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“those terrible things.” 9
    Nothing could have budged Ike from that position, but he was thankful for CIA support. The CIA warned flatly that “the Chinese would take whatever military action they thought required to prevent destruction of the Viet Minh, including when and if necessary open use of Chinese Communist forces in Indochina.” The agency pointed out that “U.S. use of nuclear weapons in Indochina would hasten the ultimate Chinese decision whether or not to intervene.” 10
    Dien Bien Phu fell to the Vietminh. In Geneva, in July of 1954, France, Ho Chi Minh, and the great powers (except for the United States) signed the Geneva Accords. The parties agreed to a truce and to a temporary partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel. Neither the French in the south (who soon handed over the government to Diem) nor Ho Chi Minh’s Communists in the north could join a military alliance or allow foreign military forces orequipment onto their territory. There would be elections within two years to unify the country.
    The United States did not sign the accords, nor did any representative of a South Vietnamese government. Bedell Smith was in Geneva as an observer, not a participant in the conference. He issued a letter stating that his government “took note of” the accords and promising that the United States would support free elections and would not use force to upset the agreements.
    This was a major embarrassment to the Republicans, who had come to power pledged to a policy of “liberation,” and who now had to watch as yet another Asian country, North Vietnam, fell to the Communists. Desperate to save something from the debacle, in late July, General Twining, Admiral Radford, Secretary Dulles, and others worked out an invasion scheme that would have landed American troops at Haiphong, followed by a march to Hanoi.
    Again General Ridgway opposed. On the basis of Army intelligence estimates, he argued that the adventure would require at least six divisions, even if the Chinese did not intervene. Eisenhower’s defense policy was to reduce the Army, not expand it. The President refused to act. 11
    Secretary Dulles then moved on the diplomatic front. Ike was a great believer in alliances, and in September of 1954 he encouraged Dulles to sign up allies in Asia. Dulles persuaded Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Thailand, Pakistan, and the Philippines to join the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization ( SEATO ). It was a defensive alliance in which the parties agreed to act together to meet an aggressor. Protection for Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam, the independent nations that had come into being when the French withdrew from Indochina, was covered in a separate protocol.
    Bringing South Vietnam into SEATO was a
de facto
violation of the Geneva Accords. The United States had already decided, in any event, that those accords would have to be ignored, especially the section that called for free nationwide elections. The CIA had reported in August that “if the scheduled national elections are held in July, 1956, and if the Viet Minh does not prejudice its political prospects, the Viet Minh will almost certainly win.” 12
    Ike was more precise in his memoirs. He stated, “I have never talked or corresponded with a person knowledgeable in Indochinese affairs who did not agree that had elections been held … possibly 80 per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Chi Minh as their leader rather than Chief of State Bao Dai.” 13
    Ike’s statement, so frequently quoted by doves in the second half of the 1960s, had a major qualifier to it. Bao Dai was then living in France. He had no interest in his native land, and all the CIA reports indicated that his popularity was nonexistent among his subjects. In addition, Ike often pointed out, when confronted with this statement, that North Vietnam had nearly twice the population of South