Goldberg's UN peace terms, retold for Vietnamese readers on a 1966 JUSPAO sheet

Sheet SP-1478, printed in 1966 by the JUSPAO printing section of the U.S. Information Agency, tells Vietnamese readers what Ambassador Arthur Goldberg offered Hanoi at the United Nations, lists two terms, and reports that Hanoi called the offer a trick.

The sheet

A photograph of the United Nations General Assembly hall sits beside a block of Vietnamese text. Two bulleted terms are set apart in the middle. The code SP-1478 is printed at the foot. These are the lines that carry the argument:

MỘT ĐỀ NGHỊ HOÀ BÌNH

[...]

Mặc dầu Hoa-Kỳ đã đưa ra một đề nghị hoà bình rõ rệt, Hà-Nội đã bác bỏ cho đó là " một đề nghị lừa bịp ".

ĐÂY LÀ NHỮNG KHOẢN HOA-KỲ ĐÃ ĐỀ NGHỊ :

In FRAME's rendering, the two terms are these. First, the United States would stop bombing military targets in the North, and the North would then reduce or end its military action against the South. Second, every foreign force would leave the South in stages, American, allied, and North Vietnamese alike, with the United Nations and other powers checking that each side kept its word. The text closes by saying that on 4 October a senior State Department official declared that Washington was still looking for any sign that "those who are disturbing the peace of Asia" were ready to negotiate.

Who printed it

The catalog credits the U.S. Information Agency and the printing section of the Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office. The National Archives holds the sheet in the series Psychological Warfare Posters, Vietnam War, Record Group 306 (series NAID 561393, item 306-VP-01-1478). The sheet names the United States as the actor throughout, and FRAME files its source as openly identified.

Reading it

This is a government reporting its own diplomacy to a foreign public. The sheet says the offer was made in a speech at the UN; the archive holds the sheet, not the speech, so this page gives the terms only as the sheet states them. FRAME tags it card stacking and transfer. The transfer is the General Assembly photograph: the hall lends the American offer the standing of the world body. The stacking is in the quoting. The American side gets several paragraphs and two bulleted terms; Hanoi gets three words, "a deceitful proposal," and a summary of its position written by the other side.

A reader in Saigon was given no way to weigh Hanoi's reasons, only its refusal. That is ordinary for wartime messaging and it would be ordinary in the other direction too. The useful habit for a citizen of the country that printed it is the same one this site applies to the Why Viet Nam pamphlet: when a government tells you what its opponent said, find the opponent's own words before you decide who blocked the peace.

The Americans who argued about the same war at home did so in their own names. Compare the New Mobilization poster and "Tell it to Hanoi", which reached opposite answers to the question this sheet raises. See US Vietnam War messaging, 1954–1975 for the rest of the period.