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Indo-china: A Military-Political Appreciation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Edward L. Katzenbach Jr
Edward L. Katzenbach Jr
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

The war in Indo-China, sinister, bloody, and seemingly endless, presents as curious a farrago of paradoxes and incongruities as any in recent military history. For one thing, its character has changed from a colonial to a civil war. It has changed from a war fought for the restitution of French sovereignty by a professional, traditionally colonial army to a war in which the same army is still fighting, but now side by side with native troops for the avowed purpose of securing the former colony's independence against the threat of Communist imperialism. Thus, in a sense, it has also become an international war, with Indo-China one of the areas ignited by the friction between the free and the Communist worlds. Indeed, it may be argued that the French forces in Indo-China are fighting the flank action of another and greater conflict, the main line of resistance of which lies somewhere between the 38th Parallel and the Yalu River in Korea.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , January 1952 , pp. 186 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1952

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References

1 “Background to Chinese Intervention in Korea,” Times Weekly Edition (London), August 15, 1951.

2 “The Communist Threat to Southeast Asia,” Doc., Ambassade de France, Service de Presse et d'Information, April 1950.

3 Raphael-Leygues, J., “L'Union française au petit bonheur ou la stratégie française depuis cinq ans,” Revue politique et parlementaire, 52e Année, No. 602 (November 1950), 242–51.Google Scholar See also Ed. Frédéric-Dupont, Deputé de Paris, “Faut-il rester en Indochine?”, ibid., No. 595 (February 1950), 113–19.

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6 Quoted in Payne, Robert, Red Storm over Asia, New York, 1951, p. 250.Google Scholar

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8 ibid.

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13 ibid., and ff.

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17 New York Times, January 3, 1951.

18 ibid., November 10, 1949.

19 Le Monde, June 25–26, 1950.

20 See Soustelle, Jacques, “Indo-China and Korea: One Front,” Foreign Affairs, XXIX, No. 1 (October 1950), 56–66;CrossRefGoogle Scholar “Indo-China: A Key to the Far East,” Supplement to L'Economie, No. 294 (March 29, 1950); and Indo-China (A French Point of View), Paris, Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1950.

21 Doc. No. 44, Ambassade de France, Service de Presse et d'Information, May 29, 1951.

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27 Quoted in Milton Sacks, “The Strategy of Communism in Southeast Asia,” Pacific Affairs, XXIII, No. 3 (September 1950), 232–33.Google Scholar

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29 New York Times, October 2, 1951.

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33 Doc. No. 52, Ambassade de France, Service de Presse et d'Information, July 19, 1951.

34 Doc. No. 29, ibid., September 5, 1951.

35 New York Times, October 2, 1951.

36 ibid., January 13, 1951.

37 Times Weekly Edition (London), August 8, 1951.

38 ibid., August 22, 29, 1951.