American involvement sparked protests 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 it also cultivated communist tendencies that provoked American intervention (Hunt 128). Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese leader, was above all a nationalist revolutionary who used communism to rally the people. Exploiting anti-Japanese sentiment and supported by the allies, he created the Indochinese Communist Party to drive out the Japanese and implement land reform in North Vietnam (Hunting 122). Ho Chi Minh used communist ideals to gain support from China and the USSR, but was primarily a nationalist domestically. This connection was key to the political tensions of the Cold War, as the United States became involved in Vietnam to prevent communism, mistaking it for nationalism. Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, reflected this confusion when he wrote: "We also totally underestimated the nationalist aspect of Ho Chi Minh's movement. We saw him first as a communist and 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 leaders and launch an anti-war youth movement in the 1960s that became a catalyst for youth movements in France, Mexico and Vietnam. Prague (Hunting 185). Through this succession from nationalism to communism and external intervention, Vietnamese nationalism modified global political realities during the Cold Period.