751G.00/12–654
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Deputy Under Secretary of State (Murphy)
Subject:
- Vietnam
Participants:
- Ambassador Tran Van Chuong, Embassy of Viet-Nam Robert Murphy, Deputy Under Secretary
The Vietnamese Ambassador lunched with me today. He left with me the attached informal memorandum1 which he said might interest us. He volunteered a number of remarks regarding the trend of affairs in Viet-Nam, the essence of which was that his country is now paying for French domination and mismanagement through the years. He said that in his opinion, regardless of gestures made by Paris and he thought a number of people in Paris are sympathetic and want to see justice done, the French elements who actually control the situation in Viet-Nam have not changed their ideas essentially. Those elements, he said, are seeking to prolong the same kind of a situation which has existed in Viet-Nam for many years under which French imperialism will continue. Inevitably in Asia, U.S. support of and association with [Page 2347] the French policy exposed the U.S. to charges of imperialism and colonialism. They seek, he said, to set up a southern Viet-Nam governmental arrangement, using Cochin China as a base, which the French will continue to dominate and control. They hope, he stated, to work out a modus vivendi with Viet-Nam and in that he stated the conviction that the French will fail. If things continue as they are, he feels the Vietminh will inevitably control the entire area. He blames much of the inability of the Vietnamese to provide a competent governmental apparatus on French unwillingness in the past ever to permit men of stature to develop. He repeated the references made in the enclosed memorandum that while the French Government is apparently conceding economic power to the Vietnamese, it actually retains its control by its regulation of foreign exchange and the general economic life of the area. He, of course, emphasized the hope that the United States would deal directly with Viet-Nam in the field of economic assistance.
On the economic independence of Viet Nam depend the economic equilibrium of Asia, the expansion of American influence in Indo-china, and the salvaging or the loss of Viet Nam.
Up to the present the United States has aided France to aid and “defend” Viet Nam. The result is that Viet Nam depends closely on the French government and French authorities, who have always taken advantage of this to support only puppet governments and to sabotage any national government. From this situation, to cite only the most recent example, stems the rebellion of General Hinh, who, encouraged and supported by almost all the French in Indochina, paralysed the Vietnamese government for nearly three months at one of the most critical periods in its history. The task of the French Expeditionary Corps was to maintain order. Yet the arrival of General Collins was necessary to restore it.…2
The American government now admits the principle of direct aid to Viet Nam. But that direct aid will not suffice if it is given only for certain small precise projects and if the Vietnamese government is left closely dependent financially on the French Treasury.
The Vietnamese government will be held in that close dependence if the draft presented by the French delegation for a bilateral economic convention is not drastically modified.3
Article 1 of this project gives the Vietnamese government the power “to determine in full sovereignty the monetary regime of Viet Nam and the value of its monetary unit in relation to the franc,” but this is [Page 2348] only a theoretical power, for Article 2 gives the French government the power to grant or to refuse advances from the French Treasury to the Bank of Issue of Viet Nam, destined to procure the necessary foreign exchange for that Bank of Issue. The French government thus concedes a theoretical power to the Vietnamese government but actually keeps the full power of regulating the foreign exchange and the economic life of Viet Nam.
That bilateral convention will be concluded only for a year, but the history of the past eighty years has shown that the French authorities have always profited from what they call a temporary dependence of the Vietnamese government to enlarge and prolong it indefinitely instead of progressively diminishing it.
In these circumstances, why not replace the advances from the French Treasury to the Bank of Issue of Viet Nam by advances from the American Treasury, since in reality both come from the same American source.
Why prolong French commitments in Viet Nam when the history of these last eight years has proved that they are a cause of disaster for Viet Nam and of weakness for France and the Free World.
Why continue to bind the Vietnamese economy to the French economy and Vietnamese finances to French finances, when for its own sake and that of Asia Viet Nam must be allowed to find its natural place in Asia,—(Japan will be asphyxiated if she is not permitted to buy and sell freely in what remains free of Asia)—when the Vietnamese people no more need French wines and perfumes than the French people need Vietnamese rice, when the moral, political, and economic life of Viet Nam is completely warped by the presence and expenditures of the French Expeditionary Corps. This presence and these expenditures are possible, moreover, only because of American dollars.
The time has come to get out of those ruts of the past which have become progressively deeper and can only lead to a rapid and final engulfment.
Viet Nam must be saved and can only be saved by itself and the United States. All the difficulties and the defeats suffered in Viet Nam stem from the fact that America tried to let someone else carry out a task which she alone could accomplish.
Furthermore, she does not need to fight. She needs only to give aid. The intermediary in this case has served only to confuse and spoil everything. That intermediary is not the French people, themselves only victims in this sad affair; it is a matter of only a few thousand colonialists, who must not be confused with France.