What if: President Eisenhower use nuclear weapons at Dien Bien Phu (Operation Vulture)
Jul 18, 2017 16:38:00 GMT
Post by lordroel on Jul 18, 2017 16:38:00 GMT
What if: President Eisenhower use nuclear weapons at Dien Bien Phu (Operation Vulture)
It was 1954, and the surrounded French garrison was facing defeat in what would become known as the First Indochina War, only "THREE TACTICAL A-BOMBS, properly deployed," Pentagon specialists estimated, would have to be dropped to save the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in remote northwestern Vietnam.
One "new weapon" might suffice for its explosive and "psycho effect," it was suggested more modestly by the National Security Council's Planning Board. "Could one 'new weapon' be loaned to France for this purpose? Could French airmen make a proper drop? Would French government dare take step?"
If the United States approached France on such a venture, an alarmed State Department official warned, "the story would certainly leak" and "cause a great hue and cry throughout the parliaments of the free world . . ."
The time was April 1954. In a rain- shrouded valley of North Vietnam, an elaborate trap baited to catch the forces of Ho Chi Minh had snapped shut instead on the French Expeditionary Corps.
Dienbienphu had been buoyantly described by Gen. Henri Navarre, commander-in-chief of French Union troops, as "a veritable jungle Verdun," to lure the Vietminh to a killing ground. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had reversed the roles. Giap's artillery turned isolated Dienbienphu into a bloody chopping block for the French, in the decisive battle of the French Indochina war. The only hope for the beleaguered French was relief by outside forces, notably the United States, which was supplying prime financial support for France in the conflict.
In one tense National Security Council (NSC) meeting on April 29th 1954 President Eisenhower challengingly told his most militant-minded associates that he believed "if the United States were to intervene in Indochina alone, it would mean a general war with China and perhaps with the Soviet Union, which the United States would have to prosecute separated from its allies."
"Without allies and associates," Eisenhower said, "the leader is just an adventurer like Genghis Khan."
Before he could bring himself to make a decision on unilateral intervention in Indochina, Eisenhower said, in the words of the note-taker, "He would want to ask himself and all his wisest advisers whether the right decision was not rather to launch a world war."
"If our allies were going to fall away in any case," the president continued, "it might be better for the United States to leap over the smaller obstacles and hit the biggest one with all the power we had. Otherwise we seemed to be merely playing the enemy's game -- getting ourselves involved in brushfire wars in Burma, Afghanistan, and God knows where."
In that sequence Eisenhower was debating, oddly enough, with Harold E. Stassen, then director of foreign aid. At an earlier meeting with Republican members of Congress, Sen. Eugene D. Millikin of Colorado suggested that "If our allies deserted, we would have to go back to fortress America."
"Dienbienphu," the president continued, "is a perfect example of a fortress. The Reds are surrounding it and crowding back the French into a position where they have to surrender or die. If we ever came back to the fortress idea for America, we would have . . . one simple, dreadful alternative -- we would have to explore an attack with everything we have. What a terrible decision that would be to make."
Admiral Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at the opposite end of the spectrum raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons to save the French at Dienbienphu. Radford, who first proposed launching planes from aircraft carriers to attack the encircling Vietminh troops, had a larger objective than the rescue of the French garrison, crossing the threshold on the use of atomic bombs. That could have paved the way to employ nuclear weapons against China, Radford's ultimate target.
Adm. Radford reported that Gen. Navarre told him the Vietminh might well be able to overwhelm the position if they could accept heavy losses; Radford believed the Vietminh would avoid an all-out assault. If worst came to worst, Radford said, the United States could send an aircraft carrier to help the French hold Dienbienphu.
An NSC study cautioned that the French might pull out of the war -- by negotiating for a coalition government -- unless the United States committed forces to it. That "would eventually turn the country over to Ho Chi Minh," the study warned. Eisenhower "said with great force, he simply could not imagine the United States putting ground forces into Southeast Asia, except possibly Malaysia. . . Indeed, the key to winning this war was to get the Vietnamese to fight."
Public apprehension began to rise in early February when the Eisenhower administration sent 200 Air Force technicians and mechanics to Indonesia to augment the United states military mission. Nevertheless, Eisenhower reassured the nation on Feb. 10: "I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any of those regions."
Dienbienphu demolished the administration's public projection of a successful, bloodless American investment in thwarting communism in Asia. Within hours after the first assault March 13, the Vietminh broke through the outer ring of fortifications in what became a 56-day seige.
For France, Dienbienphu loomed as the end of the line after seven years of war and a century of French rule in Indochina. For the Eisenhower administration it was a wholly new disaster, undermining its entire policy for thwarting communist expansion, with consequences out of all proportion to a battle involving 13,200 French Union troops and 49,500 Vietminh.
It was the American contention that the central problem in Indochina was France's strategy; especially its denial of real independence, and failure to train the Vietnamese to fight the war themselves, or to permit Americans to train them (the forerunner of the term "Vietnamization," when Vietnam became the American war of the 1960s and 1970s).
Gen. Paul Ely, chairman of the French chiefs of staff, arriving in Washington March 20, put the odds on holding Dienbienphu at "50-50." Others on the scene considered the cause hopeless. Ely asked for emergency aid, notably more B-26 bombers for the French. But his major request was for American air intervention if China sent its Mig jets into the battle.
Ely also had considerably more than that in mind. According to French sources, it was in Saigon that the American and French military together evolved the idea of "Operation Vulture": attacking the Vietminh at Dienbienphu with some sixty B-29 heavy bombers from the American base at Clark Field, near Manila, escorted by 150 fighters from aircraft carriers of the U.S. 7th Fleet.
When Gen. Paul Ely returned to Paris he assumed that Radford had given him personal assurance that if the Dienbienphu situation required it, Radford "would do his best to obtain such help from United States government."
Radford, however, could not carry his fellow chiefs of staff with him in crossing the non-intervention barrier. His own report of a March 30 meeting stated: "The individual service chiefs and the commandant of the Marine Corps unanimously recommended against such an offer at this time. The chairman (Radford) is of the opinion that such an offer should be made." (Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining wrote that his actual position was "a qualified 'yes" -- with conditions; Radford listed that as "no.")
The strongest opponent was Army Chief of Staff Matthew B. Ridgway. The Army's position was that even atomic weapons would not bring victory, and that effective American intervention would require seven to 12 divisions, plus air support.
Radford's proposal brought a ferment of debate, a search for alternatives, and recriminations about France, with fears, especially by Dulles, that France might "sell out" to the communists in negotiations due to start in Geneva in May.
Dulles suggested to Eisenhower that "it might be preferable to slow up the Chinese communists in Southeast Asia by harassing tactics from Formosa (Taiwan) and along the seacoast . . ." Richard M. Nixon's memoirs add that Eisenhower told congressional leaders that if the Dienbienphu situation became desperate enough, he would consider "diversionary tactics, possibly a landing by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces on China's Hainan Island or a naval blockade of the Chinese mainland."
The president either toyed with secretly sending aircraft carriers "to bomb (the) Reds at Dienbienphu" -- or wanted others to think he might do so. He told two publishers at lunch on April 1 that "of course, if we did, we'd have to deny it forever."
Eisenhower, however, already had informed his National Security Council on March 25 that "the Congress would have to be in on any move by the United States to intervene in Indochina." Eisenhower, picking up on a suggestion from Stassen, proposed seeking united action by such nations as Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Formosa (Taiwan) and "the free nations of Southeast Asia."
Dulles floated the idea of "united action" on March 29, in an address entitled "The Threat of a Red Asia." The State Department quietly prepared a draft joint resolution, authorizing the president "to employ the naval and air forces of the United States to assist the forces which are resisting aggression in Southeast Asia . . ."
Here the tactics, as well as the strategy, were Eisenhower's. The "tactical procedure," he told Dulles, was "to develop first the thinking of congressional leaders" before deciding to unveil the resolution. That move came April 3 when Dulles, Radford and other officials called in eight members of Congress, including Senate Republican Majority Leader William F. Knowland and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Lyndon F. Johnson.
Known unofficial as "The Day We Didn't Go to War," Radford gave the congressmen "the scare of their lives" with his proposal: Once Congress passed a joint resolution, the United States would send some 200 planes from the U.S. aircraft carriers Essex and Boxer, then in South China seas, plus land-based U.S. Air Force planes from the Philippines, on "a single strike" to save Dienbienphu.
when questioned by the eight members of Congress, Radford agreed the action would mean war, and that there would be other strikes if the first failed to relieve the garrison. When asked how many of the other Joint Chiefs agreed with his plan, Radford replied, "None." Radford's explanation was that he had spent more time in the Far East "and I understand the situation better."
Radford told the congressmen also there was no longer any hope for using American air power to salvage Dienbienphu, it "was too late," Radford told Sen. Johnson and his colleagues; "if we had committed airpower three weeks ago, he (Radford) felt reasonably certain that the Red forces would have been defeated."
The United States would have to get allies. There was "very little confidence in the French," and "less criticism of the British," but Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia said that "if the U.K. flinched in this matter, it would be necessary to reconsider our whole system of collective security . . ."
In the night of April 4 shows the planning was extending far beyond Dienbienphu and where Eisenhower "agreed with Dulles and Radford on a plan to send American forces to Indochina under certain strict conditions":
"It was to be, first and most important, a joint action" with British, Australian, New Zealand, and possibly Philippine and Thai troops. France "would have to continue to fight in Indochina and bear a full share of responsibility until the war was over." Additionally, to avoid the perception that the United States was protecting "French colonialism," France would have to ""guarantee future independence" for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
That same night France asked for a strike by United States aircraft carrier planes to support Dienbienpu. Eisenhower in a telephone conversation with Dulles next morning said that was impossible; in the absence of congressional support it would be "completely unconstitutional and indefensible."
Radford, meanwhile, had additional ideas about what was required. In a message relayed to Dulles on April 7, Radford said the Pentagon's Joint Advanced Study Group had "reached the conclusion that three tactical A-weapons, properly employed, would be sufficient to smash the Vietminh effort" at Dienbienphu.
The proposal evidently stunned State Department Counselor Douglas MacArthur II when he received it. He wrote that he believed the French would spurn it; "the story would certainly leak," arouse alarm "throughout the parliaments of the free world," and might bring pressure for assurances "that we would not use A-weapons without consultation."
By April 30, however, a variation was suggested by the National Security Council's Planning Board.
It asked: "Should decision be made now as to United States intention to use 'new weapons,' on intervention, in Vietnam on military targets? Would one 'new weapon' dropped on Vietminh troop concentrations behind DBP (Dienbienphu) be decisive in casualties and overwhelming in psycho effect on Vietminh opposition?" The study went on to ask if "one 'new weapon'" could be "loaned to France for this purpose," if French airmen could drop it properly, and would France "dare take step."
The truth about what the United States did or did not offer the French and about how Eisenhower really felt about using atomic bombs in the Indochina crisis, will probably never be known with precision. The president and his secretary of state said different things to different people. But the extensive discussions in the Pentagon and the NSC during the crisis about potentially using the Bomb, coupled with Eisenhower’s assertion on April 30 that “we might give [the French] a few,” suggests it’s entirely possible Bidault heard what he claimed to have heard.
Whatever the case, no atomic bomb was unleashed in Indochina in 1954, nor did the United States intervene with conventional weapons. Eisenhower actively considered going in with airpower and potentially ground units, but he ruled out acting unilaterally (partly on account of congressional opposition), which in effect left the matter in the hands of the British, who refused to go along despite intense US pressure. Many in Washington reacted with equanimity. They doubted whether the French would in any case implement needed political reforms in Indochina, and they knew that the American public, fresh off three years of grueling war in Korea, had little desire for another major embroilment in Asia. And besides, it was not at all clear that the new military measures would turn the war around; perhaps the most that could be hoped for was that they would delay France’s defeat and give Paris and her allies a better negotiating position vis-à-vis Ho Chi Minh’s government at the negotiations about to get under way in Geneva.
On May 7, the French capitulated at Dien Bien Phu. Symbolically, it marked the end of the First Indochina War. But as that name implies, the struggle for Vietnam was far from over. For in the months thereafter, the Eisenhower Administration, freed from the burden of French colonialism, took responsibility for “saving” southern Vietnam and making it a noncommunist bastion in Southeast Asia. As one Western power prepared to exit Indochina, another readied to step in.
It was 1954, and the surrounded French garrison was facing defeat in what would become known as the First Indochina War, only "THREE TACTICAL A-BOMBS, properly deployed," Pentagon specialists estimated, would have to be dropped to save the beleaguered French garrison at Dien Bien Phu in remote northwestern Vietnam.
One "new weapon" might suffice for its explosive and "psycho effect," it was suggested more modestly by the National Security Council's Planning Board. "Could one 'new weapon' be loaned to France for this purpose? Could French airmen make a proper drop? Would French government dare take step?"
If the United States approached France on such a venture, an alarmed State Department official warned, "the story would certainly leak" and "cause a great hue and cry throughout the parliaments of the free world . . ."
The time was April 1954. In a rain- shrouded valley of North Vietnam, an elaborate trap baited to catch the forces of Ho Chi Minh had snapped shut instead on the French Expeditionary Corps.
Dienbienphu had been buoyantly described by Gen. Henri Navarre, commander-in-chief of French Union troops, as "a veritable jungle Verdun," to lure the Vietminh to a killing ground. Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap had reversed the roles. Giap's artillery turned isolated Dienbienphu into a bloody chopping block for the French, in the decisive battle of the French Indochina war. The only hope for the beleaguered French was relief by outside forces, notably the United States, which was supplying prime financial support for France in the conflict.
In one tense National Security Council (NSC) meeting on April 29th 1954 President Eisenhower challengingly told his most militant-minded associates that he believed "if the United States were to intervene in Indochina alone, it would mean a general war with China and perhaps with the Soviet Union, which the United States would have to prosecute separated from its allies."
"Without allies and associates," Eisenhower said, "the leader is just an adventurer like Genghis Khan."
Before he could bring himself to make a decision on unilateral intervention in Indochina, Eisenhower said, in the words of the note-taker, "He would want to ask himself and all his wisest advisers whether the right decision was not rather to launch a world war."
"If our allies were going to fall away in any case," the president continued, "it might be better for the United States to leap over the smaller obstacles and hit the biggest one with all the power we had. Otherwise we seemed to be merely playing the enemy's game -- getting ourselves involved in brushfire wars in Burma, Afghanistan, and God knows where."
In that sequence Eisenhower was debating, oddly enough, with Harold E. Stassen, then director of foreign aid. At an earlier meeting with Republican members of Congress, Sen. Eugene D. Millikin of Colorado suggested that "If our allies deserted, we would have to go back to fortress America."
"Dienbienphu," the president continued, "is a perfect example of a fortress. The Reds are surrounding it and crowding back the French into a position where they have to surrender or die. If we ever came back to the fortress idea for America, we would have . . . one simple, dreadful alternative -- we would have to explore an attack with everything we have. What a terrible decision that would be to make."
Admiral Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at the opposite end of the spectrum raised the possibility of using nuclear weapons to save the French at Dienbienphu. Radford, who first proposed launching planes from aircraft carriers to attack the encircling Vietminh troops, had a larger objective than the rescue of the French garrison, crossing the threshold on the use of atomic bombs. That could have paved the way to employ nuclear weapons against China, Radford's ultimate target.
Adm. Radford reported that Gen. Navarre told him the Vietminh might well be able to overwhelm the position if they could accept heavy losses; Radford believed the Vietminh would avoid an all-out assault. If worst came to worst, Radford said, the United States could send an aircraft carrier to help the French hold Dienbienphu.
An NSC study cautioned that the French might pull out of the war -- by negotiating for a coalition government -- unless the United States committed forces to it. That "would eventually turn the country over to Ho Chi Minh," the study warned. Eisenhower "said with great force, he simply could not imagine the United States putting ground forces into Southeast Asia, except possibly Malaysia. . . Indeed, the key to winning this war was to get the Vietnamese to fight."
Public apprehension began to rise in early February when the Eisenhower administration sent 200 Air Force technicians and mechanics to Indonesia to augment the United states military mission. Nevertheless, Eisenhower reassured the nation on Feb. 10: "I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any of those regions."
Dienbienphu demolished the administration's public projection of a successful, bloodless American investment in thwarting communism in Asia. Within hours after the first assault March 13, the Vietminh broke through the outer ring of fortifications in what became a 56-day seige.
For France, Dienbienphu loomed as the end of the line after seven years of war and a century of French rule in Indochina. For the Eisenhower administration it was a wholly new disaster, undermining its entire policy for thwarting communist expansion, with consequences out of all proportion to a battle involving 13,200 French Union troops and 49,500 Vietminh.
It was the American contention that the central problem in Indochina was France's strategy; especially its denial of real independence, and failure to train the Vietnamese to fight the war themselves, or to permit Americans to train them (the forerunner of the term "Vietnamization," when Vietnam became the American war of the 1960s and 1970s).
Gen. Paul Ely, chairman of the French chiefs of staff, arriving in Washington March 20, put the odds on holding Dienbienphu at "50-50." Others on the scene considered the cause hopeless. Ely asked for emergency aid, notably more B-26 bombers for the French. But his major request was for American air intervention if China sent its Mig jets into the battle.
Ely also had considerably more than that in mind. According to French sources, it was in Saigon that the American and French military together evolved the idea of "Operation Vulture": attacking the Vietminh at Dienbienphu with some sixty B-29 heavy bombers from the American base at Clark Field, near Manila, escorted by 150 fighters from aircraft carriers of the U.S. 7th Fleet.
When Gen. Paul Ely returned to Paris he assumed that Radford had given him personal assurance that if the Dienbienphu situation required it, Radford "would do his best to obtain such help from United States government."
Radford, however, could not carry his fellow chiefs of staff with him in crossing the non-intervention barrier. His own report of a March 30 meeting stated: "The individual service chiefs and the commandant of the Marine Corps unanimously recommended against such an offer at this time. The chairman (Radford) is of the opinion that such an offer should be made." (Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan F. Twining wrote that his actual position was "a qualified 'yes" -- with conditions; Radford listed that as "no.")
The strongest opponent was Army Chief of Staff Matthew B. Ridgway. The Army's position was that even atomic weapons would not bring victory, and that effective American intervention would require seven to 12 divisions, plus air support.
Radford's proposal brought a ferment of debate, a search for alternatives, and recriminations about France, with fears, especially by Dulles, that France might "sell out" to the communists in negotiations due to start in Geneva in May.
Dulles suggested to Eisenhower that "it might be preferable to slow up the Chinese communists in Southeast Asia by harassing tactics from Formosa (Taiwan) and along the seacoast . . ." Richard M. Nixon's memoirs add that Eisenhower told congressional leaders that if the Dienbienphu situation became desperate enough, he would consider "diversionary tactics, possibly a landing by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces on China's Hainan Island or a naval blockade of the Chinese mainland."
The president either toyed with secretly sending aircraft carriers "to bomb (the) Reds at Dienbienphu" -- or wanted others to think he might do so. He told two publishers at lunch on April 1 that "of course, if we did, we'd have to deny it forever."
Eisenhower, however, already had informed his National Security Council on March 25 that "the Congress would have to be in on any move by the United States to intervene in Indochina." Eisenhower, picking up on a suggestion from Stassen, proposed seeking united action by such nations as Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Formosa (Taiwan) and "the free nations of Southeast Asia."
Dulles floated the idea of "united action" on March 29, in an address entitled "The Threat of a Red Asia." The State Department quietly prepared a draft joint resolution, authorizing the president "to employ the naval and air forces of the United States to assist the forces which are resisting aggression in Southeast Asia . . ."
Here the tactics, as well as the strategy, were Eisenhower's. The "tactical procedure," he told Dulles, was "to develop first the thinking of congressional leaders" before deciding to unveil the resolution. That move came April 3 when Dulles, Radford and other officials called in eight members of Congress, including Senate Republican Majority Leader William F. Knowland and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Lyndon F. Johnson.
Known unofficial as "The Day We Didn't Go to War," Radford gave the congressmen "the scare of their lives" with his proposal: Once Congress passed a joint resolution, the United States would send some 200 planes from the U.S. aircraft carriers Essex and Boxer, then in South China seas, plus land-based U.S. Air Force planes from the Philippines, on "a single strike" to save Dienbienphu.
when questioned by the eight members of Congress, Radford agreed the action would mean war, and that there would be other strikes if the first failed to relieve the garrison. When asked how many of the other Joint Chiefs agreed with his plan, Radford replied, "None." Radford's explanation was that he had spent more time in the Far East "and I understand the situation better."
Radford told the congressmen also there was no longer any hope for using American air power to salvage Dienbienphu, it "was too late," Radford told Sen. Johnson and his colleagues; "if we had committed airpower three weeks ago, he (Radford) felt reasonably certain that the Red forces would have been defeated."
The United States would have to get allies. There was "very little confidence in the French," and "less criticism of the British," but Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia said that "if the U.K. flinched in this matter, it would be necessary to reconsider our whole system of collective security . . ."
In the night of April 4 shows the planning was extending far beyond Dienbienphu and where Eisenhower "agreed with Dulles and Radford on a plan to send American forces to Indochina under certain strict conditions":
"It was to be, first and most important, a joint action" with British, Australian, New Zealand, and possibly Philippine and Thai troops. France "would have to continue to fight in Indochina and bear a full share of responsibility until the war was over." Additionally, to avoid the perception that the United States was protecting "French colonialism," France would have to ""guarantee future independence" for Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
That same night France asked for a strike by United States aircraft carrier planes to support Dienbienpu. Eisenhower in a telephone conversation with Dulles next morning said that was impossible; in the absence of congressional support it would be "completely unconstitutional and indefensible."
Radford, meanwhile, had additional ideas about what was required. In a message relayed to Dulles on April 7, Radford said the Pentagon's Joint Advanced Study Group had "reached the conclusion that three tactical A-weapons, properly employed, would be sufficient to smash the Vietminh effort" at Dienbienphu.
The proposal evidently stunned State Department Counselor Douglas MacArthur II when he received it. He wrote that he believed the French would spurn it; "the story would certainly leak," arouse alarm "throughout the parliaments of the free world," and might bring pressure for assurances "that we would not use A-weapons without consultation."
By April 30, however, a variation was suggested by the National Security Council's Planning Board.
It asked: "Should decision be made now as to United States intention to use 'new weapons,' on intervention, in Vietnam on military targets? Would one 'new weapon' dropped on Vietminh troop concentrations behind DBP (Dienbienphu) be decisive in casualties and overwhelming in psycho effect on Vietminh opposition?" The study went on to ask if "one 'new weapon'" could be "loaned to France for this purpose," if French airmen could drop it properly, and would France "dare take step."
The truth about what the United States did or did not offer the French and about how Eisenhower really felt about using atomic bombs in the Indochina crisis, will probably never be known with precision. The president and his secretary of state said different things to different people. But the extensive discussions in the Pentagon and the NSC during the crisis about potentially using the Bomb, coupled with Eisenhower’s assertion on April 30 that “we might give [the French] a few,” suggests it’s entirely possible Bidault heard what he claimed to have heard.
Whatever the case, no atomic bomb was unleashed in Indochina in 1954, nor did the United States intervene with conventional weapons. Eisenhower actively considered going in with airpower and potentially ground units, but he ruled out acting unilaterally (partly on account of congressional opposition), which in effect left the matter in the hands of the British, who refused to go along despite intense US pressure. Many in Washington reacted with equanimity. They doubted whether the French would in any case implement needed political reforms in Indochina, and they knew that the American public, fresh off three years of grueling war in Korea, had little desire for another major embroilment in Asia. And besides, it was not at all clear that the new military measures would turn the war around; perhaps the most that could be hoped for was that they would delay France’s defeat and give Paris and her allies a better negotiating position vis-à-vis Ho Chi Minh’s government at the negotiations about to get under way in Geneva.
On May 7, the French capitulated at Dien Bien Phu. Symbolically, it marked the end of the First Indochina War. But as that name implies, the struggle for Vietnam was far from over. For in the months thereafter, the Eisenhower Administration, freed from the burden of French colonialism, took responsibility for “saving” southern Vietnam and making it a noncommunist bastion in Southeast Asia. As one Western power prepared to exit Indochina, another readied to step in.