![]() ![]() France’s plans were foiled by a powerful Vietnamese anti-colonial movement that had been much fortified during the war, and was led by the well-educated and worldly Communist Ho Chi Minh. ![]() During the Second World War, the Japanese conquered Indochina, but in 1945, the French government immediately set out to reclaim its colonial possession. Not only did it produce rice, rubber, tea and coffee, coal and zinc, but the colony demonstrated France’s great power status. Indochina had been France’s Asian jewel since the 1880s. In Korea, in Taiwan, and in Southeast Asia, Americans perceived dangerous threats to the “free world.” And nowhere did the stakes seems higher than in Indochina. In the 1950s, American strategists viewed Asia as the most dangerous and unstable theater of conflict with the Communist bloc. Appendix C of this 1954 report suggests the US "re-examine our national security with respect to Indochina, taking advantage of any unifying forces existing in Southeast Asia as a whole in opposition to the spread of Communism, and treating Southeast Asia as a unit," adding later, "Any step to consider Indochina in the context of a regional association instead of as a country in insolation is a step in the right direction." ![]()
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