American involvement sparked protest in the United States, catalyzing a global youth movement. Nationalism in Vietnam not only united the people to fight the Japanese, French, and Americans, but also cultivated communist tendencies that caused the United States to intervene (Hunt 128). Ho Chi Minh, the leader of Vietnam, was first and foremost a nationalist revolutionary who used communism to unite the people. Capitalizing on anti-Japanese sentiment and supported by allies, he formed the Indochinese Communist Party to oust the Japanese and implement land reform in North Vietnam (Hunt 122). Ho Chi Minh used communist ideals to gain support from China and the USSR, but he was primarily a nationalist on a domestic level. This connection was central to the political tensions of the Cold War because the United States became involved in Vietnam to prevent communism, mistaking it for nationalism. Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, reflects on this confusion by writing: “We also totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh's movement. We saw him first as a communist and only then as a Vietnamese nationalist” (McNamara). Due to the confusion between nationalism and communism in Vietnam, the United States became involved in a vast conflict that would turn the country against its leadership and start an anti-war youth movement in the 1960s that became a catalyst for youth movements in France, Mexico and Prague (Hunting 185). Through this succession from nationalism to communism and external intervention, Vietnamese nationalism changed global political realities during the Cold Period