Declassified per Executive Order 13526, Section 3.3
NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
TOP SECRET – Sensitive
possible Chinese intervention. London, therefore, was only willing to consider the establishment of a collective defense alliance in Southeast Asia after the Geneva Conference. France saw Dulles' proposal for united action as a parry of the urgent French request for immediate U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu. Initially, the French feared that united action would internationalize the war and thereby place it beyond control of Paris. Later, the French came to fear that united action would be used as a device to impede negotiations. For these reasons, the American proposal for united action failed to gather support either in Paris or in London before Geneva.
- e. U.S. Discourages Early Cease-fire
In the months before the conference, the U.S. maintained an adamant opposition to any course other than full prosecution of the war. Dulles told French Ambassador Henri Bonnet on 3 April, for instance, that a negotiated settlement would lead only to face-saving formulae for either a French or a Viet Minh surrender. The Secretary termed a division of Indochina "impractical" and a coalition government the "beginning of disaster." Writing to Chruchill on 4 April, Eisenhower echoed this line, asserting: "There is no negotiated solution of the Indochina problem which in essence would, not be either a face-saving device to cover a French surrender or a face-saving device to cover a communist retirement." And it was precisely to bring about the latter — China's "discreet disengagement" — that the President wanted British cooperation in "united action."4
The U.S. was concerned that a disaster at Dien Bien Phu would propel the French into acceptance of an immediate cease-fire even before the conference could begin. Dulles obtained assurances from Bidault that the French would not adopt that approach.5 The British did not share U.S. fears. Eden doubted that a cease-fire would lead either to a massacre of the French or to large-scale infiltration of French-held terrain by Viet Minh forces.6
