So. Vietnam.
While looking up articles to support this post I came across this one, which nicely sums up three of the views I knew of (the Vietnam War was a crime, the Vietnam War was justified and we were betrayed on the homefront, and that the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake brought about by U.S. leaders who exaggerated the influence of communism and underestimated the power of nationalism)...and added a fourth I hadn't heard of before. This article makes it clear why I support the third view. As for the new fourth one, I'm not sure I buy it. Sure, after the fact it seems to make sense of what was going on. For the thought processes at the time, though, it doesn't touch on a key argument used to support our involvement in Vietnam.
Namely domino theory. The belief that if one nation fell to communists, all the neighboring nations would also fall. The Wikipedia article linked above gives the evidence both in favor and against this theory. Unsurprisingly, I'm most persuaded by the fact that Thailand, Indonesia, and other large Southeast Asian countries didn't fall after the 1975 end of the Vietnam War. My opinion was probably also shaped by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which really made the communist threat seem overblown.
With regards to nationalism, it definitely seemed more important than communism in shaping Vietnamese resistance. Ho Chi Minh's biography again sums up what I learned in college, particularly this bit:
He [Ho Chi Minh] joined a group of Vietnamese nationalists in Paris whose leaders were Phan Chu Trinh and Phan Văn Trường. They had been publishing newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence...Following World War I, the group petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, they expected U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to help remove the French colonial rule from Vietnam and ensure the formation of a new, nationalist government.
Our feared enemy cited our own Declaration of Independence and the Wilsonian ideals of self-determination...and became further radicalized when we failed to live up to those ideals.
You could almost say we lost our power and influence because we gave up on an idealistic foreign policy. Almost. I'm too much of a classic realist to go that far. (I really liked Hans Morgenthau's work, though I think I was a classic realist before I read Politics Among Nations).
One more thing. No institution is monolithic. Building up the communist opposition meant acting as though China and the Soviet Union were a single communist entity. That's part of the genius behind Nixon's visit to China. I am not entirely sure it was wise in the long run given current events, but I do think it's a better strategy than letting your imagination create a threat that isn't quite as perfect as we built it up to be.
I suppose it's a bit like diamonds - they all have fractures, though some have less than others. An expert may figure out where to tap the diamond to fracture it entirely...
While looking up articles to support this post I came across this one, which nicely sums up three of the views I knew of (the Vietnam War was a crime, the Vietnam War was justified and we were betrayed on the homefront, and that the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake brought about by U.S. leaders who exaggerated the influence of communism and underestimated the power of nationalism)...and added a fourth I hadn't heard of before. This article makes it clear why I support the third view. As for the new fourth one, I'm not sure I buy it. Sure, after the fact it seems to make sense of what was going on. For the thought processes at the time, though, it doesn't touch on a key argument used to support our involvement in Vietnam.
Namely domino theory. The belief that if one nation fell to communists, all the neighboring nations would also fall. The Wikipedia article linked above gives the evidence both in favor and against this theory. Unsurprisingly, I'm most persuaded by the fact that Thailand, Indonesia, and other large Southeast Asian countries didn't fall after the 1975 end of the Vietnam War. My opinion was probably also shaped by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which really made the communist threat seem overblown.
With regards to nationalism, it definitely seemed more important than communism in shaping Vietnamese resistance. Ho Chi Minh's biography again sums up what I learned in college, particularly this bit:
He [Ho Chi Minh] joined a group of Vietnamese nationalists in Paris whose leaders were Phan Chu Trinh and Phan Văn Trường. They had been publishing newspaper articles advocating for Vietnamese independence...Following World War I, the group petitioned for recognition of the civil rights of the Vietnamese people in French Indochina to the Western powers at the Versailles peace talks, but was ignored. Citing the language and the spirit of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, they expected U.S. President Woodrow Wilson to help remove the French colonial rule from Vietnam and ensure the formation of a new, nationalist government.
Our feared enemy cited our own Declaration of Independence and the Wilsonian ideals of self-determination...and became further radicalized when we failed to live up to those ideals.
You could almost say we lost our power and influence because we gave up on an idealistic foreign policy. Almost. I'm too much of a classic realist to go that far. (I really liked Hans Morgenthau's work, though I think I was a classic realist before I read Politics Among Nations).
One more thing. No institution is monolithic. Building up the communist opposition meant acting as though China and the Soviet Union were a single communist entity. That's part of the genius behind Nixon's visit to China. I am not entirely sure it was wise in the long run given current events, but I do think it's a better strategy than letting your imagination create a threat that isn't quite as perfect as we built it up to be.
I suppose it's a bit like diamonds - they all have fractures, though some have less than others. An expert may figure out where to tap the diamond to fracture it entirely...
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