Word: diem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...came up with a set of resolutions urging that the U.S. should: 1) recognize East Germany and "the existing status quo of a divided Germany; 2) reopen normal diplomatic and trade relations with Castro's Communist Cuba; 3) open diplomatic relations with Red China; and 4) denounce the Diem government in South Viet Nam as a "reactionary dictatorship," gradually pull out all U.S. troops and cut off all U.S. financial help...
This made it all the more important for the U.S. and President Ngo Dinh Diem to settle their differences. The latest episodes offered little assurance of that. Couching his words in the most careful diplomatic terms, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge last week suggested to Diem that his brother and fiery sister-in-law, Ngo Dinh Nhu and Mme. Nhu, leave the country until the current crisis was over and a fresh rapprochement between the government and the population established. Lodge hinted delicately that the continued presence of the bitterly controversial Nhus in South Viet Nam not only hampered...
What next in U.S. policy? It was a time of frantic pondering and frantic discussion in Washington. Some of the suggestions were ludicrous: cut off all aid to Diem (which would effectively hand the country to the Communists); run the Seventh Fleet up to the coast and force Diem out of power (also senseless, since no suitable successor was visible). No one seemed to be discussing perhaps the most sensible solution of all: stop all the halfway hints of encouragement to promoters of a coup d'état, and get on with the difficult and unpalatable task of working...
...etat, would certainly not mind seeing one. But the Administration apparently has changed its mind about the possible benefits of a coup, for reasons perhaps explained by Pundit Walter Lippmann: "A government of Vietnamese generals, installed by the U.S., would hardly be better or more popular than Diem, and might well be worse. And so, since we cannot reform the Diem government, since we cannot replace it, and since we cannot abandon it, we have to put up with it for the time being...
...only good thing that could be said about the Vietnamese crisis was that the Communist Viet Cong was itself so inept, and its Red Chinese backers were so tied down (see cover story) that they were as yet unable to take military advantage of the unseemly split between the Diem regime...