(VIETNAMESE
HISTORY) artificial state created by the 1954 Geneva Agreement (to end the First Indochina War). Parties to the agreement were the
People's Republic of China, the USSR, and
France; the Vietnamese were stuck with an agreement that perpetuated colonial rule over the majority of their population.
ROVN expected to be a clone of Republic of Korea; however, in ROK, there were a lot of nationalist leaders with a broad
popular following, whereas in South
Vietnam there weren't; instead, Vietnamese loyalties lay with Vietnamese nation created in May 1945 (by the Viet Minh). This had little to do with
Communism, and more to do with the fact that there was nothing Vietnamese about the ROVN. It was not a republic, because there was no legitimate system of choosing the ruler, and no accountability to the
people. And it wasn't Vietnamese.
Political opponents of the regime were routinely executed.
Eventually, US withdrew its support because there was an irrepressible conflict between the "realists" in the Pentagon, who understood that the approach to the war had to address widespread peonage, and the neoconservatives, who were ideological fanatics. The ROVN instantly collapsed, because it had no base of support left in the Vietnamese population.
The "Republic of Vietnam" was a comic opera creation, with no legitimacy, no law, no legitimacy; no Vietnamese loved it, its
army would not fight for it, its generals mainly sought
power of
money, and the US military was completely deceived by the whole imposture.
