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fifty miles northward to Van Fong Bay before continuing the cruise. At dawn on 27 May 1905, while passing through the Strait of Tsushima, the Russians met Admiral Heihachiro Togo's fleet in an engagement which ended in disaster for Czarist Russia and a glorious victory for Japan. Later, in the Vietnam War, Cam Ranh Bay would be the site of a vast American logistic complex and the headquarters of the United States Navy's Coastal Surveillance Force.2

A further indication that the balance of power in the Far East was shifting was provided by the Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed in 1902, modified in 1905, and renewed in 1911. Since Britain considered its security needs in European waters to be paramount, and the alliance treaty contained assurances that British interests in Asia would be protected, Great Britain withdrew major portions of its fleet from the Far East in the first decade of the twentieth century. The net effect of the alliance and the transfer of British ships was to allow a freer hand for Japan-to whom Britain tacitly relinquished, for a time at least, naval superiority in the Orient.3

The outbreak of World War I further eroded Western naval power in the Pacific. Beset with heavy demands for men and ships in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic, the French government recalled all but 2,000 of its troops and a small naval contingent from Indochina.* At the same time, the reduction of German forces in the Far East provided tempting opportunities to Japan, which had entered World War I in accordance with the provisions of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Losing no time, Japanese task forces captured the German-held Marshall, Caroline, and Mariana island groups in the fall of 1914. Then, a Japanese squadron appeared off Tsingtao, China, and seized the German enclaves on the Shantung Peninsula.

3

The Vietnamese Revolutionary Movement

Of the many direct and indirect results of World War I, two in particular

*Edwin B. Hooper, Mobility, Support, Endurance: A Story of Naval Operational Logistics in the Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (Washington: Naval History Division, GPO, 1972), pp. 157-59. William R. Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897-1909 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1958), pp. 142–43, 183–84; William R. Braisted, The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1909–1922 (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1971), pp. 14–15; Arthur J. Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880-1905 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), pp. 450–53.

Jan Romein, The Asian Century: A History of Modern Nationalism in Asia (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1962), p. 137.

would influence the chain of events leading to the post-World War II Vietnam conflict and America's involvement. The first was the stimulus to nationalist aspirations within colonies of the European powers. The second was the transformation of a revolutionary Marxist movement into a pragmatic Communist Party, in control of Russia and in a position of leadership over the international Communist movement.

When he asked Congress for a declaration of war in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson reiterated the views of many of his predecessors by associating American national policy with the self-determination of nationalities. According to Wilson, the United States was entering the war:

for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, [and] for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.5

Even if such idealistic goals were not entirely attainable in the world at that time, they endowed the President's decision with a higher purpose, provided inspirational motivation to the American people, and encouraged the support of others. Aside from the utility of the statement, in connection with World War I, it gave expression to a periodic theme of United States policy since the era of the American Revolution.

After the signing of the armistice in 1918, American representatives at the Paris Peace Conference espoused the cause of self-determination for peoples ruled by others. One effect was further encouragement of nationalist movements. Pursuance of similar objectives at the end of World War II would be one of the determinants of United States policy with regard to European colonies. Efforts to accelerate decolonization would have a significant influence on the course of events in the early phases of the Vietnam conflict.

Following the collapse of the Czarist government and the subsequent Bolshevist takeover from the provisional Kerensky government, the Leninist group had gained control of a country of vast natural resources and a large population. In addition to providing a successful example for Marxist revolutionists elsewhere, the Soviet Union became a base for the support

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"For Declaration of War Against Germany," in Ray S. Baker and William E. Dodd, eds., War and Peace: Presidential Messages, Addresses, and Public Papers (1917-1924) of The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson (New York: Harper and Brothers Publishers, 1927), Vol. I, p. 16.

and guidance of their activities. Fully as important, with regard to the long-range effects on the world, were the methods devised by Lenin for exercising political control and the application of power. Lenin's concepts of organization, his use of the Communist Party as a disciplined body for exerting authority, his combination of force with other means of influence to gain his ends, and his utilization of Marxist rhetoric to unify the movement were embraced by Communists in other lands. With the overthrow of capitalism an avowed goal, and expansion of Russian influence abroad a less visible but also important objective, the Communist Party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics spearheaded an offensive which, at varying levels of intensity and with diverse means, exploited turmoil in many places. Subsequent American decisions with regard to military assistance and more active involvement in the Vietnam conflict would hinge on judgements as to the relationships of the Vietnamese revolutionaries to the Sovietled movement.

Founded in July 1919, the Third Communist International (Comintern) provided a mechanism for organizing Communist revolutions abroad. One inviting target was the colonial establishment of "capitalist" nations. In announcing the Comintern's objectives, Lenin criticized socialist groups in capitalist nations which "fail to wage a revolutionary struggle within 'their own' colonies for the overthrow of 'their own' bourgeoisie, which do not systematically assist the revolutionary work which has already commenced everywhere in the colonies, which do not send arms and literature to the revolutionary parties in the colonies...

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The story of the Communist movement in Indochina is closely intertwined with the life of Ho Chi Minh, who for so many years was to lead the Communist Party in Vietnam. A member of an educated family, Ho was born in 1890 and named Nguyen Sinh Cung. Years later the young man assumed the alias Nguyen Ai Quoc ("Nguyen the Patriot"). While in France during the early 1920s he took the name Nguyen O Phap ("Nguyen Who Hates the French") before finally assuming the name Ho Chi Minh ("He Who Aspires to Enlightenment")."

"Quoted in Vladimir I. Lenin, Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1943), Vol. X, p. 46.

'David G. Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism: 1885-1925 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1971), p. 253; Ho Chi Minh, On Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920-66, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1967), pp. viii-x. At least twenty aliases used by Ho have been identified; see King C. Chen, Vietnam and China, 1938–1954 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 37–38.

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Ho grew up in Nghe An Province just north of the 17th parallel. His father was a teacher and civil servant who at one time served as an official in the Ministry of Rites. Ho's mother died when he was ten years old. As a youth Ho attended the Lycée at Hue where he pursued a program of French studies. In the late nineteenth century his great uncle, a nationalist, had been captured by French troops.

Ho was forced to leave school after his father was removed from his government position by the French. Shortly thereafter, Ho signed on board a French merchant ship as a messboy, serving in that capacity for two years. When World War I broke out he was living in London working at menial jobs. Here he made contact with Fabian socialist groups, closely observed the Irish uprising, and mingled with members of the Chinese Overseas Workers' Association. In 1917 Ho moved to Paris where he met intellectuals, trade unionists, and pacifists. Soon afterward, he began writing articles for Le Populaire, La Révolution Proletarienne, and L'Humanité on the subject of independence for Vietnam. Ho made his presence in Paris known as World War I drew to a close. In early 1919, Nguyen Ai Quoc, as he then was known, appeared as a spokesman for Vietnamese nationalism at Versailles where, as one of many undistinguished representatives of smaller nations, he hovered on the fringes of the peace conference. His attempts to present a memorandum to the major powers, requesting basic liberties for Vietnamese, proved unsuccessful.

After the signing of the Versailles Treaty, Ho served as one of the representatives at the Eighteenth Congress of the French Socialist Party, which approved the resolution to found the French Communist Party and affiliate it with the Third International. The French Communist Party later arranged to send him as a delegate to Moscow where he was trained in revolutionary methods at the "University of the Toilers of the East." In December 1924, Ho (alias Ly Thuy) arrived in Canton, China, where he served both as an interpreter for Soviet advisors to the Kuomintang, the nationalist political party of China, and as the leader of a small group of expatriate Vietnamese Communists.9

Probably Ho's most notable early work was accomplished when, as a member of the Comintern's committee on colonies, he helped to establish the League of East Asian Oppressed Peoples. By 1925 Ho and his followers,

"Jean Lacouture, Ho Chi Minh: A Political Biography (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 17-18; Fall, Two Viet-Nams, p. 87; Marr, Vietnamese Anticolonialism, pp. 253–56. Fall, Two Viet-Nams, pp. 88–93; Chen, Vietnam and China, pp. 14–23.

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