[The following is a statement by the Central Committee of the Ligue Communiste, French section of the Fourth International, on the Vietnam cease-fire agreement. It appeared, under the title "Total Support Until the Final Victory," in the February 3 issue of the Ligue's weekly, Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
1. A Retreat by Imperialism. •
The signing of the January 27 Vietnam accords gives formal recognition to a definite strategic retreat by American imperialism in its role as world cop for capitalism. In order to understand the extent of this retreat, it is necessary to review the original aims of the American involvement in Indochina. The participation in the French war effort beginning with the years 1950-1952, the assumption of total responsibility for Western policy toward Indochina after 1954, the support for the dictatorial Diem regime, the unfolding of its "special war" (through the sending of U.S. military advisers) and then of the "localized" war (sending an expeditionary force of 500,000 men and the bombing of the North), all had one goal: to break the back of the Asian revolution in Vietnam, where it was centered, and to create the necessary conditions for a reconquest of the North and perhaps for reopening China to the imperialist market. This strategic objective was dealt a severe blow by the failure of the "local war" and by the 1968 Tet offensive carried out in the cities of South Vietnam by the NIF [National Liberation Front], which made it possible to open the Paris negotiations and halt the bombing of North Vietnam. It was following this setback that American imperialism began to work out a new international policy based on a "three-way peaceful coexistence": Losing hope of reconquering China, the U.S. government would henceforward attempt to 188
neutralize the role the latter could play in the world revolution by integrating it into the diplomatic game of the "big powers." But the goal in Indochina remained to return to the situation prevailing in 1954. Therefore, the "Nixon Doctrine" aimed at playing on the cowardice of China and the USSR in order to weaken their support; at rebuilding the bases for a consistent neocolonialist policy in South Vietnam (with "Vietnamization"); and at strangling the resistance of the NLF by making the seventeenth parallel a tightly closed border, by instigating the coup d'etat in Cambodia in March 1970, and by intervening massively in Laos in order to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
But this new U.S. orientation was also a total failure. The Vietnamese revolutionists demonstrated more clearly than ever their political independence with regard to China and the USSR; the Cambodian people swung into the camp of the Indochinese revolution; the victory of the Indochinese revolutionary front in the struggle of February 1971 stopped any new American-puppet attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh Trail; the March-April 1972 offensive shook the foundations of pacification; and the liberated zones and the North victoriously resisted the escalation of American terror.
It is this succession of failures that the January 27 accords reflect by depriving the puppet forces of their offensive capability, by putting an end to the direct and massive military involvement of imperialism. The U.S. government can no longer hope under these conditions to return to the 1954 situation in the three countries of Indochina.
This defeat for imperialism in its struggle against three small peoples, despite the extent of the commitment of various American administrations, is a major lesson for all peoples of the world. It likewise offers considerable encouragement to the international anti-imperialist movement in its fight for the final victory of the Indochinese revolution.
2.... But Not the Final Victory
For the final victory has not yet been achieved. Imperialist retreat does not mean that imperialism has renounced its goals. The U.S. government is too conscious of the dangers a new upsurge of the Asian revolution would pose for the world capitalist system to simply pull out. The imperialist goal today is the creation of a new line of defense for which Thailand would be pivotal, which would be supported by the urban and coastal regions of South Vietnam, and which would run through Laos and - if possible - Cambodia. Moreover, the means at the disposal of the American puppets today are not negligible. Imperialism has a considerable air and naval military infrastructure in Thailand and in the China Sea and has moved to quickly rearm its puppet armies, while regimes of terror have been set up in the cities. In addition, through an influx of "economic" aid, U.S. imperialism is attempting to apply a policy of social corruption on an unprecedented scale in order to endow the puppet regimes with a minimal social basis. Finally, it continues to take advantage of the passivity of China and the USSR, thanks to their policies of peaceful coexistence.
The January 27 accords do not go beyond the dual power situation existing in South Vietnam- this is the major difference between them and the PRG's seven points of July 1971. "Two powers, two administrations, two armies" continue to confront each other. For more than five years, the second Vietnam resistance, in contrast to the period before 1954, has been confronted with the problem of sinking roots in the urban areas. The difficulty of this problem cannot be underestimated, given the scope of the means marshaled by imperialism and the effectiveness of a policy of terror in the cities that has already cost the lives of a large number of militants and has led to the jailing of 300,000 political prisoners in South Vietnam. The present strengthening of the coercive apparatus, the decrees aimed at preventing any population movement and any mass demonstration, the "disguising" of U.S. military advisers as civilian advisers, the turning of U.S. military bases over to the puppet regime in order to prevent them from being dismantled, and the stepped up rearming of the army and the puppet police during the past two months all show that the American puppets are ready to defend the new line they have fallen back to and that they are ready to violate the spirit of the January 27 accords.
The violation of the 1954 Geneva accords goes to show that for imperialism these accords are nothing but scraps of paper that can be torn up any time the situation appears to allow it.
Imperialism has not retreated and will not retreat unless it is forced and compelled to do so.
3. 'Tragically Alone!'
These January 27 accords express the complex situation in which the Indochinese revolution finds itself today. They underline its positions of strength and weakness.
The strength of the Indochinese fighters lies in the depth of the revolutionary process that they have led. Only a revolutionary war mobilizing the energies of an entire population in the struggle for national and social liberation made it possible, in fact, to offset the effects of a material relationship of forces (economic, military, and technological) that was totally in the favor of imperialism. Soviet and Chinese aid to the Indochinese revolutionary front is, indeed, very inferior— in value as well as in quantity and quality-to the means marshaled by the American government.
In the face of U.S. imperialism, the situation of weakness in which the Indochinese revolution finds itself is essentially a product of the nature of the aid given by the Soviets (and the Chinese). The USSR refused to "declare the territory of North Vietnam to be an inviolable part of the socialist camp." It did not send either February 19, 1973
in quantity or in quality the kind of military materiel to Indochina that would have made achievement of the ultimate victory possible. It continues even today to recognize the authority of the Cambodian puppet regime. China increased this relative isolation of the Indochinese revolution by paying a high price for the normalization of its relations with Washington: Nixon's trip to Peking (just after the first bombings of the North) allowed him to considerably strengthen his international and domestic position. And in this way, China stripped itself of the ability to make any denunciation of the subsequent trip of the president of the USA to Moscow just after the mining of the North Vietnamese ports.
In acting as they did, the Soviet and Chinese governments agreed to undermine the diplomatic offensive launched by the PRG on July 1, 1971, with the announcement of its seven points. They gave de facto authorization to American imperialism to carry out the bloodiest military escalation of the entire history of the Indochina war. They largely contributed toward demobilizing
, the American antiwar movement (which had reached its high point with the demonstrations against the invasion of Cambodia in March-April 1970*) by showing that Nixon could at one and the same time bomb North Vietnam and improve his relations with China and the USSR. They considerably slowed down the revival of the international anti-imperialist movement, which was getting its second breath after going through a lull during the years 1968- 1970. They guaranteed the triumphant reelection of President Nixon by allowing him to portray himself as a man responsible for the détente. In this new situation, the Indochinese fighters were able much more easily than in the past to play on Soviet- Chinese "competition" in order to increase an aid that was being doled out with an eyedropper.
The policy of peaceful coexistence stands revealed for what it really is: a policy that, under cover of defending world peace, defends the interests of the ruling bureaucracies to the det-
riment of revolutionary struggles.
To understand the policy of the Vietnamese fighters with regard to the negotiations, these two essential factors and their evolution must, above all else, be taken into account. Indeed, for a year and a half, the relationship of forces has evolved favorably - on the basis of the successes in Laos and Cambodia, and then of the March-April 1972 offensivein spite of the difficulties added to the struggle by the intensification of the U.S. escalation; yet this evolution was still not able to bring about a purely military victory. On the other hand, the international situation facing the Indochinese revolution worsened, without thereby removing the danger that the world anti-imperialist movement sooner or later represented for Nixon. The Vietnamese leadership thus found itself obliged to enter negotiations on a new basis in order to put an end to the U.S. escalation, since it had not received the political and military aid that could have stopped it. But the victories achieved in the field allowed it to enlarge its negotiating margin without thereby abandoning the fundamental objectives, which remain total liberation from the imperialist grip and reunification with the socialist North. In contrast to what happened after Geneva, the January 27 accords leave the revolutionary armed forces as a whole in the South intact. The December 1972 bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong did not succeed in winning for the USA the withdrawal of troops, the regroupment of the front into an outlying zone, the recognition of two Vietnamese states, or the legalization of the Thieu regime.
It is a combination of these favorable and unfavorable factors that basically explains the shift from the seven points of the PRG to today's accords — a shift that was noted by the PRG statement on September 11, 1972.
4. A Period of Intense Struggle
The signing of the January 27 accords and the cease-fire that they provide for thus open up a period of intense struggle that will be crucial for the future of the Vietnamese and Indochinese revolution. Two powers are confronting each other, two powers between whom no "reconciliation" is possible because they represent two opposing class forces. The PRG is the only representative of the Vietnamese people: It expresses the struggle of the Southern masses for their national and social liberation. The Thieu government remains a puppet force entirely dependent on U.S. aid and representing imperialist and bourgeois interests. Because the ultimate liberation of Vietnam involves a complete break with imperialism and the forces linked to it inside Vietnam, there can be no independence and no real freedom short of the socialist revolution. This remains the perspective of the Indochinese revolutionists, who do not conceive of any independence without reunification with the socialist North. It is this perspective that was carried out in the DRV following the Geneva agreements. It is this perspective that in effect makes irreconcilable the antagonisms that pit the puppet government (embodiment of the neocolonialist scheme of U.S. imperialism) and the PRG against each other. While the signing of the present accords signifies an important U.S. retreat in South Vietnam, it does not, for all that, represent the final, definitive victory for which we are fighting.
The rate of the struggle that is opening up is hard to make out in advance. There could be a violent and very rapid confrontation brought on by Thieu's repression of the urban masses and the political prisoners. There could be a period of preparing for struggle while the U.S. withdraws — a period during which the liberated zones would reorganize economically, politically, administratively, and militarily after the horrible bombings of the last few months. But the axes of this struggle are already clear: The puppet power will essentially use what has kept it going up to now: terror, imperialist aid, and social corruption. The Front and the PRG, for their part, are preparing an intense political struggle. It is the reliance on mass mobilization and the social dynamic of the permanent revolution that gave the revolutionary war its strength. It is on the basis of this mobilization that this political struggle will be able to develop. Heavy weapons have been buried and are ready to be brought out at the sign of any new military 190
escalation. The agrarian reform will have to be speeded up in order to make possible a systematic policy of demoralizing the puppet administration and army. Preparations for the struggle of the refugees to return to their village, and for the struggle for the freeing of the political prisoners, have been made. The masses are being called on to defend their economic demands and their democratic freedoms. The battles in preparation cannot be reduced to the opposition between two military and political apparatuses; they in fact represent the continuation of a social revolution that is under way. Therein lies the essential strength of the Front and the PRG. But it would be dangerous to believe that this process must necessarily reach a rapid conclusion. The
"cease-fire equals peace equation equals victory" that the PCF [Parti Communiste Français - French Communist party] tends to advance is criminal in this context because it risks the demobilization of the support movement at a time when it must, on the contrary, prepare itself for new tasks.
As for Cambodia, there the FUNK [Front Uni National du Cambodge- National United Front of Cambodia] is proving itself strong enough to refuse any attempt at compromise with the Pnompenh regime, despite the Soviet pressures, and the present military state of affairs shows that the coming months can be decisive. There, too, the future of the Indochinese revolution is being played out.
5. Develop Support
Here the need to continue and develop support can clearly be seen. This must be done to prevent any new maneuver by Nixon, to help the Vietnamese fighters obtain the release of the Saigon political prisoners, to support them at every step in the coming struggle, and to support, too, the Cambodian and Laotian peoples in the continuation of their struggle.
In order to educate the vanguard, as well as to aid in the development of solidarity activities, revolutionary Marxists must explain how the socialist future of the Indochinese revolution forbids any "national reconciliation" between the puppet regimes and the revolutionary forces. Independently of the diplomatic and tactical formulations of the Vietnamese leadership (formulations with which we do not always agree), it is our duty to explain the process of permanent revolution as it is illustrated by the history of the Indochinese revolution.
"Total Support Until the Final Victory"— this slogan is today more timely than ever. For us revolutionary Marxists, final victory means victory for the Vietnamese and Indochinese revolutions. We call on all those for whom real independence will not exist for the peoples of Indochina short of the destruction of the puppet regimes in Saigon, Vientiane, and Pnompenh to join their efforts with ours in order to prevent any interruption of this support.
The scope and radical character of the January 20 mobilizations in France, and the number of demonstrations on that day throughout the world and in the USA, show that the anti-imperialist movement is able to continue to mobilize its forces. They demonstrate the deep distrust of the anti-imperialist activists for Nixon. They constitute a warning to the U.S. government. For us, they represent a rededication to continue our support.
The Central Committee of the Ligue Communiste salutes the victories and the heroism of the three peoples of Indochina. It urgently calls on all anti-imperialist activists and all antiimperialist organizations to continue their solidarity actions in a spirit of unity. It calls for a continuation of permanent, ongoing support activity with the Front Solidarité Indochine.
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indochina will win!
*Nixon announced the invasion on April 30, 1970, provoking a massive response by the antiwar movement during the month of May (See Intercontinental Press, May 11, 1970, p. 419) - IP