Book review: The History of South Vietnam: The Quest for Legitimacy and Stability, 1963-1967

By Tuong Vu

Book review: Vinh-The Lam, The History of South Vietnam: The Quest for Legitimacy and Stability, 1963-1967 (New York: Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series, 2021). ISBN 9780367621216. 

It is my great pleasure to introduce the English-language edition of Mr. Lâm Vĩnh Thế’s The History of South Vietnam: The Quest for Legitimacy and Stability, 1963-1967. The work is the first study to examine politics in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) during the years between the fall of the First Republic under President Ngô Đình Diệm and the founding of the Second Republic under the leadership of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu.

This was a chaotic period that witnessed severe political instability. On one hand were ambitious colonels and generals who schemed to seize power via coups. Some succeeded and others failed. On the other hand were various religious and other civil society groups who violently protested on the streets to demand political representation and accountability. In addition, several political parties and their regional factions, which lacked mass bases of their own, sought to position themselves between the military and the Buddhist movement. None turned out to be able to stay in power for long.

Amidst that political turmoil, two external forces, the communists and the Americans, further muddied the water. The former attempted, through escalating combat and terrorist activities, to aggravate the situation to pave the way for a takeover, while the latter sought to stabilize the situation for a possible expansion of the war with a larger role for US forces. A communist agent, Col. Phạm Ngọc Thảo, led a failed coup that might have resulted in a quick takeover of the South by Hanoi had it been successful. In contrast, the U.S. invested greatly in General Nguyễn Khánh only to find out that he was inept and unreliable. Both examples suggest that external forces added to the chaos but did not achieve what they wanted.

By 1965, after the departure of General Nguyễn Khánh from the scene, the situation became more stable with a core group of generals, the so-called “Young Turks,” in control of government. Social unrest continued and reached a climax in 1966 when the government under General Nguyễn Cao Kỳ confronted a popular revolt in central Vietnam led by Buddhist monks and supported by a military faction. Out of the crisis, in which the Kỳ government prevailed, was the move of the authorities to promulgate a new, liberal constitution and the democratic elections of a legislature and the president of the Second Republic in 1967.

Despite all the turbulence, the period between the two Republics was a significant period in the history of South Vietnam and Vietnam in general. For South Vietnam, it was a time when massive social energies were released after having been held back for many years by the Ngô Đình Diệm regime. As political parties were legalized, civil society groups proliferated and the press thrived. It was a period when the basis of a modern liberal order was created even though that order was still unstable and would face significant challenges later on.

For the history of Vietnam, this period can be likened to the 1945-1946 period when a similar level of intense social and political interaction took place. In both periods a great power vacuum suddenly appeared after years of political immobility. In 1945, the communists were able to seize power and gradually extinguished their rivals in the North by the summer of 1946 before war began at the end of the year between them and the returning French. The period 1964-1967 also took place in the middle of a war but ended with a more positive outcome: social forces were able to make the military accept a liberal political system in which their participation was institutionalized.

The literature on the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) that existed from 1955 to 1975 is extremely limited. For a long time, orthodox American historiography was influenced by propaganda from Hanoi and dismissed the Saigon regime as a mere creation of the U.S. in its strategy to contain communism in Asia. Lacking indigenous roots, America’s “South Vietnamese project” in this view was considered doomed from the start. To most American diplomatic historians, there is no need to study the RVN since it can be assumed that the Americans made all the major decisions.

Nevertheless, recent scholarship has showed that the U.S. was often held hostage by their South Vietnamese ally despite an asymmetry of power between them. Rather than being American puppets, Saigon elites had their own political visions and expended tremendous efforts to create a viable nation amidst a war not of their own choice. Rather than being mostly communist sympathizers, South Vietnamese people held diverse political views and fought bravely to hold those in power accountable. The period of 1964-1967 arguably offers the best example of such dynamics of contention in South Vietnamese politics.

Furthermore, for all its problems, it is important to note that the turmoil in this period, or the ups and downs in politics in the RVN over its two-decade existence, was not something unique to South Vietnam or was an indicator of something irredeemably wrong with its society or politics. After all, similar problems beset all South Vietnam’s noncommunist neighbors, including Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Burma, and the Philippines, in the first decade or two after colonial rule. All experienced personal dictatorship, military coups, regional rebellions, communist insurgencies, and periods of extreme chaos.

South Vietnam in 1964-66 was in many ways similar to South Korea in 1960-61, Indonesia in 1964-66, Thailand in 1973-74, the Philippines in 1986-87, and Burma in 1989-90. None except South Vietnam faced an attempt of direct conquest by another country, and all, including even Burma, have gradually grown out of such precarious existence. Some have achieved economic miracles, and all now have political systems that allow political competition if not liberal democracy. While I do not suggest that the RVN would become a liberal democracy like South Korea had it continued to exist, one should avoid the ahistorical notion that it was predestined to fail.

Students of Vietnamese politics and history are indebted to Mr. Lâm Vĩnh Thế for his informative analysis of South Vietnamese politics during those critical years between the two republics. This book will certainly stimulate greater interest in the Republic of Vietnam for many years to come.

Tuong Vu, US-Vietnam Research Center, University of Oregon

Co-editor of Building a Republican Nation in Vietnam, 1920-1963 (2022) and The Republic of Vietnam, 1955-1975: Vietnamese Perspectives on Nation-Building (2020)