missionaries to Indochina. A small navy, created with the help of French seamen, provided Annam with the means of completing the conquest of Cochin China and the establishment of rule, for a brief period, over all of Vietnam. Sent to protect their nationals, the French Navy played crucial roles in the forcible breaching of the wall of isolation erected by the Vietnamese leaders to defend against expansionist foreign governments. Naval actions gained the acquiescence of China to the establishment of French control over what became known as Indochina. Finally, consolidation of French rule in Indochina flowed from a maritime strategy supported by a combat-ready naval force capable of conducting operations promptly, moving troops swiftly to trouble spots, controlling the sea lanes and trade routes adjacent to Indochina, and operating on inland waters. As long as this seapower remained strong in the Far East, French interests in Indochina flourished.

Impact Of The Shifting Balance Of Seapower, 1940-1945

Events over the first four and a half decades of the twentieth century, including two World Wars, would pave the way for the Vietnam conflict. The watershed that was the First World War added stimulus to colonial aspirations for independence and led to the establishment of an Indochinese Communist Party linked to an international movement. Between the wars, the shifting balance of seapower in the Far East would be exploited by Japan to project power by sea onto the continent of Asia and into Southeast Asia. As in earlier history, Vietnam's strategic importance would again be revealed. This time it would be used as a stepping stone in the Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia and play a key role in the events leading to the Pearl Harbor attack. American and Allied victory in the basically maritime war in the Pacific Ocean and in particular in the South China Sea would lead to the elimination of the remnants of French control in Vietnam and then the Japanese surrender, thus providing revolutionary forces with a favorable opportunity to seize power at the end of World War II.

The turn of the century had witnessed the growth of a modern Japanese Navy. By soundly defeating the Chinese Navy in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, Japan cleared the way for the acquisition of Korea, Formosa, and the Pescadore Islands. Ten years later, the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 dramatically demonstrated that Japan was now a first-rate naval power.

As a result of the extraordinary difficulties encountered in the deployment of Vice Admiral Zinovi P. Rozhdestvenski's squadron from the Baltic to the Far East, future Soviet leaders learned the importance of strategically located bases.' The last stop of the squadron was made, quite logically, on

1

Sergei G. Gorshkov, Red Star Rising at Sea (Annapolis, Md.: United States Naval Institute, 1974), pp. 33-37.

the coast of Vietnam. Rozhdestvenski anchored on 14 April 1905 in Cam Ranh Bay, an extraordinarily fine, large harbor. After the ships had spent a week there, Japan's diplomatic protests led France to send a cruiser from Saigon to request the departure of the Russians, who shifted their anchorage

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.

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. 3 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

5 "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.