ABSTRACT
A major complication in the problem the Americans had decided to face was the fact that not only were the North Vietnamese being armed by Moscow and Beijing, but they controlled a major and well-organized subversive force in South Vietnam. After the Geneva conference of 1954 the mam preoccupation of the United States was to protect South Vietnam from a probable North Vietnamese invasion. The Cold War was at its height, and Moscow's policy was to provide North Vietnam with advanced weaponry and support from its worldwide propaganda apparatus, but without involving the Soviet Union directly in a war to further Ho Chi Minh's ambitions. France, having conquered the three countries of Indochina as part of its eastward colonial expansionism, in competitive rivalry with the United Kingdom, had been ousted from them as a logical consequence of its early defeat by Nazi Germany during World War II.
