Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF's Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War

Brigham, Robert K. Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF's Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. 215 pp.

Brigham, an Associate Professor of History at Vassar College, has written a surprisingly well researched work based largely on North Vietnamese documents and over one hundred personal interviews, marred weightily, however, by his own biases. A few gremlins are present in the text as well. Plei ku becomes "Play ku" and Qui Nhon is rendered as "Quy Nhon."

Brigham's basic theme, unsurprisingly, is that the Division of Viet Nam along the 17th parallel in 1954 following the Geneva Accords compelled the north to adopt twin goals: socialism at home and a war of liberation in the south (p, x). "I argue essentially," he states, "that the [post-1954] division was an important geographic determinant of subsequent revolutionary national behavior" (p, xi). While most would agree that geography played an important part in the second Indochina War, few would elevate it to the significance assigned to it by Brigham. Probably more important was the sense of cultural unity felt by all Vietnamese whether from Cochin China, Annam, or Tonkin and their xenophobic desire for the land to be free from all foreign influences so that they might settle their own differences.

Brigham endeavors to show that the National Liberation Front was not controlled by the northern politburo but carried on diplomacy with foreign nations on its own. To that end he writes a good many valuable pages describing NLF diplomats and their travels and negotiations with other governments. As part of its overall strategy, Brigham asserts, the NLF "publicly distanced itself from Hanoi." Brigham ignores a plenitude of evidence that this distancing was itself part of Hanoi's overall plan to use the NLF-created at its direction-as an umbrella front to gather unaligned and friendly and anti-Diemist folk into its fold. Despite this, Brigham insists that the NLF was somehow neither fish nor fowl, "Neither a puppet of Hanoi nor an autonomous organization" (p, xi).

Never is a friendly or objective word written about the southern government or its leaders. Brigham speaks of "Diem's reign of terror ..." (p. 9), while Ho's equally vicious government is inevitably simply described as the North or the Lao Dong (communist) party. He writes how "Diem had initiated unprecedented purges ..." (p. 10), but gives no hint that in 1946 the northern general Vo Nguyen Giap had ordered his agents to murder hundreds of nationalists in order for the Lao Dong party to rise to power unimpeded. Nor did northern terror end with the close of 1946.

Brigham continues his silence on the Lao Dong's northern repression of rural folk during the time of Ho's "land to the tillers" program in 1956, the result of which was widespread chaos throughout the north and the official execution of as many as 100,000, mostly innocent, people. Desperate men rose in wrath in November 1956 and in Quynh Luu district bloody fighting continued throughout most of November. Giap had to send in his 325th Division to suppress those anti-government forces. They killed some thousand peasants and deported over six thousand more to work camps. It is simply unhistorical for Brigham to pillory Diem and the southern government without at least some hint that similar actions took place in the north.

Such prejudices continue throughout the book. Brigham tells how the Diem "regime" engaged in "armed violence by launching massive anticommunist sweeps that depleted the party's ranks in the south" (p, 10). Of course Diems government sought to destroy the communists and their allies. They had sworn to destroy his government. And Brigham speaks of the Lao Dong's early "unwillingness" to engage in armed violence. At that point it was not unwilling, it was unable to do so.

Brigham writes approvingly how "NLF cadres drove repressive government officials out of many villages and harassed Arvn Troops." Unwary readers will have no notion that those unwilling minions slaughtered well over one thousand low-level officials of the Republic of South Viet Nam in 1958 and increased their productivity to four thousand the next year. One of their favorite acts was to behead and disembowel village elders, their wives and children. Brigham refers to these terrorists as cautious and creative. In such ways they drove "repressive" southern officials out of rural villages. Nor did they stop there. In 1964, according to Vo Nguyen Giap, those unwilling Viet Cong fought nearly 14,000 battles, razed over 400 southern posts and forced withdrawal from 550 others, killed or captured 42,000 Arvn soldiers and put 30,000 others out of action while also shooting down 170 planes.

Brigham also tells us that after "six years of trying to reunify the country through political means alone," the Politburo only then moved to the use of military force in order to "liberate" Viet Nam (p. 18). This is nonsense of the highest order. The communists had not relied on "political means alone" and rather than "liberate," they sought to occupy and to control the south. Brigham again resorts to this ploy on page 102 when he asserts that on 30 March 1972, 120,000 North Vietnamese troops crossed the DMZ and, a week later, "liberated" Loc Ninh. Capture it they did; liberate it they did not. He writes approvingly, and ahistorically, that the NLF "had risen at southern initiative in response to southern demands" (p. 18). That the NLF had a diplomatic face is indisputable. But was its origin demanded by those in the south? No. It was conceived and directed from beginning to end by the northern Politburo. It did little or nothing without direction. Its diplomats made endless visits to communist and neutralist countries worldwide and spoke reams of stultifying propagandistic words. Only the gullible then believed them to be independent. Brigham notes on page 95 that Hanoi even failed to inform the NLF of major negotiating shifts at the Paris peace talks.