ABSTRACT
The new American President linked the growing Communist-led insurgency in Viet-Nam to this statement and concluded that 'wars of national liberation' were a new instrument of Soviet policy designed to upset the status quo and alter the global balance of power. A close examination of the historical record, based on material that has since become available, reveals that neither of the above views is entirely accurate and that the interplay of events was far more complex than portrayed. The Communist Party's rise to dominance was greatly facilitated by the events of World War II. French Indochina was in no position to resist the might of Japan, as France itself was under the heel of the Nazis. The return of the French to Viet-Nam and the start of the Resistance War postponed the resolution of the conflict among Vietnamese groups as to which form the modernisation of Vietnamese political institutions should take.
