Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

Ho Chi Minh would not have put it much differently. From the start, the veteran revolutionary had understood the importance of gaining foreign support for his cause; now, with the military situation developing into an uneasy stalemate and with the enemy still holding the advantage by many indices of power, he thought it more vital still. Thus far France had played her political hand better than his DRV, he knew—Paris had secured a hands-off policy from all the major powers and the tacit backing of some of them, while his government fought alone. This, he determined, had to change. Diplomacy, that is to say, was about to assume new importance, for both sides. It would do so, however, in the context of a deepening rift in the global arena between East and West, this new thing called the Cold War.