Small Wars Journal

"Unlike proponents of la guerre révolutionnaire, Bernard Fall integrated sustained scholarship of historical developments and dynamic cultural transformations occurring in Indochina prior to, and during its revolution which commenced in August 1945. For example, he recognized that the Viet-Minh, particularly in South Vietnam/Nam Ky after 1946, faced formidable opposition from Hoa Hao, and Binh Xuyen militias, but especially from the Cao Dai religious sect and significant numbers of non-communist nationalist factions as well. Fall’s encapsulated this analysis of South Vietnam’s diverse political-economy, and its religious diversity based on millennialism – in the case of the Hoa Hao for instance - in a 1955 Pacific Affairs article, “The Political-Religious Sects of Vietnam.” Fall concluded that Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of the Republic of Vietnam, faced formidable opposition should he fail to adopt a pluralistic administration that accounted for the non-communist, political diversity of South Vietnam. As the contentious politics of nation-building in South Vietnam revealed between 1954 and 1963, Diem’s and the United States’ failures metastasized into the Second Indochina War. "