By early 1955, many American observers were concerned that the United States was on the way to losing the Cold War in Asia. Commentators pointed to the setback of the emergence of a Communist regime in North Vietnam as a result of the Geneva settlement in Indochina of 1954, and many worries were expressed over the apparent effectiveness of the efforts of the PRC to build new and better relationships with the newly independent states of Asia, and the vulnerability of many of those same states to domestic Communist subversion. Popular anxieties were focussed on the notion that the large and restless populations of the region were peculiarly susceptible to Communist entreaties, and that once these human resources were harnessed by a hostile ideology, there would be no place for Western influence. The image that was immediately invoked for many Americans by ‘Asia’, as Harold Isaacs highlighted at the time, was of ‘an undifferentiated crush of humanity’, ‘a dread blur of mystery and fearfulness, associated with vast numbers, with barbarism, and with disease’. What was also clear, moreover, was that Asia was restive and in ferment, consumed by the drive for self-determination and independence, with ‘dark peoples determined to assert themselves’. With the struggle against Communist China now fully engaged, adherents to an almost ‘apocalyptic’ perspective were making the free association: ‘Soviet imperialism plus Chinese imperialism, overwhelming combinations of Asian populations; Western civilization is outnumbered, white civilization is outnumbered, and could go under.’