Essay: The Myth of Monolithic Communism During the Vietnam War

by Eric Horne:

The Myth of Monolithic Communism During the Vietnam War

The emergence of a rift in the alliance between the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union had a dynamic, and dramatic impact on the Vietnam War from 1955 to 1973. The Vietnam War is often viewed through the lens of the Cold War between the western bloc of democracies and the eastern bloc of communist states, but the conflict between the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R) and People’s Republic of China (PRC) had a great impact on the military, economic, and political aspects of the war. The U.S.S.R and the PRC were the two largest, and most developed communist states that supported the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) of North Vietnam in their fight against the Republic of Vietnam in the south to reunify the country under communist rule. The Geneva Accords ended the war between France and Vietnam, but also partitioned the country into a northern and southern half in 1954, setting the stage for the Vietnam War that became known as the American War.

The bilateral relationships between the DRV and the PRC, and the DRV and the U.S.S.R followed a recurring pattern based on an inverse relationship throughout the Vietnam War. Given that the relationship between China and the Soviet Union steadily deteriorated throughout the war, the PRC-DRV relationship would be strengthened as the DRV-U.S.S.R. relationship strained, and vice versa. This is because the PRC and Soviet Union were constantly trying to increase their influence in Hanoi, but only at the expense of the other party. From 1955 to 1965, China was closest to the DRV and the Soviet Union was less involved, but after 1965, the Soviet Union was more influential in Hanoi, at China’s expense. After 1969, the relationship between the U.S.S.R, the PRC, and the DRV was categorized by conflict, resulting in U.S. triangular diplomacy centered around rapprochement with China and détente with the Soviet Union. The consistent feature throughout these evolving relationships is the escalating conflict between the PRC and the USSR, and the strain this put on North Vietnam, which had both military and political implications for the war.

There was a greater conflict occurring during the Vietnam War that preoccupied both the Soviet Union and the PRC, at the expense of the DRV’s war effort. China’s conflict with the Soviet Union began on ideological grounds after Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech in February 1956 in which he denigrated Stalin’s methods of pursuing communism. Mao Zedong saw this development as a way to rally the PRC against modern “revisionism” in which he used the pretext of domestic and foreign anti-communist threats to justify rooting out his opposition and consolidating his power. This had consequences for the communist alliance, and in 1960, Mao’s “ideological campaign against the Soviet Union, both within and outside of China, provoked Khrushchev into the punitive action of withdrawing all Soviet advisors from the PRC in July” (Luthi 15). This further antagonized Mao Zedong who increasingly saw the Soviets as being traitors to the cause of worldwide communist revolution because of their pursuit of better relations with the United States, and the PRC took up an increasingly belligerent view of communist insurgency, particularly in Vietnam. By 1960, the stage for a Sino-Soviet split was set, and while “Mao’s ideological radicalization during the Great Leap Forward was the ‘root cause’ for the Sino-Soviet disagreements, conflicts resulting from their geographical proximity—territorial disputes and the militarization of the mutual border during the period after 1960—were ultimately responsible for the split” (Luthi 13). Thus, the alliance between the two communist giants broke down for many reasons, but the Vietnam War ultimately brought the PRC into a direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, which had profound effects on the military and political prosecution of the war.

Mao Zedong led the communists to victory against the Chinese nationalists in the fall of 1949 and quickly joined the Soviet Union in pushing for communist revolutions in other countries. In the early years of the PRC, Mao had a cooperative relationship with the Soviet Union toward the DRV and “China was the first country to recognize the North Vietnamese diplomatically, in early 1950, and Mao was instrumental in convincing Stalin to follow suit” (Luthi 304). Despite the cooperation, China played a much greater role in supporting the North Vietnamese communists from 1954 to 1965 for several reasons. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev repudiated Stalin’s insistence on the inevitability of armed conflict between capitalist and communist states. He advocated for peaceful coexistence with the United States and her western allies and was thus reluctant to give the DRV military aid from 1954-1964. Mao Zedong thought Khrushchev’s “revisionist” ideology of Soviet foreign policy was incompatible with his revolutionary fervor, and this shows in his decision to provide “Hanoi with significant amounts of artillery, firearms, and ammunition” (Luthi 304). China was the primary patron of military and economic aid to North Vietnam from 1954 until the mid-1960s, when the Sino-Soviet split was deepened. Following the 1954 Geneva Accords that ended Vietnam’s war against the French, China not only helped North Vietnam repair its economy and infrastructure from damages sustained in the war, but also provided vast military assistance including the “(1) construction of a strategic network of Communications (2) training of military personnel (3) military supplies and logistical support and (4) naval and air support” (Tse-ming 13). The propaganda pamphlet published by the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist Leagueof the Republic of China summarizes the western view of PRC intentions; “[t]he stepping-up of the Chinese Communist military support to Hanoi has made it a satellite of Peiping which is its willing tool for aggression in complete disregard of its own losses” (Tse-ming 21). China did in fact pursue such a large aid package to increase its influence in Hanoi, but this was not for the sole purpose of PRC domination of Vietnam. Rather, because of the growing distrust of Soviet motives in their support of the DRV, the Chinese wanted to limit Soviet influence in Hanoi because they thought the Soviets would eventually sell out the DRV if they struck a deal with the Americans.

China’s superior influence over the Soviet Union in Hanoi during the period of 1955-1964 can be traced to several developments. From 1955-1964, the DRV in the north and PLA in the south were fighting using mainly guerilla tactics. Chairman Mao was far more supportive of this style of political struggle than the Soviet Union who lacked experience in this field. Drawing upon his experience in the Chinese Civil War, Mao Zedong believed that the DRV and National Liberation Front should fight a “people’s war” using hit and run guerilla tactics. In addition to the DRV preference for Chinese military techniques and larger aid package, “[c]lose ties between the two countries were also shown in the reliance of the Vietnamese Communists on Mao Tse-tung’s experience, rather than that of the Soviet Union, in consolidating power and transforming a society” (Ou 23). These organic ties between the PRC and the DRV are important in explaining China’s preeminence during this period, but the deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations is the main variable that explains Hanoi’s tilt toward China from 1955 to 1964. While Mao’s foreign policy became more radicalized during this period, “[s]ince Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization speech at the 20thCongress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, the Soviet Union had emphasized its line on peaceful coexistence, and had attempted to avoid any local war which would involve a major confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union” (Ou 35). The DRV was in a difficult position because while they sought to be neutral in the increasingly polarized relationship between the Soviet Union and China, they were occasionally forced to take sides. The DRV usually fell on the side of the PRC when forced to choose because China was giving them more aid which made Khrushchev angry and reinforced his aloof position in Hanoi. Because Khrushchev viewed the U.S.S.R as the sole leader in communist revolution, he derided North Vietnamese ambiguity toward his leadership and “[a]s a consequence, North Vietnam tilted toward China on Sino-Soviet dispute issues. In return, China gave its means and motive to support North Vietnam’s goals in the South” (Ou 35). This dynamic remained in place during the run up to American escalation of the war, but things changed rapidly due to political changes within the Soviet Union, the PRC, and the situation on the ground in Vietnam.

The years of 1964 to 1965 marked a major turning point in PRC-U.S.S.R. relations and consequently, a shift in each country’s relationship with the DRV. After Khrushchev was replaced by a collective leadership in the Soviet Politburo in October of 1964, the Soviet Union reevaluated its relationship with the DRV based on its escalating conflict with China. The major turning point came when the new Soviet Premier, Alexei Kosygin, visited Hanoi in February 1965 amid the American bombing escalation “which resulted in a new level of soviet interest and commitment to North Vietnam” (Khoo 24). The Soviet Union sought to decrease PRC influence with the DRV, so “[r]ather than making the Vietnamese choose between Beijing and Moscow (as Khrushchev did), the new Soviet leadership worked to increase cooperation with their Vietnamese counterparts” (Khoo 23). The result of this largely anti-PRC decision was that “[a] progressive and sustained increase in Soviet diplomatic, economic, and military assistance to the Vietnamese communists occurred from April 1965 through the summer of 1968 and beyond” (Khoo 25). China did not take lightly to this increase in Soviet influence with Hanoi, and this had a major impact on the military situation on the ground during the war.

The Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China had different preferences for how the war in Vietnam should be fought militarily. The PRC’s advocation of a guerilla insurgency infiltrating South Vietnam was at odds with the Soviet war-fighting doctrine. The Soviets and the DRV wanted to pursue a more confrontational war with the ARVN and American forces. China shared a border with Vietnam and thus faced a direct security threat from American expansion of the war whereas the Soviets were not directly threatened and felt a more aggressive policy would be most effective. The same geographical position that made the PRC feel insecure also gave it leverage in the Soviet role during the war because the Soviets had to transport military and economic aid through or over China to reach Vietnam. China believed that the Soviets were trying to reinforce their position as the world leader of communist revolution and sought to minimize their role in the Vietnam War by increasing its control over the delivery of supplies to Vietnam. The PRC refused to grant the Soviets access to Chinese airspace until 1966 and made the delivery of Soviet aid by land inefficient by refusing “to let the Soviets know exactly what they supplied to the North Vietnamese, by the simultaneous Chinese request that the Soviets account in detail for everything they waned to ship through the PRC, and by the Chinese insistence on checking the necessity of each Soviet military delivery with the Vietnamese side first” (Luthi 319). This had a hugely detrimental effect on the DRV and PLA armed forces because it weakened their war-fighting materiel to a level that was vastly inferior to what it could have been if China had cooperated with the Soviets in military aid.

America’s introduction of a ground invasion force in 1965 further widened the Sino-Soviet split when it came to Hanoi’s military strategy. Up until 1965, the PRC preference of a “people’s war” was largely practiced by both the DRV and PLA, but when the Americans rapidly increased their forces on the ground, the DRV sought a new strategy. Contrary to American fears that a massive escalation would drive the Soviets and the Chinese into a renewed alliance, the American invasion was the final nail in the coffin for the Sino-Soviet alliance because “Hanoi’s choice of battle strategy had implications for the balance of Vietnamese dependence on its alliance partners. An offensive strategy that relied on more technologically sophisticated heavy weaponry and large-unit forces implied a reliance on the Soviets more than the Chinese” (Khoo 38). The offensive strategy to rebuke the American escalation and the corresponding increase in Soviet aid from 1965-1968 greatly irritated Mao Zedong who subsequently reduced Chinese support for the DRV. The culmination of the new Soviet inspired war-fighting strategy by the DRV and PLA was the 1968 Tet Offensive which the Chinese viewed as a massive failure, despite its role in increasing U.S. domestic opposition to the war. Chinese-Vietnamese relations dramatically worsened in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive because of the perceived Soviet influence in Hanoi. These disagreements between the Chinese and the Soviets as to how the military elements of the conflict should be pursued carried over to the diplomatic realm as well.

The Sino-Soviet split had a large impact on the political prosecution of the war, especially when it came to negotiations. Throughout the period of 1965 to 1969, the Chinese were against making any concessions in the pursuit of a peace deal with the Americans. This was largely because they saw the Soviets as trying to “sell out” Vietnam in the pursuit of détente and because of Mao Zedong’s own ideological radicalization as the Cultural Revolution took form. This state of affairs is best summarized by China’s foreign minister, Chen Yi, who warned “that ‘peaceful coexistence with the United States was out of question’ because ‘Johnson, the pirate chieftain, personally ordered the bombing of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. . . . Only in concrete action against the United States imperialism and its followers can the Chinese-Soviet alliance be tested and tempered’” (Luthi 316). The Soviet Union, under the new collective leadership in April 1965 proposed a summit meeting between the Chinese, North Vietnamese, and Soviet leaders to coordinate a united front and revitalize the alliance. In a huge blow to the Soviet Union and the DRV’s political efforts, “Peking turned down the proposal, because Moscow intended to ‘lure us into your trap through such a meeting so that you could speak on behalf of Vietnam and China in your international maneuvers, and strengthen your position for doing a political deal with U.S. imperialism’” (Ou 55) The Chinese were against DRV negotiations with the U.S., even after the Tet Offensive in 1968. They viewed negotiations as hostile to the PRC not only on ideological “anti-imperialist” grounds, but because “Moscow favored Hanoi entering into negotiations with the U.S. even while it provided logistical and tactical support for the Vietnamese war effort. Beijing rejected the Soviet idea of Hanoi entering into negotiations as a ploy designed to increase Soviet influence in Southeast Asia” (Khoo 52). Thus, political cooperation as well as military cooperation were out of the picture from 1965 to 1969 as relations between the Soviet Union and China deteriorated to the point where war between the two former allies was a real possibility.

From 1969 to 1973, Soviet-Chinese relations and their impact on the Vietnam war would be characterized by triangular diplomacy of the new American president Richard Nixon. The biggest result of the Sino-Soviet split is that it drove the Chinese to reconcile with the Americans in order the balance the increasingly hostile Soviet Union. This had an incredibly detrimental effect on the PRC’s relationship with the DRV. On the Soviet side, the Sino-American rapprochement drove the Soviets to seek better relations with the U.S. as well in order to prevent a U.S.-China alliance that could alter the Cold War balance of power against them. This had the effect of largely isolating the DRV diplomatically. Recognizing the impact that the Sino-Soviet split had on the Vietnam War, “Nixon was interested in Sino-U.S. rapprochement primarily for two reasons: (1) to reduce the U.S. presence in Vietnam, and (2) to align the U.S. with China against the Soviets” (Khoo 67). This initiative was well received in Beijing because China had become largely isolated not only from the western nations, but from Vietnam as a result of its intransigence with regard to the peace negotiations, and its diminishing influence when compared to the Soviet Union. The PRC also was genuinely concerned that the Soviets were preparing to go to war, and “[s]eeking a way to counter the increased Soviet threat following the declaration of the Brezhnev Doctrine in 1968 and subsequent border clashes in 1969, Mao looked to the possibility of using the United States as a balancer against the Soviets” (Khoo 66). The DRV’s struggle against the U.S. had become increasingly political as it used propaganda to mobilize anti-war forces in the United States. Hanoi’s efforts in this field were largely successful in bringing down President Johnson, but Nixon’s “diplomacy with Moscow and Peking had prevented them from mobilizing the full fury of public dissent” and “had isolated Hanoi diplomatically from its main sources of support” (Kissinger 1042, 1046). From 1968 to 1970, China had dramatically reduced its aid to punish the DRV for moving toward the Soviet Union, which soured PRC-DRV relations. This relationship was further eroded because “‘[t]he ultimate act of Chinese betrayal of a beleaguered ally was Mao’s decision to invite Dr. Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon to Peking while Vietnam was still fighting the war and stubbornly holding out in the peace negotiations’” (Lucien Pye quoted in Khoo 68). The core of triangular diplomacy was the fact that the Soviets were drawn to cooperate with the U.S. in order to prevent a U.S.-China alliance created to balance the U.S.S.R, which after all was Kissinger’s goal.

The triangular diplomacy of the Nixon administration ultimately brought the DRV to the negotiating table for several reasons. The U.S.-China rapprochement had changed the military situation on the ground because it damaged PRC-DRV relations to the point where China sought to make up for its “betrayal” of the DRV through “increased military aid to Hanoi during the 1971 to 1973 period, and this facilitated the Vietnamese communists’ massive Easter Offensive in March-June 1972” (Khoo 68). While the increased military aid helped Hanoi, U.S.-Chinese rapprochement ultimately harmed the DRV’s military position because it removed the credibility of China’s deterrent to increased aggression by the United States. The DRV openly criticized this policy and “Le Duan highlighted the ominous implications of the rapprochement for Hanoi, stating that ‘now that Nixon has talked to you, they will hit us even harder’” (Khoo 69). The Nixon Administration’s policy toward China also changed the PRC’s attitude on negotiations in 1972. Whereas “[p]rior to 1972, China’s fear of collusion between the Soviet Union and the U.S. drove its opposition to Hanoi’s participation in the talks with Washington…On 31 December 1972 Zhou Enlai told North Vietnamese leader Truong Chinh that the Vietnamese communists ‘ought to approach the negotiations seriously in order to produce results’” (Khoo 76). The Soviet Union was similarly urging Hanoi to settle with the U.S. because it wanted to remove the Vietnam War as an obstacle to U.S.-Soviet détente in the world of triangular diplomacy. Thus, the Paris Agreement that ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was largely concluded because of the Nixon Administration’s triangular diplomacy toward the U.S.S.R. and China, and the subsequent pressure that the communist giants put on the DRV to settle.

The developments that led to the collapse of the Paris Agreement and Saigon’s fall in April of 1975 had little to do with the conflict between the Soviet Union and China. Richard Nixon’s domestic troubles from Watergate weakened his authority and the U.S. deterrent to North Vietnamese violations of the peace agreement. Nixon’s resignation and Gerald Ford’s ascension to the presidency did not stop the DRV from systematically violating the agreement because the U.S. Congress had cut off funds for the war and almost completely prohibited bombing in Indochina. When Saigon ultimately fell, the Chinese and the Soviets expressed their support for the newly unified communist state, but the ongoing conflict between China and the Soviet Union would permeate the post-war relationships with the newly united communist state of Vietnam. The relationship between the Soviet Union and Vietnam flourished after 1975, at the expense of China’s relationship with Vietnam. China would even go to war with Vietnam in the late 1970’s, largely because they feared Soviet encroachment on their southern border. Thus, the myth of monolithic communism was exposed to the fullest extent possible in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

In the final analysis, the conflict between the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China had a critical impact on the Vietnam War. The relationship was categorized by a competition for influence in Hanoi at each other’s expense, with the Chinese having dominance from 1954 to 1964, and the Soviets having dominance from 1965 until the end of the war and beyond. The Sino-Soviet split was used by the Americans in their triangular diplomacy, which further strained PRC-DRV relations and brought an end to the American involvement in the war with the 1973 Paris Agreement. While the DRV ultimately achieved its goal of unifying the country under a communist government in 1975, the Sino-Soviet conflict raged on and defined Vietnam’s foreign policy for years to come.

References

Khoo, Nicholas. Collateral Damage: Sino-Soviet Rivalry and the Termination of the Sino-Vietnamese Alliance. Columbia University Press, 2011. Print.

Kissinger, Henry. White House Years. Little, Brown and Company, 1979. Print.

Luthi, Lorenz M. The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World. Princeton University Press, 2008. Print.

Ou, Hsin-Hung. Communist China’s Foreign Policy Toward the War in Vietnam 1965-1973. Dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1977. UMI, 1981.

Tse-ming, Chen. The Communists’ Role in the War in Vietnam. Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, 1965. Print.

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