Vietnam seen from the Pacific. Reflections on the origins of American intervention in Indochina since the end of the 19th century

The United States' interest in Indochina did not begin with the withdrawal of the French colonizer in 1954, or even with the Second World War. In this article, Canadian historian Christopher Goscha outlines the prominent place of Southeast Asia in U.S. geopolitics from the 19th century, when it was already an important focus of the "American lake" that the Pacific Ocean was supposed to become, until the final failure of the Vietnam War.