ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses primarily to the military aspects of the war in Indochina. However, in Vietminh theory—as in all Communist theory and practice—political and military aims are intertwined and inseparable, with the political objective taking precedence over the military at all times. In countries where the Communists have become the established power, their armies tend to follow own trend toward greater professionalization and specialization. The Communists might well speculate, therefore, that the United States would consider intervening only in the final, overt phase of a war, by which time the position of the defending side would be bad, perhaps even hopeless. The high degree of centralization, which has sometimes been criticized as a general Communist failing, was thus in fact dictated by the special circumstances of the Indochinese war. Intervention by the United Nations might be difficult to justify, since the Communists would take pains to stress the "internal" nature of the conflict.
