ABSTRACT
The National Security Council, meeting a month after the Geneva Conference, interpreted the accords as a major victory for the Communists, which gave them a salient for applying pressure to the nations of Southeast Asia. By 1957, the American experiment in nation-building in southern Vietnam appeared to be a stunning success. The Americans could hardly have chosen a less promising place than southern Vietnam to try their experiment in nation-building. Sixty percent of the Vietnamese population resided in northern Vietnam. The fatal flaw in the US strategy of nation-building lay in the Americans’ attempt to create a separate state and society in the southern half of a unitary nation. Only the caprice of the American electoral calendar saved President Eisenhower from having to confront the failure of the US nation-building experiment in southern Vietnam and the failure of the US effort to shore up anti-Communist forces in Laos as well.
