It saw the independence movements of the new nations of Southeast Asia, representing, so it said, a quarter of the world’s inhabitants, as a “momentous factor in world stability”; it believed the best safeguard against this struggle’s succumbing to anti-Western tendencies and Communist influence was continued association with former colonial powers; it acknowledged on the one hand that the association “must be voluntary” and on the other hand that the war in Indochina could only destroy voluntary cooperation, and “irrevocably alienate Vietnamese”; it said that the United States wanted to be
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