On 7 May 1954, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat and a Viet Minh victory.
In terms of dialogue about communism and about nationalism, the outcome was a doozy. It was also something more.
In the words of a US soldier who would serve in Vietnam, the battle became a shorthand symbol “for the defeat of the West by the East”.
It was, of course, the second symbol. Japan’s defeat of Russia a half century before had been seen in a similar light.
For China, later the victim of Japanese aggression, Sun Yat-sen said:
We regarded that Russian defeat by Japan as the defeat of the West by the East. We regarded the Japanese victory as our own victory.
For India, Nehru would say:
Japan’s victory lessened the feeling of inferiority from which most of us suffered. A great European power had been defeated, thus Asia could still defeat Europe as it had done in the past.
The last clause of that statement, made by one of the 20th century’s leading statesman, is a profound recognition that history goes a lot further than two hundred years of western hegemony.