If the decolonization of Indochina was bound to occur, the process could have played out in a variety of ways, as the experience of European colonies in other parts of South and Southeast Asia shows.13 Moreover, difficult though it may be to remember now, in the early going the odds were against the Viet Minh. They were weak and vulnerable in military and diplomatic terms, a reality not lost on Ho Chi Minh, a political pragmatist who labored diligently and in vain both to head off war with France and to get official American backing for his cause.
