CHAPTER 6 The DRV’s Non-Communist Vision of Southeast Asia (1945–1948)

 CHAPTER 6 The DRV’s Non-Communist Vision of Southeast Asia (1945–1948)

On top of the complex Vietnamese immigration and commercial activities based in Thailand I have described so far was yet another layer of operations, a diplomatic one. Between the end of World War II in 1945 and the November 1947 coup that brought Phibun back to power by early 1948, the DRV developed a largely unknown diplomatic relationship with Southeast Asia and the world thanks to its access to Thailand. Indeed, between 1945 and 1948, if not 1951 (see Chapter 8), Bangkok was the DRV’s most important diplomatic outlet to the region and one of its few windows to the world.

Why is this postwar diplomacy important? On the one hand, the DRV diplomatic operations in Bangkok show how Vietnam’s anticolonial and non-ideological relationship with the region, first elaborated by Phan Dinh Phung and Phan Boi Chau in clandestine ways, came into the open in the wake of World War II. On the other hand, the DRV’s activities in Thailand reveal the contradictions Vietnamese communists faced when they tried to win over the support of their non-communist neighbours (see Chapters 7 and 8). In both cases, Vietnam’s postwar diplomatic contacts with the region and the world began in Thailand in 1945, and not in China in 1950.

BANGKOK: THE DRV’s POSTWAR WINDOW ON ASIA AND THE WORLD

In mid-1946, while Ho Chi Minh was engaged in tense negotiations in Fontainebleau, the Vietnamese Minister of the Interior in Hanoi, Vo Nguyen Giap, cleared the way for the dispatch of the DRV’s new diplomatic representative to Thailand, Nguyen Duc Quy. According to Tran Van Dinh, Ho Chi Minh had first selected Nguyen Duc Quy during the Tan Trao Conference a year earlier. Travelling on a Chinese passport, Quy, along with Pham Ngoc Thach, left for Bangkok some time in 1946. In August, as the French threatened to increase troops on the Thai border, Quy and Thach arrived in Bangkok to begin discussions with Thai leaders concerning the DRV’s desire to expand its diplomatic activities in Thailand.

Pham Ngoc Thach was Ho Chi Minh’s trusted adviser and later his personal doctor. In the early 1940s, he had joined the ICP and in August–September 1945 he had emerged as a leading member of the Nam Bo People’s Committee. He had worked closely with Tran Van Giau during this time, helping to channel the Vanguard Youth League revolution’s way. In November, he travelled to Hanoi with Giau after the French reoccupation of southern Indochina. Fluent in French and proficient in English, Thach was sent to Bangkok in 1946 as the DRV’s Under-Secretary of State, fully authorised to deal with non-communist Asian governments. It is likely that the government orders clearing the way for his dispatch to Southeast Asia were linked to those sending Tran Van Giau there (see Chapter 4).

The reasons underpinning Hanoi’s diplomatic opening to Southeast Asia from late 1945 were obviously strategic. As we have seen in Chapter 4, throughout 1946 the security of the Hanoi-based DRV government and resistance forces located below the 16th parallel were coming under increased pressure as the French expanded their military control over large parts of southern Trung Bo and much of Nam Bo. To the southwest, Vietnamese leaders faced the French re-occupation of Cambodia and southern Laos. To the east, the French Navy was increasing its presence along the Vietnamese coast and in the Gulf of Tonkin. To the northwest, the decision by Chungking to allow around 2,000 French troops to cross into northern Laos and northwestern Bac Bo in early February rekindled fears of a French attack from that direction. And with the Chinese nationalists now moving towards an agreement with the French to pull their troops out of northern Indochina and American support anything but sure, it was clear to Vietnamese leaders at the outset of 1946 that Vietnam was increasingly encircled (vong vay) by the French and isolated (co lap) from both the region and the world.

Compounding the situation was Hanoi’s difficulty in contacting the socialist world. In early 1946, Chinese communist troops were still far from the northern Indochinese border. Moreover, between 1945 and 1948 Vietnamese communists do not appear to have been successful in tapping the CCP’s overseas revolutionary networks in Southeast Asia. In 1945 Soviet support was even further away. Moscow would not have a functioning Legation in Bangkok until 1948 (see Chapter 7). Hoang Nhat Tan, the son of Hoang Van Hoan and a cadre who worked in Thailand after World War II, pointed out in an interview that because of the disbanding of the Comintern in 1943, it was almost impossible for Vietnamese communists to contact the internationalist socialist world based in Eastern Europe.5 However, it is possible that the ICP had established contact with the French and Russian communists in Hanoi in September 1945. Yet such contacts were anything but official or secure.

Even normal communication with the non-communist parts of Asia and the West remained difficult, given the destruction of the war, the sudden capitulation of the Japanese, and the upheavals that followed in many countries. Without up-to-date information and intelligence on changes in international affairs, the Vietnamese decision-making process was seriously under-informed at a time when French authorities in Indochina had begun to take a more aggressive line towards Hanoi, especially after the signing of the modus vivendi in September 1946. If Vietnamese leaders were going to keep negotiations on track and counter French attempts to gain international support for an emerging counter-revolutionary state, the DRV needed much-improved access to Western and Asian governments, the international media and information services, and most of all diplomatic Bangkok offered the DRV favourable conditions for establishing an outlet (cu ngo) to the region and the world:

1.Most Western nations had diplomatic representation in Bangkok after the war.

2.Newly independent Southeast Asian nations had or were in the process of establishing diplomatic relations with Thailand between 1945 and 1950.

3.Bangkok was geographically located at the centre of Asia, close to Vietnam, and linked to the rest of the world by air, sea and international lines of communication.

4.The serious problems dividing the Thais and the French in 1946–47 made it easier for the former to support the DRV more openly than ever before.

5.Thanks to the Seri Thai connections of men such as Vu Huu Binh, the Vietnamese government had links to the highest levels of the postwar Thai government.

6.ICP leaders would have appreciated better than any of their non-communist collaborators how the surrounding region was key to the survival of the Vietnamese independence movement on the inside. Cao Hong Lanh, Hoang Quoc Viet and Tran Van Giau’s organisation of supply routes to Thailand from late 1945 is a good indication (see Chapter 5).

Upon arriving in Bangkok, Nguyen Duc Quy, Pham Ngoc Thach and Tran Van Giau entered negotiations with Thai officials concerning the possibility of establishing some sort of diplomatic representation in Bangkok. Pham Ngoc Thach forwarded a letter from Ho Chi Minh to Pridi and discussed the matter of establishing a delegation. He also underlined the need for stepped-up cooperation against European colonialism.8 At the time, the Thais were involved in tense negotiations with the French over contested Indochinese territories and a related bid to join the UN. Though talk of a military alliance may have crossed some (mainly Vietnamese) minds, it soon became clear that Thai leaders would not risk upsetting fragile negotiations with the French by supporting a Vietnamese revolutionary state too overtly. The Thais needed France's critical vote at the UN to regain their own international recognition. They thus refused to recognise the DRV officially.

However, that does not mean that the Thai government turned its back on the DRV. By allowing the Ho Chi Minh-led government to establish a diplomatic office in Bangkok, known as the Representational Office of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Van Phong Dai Dien Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa),9 Thai leaders made it clear that they sympathised with the DRV and were willing to recognise a decolonising Southeast Asian world of which they would take part. Later, this DRV office was also referred to as the Vietnam Delegation for 

South East Asia. At the outset, it shared the premises of the Vietnam News Service on 543 Silom Road, nicely located between the American Legation on Withayu Road and, from 1948, the Soviet Legation on Thanon Sathorn Nua.

 The Thai decision to allow the Vietnamese to establish a delegation in Bangkok was extremely propitious. By the time the delegation was actually functioning some time in October or November 1946, French authorities in Indochina were making preparations to retake northern Vietnam by force. A handful of officers formed the core of the delegation. Proficient in English, Thai, French and Chinese, Nguyen Duc Quy was the President of the delegation and the ranking Vietnamese government official based in Bangkok. Quy was also designated the DRV’s Special Representative for Southeast Asia. Nguyen Hong Pho was the Secretary General and Bui Van Cac the Secretary. Tran Van Giau focused his work on military matters and also played an important part in directing Vietnamese military operations from Thailand and western Indochina as well as assisting the Laotian and Cambodian resistance movements (see Chapter 5). Le Hy (alias Vinh Loi) was chief of the Vietnamese News Service (VNS, or Phong thong tin Viet Nam in Vietnamese), while Nguyen Van Trong was responsible for purchasing military equipment and arms. He was also a graduate from the prestigious French military academy, Saint Cyr. Bao An, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk whom we have already met on numerous occasions, tended to Viet kieu affairs and clandestine commerce. The counselor to the Delegation was Nam Hong Chung, a longstanding Vietnamese resident in Thailand whom we have already met.11 The DRV’s Bangkok delegation and the Nam Bo Supply Committee (Nam Bo Tiep te) remained administratively independent operations, though they shared the same premises at the outset (see Chapter 5).

"Besides this core group, there were other important members, some assigned directly to the delegation, others peripherally linked from their posts in northeast Thailand, Laos, Cambodia or Burma. Pham Ngoc Thach worked through the delegation in Bangkok as the DRV’s shuttle diplomat in charge of the DRV’s relations with non-communist governments in Southeast Asia. Also working on diplomatic affairs was Dr Tran Van Luan. The latter met with major Asian representatives stationed in Bangkok, organised the DRV’s relations with various international youth and workers’ groups, published articles in the VNS and the Bangkok Post supporting Vietnam’s case against the French, and represented the DRV at international conferences. In 1948, he would form and direct the DRV’s second most important regional diplomatic office in Rangoon (see Chapter 8)."

Members of the delegation were in touch with many Thai government officials. If we can believe Quy, from the time of his arrival in Bangkok he could 'meet with any Thai minister he wanted'. Speaking to me in 1989, as Vietnam moved towards integrating itself into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Quy no doubt wanted to play up the extent of his contacts with ranking Thai officials and his role as the DRV’s ‘first’ Southeast Asian diplomat. None the less, there must have been some truth in his claim. In order to form the delegation in Bangkok and to run large-scale contraband activities there, the DRV must have had support in very high places. One of the most important individuals was Pridi Phanom Yong. Even though Pridi had resigned from ministerial life in August 1946, he remained an important power-behind-the-scenes. Tiang Sirikhan, the Deputy Minister of the Interior, continued to be a leading Thai ally of the DRV, being especially close to Tran Van Giau.

The new Cabinet formed under the leadership of Rear-Admiral Luang Thamrong Nawasawat in August was favourably inclined towards the members of the delegation. Quy met with Thamrong on at least one occasion to discuss the state of Thai–Vietnamese relations. The Minister of Industry, Thongin Phuprihat, was a Vietnamese supporter, as we have already seen. It was Thongin to whom Quy delivered his letter of authorisation from Vo Nguyen Giap. Other long-time allies of the Viet Minh from World War II days included: the Acting Minister of Commerce, Chamlong Daoroong and Ministers without Portfolio, Thawi Udon and Thong Kantatham. While the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister, Direk Chaiyanam, did not allow the Thai government to recognise the DRV formally, Quy said that Direk nevertheless ‘sympathised’ with the DRV and did not oppose the formation of the delegation. Shortly after arriving, Quy met with the Vice-President of the National Assembly and Minister of Education, Duen Bunnik; the former Chief of Police and Minister of Defence and now the Commander-in-Chief of the Thai Armed Forces, General Adun Dechaard; and the Chief of Police as well as the Minister of the Interior, Colonel Chuang Chawengsak Songkhram. Khuang Aphaingong, a native of Battambang province and the leader of the opposition party, Prachathipat (Democracy), also met with Quy. In 1946, before leaving for Europe, even the young Thai King allegedly granted Nguyen Duc Quy an audience. The Viet Minh also had friends within Thai intelligence and police circles.

Thai sources confirm that Pridi Phanomyong was one of the DRV’s most powerful postwar allies in Thailand. Like Ho, Pridi also hoped to see an end to European colonialism in the region. Writing decades later, he reflected on the anticolonial sentiments sweeping the region after the war in the following terms:

After the Japanese had surrendered, the former Western colonial powers returned to rule their former colonies. However, upon returning they had to confront resistance movements led by nationalists in those formerly colonised countries. A certain number of these nationalists came to Thailand in order to ask for assistance from us. From the discussions I had with these nationalists, we came to the view that every country in Southeast Asia would soon have its independence.15

In addition to access to the Thais, the delegation also provided the DRV with an important point of contact with the US Legation and its officers stationed in Bangkok. This access, in turn, encouraged a simultaneous diplomatic bid by the DRV to win over American support.16 Via the US Legation, Vietnamese diplomats in Bangkok channelled important information to the State Department in Washington. Vietnamese government representatives in Bangkok were in touch with the US Ambassador Edwin Stanton; his Military Attaché, Lt. Col. William Law, and the General Attaché, Colonel James Thompson (who sent gifts through Quy to Ho Chi Minh on the President’s birthday). In early December 1946 American diplomat, Abbot Moffat, contacted DRV representatives in Bangkok before visiting Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi. On 4 December Pham Van Bach called ‘Hoang’ (Tran Van Giau) and Quy indicating that in the light of Moffat’s favourable declarations on the Franco–Vietnamese problem and the sympathetic opinion expressed for the DRV in a recent New York Times article, the Vietnamese had to find a way of ‘renewing our earlier relations’ with the Americans, this time via Bangkok.

This attempt at a rapprochement may have been linked to the growing number of meetings between anticolonial Indochinese leaders in Bangkok and American Legation officials in late 1946.18 Indeed, if much attention has been given to the OSS’s anticolonial role in Vietnamese affairs in Hanoi in late 1945, little study has been made of how warmest US–Thai contacts with the Americans in Thailand may have facilitated similar Vietnamese contacts with the Americans in Thailand.19 According to Thao Oun’s personal diary, it was Tiang Sirikhan who, in 1946, first put him in contact with ‘representatives of the embassy of the USA’, above all Colonels Law and Thompson.20 Tiang and Oun, in turn, facilitated contacts between the Vietnamese and these former OSS officers who had stayed on in Thailand. Colonel James Thompson, in particular, had been meeting regularly with Laotian and Vietnamese representatives since at least October 1946, if not earlier. Like Archimedes Patti in Hanoi in late 1945, Thompson made no effort to hide his disdain for French colonialism in his conversations with Indochinese nationalists in Bangkok.21 In October 1946, as Franco–Vietnamese relations deteriorated, even Nguyen Binh hoped to use his friendship with an American Protestant missionary to reach ‘outstanding American personalities’.

The delegation in Thailand acted also as an important link for DRV leaders to the international press. This was particularly true in light of the fact that major news service assigned correspondents to Bangkok to cover Southeast Asia after World War II. On numerous occasions, the delegation relayed questions to Ho Chi Minh from foreign journalists and made press statements according to government instructions. On 18 August 1946, for example, representatives from 20 Thai-based newspapers convened at the Bangkok opera house to celebrate the (upcoming) Vietnamese national day. The delegation had particularly good relations with the Thai papers Siang Thai, Katinsak, Nakhon San, The Bangkok Post and Liberty, and with American journalists in particular. Press conferences were arranged regularly by the delegation for the representatives of the different consulates and legations in Bangkok. This sort of publicity could only help the DRV’s drive for international recognition. It also marked the DRV’s first attempts at developing “modern” public relations as an integral lever in its foreign policy-making.

Established some time in August or September 1945, the Vietnam News Service (VNS) was located at 543 Silom Road. The VNS’s main task was to disseminate information and to publish a bulletin known by the same name. Directing the VNS in late 1945 was a certain DRV official named Dr Hai. In 1946, the Director would become Le Hy. the two may, in fact, have been the same person due to problems in transliteration between Thai and Vietnamese. Le Hy was an ICP member from the south, a former editor of a resistance newspaper in Vietnam who had been active in Nam Bo in 1945 and travelled to Thailand when hostilities broke out there. He worked with Thai correspondents, such as Kulap Saipradit, Snoh Tambunyun, a former Thai correspondent for the BBC and a professor at Chulalongkorn University, and Chawala Sukamchantan, a Thai reporter for The Bangkok Post and later for the Associated Press. Hy's journalistic credentials, press connections and knowledge of ‘several languages’ made him an obvious choice for the post. Joining him later was a certain ‘Huong’, said by the French to be a liaison agent of the Central Committee of the Thai Communist Party. According to a recent Vietnamese account, Tran Mai and Tran Thanh took over the top two posts at the VNS after Le Hy.

 The main task of the VNS was to provide the international community with information on the DRV and the widening conflict between the French and Vietnamese. In the preface of an article written in English and published by the VNS in September 1945, the information-propaganda role of the VNS is clear:

Blood is being shed in South Vietnam. The situation is aggravating every hour, threatening the security of the Far-East ... False propaganda and insinuating reports [by the French] have distorted the world opinion on the Vietnamese question. We wish to expose in the following note, the development of the Vietnamese situation since the establishment of the French domination up to the present day.

From Bangkok, publications were sent to embassies, governments and overseas destinations, as well as back to Vietnam.30 Assisting Hy in his English translations was an Australian communist, probably Alexander Brotherston (alias Van Tan), whom Pham Ngoc Thach had brought from Singapore to work at the delegation and the VNS. Improvements in the VNS paper were made in late 1946, underscoring a growing interest on the part of Hanoi in the appearance, quality and effectiveness of its propaganda abroad.

From 1945, the DRV issued its own passports. They were recognised by several Asian governments, which is a concrete example of the subtle recognition the DRV acquired from its Asian neighbours. However, this was still a far cry from official diplomatic recognition. Interestingly, the DRV passport showed a map of Indochina on the cover, with the words ‘Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam’ written in English and Vietnamese. Nguyen Duc Quy would eventually carry both a Chinese and a DRV passport, the latter indicating that he was the DRV’s Delegate for South East Asia authorised to travel to Siam, Burma and India. According to French intelligence, for those Vietnamese travelling in conventional ways, they acquired the necessary visas from the diplomatic representatives of the Indian Union and Burma based in Bangkok. As for the Thai border authorities, they gave the DRV travelers entry, transit and exit visas without asking too many questions between late 1945 and mid-1948. From India, DRV diplomats could procure an Indian passport allowing them to continue on to (Eastern) Europe (see Chapter 8).

With Bangkok as its diplomatic hub, the DRV dispatched a number of other unofficial representatives to Asia and the West. Representing the DRV government in India was Mai The Chau (alias Chau Luong); Tran Van Luan in Rangoon (see Chapter 8); Tran Mai and Tran Phuc M in Indonesia; in southern China was Nguyen Duc Thuy; in Hong Kong, Le Xuan and Nguyen Dinh Tu; in the Philippines, Tien; in Malaya/Singapore, Nguyen Ngoc Vy and Phan Van Phuc; and in Japan, Dr Dang Van Ngu.33 According to an agreement in the 6 March Accord, the French allowed the DRV to administer a delegation in Paris. Hoang Minh Giam, Under-Secretary of the Interior, was in charge of the delegation at the beginning. In November 1946 a Moscow-trained veteran communist, Tran Ngoc Danh, took over. He was in communication with Nguyen Duc Quy in Bangkok.34 The Bangkok delegation was also in some sort of contact with a similar DRV office in Prague, Czechoslovakia, from 1949 if not earlier (see Chapters 7 and 8).35 By the end of 1946, the DRV had considerably expanded its (unofficial) diplomatic representation throughout the region and the world. But let us not exaggerate: despite having diplomats posted abroad, the central government’s communication with these officials was anything but easy. Messages took time. Travel was always laborious. Spies were everywhere. Although the DRV’s Bangkok delegation was theoretically in charge of the DRV’s foreign affairs, decisions, as we shall see, could be haphazard and sometimes even independent (see Chapter 7).

GLIMPSES OF ASIAN REGIONALISM VIA BANGKOK?

Besides the Americans, the second major diplomatic card the DRV tried to play against the French via Bangkok was a policy of anticolonial Asian solidarity. This came about during the brief lull following the defeat of the Europeans in Asia during World War II and before the outbreak of the Cold War took full effect in 1950. It gave rise to a fleeting vision of a regional order as Asians increased their contacts with one another in 1945–46. In fact, increased intra-Asian contacts had occurred earlier. It will be remembered, for example, that the Viet Minh’s political programme of 1941 had mentioned the importance of cooperating with Asian neighbours, in particular Burma and India, in the fight against the Japanese. In mid-1944, the Viet Minh leadership had singled out the importance of ‘linking closely with fellow Southeast Asian revolutions’. During the war, the Viet Minh had reportedly asked the ‘resistance government of China to convene a pan-Asian conference, consisting of delegates from every oppressed Asian country, to determine the ways by which Asians would join together to fight fascist Japan.

and its lackeys.36 We should not forget that an entire generation of Vietnamese revolutionaries had lived and worked in Asia for decades (see Chapters 1–3). Nor should we forget that during the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, Bangkok had already served as a particularly important meeting point for a wide variety of Asian nationalists, ranging from Duong Van Giao and Tran Trong Kim to India’s Bose and Burma’s Baw Maw. In short, intra-Asian contacts already existed.

The idea of increased Asian solidarity continued in the wake of World War II and in spite of the failure of Japan’s policies of “greater” Asian solidarity. In October 1945, the DRV leadership announced that its foreign policy towards the “small and weak countries of the world” (cac nhoc-tien dan-to teon hoan-cau) was based on friendship, egality and mutual assistance in view of securing national independence.37 A reading of the Viet Minh’s nationalist mouthpiece, Cuu Quoc, shows that the Vietnamese were clearly following events in neighbouring countries in late 1945, above all in Indonesia, Burma, Malaya, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.38 Days after the French takeover in Nam Bo in September 1945, Ho Chi Minh expressed his hope to an OSS officer, Archimedes Patti, that the US “would restrain the French in their colonial obsession” in Vietnam. In this connection, Ho informed Patti that he had given thought to the necessity of forming a “pan-Asian” community consisting of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaya, Greater Burma (including Bengal), India, Indonesia and the Philippines (but apparently not China, Japan or Korea). These nations, Ho argued, would promote “political and economic programs for the common good” and live in peaceful coexistence with the US, Great Britain, and France. According to Patti, ‘Ho regarded the United States as the avant garde of such a movement.’39 He compared his position in Vietnam to that of Nehru in India and Quezon in the Philippines. 

Immediately following World War II, anticolonialism was the driving force behind the DRV’s regional politics. Despite appeals by Indonesian and Indonesian leaders calling on the UN to prevent the return of European colonialism, it was clear to a growing number of Asian nationalists by 1946 that the Western powers attached more importance to postwar Western European reconstruction than to Southeast Asian decolonisation. In this context, many frustrated leaders began discussing the possibility of forming a regional organisation to oppose the re-imposition of European colonialism, with Thailand frequently put forward as an appropriate site for its headquarters. To DRV officials working in Bangkok, the possibility of an Asian regional organisation based in Bangkok corresponded especially well with their war against the French.

One nation which Ho targeted in particular was Indonesia, a country whose struggle for independence from the Dutch was very similar to Vietnam’s fight against the French. In November he wrote a letter to the Prime Minister of the young Republic of Indonesia, Sûtan Sjahrir, proposing that ‘Viet Nam and Indonesia make a public declaration of their complete solidarity in their present struggle for freedom’. An American journalist, Harold Isaacs, delivered the proposal to

Indonesian leaders for Ho. The letter went first to Mohammad Hatta, whom Ho Chi Minh had, according to the Soedjatmoko family, met in Europe in 1929. Hatta forwarded the letter to Sultan Sjahrir, who was then Prime Minister. He asked Indonesian leaders to join Vietnam in appealing to ‘India, Burma, and Malaya and all the subject peoples of Asia to join us in a common front’. In his letter to Sjahrir, he also included a ‘Proposed Text of Common Declaration by Viet Nam and Indonesia’. He said that because of the failure of the ‘Great Powers’ to prevent France and Holland from re-establishing their colonial rule by force, ‘we must depend on ourselves and ourselves alone to win our freedom’. To the Vietnamese, promises made by the Allies during the war opposing the return of colonialism were empty unless the French and Dutch were stopped. With the Franco-British reoccupation of southern Vietnam no doubt in mind, Ho urged the Indonesians to join him in calling upon India, Burma and Malaya to create a Preparatory Commission, aimed at creating a Federation of Free Peoples of Southern Asia, according to this proposal, the Federation would represent a ‘common front’ against colonialism and would play a part in the building of a ‘common future’ for Asia. According to this proposal, the Federation would represent a ‘common front’ against colonialism and would play a part in the building of a ‘common future’ for Asia. According to this proposal, the Federation would represent a ‘common front’ against colonialism and would play a part in the building of a ‘common future’ for Asia. 

To Ho’s disappointment, some in the Indonesian nationalist leadership balked at supporting his proposal. Sjahrir himself refused to answer Ho’s letters. According to the recollection of an associate who discussed this issue with the Prime Minister, Sjahrir was worried that if Indonesia cooperated with the Vietnamese, the Dutch would try to use the DRV’s well-known communist core to taint the Indonesian independence movement. Sjahrir felt that the Indonesians would succeed in their independence struggle, but explained that

Ho Chi Minh is facing the French, who will resist him for a very long time. Ho is also dependent on the support of the Communists who are very powerful in the [Vietnamese] independence movement which is not the case with us.

No doubt aware that the Dutch, French, British and the US were exchanging intelligence, Sjahrir concluded that “if we ally ourselves with Ho Chi Minh, we will weaken ourselves and delay independence.”

In short, from 1945 Ho had to convince emerging, non-communist Asian leaders that he was no longer an international communist determined to overthrow ‘feudalists’ Southeast Asian governments as he had advocated from within the Far Eastern Bureau in the early 1930s; but rather a sincere nationalist ready to cooperate with his non-communist nationalist neighbours for the ‘common anti-colonial destiny of the region. One of the reasons that the ICP was dissolved on paper on 11 November 1945 was to reassure non-communist states of the DRV’s nationalist core. However, Ho’s impressive internationalist communist résumé, especially his ranking position in the Comintern’s Asian networks in 1930–31, would not be easy to erase, whether in Western or Asian minds (see Chapters 2 and 8).

Undeterred by the Indonesian setback, in early 1946 the Vietnamese turned to India. This overture coincided with increased Vietnamese attention to Indian independence politics in late 1945 and Pandit Nehru’s emerging pan-Asian plans. In March 1946, during a trip to Burma, Nehru discussed with General Aung San his desire to hold an Asian conference on decolonisation and regional cooperation. Encouraged by his conversations with the Burmese leader, Nehru began making preparations.46 In that same month, an editorial in a Viet Minh–controlled DRV newspaper, Doc Lap [Independence],47 picked up on Nehru’s regional theme. As the government’s editorial noted:

The Pan Asian Union’s strength derives from the unification of every Asian nation, especially the small and weak nations. It would seek to attain freedom for every oppressed nation in Asia and build mutual prosperity for all of Asia. At a time when independence movements are breaking out throughout Southeast Asia, the Pan Asian Union will certainly be welcomed by every nation in Asia. Unlike the fascist Japanese ‘Co-Prosperity Sphere,’ the Pan Asian Union would be just and in accordance with the trend in human evolution towards freedom and happiness.

Shortly thereafter there was a notable shift in the DRV’s foreign policy towards Nehrü’s pan-Asian idea. The timing of this shift in the DRV’s regional politics was almost centrally linked to Ho Chi Minh’s stoppver in Rangoon on 1 June 1946 during his trip to France for further negotiations at Fontainebleau. Ho’s Rangoon stoppver would have allowed the Vietnamese President to assess the DRV’s diplomatic prospects in Asia and possibly discuss in greater detail with Burmese officials the idea of promoting greater Asian unity along the lines proposed by Nehru a few months earlier in the same capital.49 At some point during his voyage to France, Ho announced publicly that the DRV supported Nehru’s call for a pan-Asian conference.50 This may have occurred on 2 June, when Ho arrived in Calcutta by plane, where he met Vietnamese nationals living there.51 It is likely that the Vietnamese President met with his diplomatic representative, Mai The Chau, on the need to strengthen the DRV’s contacts with Asia and India specifically.

While he had not abandoned his overtures to the Americans via Bangkok, Ho must have realised upon leaving Vietnam in late May that both the USA and the Soviet Union balked at the idea of risking French support in Europe by supporting the DRV’s case too strongly against the French in the UN.52 Moreover, as long as the CCP’s divisions were far from Bac Bo’s northern border, the improvement of relations with non-communist Asian governments was one of the last remaining diplomatic options open to DRV leaders. Coinciding with the dispatch of DRV government officials to Thailand in mid-1946, Ho Chi Minh’s stop-over in Burma and the DRV’s pan-Asian announcement, there was the ICP’s approval of an external policy called “finding friends on the outside” (tim ban ben ngoai), as one Vietnamese historian informally referred to it. The ICP’s official journal, Su That, elaborated on this flexible Asian foreign policy in an article published on 5 July 1946. Any country, people, or force that supported Vietnam’s goals of ‘independence’ and ‘democracy’ were, it was stated, ‘our friend’. This was followed at the end of July by a Resolution of the Central Committee’s First Cadres Meeting (Nghı Quyet Hoi Nghı Can Bo Trung Uong lan thu I), announcing that because ‘Indochina’ was surrounded by ‘imperialists’, it had ‘to link together with the oppressed and world proletarian countries’. Relying heavily on the decrypted cable traffic between Hanoi and Bangkok, the head of the Deuxième Bureau’s Etat-Major for the French Expeditionary Corps (CSTFEO) also placed the DRV’s overture to Asia in mid-1946, when delegates in Bangkok started targeting Malaya and Burma in their propaganda drives. 

In September 1946, as he made his way back to Vietnam by boat, Ho Chi Minh stopped over in Sri Lanka. It was at this point that an official representative of Pandit Nehru and Gandhi delivered a letter to Ho, inviting the Vietnamese President to attend the Inter-Asian Conference to be held in New Delhi in March 1947. Nehru made a similar overture to Suttan Sjahrir. The French noted that following the exchange of letters between Ho and Nehru, the DRV intensified its Asian foreign policy. As the government explained its Asian policy on 19 September, the idea was to’ manoeuvre adroitly vis-à-vis the Chinese and Indians so as to win them over to our goals. Asia clearly counted in the DRV’s postwar attempts to pressure the French to respect Vietnam’s independence.

Unfortunately, what occurred between September and December 1946 remains very unclear. We learn more of the DRV’s regional policy in December 1946, as Franco–Vietnamese relations began to deteriorate drastically. In this month DRV, Khmer Issarak and Lao Issara representatives set up a “Mixed Commission” in Bangkok to coordinate their military cooperation and foreign policies.59 The creation of this “mixed” Indochinese commission underscored the importance Tran Van Giau in particular attached to allying the Laotians and Cambodians with his Southeast Asian politics. Together, he and Vu Huu Binh also established a Lao–Cambodian–Vietnamese Military Committee in early 1947. Several intercepted telegrams reveal that it was also in early 1947 that the question of allocating credits for the Laotians and Cambodians in Thailand was presented to Ho Chi Minh himself.60 On 22 December the desire of the Mixed Commission to form a regional organisation to stand against the European colonial powers was communicated to the Thai, Burmese and Indonesian governments and the ‘nationalist group of Malaya.’ This discussion may not have been unrelated to two directives approved in the 22 December Vietnamese ‘Resistance Programme’, which called for ‘linking up with the Cambodians and Lao’ and closer relations with the ‘Chinese, Siamese, Indians, Burmese [and] Indonesians’.61 What is certain is that on 1 January 1947 the Vietnamese took concrete measures. On that day representatives from the DRV, Khmer Issakar and the Lao Issara held a meeting in Bangkok to discuss the formation of a Southeast Asian Federation. This Federation was to consist of Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The Philippines was not mentioned.

DRV diplomats also decided to use this ‘Mixed Commission’ to contact the US and the UN in their bid to stop the French on the international level. A document describing the goals of the Federation was sent to Washington via the US embassy in Bangkok so that US policy-makers would know of its agenda. Following the 19 December outbreak of full-scale war in Indochina, this link to the US Legation in Bangkok became even more important to DRV diplomats keen on avoiding war. On 24 December Nguyen Thanh Son ordered Tran Van Giau to enter into contact with the Americans. In April 1947 Pham Ngoc Thach delivered two important memos to Stanton through Law concerning Franco–Vietnamese negotiations and the events leading to the outbreak of war in December 1946, as well as a request to General MacArthur outlining the DRV’s claims to Indochina’s gold held in Tokyo since World War II.63 The State Department’s response was less than they had counted on.64 A memorandum, dated 1 January 1947, was also directly sent to the Secretary General of the United Nations, asking him to submit the Vietnamese question to the Security Council.65 Until May 1947 there was still talk between Stanton and the State Department concerning a possible trip by the US Consul at Saigon, Charles Reed, to Bangkok where he could meet with Tran Van Giau and Nguyen Duc Quy on the Franco–Vietnamese war.66 It appears that it never happened.

The DRV did not place all its hopes in the US-Vietnamese diplomats simultaneously stepped up their Asian solidarity diplomacy. On 30 November 1946 General Vo Nguyen Giap sent a cable to ‘Hoang’ (Tran Van Giau), instructing him to go to Malaya. Once there, Giap explained, he was ‘to enter into contact with RIGHT in order to be able to communicate with our TSF [Telephone sans fils or wireless radio] services’. A few days later, a Ministry of the Interior official in Hanoi directed Nguyen Duc Quy and Tran Van Giau to open negotiations with the Malaysians, given that the ‘political situation’ in Burma was still too ‘confused’. 

If DRV’s diplomats targeted the US as the only Western power able to help them, in early 1947 they turned to India as a major Asian backer. Given the British decision to move rapidly towards granting independence to its colonies, Vietnamese diplomats hoped that prewar contacts to Nehru and his anticolonialism might, once independence was achieved, lead him to bring Vietnam’s case before the United Nations. On 20 December 1946, the day after hostilities broke out in Tonkin, Nguyen Duc Quy asked Pham Van Bach to contact the Indian consul in Saigon and to inform them of Quy’s imminent arrival in Bangkok. Bach insisted that the Indians understand that Quy had been sent to Bangkok to ‘make contact with India’. Nguyen Binh and Ung Van Khiem were to inform Quy that he was now empowered to enter into ‘direct relations with India’. Besides wanting to build relations with India, the Vietnamese also needed to explain to Nehru why the Viet Minh had forcibly evacuated 76 Indians from Hanoi to resistance-controlled zones in the countryside and why some had been executed by southern Vietnamese leaders in 1945. The DRV may also have 

wanted to broadcast the fact that the French had killed three Indians during the events of the 19 and 20 December 1946. 

 Four days later Nguyen Thanh Son informed Tran Van Giau that he should ‘remind the Malayans of their promise of aid’. On 28 January 1947 a Chinese paper in Singapore revealed that a recent conference of the ‘Association of the Veterans of the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese [Resistance]’ had met on the 27th to pledge its assistance to the Vietnamese ‘struggle’. They sent a letter to Chandra Bose approving the dispatch of ‘volunteer army’ to Vietnam and a telegram to Ho Chi Minh. On 28 January Vo Nguyen Giap sent a cable to Chandra Bose via the Bangkok delegation thanking the Indian leader for their support of the Vietnamese. Bose responded with a message to the DRV’s representative in Singapore that he was doing everything he could to assemble a volunteer team to send to Vietnam. 

In January 1947 Ho fired off letters to the leaders of nationalist China, India and Burma, decrying French efforts to disrupt peace in the region and calling for closer collaboration against colonialism. As ‘a part of the great Asian family’, Ho argued, Vietnam’s fate is intimately linked to the destiny of all Asian peoples. He portrayed the French attack on Vietnam as a threat to all of Asia: ‘French colonialism seeks to crush Vietnam, that is, it wants to destroy the great Asian family.’ In the same month Ho wrote a letter to Nehru calling for closer cooperation between the two countries in their bid for full independence. He followed up with another cable to the President of the National Hindu Congress. There is clearly a chronological pattern to these January 1947 communications, with India emerging as the most important Asian country for the DRV since the failure of their Indonesian overtures a year earlier.

Vietnam's pleas did not go unnoticed. In January 1947 the former Premier of Burma, Dr Baw Maw, announced that a Burmese voluntary expeditionary force would go to Indochina to help the Vietnamese in the struggle against France. The leader of this expeditionary force, Colonel Bo Yan Naing, told a Reuters correspondent that his contingent would number about 100 Burmese volunteers, a symbol of 'Burmese support for the Vietnamese cause.'80 Colonel Bo Yan Naing was a 27 year-old Burmese leader and former officer in the Burmese Defence Army during the Japanese occupation. He was also the son-in-law and former military secretary to Baw Maw. The latter had reported been assisting the Vietnamese at the behest of the DRV's representative in New Delhi, Mai The Chau. This may explain why, in a subsequent letter to Aung San, Ho personally thanked the President for 'the things which you have done and will do' for the Vietnamese resistance.81 Two days later, it was reported that a decision had been made by Bo Yan Naing and Sarat Chandra Bose to dispatch a joint Indo-Burmese volunteer force to Indochina to fight the French, 'provided that necessary facilities were available.'82 Under Bose's direction in 1947, a 'Vietnam Brigade' was assembled from volunteers in Pondicherry, a French concession in India. Bose's volunteer force never left India, though. Nehru refused to provide it transport.

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