Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War opens in 1954 with the signing of the Geneva accords that ended the eight-year-long Franco-Indochinese War and created two Vietnams. In agreeing to the accords, Ho Chi Minh and other leaders of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam anticipated a new period of peace leading to national reunification under their rule; they never imagined that within a decade they would be engaged in an even bigger feud with the United States. Basing his work on new and largely inaccessible Vietnamese materials as well as French, British, Canadian, and American documents, Pierre Asselin explores the communist path to war. Specifically, he examines the internal debates and other elements that shaped Hanoi's revolutionary strategy in the decade preceding U.S. military intervention, and resulting domestic and foreign programs. Without exonerating Washington for its role in the advent of hostilities in 1965, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War demonstrates that those who directed the effort against the United States and its allies in Saigon were at least equally responsible for creating the circumstances that culminated in arguably the most tragic conflict of the Cold War era. "Highly recommended." ― CHOICE Published On: 2014-06-01 "Excellent new [work] on the Vietnam War." -- Geoffrey C. Stewart ― Cross-Currents Published On: 2014-03-01 "Outstanding. . . . Illuminating." ― Proceedings Published On: 2014-04-01 "A valuable contribution to any discussion of North Vietnam’s road to war, and the origins of the American stage in the Vietnam War." -- Tal Tovy ― H-Net Published On: 2015-02-01 "Asselin's excellent study . . . will remain an indispensible source for students of Vietnam, the Cold War, and twentieth-century world history for many years to come." -- Jessica Elkind ― The Journal of American History Published On: 2015-06-28 "This authoritative and compelling book fills a long-felt need for a scholarly treatment of policy making in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Pierre Asselin has conducted careful and exhaustive research into available Vietnamese and Western archival sources and consulted widely secondary writings on his topic. The result is a meticulously researched, lucidly written, and highly revealing volume on a previously obscure aspect of the Indochina conflict.... Asselin pushes the frontier of our knowledge about Hanoi’s strategic thinking and diplomatic maneuver during the Indochina conflict further than anyone else." ― Journal of American-East Asian Relations “Splendidly researched, chock-full of fascinating new information and insights, Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War is truly a path-breaking study, far and away the best book to date on that crucial topic.” ―George C. Herring, author of America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1900–1950 “Pierre Asselin has done an admirable job of marshalling French, Canadian, and British records to supplement the available Vietnamese evidence and illuminate Hanoi's road to the Vietnam War. Asselin shows that the conflagration was inevitable not only due to American goals and actions but because North Vietnam specifically chose war. This is an important contribution to lifting the veil that has long prevented an understanding of Hanoi's approach to the war.”―John Prados, author of Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 “An illuminating account of how North Vietnam's leaders moved from a peaceful reunification strategy to a policy of all-out war. Asselin's stress on Vietnamese agency and on Hanoi's ability to manipulate its Soviet and Chinese allies makes his book a major contribution to the history of Indochina.”―Odd Arne Westad, author of Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750 Pierre Asselin is Professor of History at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu and the author of A Bitter Peace: Washington, Hanoi, and the Making of the Paris Agreement . Hanoi's Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 By Pierre Asselin UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Copyright © 2013 The Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-520-27612-3 Contents List of Maps, ix, Foreword by the Series Editors, xi, Acknowledgments, xiii, Glossary of Terms and Acronyms, xvii, Introduction, 1, 1. Choosing Peace, 1954–1956, 11, 2. Changing Course, 1957–1959, 44, 3. Treading Cautiously, 1960, 72, 4. Buying Time, 1961, 91, 5. Exploring Neutralization, 1962, 118, 6. Choosing War, 1963, 145, 7. Waging War, 1964, 174, Epilogue, 206, Notes, 213, Bibliography, 291, Index, 309, CHAPTER 1 Choosing Peace, 1954–1956 By the summer of 1954, the world seemed slightly safer than it had been just a few months before, as a "hot" phase in the Cold War came to an end. The Korean and Indochina Wars had done much to increase tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union while marking the emergence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) as an ardent opponent of Ameri