Spiritual Fraternities: The Transnational Networks of Ngô Đình Diệm’s Personalist Revolution and the Republic of Vietnam, 1955–1963

This article elucidates the role of personalism in Ngô Đình Diệm’s relations with his principal anticommunist allies in Asia by considering the First Republic’s involvement in the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League and Moral Re-Armament. These organizations provided crucial transnational platforms through which Ngô Đình Diệm secured support for his personalist vision. Shared beliefs about the spiritual and moral threat of communist materialism, and the spiritual revolution it demanded in response, undergirded Ngô Đình Diệm’s anticommunist alliances in Asia. The First Republic’s deep involvement in these regional organizations, which operated free from US influence, challenges prevailing conceptions of its engagement with Cold War Asia.