The forces with enough internal discipline and external ruthlessness to overcome rivals and impose dieir own vision as the national one were best placed to inherit the revolutions. The military and the communists were not always the two toughest competitors on the ground, but the Cold War made it difficult for other players with more comprehensive or pluralist visions to survive. In this context what seems surprising is how long it took the communists (in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia) or the military to achieve that dominance. Democracy endured for a decade not just because it was the global gold stand¬ard, but because the intense pluralities in each country could not be contained in any other ring.