Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
SUMMARY
It has been charged that Ho Chi Minh was robbed at the conference table of what he had won on the battlefield, that the Geneva Accords were prejudicial in content and implementation to legitimate Viet Minh interests, and that, therefore, the subsequent actions of the Viet Minh are understandable in light of these disappointments. While it is fair to state that the immediate implications of the Accords did not reflect (even according to CIA reports) Viet Minh strength and control in Vietnam at the time of the conference, it is equally important and revealing to understand why. Viet Minh ambitions were thwarted, not so much by Western resistance or treachery, as by Sino–Soviet pressures on them to compromise. If the Viet Minh were to look for villains at the Geneva Conference, in honesty they would have to admit that their interests were compromised by their own communist allies, not the West.
Viet Minh ambitions were broad. The Viet Minh were not only interested in gaining rights to the three-quarters of Vietnam they claimed to have controlled, but in extending their authority throughout Indochina into Laos and Cambodia. Although their offshoots, the Pathet Lao and the Free Khmers, controlled little territory in Laos and Cambodia, the Viet Minh pressed for their full representation in these countries. Arguing that they spoke for all the Indochinese people, the Viet Minh wished to compel or persuade the French to leave the area and then to settle directly with the indigenous and weakened non-communists. They were pressing for a political settlement prior to a military armistice, or, in other words, they wanted to fight while talking. Their specific objectives were: partition at the 13th parallel, a deadline for complete French withdrawal from the North, and nation-wide elections to be held six months after an armistice (Tab 1).
The source of DRV disappointments with the Accords can be traced not so much to Western strength and unity or Western "treachery" as to efforts by the Soviet Union and Communist China to make the conference a success; that is, to bring stability to the area and a settlement to the fighting. Together and separately, Moscow and Peking pressed concessions on the Viet Minh. Invariably, the two principal communist delegates, Chou En-lai and Molotov, played major roles in breaking deadlocks with conciliatory initiatives. While the exact motives of the Soviet Union and Communist China must remain a matter of speculation, the most acceptable explanation for their behavior is that both sought to achieve their objectives in Southeast Asia without triggering U.S. intervention. "Peaceful co-existence" was the hallmark of their diplomacy. The Chinese,
