For another, France’s war was also America’s war—Washington footed much of the bill, supplied most of the weaponry, and pressed Paris leaders to hang tough when their will faltered. Well before the climax at Dien Bien Phu, Viet Minh leaders considered the United States, not France, their principal foe. Furthermore, what Dulles and other U.S. officials for a long time didn’t fathom, and then refused to acknowledge after they did, was that colonialism is often in the eyes of the beholder:
