If the United States moved in to rescue the French, Ike stated, “we would in the eyes of many Asiatic peoples merely replace French colonialism with American colonialism.” Furthermore unilateral American intervention “would mean a general war with China and perhaps with the USSR.” The only way to sustain America’s moral position in the world was through collective action in the name of freedom. To intervene alone in Indochina “amounted to an attempt to police the entire world.”
