Gli Stati Uniti e la Conferenza di Ginevra del 1954: il significato di una dissociazione

Abstract

The Geneva Conference of 1954 marked an important passage for the destiny of Indochina. The United States decision not to associate itself to the Final Agreements and the issue of a unilateral declaration represented a milestone toward the future American involvement in the Vietnam War. This work explains the reactions to the conference in the United States and analyzes how a combination of domestic and foreign political reasons induced the Eisenhower administration to dissociate itself from a series of agreements that stopped a bloody war – avoiding a possibly internationalization of the conflict – but had the faults to recognize a Communist partial success and to imply a multilateral cooperation with the Red China about the future definition of the political map of Asia. The anticommunist rhetorical propaganda of the Republican administration would not permit the acceptance of a compromise with the enemy without having internal political repercussions, therefore the U.S. delegations at Geneva was instructed to keep a low-profile and to dissociate itself from the Final Agreements. Such a choice allowed to the Usa to have a free hand to commit itself on the future of the area, without any tie to the results of the Geneva Conference.