After the humiliation of World War II, the French military and political class took solace in their remaining colonies, which included Indochina, Algeria, Madagascar, Morocco, French Somaliland (Djibouti), and other territories in central and western Africa. Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier, for one, stated soon after World War II, “We will hold on everywhere, in Indochina as in Madagascar. Our empire will not be taken away from us, because we represent might and also right.” After a humiliating 1954 defeat at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina, though, it seemed that France’s days as an imperial power were greatly numbered. This new reality came as a shock to many in France who assumed that French grandeur would continue indefinitely.

Many in the French military responded to the loss of Indochina by concluding that it was a defeat at the hands of global communism, not grassroots nationalism. Disillusioned officers posited a connection between the communist forces they were fighting in the Indochina campaign and a vast subversive threat throughout the former European empires. As one French proponent concluded, “Western civilization now faces a life or death situation.” Even the imperturbable Charles de Gaulle commented, “Nationalism in Indochina is a means, the end is Soviet imperialism.” This perception was the basis for the counterinsurgency doctrine that emerged in France in the late 1950s – what became known as guerre révolutionnaire. In this view, the French military needed a new approach to prevent more losses to global communism.