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Title:
Selected significant Communist statements on intervention in Vietnam
Date of Creation:
April 7, 1965
Date of Declassification:
November 18, 1981
Type of Document:
Report
Level of Classification:
TOP SECRET
Status of Copy:
SANITIZED
Pagination, Illustration:
28 p.
Abstract:
This report contains some of the more significant Communist statements on the issue of intervention in Vietnam. The tone of statements by each protagonist has been quite different; the USSR being less strident and more cautious than Peiping and Hanoi. Moscow has said repeatedly that it had an obligation to extend "necessary support" to North Vietnam to help safeguard the security and strengthen the defenses of that state. Moscow's few references to Soviet "volunteers" have been deliberately vague in defining the limits to which it might go if the US continues to increase its commitment in Vietnam. Privately, the Russians have warned of the "dangerous consequences" for US-Soviet relations if the conflict expands. Chinese statements on intervention have been tough, but do not commit Peiping to any particular course of action. The Chinese note to Hanoi on 28 March [1965] is the most explicit promise of "volunteer" assistance thus far, but it is carefully conditioned to leave Peiping room for maneuver on the issue. Hanoi, like Peiping, has taken a hard line on the Intervention question. It has given extensive coverage to the Liberation Front's call for "volunteer" support; it continues to publicize the alleged "eagerness" of young people in the bloc to fight in South Vietnam. North Vietnamese propaganda asserts that the struggle against the US by people in both parts of Vietnam is now "more closely coordinated than ever before." Hanoi has, however, carefully avoided any public commitment to send native northerners into South Vietnam. The National Front, as the political arm of the Viet Cong, speaks with the voice of Hanoi. Its request on 22 March [1965] for help by volunteers was carefully phrased as a contingency move. This hedged statement got rapid and apparently coordinated responses from both Hanoi and Peiping calculated to deter the US without committing either the Chinese or the North Vietnamese to any specific action. It is beleived that the National Liberation Front, Hanoi and the Ciniese Communists are trying to boost the morale of Communist forces in South Vietnam, and, more importantly, are trying to raise the spectre of general war on the Indochinese mainland in order to increase the diplomatic and political pressure on the US and to deter the US from continuing, and perhaps increasing, its present policy line. It is unlikely that these statements portend any overt infusion of North Vietnamese or, especially, Chinese manpower into the war in South Vietnam, though there may be some increase in covert North Vietnamese support to the Viet Cong.
Indexing Terms:
Declassified Documents Reference System Location:
1983-001588