HOW A REFUSAL TO MEET UNLEASHED THE VIETNAM WAR
The young cook Nguyen Sinh Cung feels confident as he makes his way to the Versailles Peace Conference in June 1919. The Vietnamese nationalist has borrowed a suit of clothes in hopes of being admitted to see the most powerful man in the world— U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Nguyen’s goal: to liberate his country from the influence of French colonialism. He wants to submit a petition to Wilson calling for an independent, democratic Vietnam. Many of the world’s oppressed nationalities see Wilson as a beacon of hope— in a recent speech he has attributed the outbreak of the First World War to a disregard for the rights of small nations and peoples. But the meeting never happens—wilson refuses to see Nguyen. With a sense of disappointment, the 29-year-old turns to a different ideology, one that is spreading across Russia: Soviet Communism. He even arranges a meeting with Stalin, who— unlike Wilson— agrees to receive him. Nguyen returns to Vietnam after the Japanese invasion of Indochina in 1941 and adopts the name Ho Chi Minh, which means “he who enlightens.” He successfully resists the Japanese and, after the end of World War II, French colonial rule. When the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is proclaimed in 1945, Ho Chi Minh becomes its president. Independence is a difficult path, however, with Vietnam caught in a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In all, active U.S. involvement in the war lasted 20 years and had cost more than 58,000 American lives by the time the war concluded in 1975. But the story had begun in 1919, with a meeting that never happened.