Geneva Accords Called Viet Nam One Country: No Country Called "North Viet Nam" Ever Existed
US leaders' false claim supports other resource control actions
Citations for most of these facts are in Corporate Tsunami in Countryside Paradise.
The 1954 Geneva Accords repeatedly used the term “Viet Nam” (also spelled Vietnam) and did not use the terms “North Viet Nam” or “South Viet Nam.” The Accords recognized that Viet Nam was one nation, Some excerpts are attached below, and the full two Geneva Accords documents on Viet Nam may be viewed at the website shown below:
Geneva Agreements 20-21 July 1954 (excerpt, bold added)
Final Declaration. 12 . . . with Cambodia, Laos and Viet-Nam, each member of the Geneva Conference undertakes to respect the sovereignty, the independence, the unity and the territorial integrity of the above-mentioned states. (Please see attachment for more Geneva Accords excerpts.)
Despite the clear, one-nation statements in the Geneva Accords, the US government falsely tells the US public, to this day, that a “North Viet Nam” fought the US. This false claim supports two matters: (1) it falsely denies that one nation supported by the vast majority defeated France and then defeated the US; and (2) it has been the basis for a false argument into today, which says, similar to a “North Viet Nam” supposedly fighting the US, “terrorists” in other nations are supposedly the kind of people who have recently fought the US.
The truth is that no nation ever existed that called itself “North Viet Nam” or anything close. No US official or anyone else has ever shown that a nation ever existed that called itself “North Viet Nam” or anything close.
At first blush, statements by the US government on this appear true. In 2021, a US State Dept website contains a one-paragraph description, saying:
U.S.-Vietnam Relations
. . . . In 1954, Vietnamese nationalists fighting for full independence defeated France, and the now-divided Vietnam entered into two decades of civil war. The U.S. did not recognize North Vietnam's government. . . https://2017-2021.state.gov/countries-areas/vietnam/index.html
In another recent statement, in 2020, a book called The World: A brief introduction, by the president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)—an organization whose members are regularly in the highest foreign policy posts of government—says we fought a “North Vietnam” to protect a “South Vietnam.” The book was written for the public and college students to understand world events. The CFR formed in 1921, and some of its early members were connected with United States Rubber Company, which had buyers in Viet Nam by 1917, and some connected with Standard Oil Company, which had sold kerosene oil there since 1884.
Similar statements have been made by officials such as Under Secretary of State Nelson Rockefeller (of Standard Oil wealth), and presidential advisers McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, and Henry Kissinger (connected with Nelson Rockefeller), all of whom were CFR members. They all falsely said that a “North Vietnam” had attacked a “South Vietnam.”
Other historians have made similar assertions: “. . . [T]he accords signed at Geneva divided Vietnam into two separate states . . ." That is in Governments and Politics of Southeast Asia, p. 342, edited by Kahin, G.M. (1959). In 1969, an encyclopedia said, “Vietnam . . . from July 21, 1954, was divided de facto into two republics. . . .” Britannica Book of the Year, 1969, P. 790.
The following facts prove that in modern times, Viet Nam has always been one nation. No nation ever existed that called itself “North Viet Nam.” And by hiding the early US colonial period, US leaders hid the fact that they committed aggression from 1954 on, trying to seize that southern half to resume what they called “Colonial Relationships.” Saying the South Zone was a separate country was part of the attempt to split the nation in half, after the 1954 Geneva Accords kept it as one nation. Thus the uncovering of thousands of consul reports showing the early colonial period adds the missing link: The US leaders’ real purpose of a colonial regime. The US leaders’ line of reasoning fails.
During 1945–75 and after, the Viet Nam nation always called itself the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam” (DRV). In 1945, the DRV declared its independence from French colonial control, in the area from the northern border with China to the southern tip in the sea south of Sai Gon. It enjoyed overwhelming support of the people throughout the area. After the 1954 Geneva Accords settled its defeat of the French invasion, the nation continued calling itself Democratic Republic of Viet Nam in all of the same area. Among myriad examples of using that name are: for regular meetings of its National Assembly, and in the 1961 formation of a National Water Volleyball Association and National Soccer Association.
The 1954 Geneva Accords repeatedly called the nation, “Viet Nam” referring to the single nation from the northern border to the southern tip. The Accords did not create two nations or two states. Rather, they repeatedly spoke of two “regrouping zones,” for regrouping the armies; the zones to be administered by France in the south and Viet Nam in the north (Articles 1, 14a, and 19) until guaranteed elections. (See excerpts below, from Geneva Accords.) The line between the two regrouping zones was “not . . . a political or territorial boundary.” (Final Declaration, Para 6).
France’s duty to administer the southern half included to prohibit US soldiers from entering or to kick them out if they did enter. Article 16 said, “. . . the introduction into Viet-Nam of any troop reinforcements and additional military personnel is prohibited.” Article 19 said “. . . the two parties shall ensure that the zones assigned to them do not adhere to any military alliance and are not used for the resumption of hostilities or to further an aggressive policy.” (italics added).
US leaders, however, claimed that the US was not bound by the Accords, since it had not signed them, but this is wrong for two reasons: 1) France, not the US, had the duty under the Accords to administer the southern zone; it included keeping US soldiers out. 2) The US was also bound by the Nuremberg Judgment, which applied to all nations and prohibited “Planning, preparation, initiation, or waging of a war of aggression. . . .” . US leaders steered US voters away from the topic of US aggression, by not mentioning thousands of consular reports from an 1875–1954 period of US corporate business, enabled by French invasion force. These reports lay buried in the National Archives. Seizing Viet Nam to resume that 1875–1954 business was the real reason for which US leaders took the US to war from 1954 onward. That was aggression.
In the nation’s southern half, the full name of the National Liberation Front ended in the term “Liberation of the South Region of Viet Nam” (Giai Phong Mien Nam Viet Nam)(italics added). “Mien Nam” means “South Region.” So, this large organization considered the south to be a region of the DRV, not a nation. But US leaders regularly mistranslated “Mien Nam” as “South Viet Nam.” The mistranslation continues today.
At the end of the 1954 Geneva Conference, President Eisenhower referred to Viet Nam as one nation.
The authoritative Joseph Buttinger’s 1967 Vietnam: A dragon embattled says: “To regard the people below and above this parallel as two separate nations was not only an absurd concept for anyone familiar with the history of Vietnam but also a legally untenable proposition. . . .”
The US placed soldiers in the southern half, then claimed that somehow a “North Viet Nam” existed. But this was as if a foreign nation invaded New Orleans, put soldiers in a few places, then claimed that this also created a “North United States.” The United States would still exist in both the north and south. Likewise, Viet Nam (DRV) continued to exist in the north and south.
The 1955 claim by the US that a “North Viet Nam” existed did not match the reality on the ground. The vast majority of the people supported Ho Chi Minh and the DRV. All those villagers were DRV citizens. Ho had led them to defeat the French invasion, which had ruled by murder and malnutrition. Virtually all knowledgeable observers agreed that if the 1956 election had occurred, Ho and the DRV would have won in a landslide. This is why US soldiers found themselves to be considered the enemy by virtually all villagers.
Today and in recent decades, opposition to the US has arisen overseas, because the false blame on a non-existent “North Viet Nam” supports a false blame on “terrorists” in other countries. Much of the US public accepts the leaders’ false claim, because the evidence of the resource control purpose on Viet Nam has lain hidden in thousands of consular reports from that era, not mentioned by US leaders. Having escaped blame for the early colonial record that shows the 1960s war was a US attack to resume control, leaders have diverted the public’s questioning, away from the policy of resource control by force.
Thus in recent decades, some commentators who may have been unaware of the early US decades in Viet Nam have cited the loss in Viet Nam as support for using sufficient force elsewhere. For example, a November 16, 2009 Newsweek cover-page article, “How We (Could Have) Won In Vietnam : For Obama & Afghanistan, The Surprising Lessons Of A Long-Ago War” said that in Viet Nam, President Johnson had “tried to slide by without leveling with the American people about the commitment required to win.” Thus the article said of Obama: If he decides that Afghanistan is winnable—i.e., that the Afghans can find some lasting measure of security against the Taliban—he will need to give the war his wholehearted backing.” This view, although reasonable given the facts discussed, did not discuss the 1875–1954 US colonial presence in Viet Nam, enabled by force. Thus it missed why most people fought against the West.
Like in Viet Nam, supposed “terrorists” elsewhere are often patriots, who oppose US leaders’ efforts to control their nations resources by coups, wars, destabilizations, and election interferences. This side of US foreign policy, shielded by the silence on US colonialism in Viet Nam, spotlights a 1967 warning by Dr. Martin Luther King: “If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam.”
Recommended Reading. Term “Viet Nam” in Geneva Agreements 20–21 July, 1954.
Agreement on the Cessation of hostilities in Viet-Nam July 20, 1954 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/inch001.asp
Final Declaration . . . July 21, 1954 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/inch005.asp