NND Project Number: NND 63316. By: NWD Date: 2011
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Political decisions affecting military operations are reached in sessions of the high committee by representatives of the States, France, and the Commander in Chief. Essentially military problems are resolved in a permanent military committee in which the military chiefs of the Associated States together with the Commanding General of Headquarters, Joint and Ground Forces, Far East, participate.
Although a quadruplication of facilities exist in the form of several national general staffs and territorial organizations, actually a reasonably efficient channel of command is maintained by the French. Diplomatic liaison with the States counterpart organizations is exercised wherever coordination is required. This highly complex arrangement of joint and combined staffs and pooling of national forces may be likened to a miniature NATO at war, except that by necessity, the senior and more professionally qualified partner, France, exercises the dominant role. The governmental structure of each state is more or less oriented toward support of the war against Communism and the principal portion of each State's budget is devoted to defense expenditures. Viet Nam is the most vigorous state in this regard. Laos is cooperative to the French, but without sizeable resources of men or money. Cambodia views the entire struggle as secondary to what it considers more important, the determination of future relationships among the States themselves. In consideration of the fact that hostilities are more or less normal in the life of the Indochinese, the States may be considered as mobilize d for war, although with less dislocation to private enterprise and fewer restrictions and austerity measures than would be expected by Western nations in a counterpart situation
Both Laos and Cambodia are constitutional monarchies, while the Vietnamese respond with less solidarity to the government indirectly controlled by the Chief of State, Bao Dai, nominal descendant of the Emperors of Annam. He is potentially a capable leader but unfortunately out of favor with many extreme Nationalists and non-Communist dissidents.
The overall attitude of the population borders on indifference. The failure of friendly propaganda toward both development of a National attitude and the fostering of patriotism is an important deficiency. The uneducated native is inclined toward himself, his family and his tribe, or stock, in that order. The Japanese-inoculated spirity of Asia for the Asiatics has been adopted by Nationalistic leaders and the intelligentsia. The peasant, whose way of life has not been changed for centuries, is mostly apathetic.
The principal targets for Communism are among the educated classes, whose immediate resentment is the domination of the French through force of arms and political and economic controls . These people, when converted to Communism, muster more effective support from the peasantry and city workers than do the French and the educated Loyalists. Communist influence is strong and its organization very complete , particularly within the large cities. The contending leaders compete with each other for recruits -- the Communists holding forth idealistic rewards reinforced by threats, and the Loyalists stressing fear of the enemy as well as other inducements, some of which approach impressment.
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