Start Date: March 1954
End Date: April 1954
Proposed U. S. military intervention in the Indochina War. On March 13, 1954, Viet Minh commanding general Vo Nguyen Giap launched an attack on the French fortress of Dien Bien Phu established in far northwestern Vietnam on the orders of commander in Indochina General Henri Navarre. Ultimately Giap committed to the battle four divisions of 49,500 troops against a total French strength with reinforcements of only 13,000. Both sides recognized the importance of the battle, which took place against the backdrop of an international conference in Geneva, called to discuss Asian affairs.
In February 1954 French Army chief of staff General Paul
Henri Romuald Ély and Defense Minister René Pleven undertook a fact- finding
mission to Indochina. Convinced that France could not win the war there without
massive military assistance, Ély traveled to Washington to meet with U. S.
government officials. Arriving there on March 20, 1954, Ély candidly informed
his American counter- part, Admiral Arthur W. Radford, of the probable fall of
Dien Bien Phu and the serious consequences this would have for the Indo- china
War and perhaps for all of Southeast Asia.
Radford recommended that the United States consider direct
military intervention, most likely in the form of airpower, should the French
government so request. This was the origin of Operation VULTURE. Despite
opposition from U. S. Army chief of staff General Matthew B. Ridgway, Radford
encouraged Ély to believe that the United States would intervene should Paris
request it. Afer Ély’s return to Paris, the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration
did decide to send the French 25 additional B-25 medium bombers.
Although the military options varied, the plan revolved
around an air strike by between 60 and 100 U. S. Air Force B-50 bombers from
the Philippines, supported by several hundred U. S. Navy jet fighters flying
off U. S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The option of attacking Viet
Minh forces in the mountains surrounding Dien Bien Phu was abandoned because of
the inadequacy of French radar. Another option called for air strikes against
Viet Minh base areas and lines of communication to the Chinese border. Finally,
there was discussion of possible air bursts with nuclear weapons. A Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS) study committee concluded that three tactical nuclear
bombs would be sufficient to smash the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu.
On March 29 U. S. secretary of state John Foster Dulles
delivered a speech to the Overseas Press Club in New York City in which he
called for “united action” to meet the Communist threat in South-
east Asia. Several days later during a press conference President Eisenhower
seconded Dulles’s call although without promising direct U. S. assistance. Vice
President Richard Nixon was among those urging intervention, suggesting that
the United States might have to “put American boys in.”
On April 3 Dulles and Radford met with congressional leaders
to solicit their support should Eisenhower decide that military intervention
was necessary. The legislators set three conditions to secure congressional
approval: the intervention would have to be multinational effort, including
Britain and Commonwealth nations; France would have to promise to accelerate
independence for Indochina; and France would promise not to withdraw from the
war should the United States become directly involved.
On April 4 Navarre cabled Ély to report a deterioration in
conditions at Dien Bien Phu and to call for a U. S. air strike. That same night
the French government formally requested immediate U. S. intervention. During a
press conference on April 7 Eisenhower referred to the possible loss of
Indochina to communism as the “falling domino principle,” the first
occasion in public that the administration had used the term. Eisenhower again
refused to commit the United States to unilateral military action, however.
Dulles then flew to London and Paris to meet with his
counterparts. British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, while publicly supporting
the principle of collective defense, refused any specific commitment. Dulles
then flew on to Paris, where the French government sought to bargain with him
over the European Defense Community (EDC), which the U. S. government earnestly
sought. On April 22 Dulles informed the French that without French approval of
the EDC there was no chance of U. S. intervention. Foreign Minister Georges
Bidault responded that if Dien Bien Phu surrendered, France would have no
interest in the EDC. Bidault said that the only alternatives were Operation
VULTURE or an Indochina cease- fire. French premier Joseph Laniel then appealed
to the British government for its participation, the precondition for U. S.
military intervention. Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the British
cabinet into emergency session, but the cabinet decided against involvement.
The British believed that the battle was too far gone and that France should
seek to resolve the situation diplomatically at the Geneva Conference. Foreign
Minister Eden noted prophetically that “I am beginning to think Americans
are quite ready to supplant French and see themselves in the role of liberators
of Vietnamese patriotism and expulsers or redeemers of Communist insurgency in
Indochina. If so they are in for a painful awakening.”
On May 7, 1954, Dien Bien Phu surrendered. The next day the
French government entered into negotiations at Geneva to extricate France from
Vietnam.
References Arnold, James R. The First Domino:
Eisenhower, the Military, and America’s Intervention in Vietnam. New York:
William Morrow, 1991. Billings-Yun, Melanie. Decision against War: Eisenhower
and Dien Bien Phu, 1954. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Eden,
Anthony. Full Circle. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. Eisenhower, Dwight D.
Mandate for Change, 1953-1956: The White House Years. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1963. Ely, Paul. Mémoires: L’Indochine dans la Tourmente. Paris:
Plon, 1964. Gardner, Lloyd C. Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through
Dienbienphu. New York: Norton, 1989. Prados, John. The Sky Would Fall: Operation
Vulture, the U. S. Bombing Mission in Indochina, 1954. New York: Dial, 1983.
Radford, Arthur W. From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur
W. Radford. Edited by Stephen Jurika Jr. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press,
1980.
