungle hideouts came blasts at the U.S. "Marshallization of the world," taking note that the Russians opposed "Marshallization."39 In 1949, after the U.S. had publicly welcomed the formation of Bao Dai's "new and unified state of Viet Nam," Ho sent delegates to a Peking conference where Liu Shao-Chi, in the keynote speech, declared that only the Communist Party could lead a "national liberation movement."40 Ho and Mao exchanged messages of amity, and neutralist Tito was taken under attack by the Viet Minh radio. In January, 1950, in response to Ho's declaration that the DRV was Vietnam's only legitimate government, Mao tendered formal recognition, and Stalin's followed immediately thereafter.41 The die was cast: U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson declared in February, 1950, that these recognitions "should remove any illusion as to the nationalist character of Ho Chi Minh's aims and reveals Ho in his true colors as the mortal enemy of native independence in Indochina."42 Ho responded in August, 1950, to the first shipments of U.S. aid to French forces in the following sharp language.
- "Since the beginning of the war the Americans have tried to help the French bandits. But now they have advanced one more step to direct intervention in Viet Nam. Thus we have now one principal opponent — the French bandits — and one more opponent — the American interventionalists...
- "On our side, a few years of resistance have brought our country the greatest success in the history of Viet Nam — recognition of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam as an equal in the world democratic family by the two biggest countries in the world — the Soviet Union and democratic China — and by the new democratic countries. That means we are definitely on the democratic side and belong to the anti-imperialist bloc of 800 million people.43
