*from earlier post:
I had a comment about the French involvement in what we now know as Vietnam. Along with Suez, this was IMHO, a MAJOR mistake of the Eisenhower Administration.
Eisenhower, like many Americans of his era (FDR included) was pretty strongly anti-imperialist. As such, he basically pulled the rug out from under the Brits/French/Israelis in Suez and then didn't give much help to the French in what was then French Indo-China. I'm trying to present both sides here:
Suez:
The Brits, French, and Israelis went into Egypt to retake the Suez canal from the Egyptians. Eisenhower saw it as naked European imperialism and opposed them at the UN. That doomed the effort.
The argument for opposing them was that it really was naked European Imperialism. The canal is IN Egypt not France, the UK, nor even Israel.
The argument for supporting or at least not impeding them is that the Brits/French/Israelis would have opened the canal to all rather than locking it down to some users. Further, US Presidents for decades have complained about the lack of European spending on defense, basically that they are propped up by being defended by US. This all basically started because of Suez. The British/French response was basically to say "well, if the US is going to determine what goes, then F-it, we'll let them police the world and they can pay for it."
It wouldn't necessarily have been reasonable for IKE is foresee that potential consequence but it was largely a consequence of being more-or-less told to stand down at Suez. Additionally, Israel effectively became our dependent when prior to that we hadn't had much involvement in the Middle East as it had been more of a British/French concern.
French Indo-China:
What is now Vietnam along with Cambodia and Laos was the French Colony of French Indo-China pre-WWII. During the war the Vichy regime "permitted" Japan to occupy it. I have permitted in quotation marks because they really didn't have much of a choice given the situation. Post-war the French attempted to re-assert their authority and they were opposed by various locals including Ho Chi Minh's communists. They got involved in a war there that cost about as many French lives as our involvement in Vietnam would eventually cost in American lives. It is important to note, however, that the French had a much smaller population and that the French casualties occurred in a shorter time so the French war there was more impactful on France's population than our involvement was on ours.
Eisenhower did provide some support to the French for anti-communist reasons but his support was lukewarm for anti-imperialist reasons. IMHO, we should have given the French anything they asked for and I say this for multiple reasons:
- It was essentially free to us. We had MASSIVE amounts of surplus WWII military hardware that all ended up being scrapped anyway so why not just give it to the French?
- While the French were involved for the purpose of maintaining French Colonialism, in practice they were fighting with and thus containing Communist expansion and since "Containment" of Communism was a widely agreed US Policy at the time, why not let the French do the fighting (and dying) in service of that end?
- Most importantly, we ended up losing 55K soldiers in Vietnam and our involvement there was a result of South Vietnam effectively becoming our dependent once the French pulled out. It is at least possible that a massive infusion of American Military hardware would have kept the French fighting there long enough to keep us out.
