In 1954, the French suffered a catastrophic defeat at the hands of the Việt Minh. Under a multinational cease-fire hammered out in Geneva, Vietnam was to be partitioned temporarily, then reunited following elections to be held two years later. The north went to the Việt Minh and the south became the State (later Republic) of Vietnam, nominally headed by Bảo Đại, who was now the ex-emperor. Diệm’s American connections helped him get appointed premier; his government and the United States refused to sign the Geneva Accords and blocked the planned elections, which the Việt Minh were widely expected to win.
Diệm promptly requested aid from his key backers, the U.S. government and Michigan State University, and asked his old friend Wes Fishel to come aboard as an adviser. Fishel did, officially serving as liaison to Diệm on the staff President Dwight Eisenhower’s special emissary in Vietnam.
Their political partnership suited the times. America’s cold warriors were scrambling to turn fragile postcolonial states into bulwarks against Marxist ideology and Soviet influence. Many universities enlisted in this effort, eager to turn theory into practice, take their missions to a global level, and rake in federal dollars. By the mid-1950s, the U.S. government was sponsoring 42 university aid missions around the world.
None enlisted more eagerly than Michigan State, whose Vietnam group became the largest of those missions. The school’s longtime president, John Hannah, was an idealist, an empire-builder and former assistant secretary of defense with deep ties in Washington, D.C. Over the 28 years he led the school, Hannah transformed the backwater Michigan State College into one of the nation’s largest universities and an important research institution, growing its enrollment more than sixfold. As MSU historian John Ernst shows in Forging a Fateful Alliance, a deeply researched history of the university’s Vietnam venture, Hannah saw nation-building as a natural extension of the school’s service mission as a pioneering land-grant college. “The world is our campus,” he proclaimed.
Above and beyond the Fishel–Diệm connection, Michigan State had exceptional resources in two fields that the U.S. agencies in Vietnam lacked: law enforcement and public administration.
To fund his lavish lifestyle in France, Bảo Đại had franchised Saigon’s police operations to the Binh Xuyên, a protection racket and private army with roots in river piracy and sidelines in prostitution, gambling and opium. Vietnam’s police services desperately needed reorganization, training and equipment; Michigan State, home to one of the largest criminal justice schools in America, could provide them. Still, U.S. officials resisted entrusting the job to MSU: Fishel was too independent, too close to Diệm, too quick to flaunt his inside connections and knowledge. But Diệm trusted Fishel and insisted he stay.
