Nguyen Van Thieu

President of the Republic of Vietnam (1967-1975)

  • Born: April 5, 1923
  • Birthplace: Tri Thuy, Ninh Thuan province, French Indochina (now in Vietnam)
  • Died: September 29, 2001
  • Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

Thieu provided stable leadership to South Vietnam. However, his government fell short of Western expectations of democracy, had a narrow power base, and was plagued by endemic corruption. Without the support of U.S. forces who were in Southeast Asia fighting in the Vietnam War after January, 1973, and aggravated by his political and military misjudgments, Thieu could not save South Vietnam from Communist conquest in 1975.

Early Life

Nguyen Van Thieu (ehn-gee-ehn vahn thee-ew) was born in Tri Thuy village in the Ninh Thuan province in southern Vietnam, then part of colonial French Indochina. As a young man, Thieu changed his birthday to April 5, 1923, because that date was more astrologically auspicious. Thieu was the youngest of five children of a small landowner and fishing family. Because the modern city of Phan Rang, near where he was born, was the ancient Cham city of Panduranga, many have speculated that Thieu was of Cham ancestry, a possibility Thieu did not dismiss.

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Although a Buddhist, Thieu attended the Roman Catholic Pellerin School in Hue. Opposing the reimposition of French rule over Vietnam after World War II, Thieu joined the nationalist Viet Minh in 1945, becoming a village chief. In 1946, concerned about the Communist nature of the Viet Minh, Thieu aligned himself with anti-Communist French fighters against the Viet Minh.

After a stint with the merchant marine in 1947, Thieu joined the first class of Vietnam’s National Military Academy in Dalat and graduated in 1948. After training in France, Thieu became a second lieutenant in the new Vietnamese National Army (1949). He married the Catholic daughter of a prosperous southern Vietnamese physician, but he did not convert to Catholicism until some years into his marriage.

Life’s Work

After the Geneva Accords of 1954 gave independence to Vietnam but temporarily divided the nation into a Communist North and a non-Communist South Thieu was made lieutenant colonel in South Vietnam in 1955. In 1957, he trained in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, with the U.S. military. Beginning in 1959, he successively led three South Vietnamese infantry divisions.

On November 11, 1960, there was a coup against Ngo Dinh Diem , president of the Republic of Vietnam in the south. Thieu was loyal to Diem at the time, but this loyalty would change with the coup of November 1, 1963, in which Thieu’s fifth infantry division led the assault on Diem’s palace. After the murder of Diem on November 2, Thieu was made brigadier general.

In the political turmoil following Diem’s assassination, Thieu aligned himself with a group of plotting young generals. As deputy prime minister since January, 1965, and defense minister since February, Thieu welcomed the arrival of the first U.S. combat troops in Da Nang on March 8, 1965. The bloodless coup of June 19 made Thieu head of state of the Republic of Vietnam, and General Nguyen Cao Ky became prime minister.

Thieu and Ky’s coup brought a modicum of political stability to South Vietnam. At the urging of U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson , who met with the two in Honolulu in February, 1966, and in Guam the following March, Thieu and Ky decided to hold presidential elections. Ky refused to oppose Thieu, so he ran on Thieu’s ticket as vice president, and the two were elected. A few years later, on September 3, 1971, President Thieu was elected with 38 percent of the popular vote, despite Communist threats against the southern Vietnamese electorate. Voter participation reached 83 percent, and the elections saw ten candidates.

Just as it seemed President Thieu could stabilize South Vietnam with American support, the Communist Tet Offensive of January 31, 1968, destroyed America’s will to remain in Vietnam. With the Johnson administration’s peace talks with North Vietnam, which began in mid-May, came Thieu’s adamant opposition to the talks and Communist demands for Thieu’s ouster.

Just before the U.S. presidential elections of October, 1968, Thieu had denounced the Paris peace talks. Richard Nixon’s election to the U.S. presidency, secured in part by his promise to end U.S. engagement in Vietnam, put Thieu in an awkward position. Emboldened, the Communists formed a provisional revolutionary government that claimed to represent the people of the south. In June and August, 1969, Nixon outlined his plans for the “Vietnamization” of the conflict, which meant that Thieu’s forces would have to bear the brunt of the fighting.

Thieu failed to grasp the depth of the wish of the Nixon administration, in line with American popular opinion, to extricate itself from military conflict in South Vietnam. This was in spite of Nixon’s ill-fated incursion into Cambodia in May, 1970. Thieu’s Lam Son 719 offensive into Laos from February 8 to March 24, 1971, intended to cut the Ho Chi Minh trail, ended in utter failure. His attempts to declare victory met with widespread derision. Nevertheless, Thieu ran unopposed in the October 3 elections and won with 90 percent of the vote.

In 1972, Thieu’s forces fought bravely against North Vietnam’s forces, who launched the Easter Offensive on March 30. With close U.S. air support the south repelled the Communists. Thus, Thieu was utterly shocked when Nixon’s national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, presented him on October 22 with the draft of a peace agreement negotiated with Le Duc Tho of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) in Paris. Thieu rejected the agreement on four principles: He adamantly refused the idea of a coalition government with the Communists for South Vietnam, demanded departure of North Vietnamese troops from the South, demanded secure borders, and wanted international recognition of the Republic of Vietnam. The Americans knew that this was a deal breaker, and Kissinger denounced Thieu to Nixon as being on the verge of insanity.

Thieu’s intransigence won him a little time only. Despite the subsequent Christmas bombing of North Vietnam by the United States from December 18 to 30, 1972, the Paris Peace Accords were signed the following month by the United States, North Vietnam, President Thieu’s government, and the provisional revolutionary government. For Thieu, the worst aspect of the treaty was that it allowed about 150,000 North Vietnamese troops to remain in South Vietnam.

In 1973, Thieu went on the offensive and added to the 75 percent of the territory and 85 percent of the population of South Vietnam he controlled. Soon, the absence of American troops, curtailed U.S. aid, and the global effects of the 1973 oil crisis challenged Thieu. In 1974, the Communists made significant gains. The resignation of Nixon on August 9 left Thieu bereft of key support and at the mercy of a war-weary U.S. Congress. When North Vietnamese forces captured Phuoc Binh on January 6, 1975, there was no objection by the United States.

Emboldened, North Vietnam launched a major attack. After the fall of Ban Me Thuot on March 11, Thieu made the fateful, abrupt decision to abandon the Central Highlands on March 14. The retreat turned into a rout, annihilating half of his army. Thieu saw the fall of Hue on March 25 and Da Nang on March 30. On April 16, Phan Rang fell, and Thieu’s angry army desecrated the graves of his ancestors before fleeing the Communists. On April 21, Thieu resigned in a televised speech. Tearfully, he accused the United States of betrayal. Thieu fled to Taiwan, and on April 30, Saigon fell.

In 1979, Thieu left for Surrey, England, and bought a mansion he dubbed the “White House.” Later he moved to a flat in London and formed a rather insignificant political group. In 1990, he moved to Newton, Massachusetts, near Boston, advocating the violent overthrow of Vietnam’s Communist government. The Clinton administration declined Thieu’s offers to aid negotiations between the United States and Vietnam, which resumed diplomatic relations on July 11, 1995. Thieu died in Boston on September 29, 2001.

Significance

From 1965 to 1974, Thieu gave South Vietnam a somewhat stable authoritarian government, but he failed under the final Communist onslaught in 1975. Under Thieu, South Vietnam could not survive without U.S. military support. In the eyes of many of his subordinates, like General Lam Quang Thi, Thieu lacked the charisma, integrity, vision, and popular support needed to achieve an effective defense, win against the Communists, and build a democratic society.

Among the Vietnamese, Thieu became unpopular for his stubborn but indecisive behavior, his suspicious nature, and his plotting. The West objected to his authoritarianism and absolute opposition to negotiations with the Communists and ridiculed his belief in astrology.

Many South Vietnamese hated the endemic corruption of Thieu’s regime, which steadily grew worse as Thieu bought the loyalty of soldiers and politicians by tolerating their corruption. Thieu’s wife amassed a fortune with shady real estate deals, while inflation oppressed common soldiers and citizens in 1974. After his ouster in 1975, Thieu failed to attract significant attention in the Vietnamese exile community.

Bibliography

Haycraft, William. Unraveling Vietnam. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2005. Analyzes Thieu’s performance as president of South Vietnam in light of U.S. military and diplomatic relations with Thieu’s nation. Sympathetic but acknowledges Thieu’s shortcomings.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. 2d ed. New York: Viking Press, 1997. Remains the most widely available source in English. Presents mainstream U.S. historical assessment of Thieu and his presidency. Illustrated.

Lam, Quang Thi. The Twenty-Five-Year Century. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2001. Autobiography of South Vietnamese general shows common South Vietnamese disaffection with corruption and military incompetence of Thieu’s final years as president. Perceptive discussion of Thieu’s inability to prevent collapse in 1975.

Lee, Edward, and Toby Haynsworth. Nixon, Ford, and the Abandonment of South Vietnam. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002. Discusses how Thieu lost crucial American support when Nixon forced Thieu to accept the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 and Ford failed to aid South Vietnam in early 1975. Authors blame both U.S. presidents for abandoning Thieu’s government. Illustrated.