Talk:The Two Vietnams after Geneva

To do. Please write a brief definition or description of this article at The Two Vietnams after Geneva/Definition.

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I'd say the title of this page and the opening sentence reference to "a 1954 Geneva meeting that partitioned Vietnam into North and South" are debatable.

The actual Geneva Accords [1] consistently refer to a "provisional military demarcation line" and the final declaration [2] of the conference has the text "The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the Agreement relating to Viet-nam is to settle military questions with a view to ending hostilities and that the military demarcation line is provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary."

Dropping "two Vietnams" on top of that seems to me to be an anachronism. Granted, there was a French administration in the South, but that administration existed by virtue of Geneva and its tenure was limited by Geneva. It had Bao Dai as a puppet again, as he had been for the pre-war French Empire, Vichy France, and the Japanese. Of course, the US did not participate in or recognise the accords. Sandy Harris 15:54, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

What , then, would you call it?

The Geneva Accords are a largely ignored historical accident, more significant than the Kellogg-Briand Accords, but officially ignored by some of the participants, and refused by the successors to some of the governmental entries. Now, given they are anachronisms, what is an alternate, comparably short article title that gives a sense of the topic, even a little pithily? I'm not wedded to this title, but it was the best I could create when I wrote it — several earlier efforts were worse.

Arguably, there were one, or no Vietnams preceding Geneva. Some Vietnamese nationalists would say Annamm, Cochin China, and Tonkin made up a Vietanmese proto-state, which to some extent was recognized by the French Union. Other nationalists and French might have said those were three of the five pieces of Indonesia. Some of the harder-core French would have said "Vietnam? What's Vietnam? There's Indochina." Ho did declare the DRV on September 2, 1946, but there was a competing contemporary country in Cochin China.

Two political entities resulted from Geneva. I don't know a better name. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

The title was not my main point, and is one I'll concede. However, since the "two Vietnams" idea was a fundamental part of the US rationale for intervention, I think the links to primary sources above belong in the article, along with discussion of the original intent that the border "should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary", Diem's refusal to hold elections, and Eisenhower [3] writing "It was generally conceded that had an election been held, Ho Chi Minh would have been elected Premier." These call into question the whole US rationale of fighting for "freedom & democracy". Not that we want to re-hash the debates of the 60s here, but I think we should cover the Accords even though the US & the Diem government ignored them. Sandy Harris 07:27, 5 December 2008 (UTC)