Thank you for this republished book which is remarkable because it recalled us the tragedy of the Indochinese peninsula, just after the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu. This time corresponded the cold war's epoch where the US didn't still get com letely out of the McCarthysm. Sure, France, as well as other european countries, needed the financial aids of its ally (through the Marshall plan) to rebuild its homeland heavily damaged by the Second World War! The US foreign policy was thus based on the strenthening of its presence everywhere freedom was threatened. Indochina, and particularly Vietnam, was one of the major concerns of this policy, known as the Domino theory, strongly defended by John Forster Dulles. If Vietnam fell, all the South East Asia fell with it. So, the US's goal was to contain the advance of Communism & prevent it to expand to the whole area, what will be demonstrated later when Communism took over Vietnam in 1975.