Failure of Diplomacy in 1954

The readings and lecture have identified several formative activities that defined the American understanding of world history from 1946 to 1989 (and American activity during that period): Baruch’s labeling of world conflict as the Cold War in 1947, the Truman Doctrine of 1947, and Eisenhower’s figure of speech about falling dominoes.

As World War II began, the Vietminh formed as a guerilla army to resist French influence in the Vietnamese portion of Indochina. French respect for the Vietminh was so low that they called it “the barefoot army” – and yet the Vietminh organized over time to defeat much more sophisticated French forces by 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.

Let’s discuss how the operating assumptions of conflicting parties and other related nations prohibited constructive discussion at the Geneva Accords meetings of 1954 and brought about the continued failure of the diplomatic process to bring settlement in Vietnam.

From diplomatic effort in general and the 1954 Geneva negotiations in particular, what lessons can we learn about necessary conditions and understandings that are essential for conflict negotiations to succeed?

An antecedent to the world situation at the time of the Vietnam War was the first collective security agreement: the League of Nations (1919–1946). President Woodrow Wilson had broken new ground in international relations when he proposed the League of Nations concept in 1919 at the Treaty of Versailles negotiations that followed World War I – known at the time as The Great War. Other collective security agreements relating to the situation in Southeast Asia include the UN, Warsaw Pact, NATO, and SEATO. There were also other agreements elsewhere in the world. The United States was involved in the creation of all these agreements except the Warsaw Pact.

What were the purposes to be achieved in collective security agreements? What were the dangers to be avoided, and what were the fears?

And what was going on at their creation that made them differ so sharply in form, authority, decision-making ability, and military response capability? Our special concern is the case of SEATO. Treaties and alliances go back as far as written history will take us, but in the 20th century we start something altogether new with collective security agreements