Threatened Viet Nam

Report Outline
Communist Threat to South Viet Nam
Partition of Former French Colony
Foreign Assistance to Divided Viet Nam

Communist Threat to South Viet Nam

Laos as Red Stepping Stone to South Viet Nam

Whatever is done or not done about Laos by the conferees now struggling with the problem at Geneva, increased Communist pressure on the adjoining Republic of [South] Viet Nam seems in store. If a strictly neutral status should be achieved for Laos, the Communist drive to penetrate more deeply into Southeast Asia would still go on. If Laos sooner or later falls completely under Communist domination, the southward push will simply be facilitated. Either way, South Viet Nam is the logical next target for Red expansion in that area.

This situation was foreseen when the Council of Ministers of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization met at Bangkok at the end of March to consider the growing crisis in Laos. The Council in its final communique, March 29, noted “with concern the efforts of an armed minority … to destroy the government of Viet Nam” and declared “its firm resolve not to acquiesce in any such take-over of that country.” Vice President Johnson's recent trip to South Viet Nam obviously was undertaken to give proof of that resolve on the part of the United States. Although this country has not yet offered to send American troops to Viet Nam in case of need, military assistance of other kinds is being sharply increased.

Secretary of State Dean Rusk told newsmen, May 4, that Communist guerrilla activities in South Viet Nam had already been greatly increased. Since late in 1959, the organized armed strength of the Viet Cong, which is the guerrilla organization in the republic, has grown from about 3,000 to more than 12,000 and has been supplemented by increased numbers of political and propaganda agents. More than 3,000 local officials, military personnel and civilians were murdered or kidnapped in the year 1960 alone. Rusk pointed out that the upsurge of guerrilla operations apparently resulted from a decision of the Communist Party of North Viet Nam in May 1959 calling for reunification of Viet Nam by all “appropriate means.” The North Vietnamese party in September 1960 had named as a major strategic task the liberation of the South from the “rule of United States imperialists and their henchmen.”