Cambodia as ‘a little Oriental Switzerland’. Ping Sây’s twin ambitions, as a trainee engineer, were to see independence and to build a bridge across the Tonle Sap. Sâr remembered simply being ‘
patriotic and against
French colonialism’. None of them regarded the war in Vietnam as anything other than a colonial struggle. Communism scarcely figured on their horizon. Even Keng Vannsak, more attuned to political realities than most, had unwittingly offended an upper-class French girl a year earlier by suggesting that they spend an afternoon at the ‘Fête de
l’Humanité’,
the annual festival organised by the French
Communist Party. ‘I had no idea it was communist,’ he protested. ‘I thought it was just a festival of humanity. She was outraged.’
After the Chinese victory, this age of innocence was left behind. Mao’s triumph brought to what had been essentially a little, local conflict, the logic of the Cold War, transforming Indochina from a colonial backwater into a theatre for the Great Powers, whose rivalry would plague the region for the next half-century. The global political shift which had begun three years before, with Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, had finally reached Asia. In a world divided into two rival camps, Stalin’s spokesman, Andrei Zhdanov, proclaimed, Hanoi was associated with ‘the camp . . . based on the USSR and the new democracies . . . [It] is backed by the labor and democratic movement and by the fraternal Communist parties in all countries, by the fighters for national liberation in the colonies and dependencies, by all progressive and democratic forces.’
On January 18 1950, China became the first foreign power to recognise Ho Chi Minh’s regime in North Vietnam. Moscow and its allies quickly followed suit. Soon afterwards, the US and Britain responded by recognising Cambodia and the other two ‘Associated States’ of the newly established French Union, Laos and what would become known as South Vietnam. Thailand, put on notice by America to choose between anti-communism and anti-colonialism, did the same, reaping US military aid as its reward. By June, when the Korean War broke out, the logic of containment, with its domino theories and defensive blocs, had become the foundation of American policy.
Vietnamese policy underwent a sea change too.
Communist Chinese occupation of the border areas gave Ho’s regime, in the words of the ICP Secretary-General, Truong Chinh, a ‘vast and powerful friendly country’ as a reliable rear area. The scale of the fighting increased dramatically. Over the following two years, the Chinese formed, equipped and trained six North Vietnamese divisions, capable of waging large-scale mobile warfare, where previously most engagements had been at battalion level or below. The pretence that the Viet Minh was a purely nationalist force was dropped, and the links between the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary movements were strongly underlined. General Giap, who in March 1950 was appointed head of an ICP CC Special Committee overseeing Laotian and Cambodian affairs, declared that Indochina was ‘a strategic unity’. Truong Chinh insisted that ‘the independence of Vietnam will not be assured as long as Cambodia and Laos are not liberated’, a statement subsequently repeated
ad nauseam
by every Vietnamese leader from Ho Chi Minh down. The final goal was a ‘Democratic Republic of Indochina’, incorporating all three countries,
to serve as the vanguard of the communist revolution throughout South-East Asia.
In this new geo-political context, the Vietnamese leaders, responding to the French creation of the ‘Associated States’, decided to establish ‘revolutionary counter-states’, the Pathet Lao (or Lao Country) and Nokor Khmer (Khmerland), and to endow them with full-fledged political parties which would lay the groundwork for socialist systems modelled on that of North
patriotic and against
French colonialism’. None of them regarded the war in Vietnam as anything other than a colonial struggle. Communism scarcely figured on their horizon. Even Keng Vannsak, more attuned to political realities than most, had unwittingly offended an upper-class French girl a year earlier by suggesting that they spend an afternoon at the ‘Fête de
l’Humanité’,
the annual festival organised by the French
Communist Party. ‘I had no idea it was communist,’ he protested. ‘I thought it was just a festival of humanity. She was outraged.’
After the Chinese victory, this age of innocence was left behind. Mao’s triumph brought to what had been essentially a little, local conflict, the logic of the Cold War, transforming Indochina from a colonial backwater into a theatre for the Great Powers, whose rivalry would plague the region for the next half-century. The global political shift which had begun three years before, with Winston Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Fulton, Missouri, had finally reached Asia. In a world divided into two rival camps, Stalin’s spokesman, Andrei Zhdanov, proclaimed, Hanoi was associated with ‘the camp . . . based on the USSR and the new democracies . . . [It] is backed by the labor and democratic movement and by the fraternal Communist parties in all countries, by the fighters for national liberation in the colonies and dependencies, by all progressive and democratic forces.’
On January 18 1950, China became the first foreign power to recognise Ho Chi Minh’s regime in North Vietnam. Moscow and its allies quickly followed suit. Soon afterwards, the US and Britain responded by recognising Cambodia and the other two ‘Associated States’ of the newly established French Union, Laos and what would become known as South Vietnam. Thailand, put on notice by America to choose between anti-communism and anti-colonialism, did the same, reaping US military aid as its reward. By June, when the Korean War broke out, the logic of containment, with its domino theories and defensive blocs, had become the foundation of American policy.
Vietnamese policy underwent a sea change too.
Communist Chinese occupation of the border areas gave Ho’s regime, in the words of the ICP Secretary-General, Truong Chinh, a ‘vast and powerful friendly country’ as a reliable rear area. The scale of the fighting increased dramatically. Over the following two years, the Chinese formed, equipped and trained six North Vietnamese divisions, capable of waging large-scale mobile warfare, where previously most engagements had been at battalion level or below. The pretence that the Viet Minh was a purely nationalist force was dropped, and the links between the Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian revolutionary movements were strongly underlined. General Giap, who in March 1950 was appointed head of an ICP CC Special Committee overseeing Laotian and Cambodian affairs, declared that Indochina was ‘a strategic unity’. Truong Chinh insisted that ‘the independence of Vietnam will not be assured as long as Cambodia and Laos are not liberated’, a statement subsequently repeated
ad nauseam
by every Vietnamese leader from Ho Chi Minh down. The final goal was a ‘Democratic Republic of Indochina’, incorporating all three countries,
to serve as the vanguard of the communist revolution throughout South-East Asia.
In this new geo-political context, the Vietnamese leaders, responding to the French creation of the ‘Associated States’, decided to establish ‘revolutionary counter-states’, the Pathet Lao (or Lao Country) and Nokor Khmer (Khmerland), and to endow them with full-fledged political parties which would lay the groundwork for socialist systems modelled on that of North
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