The challenge of understanding was exacerbated by the fact that, whereas the Philippines was the most Americanized country in Asia, with English as its lingua franca, Vietnam until that point had had little contact with Americans or their language and culture. Its chief foreign influences were China and France. While the Philippines had had decades of experience with democracy and a free press, freedom was an entirely new concept in Indochina. Yet counterinsurgency and state building—the exercises upon which Lansdale was to be engaged—are inherently context-specific: what works in one location
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