Viet Nam
Dien Bien Phu and after: the U.S. inherits an intractable conflict
You thought the Vietnam war was lost by 1974? Turn your clocks back two decades Almost 70 years after the French defeat — and, all credit due, the Vietminh victory — at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam,1 lessons continue to be drawn from a military confrontation that saw the defeat of a well-equipped Western…