information:highlighting
Indochina

Post-war doctrine, as in Indochina, took a more drastic view of " Guerre Révolutionnaire ", which presented an ideological and global war with a commitment to total war. Countermeasures, in principle, needed to be both political and military: "No measure was too drastic to meet the new threat of revolution". French forces taking control from the Japanese did not seem to negotiate seriously with nationalist elements in what was to become Vietnam, which reaped the consequences of overconfidence at Điện Biên Phủ.

It occurred to various commanders that soldiers who were trained to operate as guerrillas would have a strong sense of how to fight guerrillas. Before the partition of French Indochina, French Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (GCMA), led by Roger Trinquier, took on this role, drawing on French experience with the Jedburgh teams. GCMA, operating in Tonkin and Laos under French intelligence, was complemented by Commandos Nord Viêt-Nam in the North. In those missions, the SOF teams lived and fought with the locals. One Laotian, who became an officer, was Vang Pao, who was to become a general in Hmong and Laotian operations in Southeast Asia while the US forces increased their role.