The Lost Mandate of Heaven by Geoffrey Shaw, Ignatius, £16.99
“The historical record places the responsibility for the fate of South Vietnam upon the shoulders of specific individuals, powerful men within the Kennedy administration who directly and intentionally abrogated America’s pledges to President Diem’s government.” Such is the scathing conclusion of Geoffrey Shaw’s new book.
Ngo Dinh Diem came to power in 1955 with considerable assistance from the United States and, for the remainder of the decade, was courted and supported as a valuable ally against the communist menace. There were always grumbles in some Washington circles about Diem’s political world view but these were easily trumped by the perceived imperatives of US foreign policy. The trouble began when it became clear that Diem was his own man and not an American stooge.
Shaw does a superb job of explaining the points of contention. They usually orbited around issues of military strategy: how to confront North Vietnam and deal with pro-communist intrusions and insurgencies south of the border. Diem’s failure to embark upon immediate democratic reform also irked some within the Kennedy administration.
Throughout the early 1960s there was never a consensus about how to deal with Diem, but an increasingly influential faction saw him as an obstacle. Ever greater pressure was applied to South Vietnam – “suggestions” were made – and the image of Diem as a corrupt tyrant who was squandering the loyalty of his people was constructed. The final destination of this anti-Diem logic was that if Diem did not mend his ways then the US might have to withdraw support: indeed, it would not be a tragedy if Diem were to be replaced.
Shaw is enraged by every aspect of what he regards as a very murky tale. Diem, he suggests, was no kind of tyrant and retained the affection of most of his people. His tactical analyses were anything but absurd: his piecemeal anti-insurgency measures were quite effective and it was more a matter of the Americans unrealistically expecting “rapid results to flow from their wealth and power”. Nor is there much room to applaud the disrespectful way Diem was sometimes treated. At his first meeting with Diem, Averell Harriman (at the time Kennedy’s ambassador-at-large and a figure who would emerge as a leader of the anti-Diem campaign) turned off his hearing aid and took a nap when the president began to speak.
The American role in Diem’s fall most infuriates Shaw. The so-called Buddhist crisis of 1963 was crucial. Protesters were suppressed by Vietnamese government troops, unarmed civilians died and “poignant photos of monks immolating themselves” spread around the world. Diem, Shaw makes clear, was in no way an anti-Buddhist, but events gave his American enemies an irresistible opportunity.
By July 4, Kennedy was being advised that if Diem fell this would be no great loss. On the weekend of August 24 a telegram was sent to the US embassy in South Vietnam making it perfectly clear that the US would do nothing if there were a regime change. Shaw talks about this message being “sneaked out of town”: no big meeting in Washington, just all the key players, Kennedy included, being individually assured that everyone else was on board.
By November, Diem’s South Vietnamese enemies had struck and the president, along with his brother, were shot – though not before having their gallbladders removed while still alive. Frederick Nolting, formerly US ambassador to South Vietnam and someone who held Diem in considerable esteem, later wrote of Americans “encouraging a coup while pretending we had nothing to do with it”. At the very least, the US did absolutely nothing to prevent the coup and it is such inaction that Shaw regards as a betrayal. If we are looking for a “veritable Conradian ‘heart of darkness’ ”, he writes, it is to be found “not in Saigon but in Washington DC”.
There are, of course, other ways of looking at events. Many historians have argued that the Kennedy administration had little choice but to withdraw support from Diem: it was necessary if not particularly noble. It will be interesting to see how they respond to Shaw’s conclusion that the US tried to “solve a problem that did not exist” and “created a problem that could not be solved” – namely a long, disastrous and bloody war.
On one issue, however, even Shaw’s critics must concede that the book is both compelling and disturbing. The attempt to blacken Diem’s name – portraying him as tyrannical and incompetent – does seem to have been a devious (if astute) propagandist manoeuvre. The way in which the American press gobbled up and regurgitated the caricature is quite astonishing.
Diem was no saint, but he was passionate about his country and, for the most part, a decent man. Shaw puts some of this down to Diem’s Catholicism. This, after all, was a man who was up for Mass every day at 6.30 am and was “often described as monk-like with a touch of severity”.
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