Talk:The Two Vietnams after Geneva

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. Howard C. Berkowitz 17:38, 4 December 2008 (UTC)