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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 1. 28th February 1973

Ceasefire is Vietnam's Victory — Peter Franks Examines the Paris Agreement

page 10

Ceasefire is Vietnam's Victory

Peter Franks Examines the Paris Agreement

"With the signed agreement, the resistance of our people against U.S. aggression, for national salvation, has won a very glorious victory. This is a very great victory of the most glorious war of resistance in the history of our people's struggle against foreign aggression . . . This victory of the Vietnamese people is also a victory of epochal significance of the forces of socialism, national independence, democracy and peace, of the freedom and justice loving people all over the world".

With those words the Central Committee of the Vietnam Workers' Party and the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam hailed the "Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam", signed in Paris on January 27th, 1973.

Hanoi's jubilant description of the Peace Agreement was echoed in Peking and Moscow. Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese leaders told the leaders of the D.R.V., the South Vietnamese National Front for Liberation and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam that the agreement was a great victory for the people of Vietnam and for all the people of Indochina and a "common victory for the people of the whole world, the American people included". The Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, also described the Peace Agreement as a great victory for the Vietnamese people and for the forces of peace.

The meaning of these statements is quite clear. What is not clear however is how Nixon could say the Agreement brought the United Slates "peace with honour", and, more basically, why the United States and its underling in Saigon — 'the Government of the Republic of Vietnam' — signed it at all. If Nixon could put his Government's name to the Agreement then how could the communist states see it as a great victory over U.S. aggression? It is not surprising therefore that some people in the anti-war movement in New Zealand and overseas have greeted the Agreement with scepticism and mistrust. A few have even said that the Vietnamese peple have been "sold-out" to the Americans by their leaders.

Nixon's "Surrender Document"?

Close analysis of the provisions of the Agreement suggests however that the sceptics are quite wrong and that the North Vietnamese, the N.F.L. and P.R.G. in South Vietnam, The Chinese and the Russians were quite correct in hailing the document as meaning a great victory. While many western politicians and commentators were content to merely express pious sentiments of pleasure that the war was over, some non-communist commentators came up with essentially the same conclusions as Hanoi, Peking and Moscow.

On January 29th the authoritative Far Eastern Economic Review stated bluntly in an editorial: "After eight years of unnecessary bloodshed and cruelty, the United States has finally signed the surrender document".

End of U.S. Involvement

Article 4 of the Agreement explicitly states that "The United States will not continue its military involvement or intervene in the internal affairs of South Vietnam".

Other relevant articles provide for the withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel from South Vietnam within 60 days of the signing of the agreement; during which time all American prisoners in Indochina will be released and all U.S. and foreign military bases will be dismantled. The armed forces of the P.R.G. and the Thieu regime will maintain their present positions. Both South Vietnamese parties are pledged not to accept the introduction of troops, other military personnel or war materials in the South, although they will be allowed to replace periodically war materials destroyed or worn out after the ceasefire on a piece-for-piece basis. Both South Vietnamese parties agreed to do their utmost to effect the release of Vietnamese civilians detained in the South within 90 days of the ceasefire taking effect.

A four party Joint Military Commission (comprising the U.S., the D.R.V., the Thieu regime and the P.R.G.) will stay in existence for 60 days to implement the various aspects of the ceasefire - withdrawal of U.S. troops, return of prisoners etc. An international control commission has also been established, with Canada, Hungary, Indonesia and Poland as members, to supervise various parts of the Agreement. Within 30 days of the signing of the Agreement an international conference will be held to acknowledge the signed agreements, to guarantee the ending of the war and to ensure the maintenance of peace. The U.S. and the D.R.V. invited China, France, the Soviet Union, Britain, the four members of the international control commission and the U.N. Secretary-General to participate with the P.R.G. and the Saigon Administration in the conference.

Finally, the U.S. pledged it would contribute reparations for the war damage and also to the postwar reconstruction of North Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Dr Kissinger, Nixon's Special Adviser on Foreign Policy, has just been in Hanoi to talk about the U.S. Government's contributions to war reparations and postwar reconstruction with the D.R.V. Government.

Commenting on the Agreement in an interview with "Checkpoint" just after the documents had been signed in Paris, Leo Goodstadt of the Far Eastern Economic Review said: "The one party which has no room for manoeuvre is the United States. Washington's role is completely sewn up by the wording of the agreement. It must withdraw lock, stock and barrel from South Vietnam ..." (N.Z. Listener, February 19th)

Self Determination for the South Vietnamese

In Article 9 the D.R.V. and the U.S.A. agreed that the South Vietnamese people's right to self determination is sacred and inalienable and shall be respected by all countries. The South Vietnamese shall decide their political future through genuinely free and democratic elections under international supervision.

The two South Vietnamese parties pledged they would ensure democratic liberties and prohibit all acts of reprisal. They agreed to establish a tripartite National Council of National Reconciliation and Concord, consisting of the P.R.G., the Thieu regime and the neutralist forces. Operating on the basis of unanimity of decision, the Council will organise free and democratic general elections and decide the procedures for these elections.

These provisions of the agreement which relate to South Vietnam's political future are extremely significant.

The Agreement recognises that there are two administrations in South Vietnam with equal rights. The N.F.L. of South Vietnam (the major force in the P.R.G.) was established in 1960 to overthrow the American hireling regime in Saigon by means of an armed struggle. Successive regimes in Saigon have always denied that the N.F.L. or the P.R.G. had any legitimacy whatsoever, and the fact that Thieu had to sign an agreement recognising the P.R.G. as an equal administration shows just how far the Americans capitulated in the negotiations. While the P.R.G. has not yet won its final victory the provisions of the Agreement establishing it as an administration equal to that of Thieu are clearly a great political and military success on the way.

Reunification of Vietnam

Article 15 of the Agreement states that: "The reunification of Vietnam shall be carried out step by step through peaceful means on the basis of discussions and agreements between North and South Vietnam, without coercion or annexation by either party, and without foreign interference". Pending reunification, the military demarcation line between the North and South at the 17th Parallel "is only provisional and not a political or territorial boundary" as was provided by the 1954 Geneva Conference on Vietnam.. North and South Vietnam will promptly start negotiations on re-establishing normal relations in various fields. As stipulated in the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam, neither North or South shall join any military alliance or allow foreign bases or troops on their territories. Once again this article shows how much ground the Americans have conceded politically in the Agreement.

page 11

Recognition that Vietnam was one country only temporarily divided, was one of the fundamental points of the 1954 Geneva Agreements. Over the years, the U.S. and their various hirelings in Saigon consistently refused to recognise that Vietnam was one country only provisionally divided into two regrouping zones. But now they have reversed even their 1954 position.

Laos and Cambodia

The Agreement provided that foreign countries will put an end to all military activities in Laos and Cambodia and called for respect for the neutrality of those countries. Although it did not call for a ceasefire in either country, the overall effects of the Agreement in bringing about an end to hostilities and foreign interference throughout Indochina can already be seen in the Ceasefire Agreement settled in Laos last week between the Pathet Lao and the neutralist and right-wing forces.

Drawing of Vietnamese burying their dead

"Well you'll just have to dig him up again—he has't registered his for President Thieu yet."

No Return to 1954 Position

Some commentators have argued that the present Vietnam Peace Agreement will mean the same as the 1954 Geneva Agreements. An article in Socialist Action on the Agreement (condensed from two articles in the American Militant claimed that "Whatever happens next in Vietnam, these accords will not bring peace any more than the 1954 Geneva accords did". Such assertions fail to recognise the sources of the present agreement and the crucial differences between the present political and military situation in Vietnam and that of 1954.

In July 1971 the Foreign Minister of the P.R.G., Madame Binh, announced her government's Seven Point Peace Proposal for ending the war. At the time the United States and Thieu flatly rejected the proposal which received very widespread support from the D.R.V., other socialist countries and the international anti-war movement.

The 1973 Peace Agreement incorporates all the major points of that proposal which was the original source of the provisions in the present agreement concerning the political future of South Vietnam.

The other major source of the present Agreement is, of course, the 1954 Geneva Agreements on Vietnam and the rest of Indochina which the then U.S. Administration (including a Richard M. Nixon as Vice President) refused to sign. The differences between the 1954 and 1973 agreements were well summarised by Leo Goodstadt in the Far Eastern Economic Review of January 29th:

"The peace agreement gives the balance of advantage al-most entirely to the North Vietnamese as the October formula did. Their position, compared with 1954, has improved considerably while Saigon's viability is left highly doubtful. In 1954, mutual withdrawal to North and South of communist and non-communist troops (as well as freedom of movement for the civilian, population to the political regime of its choice) was an integral part of the truce between the French and the communist administration.

"Today, no such regrouping is required. The North Vietnamese troops can remain in place. Only the Americans and their allies are banned from further involvement in Vietnam...

"In 1954, the position of the Saigon Administration was clear enough. Its jurisdiction over the area south of the Demilit-arised Zone was set forth in black and white. Calls for reconciliation with procommunist elements in the South and for the reunification of the halves of Vietnam were issues to be settled in the future. The date for these moves was sufficiently remote to permit Saigon a chance of establishing its hold over the South (and, as events turned out, to make these clauses of the 1954 agreements a dead letter).

"But last week's pact recognises two South Vietnamese administrations with equal rights, to be consulted not only over the exercise to determine the form of government that South Vietnam will enjoy but on problems that may occur in the implementation of the ceasefire".

The armed forces of the P.R.G. can not only remain in place but they also control most of the countryside anyway, whereas Thieu's regime is effectively isolated in the towns.

Bombing Revealed Nixon's Weaknesses

It is important to understand that the Peace Agreement signed in Paris at the end of January was a product of the present political and military situation in Vietnam and not a cynical deal forced on the Vietnamese by their major socialist allies China and the Soviet Union.

The United States Government signed "the surrender document" (and forced its hireling Thieu to do so too) because it had finally realised that there was nothing to gain and a good deal to lose, by continuing the war. The Americans' political and military weakness was shown up very clearly by the fact that the document it signed in January was practically the same as the draft agreement Nixon had declined to accept last October.

In October Nixon decided that he would throw all his air power into a final effort to bomb the North Vietnamese into submission. Over Christmas especially he unleashed greater destructive power on North Vietnam (and especially Hanoi) than had ever been used before. The only concession the Americans got was agreement by Hanoi to increase the number of mutual observers to supervise the end of hostilities. But as Goodstadt noted in the Far Eastern Economic Review, "this issue is of such small practical significance (given the confusion which must arise in a struggle for power, over individual hamlets, between guerilla forces and platoons of regular troops) that it was hardly worth the cost — in terms of destruction of life and property — of the barrage which President Nixon unleashed as a Christmas gesture towards Hanoi". The heroic resistance of the Vietnamese to that aggression and the unparalleled wave of international pressure it created showed the Americans that the only move they could make was to try and cover "up their defeat and get out as quickly as possible.

What will Happen Now?

The North Vietnamese and P.R.G. leaders are not so politically and militarily stupid as to provoke full scale war in Vietnam in the immediate future and thus give the Americans an excuse to return. The caution of the D.R.V. and P.R.G. leaders in this respect can be seen in one comment in particular that Vu Dinh, the Mayor of Hanoi, made last week at a Press Conference on the arrival of the D.R.V. trade union delegation from Australia. When he was questioned about violations of the ceasefire he said that these violations did not amount to a resumption of full-scale fighting. He stressed that the P.R.G. armed forces would only fight if attacked and would not initiate fighting themselves.

Only if Thieu's regime is clearly seen to be in danger of total extinction in the next 12 months is it at all likely that the Americans would try to return to Vietnam in force. But Nixon would not have been prepared to make the concessions he did in order to get rid of the war if Thieu had meant anything more to him than a potential embarrassment. Nixon and Kissinger's foreign policy of trying to create room for manoeuvre by maintaining contact with Moscow and Peking is far more important than the fate of one very expensive lackey in Vietnam. The continuation of American involvement in Vietnam jeopardised this policy, as well as exacerbating the strains on the U.S. economy and society.

The major lesson of the Vietnam war for the American Government is that it cannot afford to get bogged down in wars of national liberation. The effects of the war in Vietnam have been disastrous enough for American Imperialism and Monopoly Capitalism.

The North Vietnamese and the P.R.G. can afford to bide their time for a while because they have successfully negotiated the removal of their major enemy from the battlefield. Thieu, on the other hand, is rapidly running out of time. If he abides by the terms of the Agreement it is pretty certain that his regime will be rapidly replaced by a genuinely popular government as a result of the proposed General Elections. If he decides to fight it out he has to provoke a big enough confrontation to get the Americans back to save him once again. But as Vu Dinh indicated, the P.R.G. are unlikely to be easily provoked into an all out battle. Whatever he does, Thieu's political future looks fairly short.

Turning Point in the Vietnamese People's Struggle

The people of Vietnam — and all of Indochina — have been fighting for the past thirty years to end foreign interference in their country. The Agreement signed in Paris at the end of January means that they have achieved this and can now turn to settling their own affairs themselves.

The present position from the Vietnamese point of view was very clearly stated recently by Le Due Tho in a speech in Peking. The Agreement, he said, "has laid a political and juridicial basis for the struggle of the entire Vietnamese people to continue to advance and score still greater victories and to complete the national democratic revolution throughout the country.

"The successful conclusion of the Vietnamese people's war of resistance marks a turning point for the Vietnamese revolution. However, it is only an initial victory. The people in both zones, north and south, still have to wage a hard and complicated struggle before they can reach their goal of building a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic and prosperous Vietnam.'

Photo of soldiers and children