It all combined to limit Washington’s leverage over France, and it frustrated the secretary. On May 1, President Truman formally approved an aid program of $23.3 million for the Indochinese states. He did so on Acheson’s recommendation, yet the secretary was frustrated, telling associates that the French seemed “paralyzed, in a state of moving neither forward nor backward.” The only thing to do was to press on, in the hope that Carpentier and his Expeditionary Corps could turn things around and bring Ho Chi Minh to his knees.
