Finding Nguyen Van Thieu: the value of multinational, multi-archival research

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Kevin Buckley, ‘No One Can Be Sure What Thieu is Thinking’, New York Times, 2 March 1969.

² Email from Sean Fear, 27 June 2022. His pioneering work on Thieu includes ‘Saigon Goes Global: South Vietnam’s Quest for International Legitimacy in the Age of Détente’, Diplomatic History 42, no. 3 (June 2018): 428–455; and ‘The Ambiguous Legacy of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam’s Second Republic (1967–1975)’, The Journal of Vietnamese Studies 11, no. 1 (2016): 1–75.

³ George Veith, Drawn Swords in a Distant Land: South Vietnam’s Shattered Dreams (New York: Encounter Books, 2021).

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Buckley, ‘No One Can Be Sure What Thieu is Thinking’.

⁶ Dispatch, C.M. MacLehose, ‘Call on President Thieu, 13 March, 14 March 1968, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (hereafter FCO) 15/698, The National Archives, Kew, UK (hereafter TNA); telegram, MacLehose to Foreign Office, ‘President Thieu’, 2 April 1968, Ministry of Defence (hereafter DEFE) 11/696, TNA; and telegram; unknown, Saigon, April–May 1968, FCO 15/698, TNA.

⁷ See Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 149–150; David Anderson, Vietnamization: Politics, Strategy, Legacy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), 33.

⁸ Dispatch, Canadian Delegation to the International Commission for Supervision and Control (ICSC) to External Affairs, ‘USA Troop Withdrawals – SVN Position’, 22 January 1969, file 20–22-VIETS-2-1 part 33, Volume 9402, Record Group (hereafter RG) 25, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter LAC); memo, C.M. MacLehose, ‘Call on Ambassador Bunker, 18 April’, 19 April 1969, FCO 15/1040, TNA; and memo, Roger Martin, ‘Political Round-Up’, 10 June 1969, FCO 15/1001, TNA.

⁹ Dispatch, Tait to External Affairs, ‘Interview with Pres Thieu’, 16 August 1969, file 20–22-VIETS-2-1 part 36, Volume 9402, RG 25, LAC; dispatch, commissioner (Canadian Delegation to the ICSC), ‘National Day of the Republic of Vietnam – Conversation with President Thieu’, 10 November 1970, file 20-NVIET-1-3-S VIET part 2, Volume 8923, RG 25, LAC; telegram, Moreton, 29 December 1969, FCO 15/1009, TNA; Diplomatic Reports, Moreton to the Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, ‘Viet-Nam: Keeping One’s Nerve’ and ‘South Viet-Nam: Annual Review for 1969’, 16 December 1969 and 23 January 1970 respectively, DEFE 11/696, TNA.

¹⁰ Dispatches, New Zealand embassy (Saigon) to Wellington, ‘Presidential Candidates’, 15 February 1971 and 6 August 1971, file 20-VIETS-19 part 1, Volume 9377, RG 25, LAC; and dispatch, New Zealand embassy (Saigon) to Wellington, ‘Final Part of Two Parts’, 23 August 1971, file 20-VIETS-19 part 2, Volume 9377, RG 25, LAC.

¹¹ On anticommunist networks, see Kyle Burke, Revolutionaries for the Right: Anticommunist Internationalism and Paramilitary Warfare in the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

¹² I suspect that had I pursued Korean and Taiwanese sources I would have found even more intimate and revealing conversations, seeing as Thieu admired and sought to emulate those sister republics. See Simon Toner, ‘Imagining Taiwan: The Nixon Administration, the Developmental States, and South Vietnam’s Search for Economic Viability, 1969–1975’, Diplomatic History 41, no. 4 (September 2017): 772–798.