The Third Indochina War

Conflict between China, Vietnam and Cambodia, 1972-79

Odd Arne Westad, Sophie Quinn-Judge, Odd Arne Westad, Sophie Quinn-Judge

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134167753
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Storia
• Categoria: Storia militare e marittima

This new collection explores the origins and key issues of the Third Indochina War, which began in 1979.

Drawing on unique documentation from all sides, leading contributors reinterpret and demystify the long-term and immediate causes of the Vietnamese-Cambodian and Sino-Vietnamese conflicts. They closely examine how both the links between policies and policy assumptions in the countries involved, and the dynamics - national, regional and international - drove them towards war. Rather than explaining the conflicts as determined by age-old resentments and suspicions or seeing war between the former allies as the necessary outcome of the conflicts of the 1970s, the contributors to this volume look at the concrete causes for the breakdown in cooperation and the road to war.

This volume includes even-handed assessments of the roles of the major players, including a look at the beginnings of Thai-Chinese military cooperation in support of the Khmer Rouge. The subjects covered remain highly relevant to inter-state relations in South East Asia, where border issues are still a cause of tension. An updated chronology of events leading to the outbreak of hostilities is also included.

This book will be of immense interest to all students of the Third Indochina War, Southeast Asian history and of international relations and war studies in general.

1 The Sino-Vietnamese split and the Indochina War, 1968–1975

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the roots of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict in the latter half of the Second Indochina War and in particular how the nature of the post-Tet conflict contributed to the deterioration of relations between the DRV and the PRC. In order to trace the evolution of the Sino-Vietnamese split during the latter half of the Second Indochina War, it will analyze the breakdown of relations on three levels: the bilateral, regional, and international. In particular, the weakening of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance, which had begun at the start of the Americanization of the Vietnamese conflict, reached a critical juncture in the post-Tet war, as the 1968 Communist offensive wrought massive changes in the nature of the conflict that also, in turn, held consequences for the alliance. First, Hanoi’s decision to enter into peace negotiations with Washington underlined the divergence in Chinese and Vietnamese opinion regarding tactics. Second, the military stalemate in South Vietnam after 1968 ushered in the regionalization of the war, which essentially created an arena of political competition between the Chinese and North Vietnamese for influence and control. Third, the internationalization of the diplomatic struggle from 1969 onwards pitted Chinese and Vietnamese interests squarely against one another in face of the Nixon administration’s triangular diplomacy.

The chapter is divided into four sections. The first three sections will deal with the period from the Tet Offensive to the signing of the Paris peace agreement. It will look at bilateral relations between Hanoi and Beijing and, in particular, Sino-Vietnamese disagreement over negotiations with Washington and the Soviet factor that caused the first crack in the Asian Communist alliance. The second section will analyze the ramifications of the regionalization of the war that began the competition for mastery in Indochina between China and Vietnam. The third section will look at the internationalization of the diplomatic struggle, which placed Chinese interests in conflict with Vietnamese interests as a result of rapprochement with Washington. The final section will examine Sino-Vietnamese interaction from 1973 to 1975 as a product of the gradual deterioration of relations in the previous period.

Cracks in the alliance

Although Sino-Vietnamese relations at the end of 1967 were not in their prime, the events that ensued in 1968 dealt a major blow to the Asian alliance. For the Chinese, the Sino-Soviet split played a major role in their calculations of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance. Beijing was in constant fear that Hanoi would tilt towards Moscow, given North Vietnam’s growing reliance on Soviet economic and military aid.¹ For the Vietnamese, the memory of the 1954 Geneva Conference² and, more importantly, the need to maintain Soviet aid meant that Hanoi had to keep Beijing at a distance.³ However, bilateral relations between the two Asian allies on the eve of the Tet Offensive were strained yet intact. With the arrival of the 1968 Lunar New Year, the foundation that Sino-Vietnamese relations rested upon began to crack under the weight of the Soviet factor. To the CCP, the Tet Offensive signaled to Beijing that its North Vietnamese allies were moving away from a Chinese model of protracted warfare and towards a strategy that would entail greater dependence on advanced Soviet weaponry.⁴ In reality, although Hanoi paid homage to Mao’s doctrine of “People’s War” and even appropriated aspects of China’s revolutionary tactics, the North Vietnamese designed their own unique military strategy dictated by Vietnam’s experience and perceived needs.⁵

Although the exact timing of the planning for the Tet Offensive remains unclear, in early April of 1967 Vietnamese leaders did meet with their Chinese allies in Beijing to discuss the shift in strategy.⁶ At the Beijing meeting, Chinese leaders gave their approval to the North Vietnamese to accelerate the war. But as the Tet Offensive crystallized into a general offensive and uprising with an ambitious nation-wide attack on major cities and provincial towns, the Chinese deemed the move premature.⁷ From the CCP’s perspective, the shift in North Vietnam’s strategy not only meant a divergence from Mao’s three-stage process of war but, more importantly, meant greater reliance on Soviet arms that would inevitably lead to an increase of Moscow’s political influence in Hanoi. In a June 1968 conversation between Zhou Enlai and Ph

m Hùng⁸ after the first and second waves of the offensive, the Chinese premier stated:

Your recent attacks on the cities were only aimed at restraining the enemy’s forces, helping the work of liberating the rural areas, mobilizing massive forces in urban areas. Yet, they are not of a decisive nature. The Soviet revisionists are claiming that attacks on Saigon are genuine offensives, that the tactics of using the countryside to encircle the urban areas are wrong and that to conduct a protracted struggle is a mistake. In their opinion, only lightening attacks on big cities are decisive. But if you do [that], the US will be happy as they can concentrate their forces for counter-attack thus causing greater destruction for you. The losses that you would suffer will lead to defeatism on your side.⁹

Nonetheless, the disagreement over military tactics alone, even with the Soviet implication, would not have been fatal to the alliance.¹⁰ Instead, it was Hanoi’s decision to enter into negotiations with Washington as a result of the military stalemate in the wake of Tet that dealt the first major blow to Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Second Indochina War. In a sense, if the 1968 offensive planted a seed of doubt in Chinese thinking regarding Soviet influence in North Vietnam, the initiation of negotiations in Paris sprouted paranoia. Beijing’s active opposition to peace initiatives prior to 1968 and harsh criticism following the Vietnam Workers’ Party’s (VWP) agreement to enter talks in April stood in stark contrast to Moscow’s active support for peace talks prior to 1968 and the Soviet Union’s role in ensuring that the Paris meeting advanced past its initial hurdles.¹¹ Fearing that negotiations constituted a Soviet ploy to take the war in Vietnam out of China’s grip, Beijing advised Hanoi to continue waging a protracted struggle and cease any diplomatic Chen Yi and Lê Ðúc Th

, the Chinese foreign minister engaged in a vitriolic condemnation of Hanoi’s acceptance of quadripartite negotiations:

In our opinion, in a very short time, you have accepted the compromising and capitulationist proposals put forward by the Soviet revisionists. So, between our two parties and the two governments of Vietnam and China, there is nothing more to talk about.¹²

Lê Ðúc Tho responded to Chen Yi’s long diatribe by stating simply, “On this matter, we will wait and see. And the reality will give us the answer. We have gained experience over the past 15 years. Let reality justify.”

The “15 years” of experience resulted in the tactic of dàm và dánh (talk while fighting) but, to the Chinese, the negotiating aspect of Hanoi’s strategy coincided too closely with Soviet revisionism. Although Beijing insisted that its disapproval of Hanoi’s tactics also stemmed from a fear that the North Vietnamese were not yet experienced enough to negotiate with the US, the Vietnamese believed that the PRC’s stance was more reactionary than cautionary. In late October, Johnson’s suspension of Rolling Thunder, more specifically the cessation of bombing north of the 17th parallel, prompted the Chinese to pull back their troops from the DRV and to reduce military aid.¹³ Beijing claimed that its actions were aimed at ensuring Vietnamese self-reliance; however, the conversations between Chinese and Vietnamese leaders at the time indicate that Beijing’s policies were motivated by disapproval and outright anger with the Vietnamese for disregarding Chinese advice.

Hanoi’s decision to undertake the Tet Offensive and to enter into negotiations with the US greatly strained the internal dynamics of the Sino-Vietnamese alliance. Although distrust and suspicion, especially on the part of the Chinese, existed prior to 1968, Sino-Vietnamese relations never recovered after Tet. In turn, the internal squabbles in the Asian alliance allowed external factors to deepen the divide between Hanoi and Beijing.

Struggle for mastery in Indochina

Mutual distrust between Hanoi and Beijing after 1968 soon turned into competition, with the regionalization of the Vietnamese–American conflict. Although rivalry over Indochina never resulted in armed conflict between the Chinese and North Vietnamese during the Second Indochina War, it did entail a bitter political struggle for influence over the Cambodian and Laotian revolutions that would later have major implications for the post-war region. Since the First Indochina War, Chinese and Vietnamese Communist leaders had worked together in Laos and Cambodia, coordinating their strategies to support the smaller revolutions in the neighboring countries. By the latter half of the Second Indochina War, Beijing and Hanoi competed rather than cooperated in Indochina. By 1969, Moscow had replaced Washington as the main threat to Chinese security. Since the PRC could not countenance even the potential of a unified, pro-Soviet Vietnam, when the war expanded into Cambodia and Laos, Mao and other Chinese leaders opted to cultivate other allies in the region. For H...