In contrast to its intervention in the Dutch–Indonesian conflict, the United Nations never seriously took up the question of the Indochina War between 1945 and 1954. There are several reasons for this. For one, the French held a permanent seat with veto rights on the Security Council and could thus effectively thwart any attempt to bring up the decolonization of Indochina in that body. Second, neither the Americans nor the Soviets, both permanent members, wanted to trouble the French over Vietnam in the wake of World War II. What counted most was France’s position in Europe. When the United States received a request from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) at the outset of the Indochina conflict to bring the Franco-Vietnamese conflict before the UN, the Americans reached an understanding with the UN’s secretariat (“Trygve Lie’s people”) preventing the circulation of the appeal to members of the Security Council. During the first half of the Indochina War, the Soviet Union refused to act on DRV pleas to bring the Vietnamese cause before the UN. Third, during the second half of the Indochina conflict, the globalization of the Cold War rivalry between the Soviets and the Americans ensured that any attempt to support the cause of the communist-led DRV would meet with a veto from the Americans as well as the British, French, and most probably the Republic of China. The Soviet Union’s veto torpedoed the Associated State of Vietnam’s attempt to join the UN in 1952 (as was the DRV’s application rejected by the American-led bloc). Fourth, given that the historical phenomenon of decolonization was only just getting underway in the “South” in 1945, the number of sovereign “Southern” nation-states present in the General Assembly of the UN and in favor of the DRV’s nationalist cause remained small during the period of the Indochina War.
However, some in French ruling circles understood that things were changing. French President Vincent Auriol warned one of his generals in 1949 that the days were numbered in the UN for hardline defenders of the colonial order. Decolonization was on the move in Asia, he pointed out: “And then there’s the United Nations, do you see what’s happening in Indonesia”. However, it was only truly during the Algerian War that the increasing number of Southern states in the General Assembly allowed for a discussion of Algeria in the General Assembly in spite of French opposition. Nor did the Americans come under the same type of non-Western pressure on Indochina as they would during Algerian conflict in the UN.
Nonetheless, unlike the FLN in Algeria or the Indonesian Republicans fighting the Dutch, the communist core of the DRV also posed problems for non-communist Southern states. Despite direct requests from the DRV, especially from Pham Ngoc Thach in 1948, the Indian government led by Jawaharlal Nehru refused to bring up the Vietnamese issue in the General Assembly, in striking contrast to Nehru’s support of Indonesian Republicans at the UN at the same time. Indian, Burmese, and Indonesian leaders were also distrustful of Vietnamese communist designs on Laos and Cambodia. See also BURMA; INDONESIA; NEUTRALIZATION OF INDOCHINA.