Bribing the North Vietnamese

[TSBG]

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/717/would-vietnam-war-money-have-been-better-spent-bribing-the-enemy-to-stop-fighting

I'm not sure why Cecil dismisses the 900 billion out of hand. Inflation costs may be difficult to untangle, because who knows what would have happened to the economy without a war, but the costs of later medical care for veterans, and their pensions, ought to be pretty simple to assess. There may be other examples as well, though he doesn't enumerate all the factors that went into the 900 billion calculation. Perhaps lost productivity from having hundreds of thousands of young men fighting instead of manufacturing?

I know, newspaper column, not enough words, etc. But the column is more interesting the bigger the number, no?

[Pessemist]

Seriously? OK, money spent on military hardware does not 'go up in smoke'. It is used to pay contractors and solider salaries etc etc. The money, in short, is mostly funneled back into the economy of America.

Now instead of paying for the war effort we, instead, gave the money straight away to another country.

What do you think that impact would be on Americas economy?

Pesse (Doh!) Mist

[XT]

I'm prety sure the $140 billion Cecil was using there was in unadjusted dollars. As was the $900 billion dollars, which would be several trillion in today's dollars.

-XT

[Nunzio Tavulari]

Seriously? OK, money spent on military hardware does not 'go up in smoke'. It is used to pay contractors and solider salaries etc etc. The money, in short, is mostly funneled back into the economy of America.

Now instead of paying for the war effort we, instead, gave the money straight away to another country.

What do you think that impact would be on Americas economy?

Pesse (Doh!) Mist

One need only look at the booming economy we've had since the most recent war began.

[New Deal Democrat]

The War in Vietnam was tragically futile, and says bad things about human nature. Each side would have been better off not to have fought. The First World War was like that too. The reasons for fighting were vague. The winners were worse off after the war than before.

During human evolution men who were victorious in war had more children who survived and reproduced than men who avoided war, so a tendency to fight wars is instinctive for men.

For women there was no advantage in fighting. If their side lost their husbands and male relatives were killed, and they were carried off. If their side won they had to share their husbands with captive women. Consequently, as women achieve more political power countries become more peaceful.

[gamerunknown]

a tendency to fight wars is instinctive for men.

Uh, that's not a universally accepted notion. Our ancestors were rapists and murderers too, but we've constructed a society where rapists and murderers are maligned.

[TSBG]

Please take the discussion of the tragedy of war to another forum. Fascinating as it is, it's OT.

[Pessemist]

One need only look at the booming economy we've had since the most recent war began.

As, opposed, to say looking at the economy during and after WW2?

Most economists felt that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Military spending on the war caused or at a very minimum accelerated recovery from the Great Depression.

Cynically, it also removed a large number of people from potential unemployment by thinning the workforce.

I am not advocating war as a method of economic recovery but it helps.....

Back to (semi) OT, I don't believe the American government could have managed to pay out directly that sum of money in any event. The government gets its funds through taxes....if people are not getting paychecks (by building war material or otherwise) then the cash flow is choked off.

Pesse (so north Vietnam would have still won without fighting) Mist

[gamerunknown]

Most economists felt that the Great Depression ended with the advent of World War II. Military spending on the war caused or at a very minimum accelerated recovery from the Great Depression.

Which? This is addressed specifically as the "Broken Window Fallacy" by Hazlitt in "Economics in One Lesson".

[snowthx]

I don't believe the American government could have managed to pay out directly that sum of money in any event. The government gets its funds through taxes....if people are not getting paychecks (by building war material or otherwise) then the cash flow is choked off.


How about if we gave them American-made goods - like refrigerators and washers/dryers, as well as water treatment and power plants. These would support jobs back home, and giving away these products at government expense may have been cheaper overall. Maybe we should have done that in our current oversea adventure. ISTM we are delivering American-made goods anyway with no return - in the form of bombs and bullets, which does not seem to be winning over the hearts and minds.

[TSBG]

It certainly is true that Americans hate foreign aid, negligible as it is. And even at that, most of the aid we do give essentially goes into American pockets--for example, hiring an American company to hire Americans to build a school with material bought in America. I made that up, but it's emblematic of the way aid gets distributed.

[rosella_alm]

We human barbarians never learn from our history or our mistakes. Bribing would have been a better idea. Nothing would have helped prevent ancilliary horror however, in surrounding countries. Now the USA is building its' own Great Wall, as China did once, to keep out immigrants.

[aldiboronti]

Sure, give those gooks a few shiny consumer goods and they'll forget their dumb ideals. Let's pretend for a moment that Cecil was seriously suggesting this. What would prevent Vietnam taking the cash and then continuing to fight for a unified Communist Vietnam? What could the US do? Send the troops back in?

[TSBG]

Well, the US could have avoided the whole war for free if they'd told the French to get out after 1945. Ho reached out to the US on this, Vietnam. The vast mass of North Vietnamese were no more idealistic Communists than the South Vietnamese were idealistic capitalists, and Ho just wanted whitey gone.

Anyway, the question was how much did the Vietnam war cost the United States, so we could do the interesting thought experiment of how much we could have paid each Vietnamese person instead of killing them.

And, aldiboronti, if paying them off didn't work, it would have been exactly as successful as the war, with fewer deaths.

[Cylar]

Sure, give those gooks a few shiny consumer goods and they'll forget their dumb ideals. Let's pretend for a moment that Cecil was seriously suggesting this. What would prevent Vietnam taking the cash and then continuing to fight for a unified Communist Vietnam? What could the US do? Send the troops back in?

Exactly.

I read Cecil's reply to this question and immediately thought, "What a load of bull." It makes some very flawed assumptions about the political aims of the communist North Vietnamese government. It also ignores the NVA's willingness to commit all manner of gross human rights violations in order to complete its conquest of the country.

It makes about as much sense as these politicians today who suggest that "sitting down" with our enemies in the Middle East is going to magically solve all our problems. There's very little common ground to be had with people whose religion/political ideology directs them to destroy you at any cost to themselves.

[Cylar]

Well, the US could have avoided the whole war for free if they'd told the French to get out after 1945. Ho reached out to the US on this, Vietnam. The vast mass of North Vietnamese were no more idealistic Communists than the South Vietnamese were idealistic capitalists, and Ho just wanted whitey gone.

And you know this, how?


Anyway, the question was how much did the Vietnam war cost the United States, so we could do the interesting thought experiment of how much we could have paid each Vietnamese person instead of killing them.


The question was pointless. It would be like asking how much yogurt it would take to construct a sphere the size of the moon. Who cares? The Vietnam War ended almost forty years ago. Why not stick to mourning the dead, honoring their sacrifices, and caring for the men who lived through it and still suffer from the after-effects of jungle combat?


And, aldiboronti, if paying them off didn't work, it would have been exactly as successful as the war, with fewer deaths.

Fail.

As others have pointed out, we could have bribed them, then had to fight them anyway.

[gamerunknown]

directs them to destroy you at any cost to themselves.

Yeah, great job anticipating and successfully routing all of their attacks on US soil. Warning though: I think if the US invaded any European country and started massacring its civilians, some of them would fight back too. That's grounds for pre-emptive war, is it not? After all, that kind of unmitigated aggression will not be tolerated.

[TSBG]

@Cylar:

"[Ho] makes a dozen appeals to US President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee for help, insisting he is not a communist and suggesting that Indochina could be a “fertile field for American capital and enterprise.”

http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=ho_chi_minh

The original question was not pointless. Not to the men who fought, suffered, and died in a war the U.S. fought and lost for no good reason. It's because of their sacrifice that we should think about ways to avoid wars like Vietnam...or in the Middle East.

Also, there is no "had to fight them anyway." The war didn't need to be fought, for any number of reasons; one of them is given in this post. Have you heard of the Pentagon Papers?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

[John W. Kennedy]

And you know this, how?Oh for God’s sake, it all came out in the Pentagon Papers decades ago!

[Cylar]

Yeah, great job anticipating and successfully routing all of their attacks on US soil. Warning though: I think if the US invaded any European country and started massacring its civilians, some of them would fight back too. That's grounds for pre-emptive war, is it not? After all, that kind of unmitigated aggression will not be tolerated.

Nice strawman.

Maybe if the Clinton Administration's Jamie Gorelick hadn't directed the FBI and CIA not to talk to one another, our intel people might have connected the dots.

[Cylar]

Oh for God’s sake, it all came out in the Pentagon Papers decades ago!

Oh for heaven's sake, whatever. Keep denying that the communists wanted to consolidate their control of Vietnam and didn't care who got trampled on in the process.

[Cylar]

The original question was not pointless. Not to the men who fought, suffered, and died in a war the U.S. fought and lost for no good reason. It's because of their sacrifice that we should think about ways to avoid wars like Vietnam...or in the Middle East.


Yes, it is. I've already explained to you now that it's too late to un-fight the Vietnam War.

And that conflict couldn't possibly have less in common with what's been going on in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last ten-odd years. The Vietcong didn't launch a terrorist attack on US soil, for starters.


Also, there is no "had to fight them anyway." The war didn't need to be fought, for any number of reasons; one of them is given in this post.


That's your opinion and nothing more. Keep whipping that dead horse, hippie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers

You're aware that anyone can edit Wikipedia entries, right? I am speechless that you expect me to find that credible.

[gamerunknown]

Nice strawman.

You admit yourself that the Vietcong didn't attack the US on their soil (terrorism is a slightly lower crime than aggression by the way, which is what the US engaged in by invading Vietnam). So I was only attacking the strawman you constructed.

The Vietcong didn't launch a terrorist attack on US soil, for starters.

Yeah, unlike the taliban or the baathists.

Keep whipping that dead horse, hippie.

Nice ad hom.

[TSBG]

OK, Cylar, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have some points you'd like to make that you feel really strongly about, and invite you to make them. You seem to think--and please let me know if I'm summing this up well--

1. The war in Vietnam was worth fighting.

2. It's useless to think about ways it might not have been fought.

As to point number 1, I provided a cite showing Ho did not want a fight with the US. I also cited the Wiki for the Pentagon Papers; if you are skeptical of the summary provided on Wiki, you can read them yourself at http://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers/

There are many other sources on the Web summarizing the Papers. Here's just one:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/450326/Pentagon-Papers

As to point number 2, well, you're free to disagree, but I think learning from the mistakes of the past is useful. Cecil's original column was just an interesting way of thinking about the mistake. Again, if you don't think the Vietnam was a mistake, please make your case, using cites where appropriate.

Finally, calling me a hippie seems like an insult, though a sort of strange one. I see that you haven't made a great many posts, so I would just like to politely point out that personal attacks are frowned on in this forum.

[Captain Amazing]

"[Ho] makes a dozen appeals to US President Roosevelt, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee for help, insisting he is not a communist and suggesting that Indochina could be a “fertile field for American capital and enterprise.”

Ho was lying. I mean, he was telling the truth that he wanted the French gone, and that he wanted an independent Vietnam, and wanted American help to get it. But he was definitely a Communist. He attended the Tours Congress in 1920 and was one of the founding members of the French Communist Party. Then he studied in Moscow for two years at the Far East University, then became a Soviet agent in China. He bounced around Asia and Europe until 1941, when he joined the Viet Minh.

[TSBG]

Ho was lying. I mean, he was telling the truth that he wanted the French gone, and that he wanted an independent Vietnam, and wanted American help to get it. But he was definitely a Communist. He attended the Tours Congress in 1920 and was one of the founding members of the French Communist Party. Then he studied in Moscow for two years at the Far East University, then became a Soviet agent in China. He bounced around Asia and Europe until 1941, when he joined the Viet Minh.

That he was a Communist wasn't necessarily incompatible with being friends with the U.S., not at the time. The Soviet Union was our great ally in WWII. I don't know enough about Ho to definitively say, but was he more engaged in the worldwide workers' revolution, or the communist movement as a path to Vietnamese independence? If he was inviting a US presence in his country, I suggest the latter.

[Captain Amazing]

That he was a Communist wasn't necessarily incompatible with being friends with the U.S., not at the time. The Soviet Union was our great ally in WWII.

Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't. But the point is that, if Ho was "insisting he is not a communist", he was lying. And in case you hadn't noticed, our great ally in WWII, just after the war was over, ended up breaking all their promises and guarantees and enslaving millions of people. So, good allies there, I guess.

[Irishman]

The alliance with the USSR during WWII was an uneasy one, formed more by necessity and a common enemy than any real sense of desire for cooperation. Before that we were not particularly friendly, and even during hostilities there was a strong sense of keeping in mind we were likely to be enemies after the war.

[MikeBB]

If you feed a stray cat, then soon you'll have lots of stray cats to feed. If we paid to end a war, then soon we would be in lots of wars with aggressors hoping to get paid.

[darrakk]

would dThe War in Vietnam was tragically futile, and says bad things about human nature. Each side would have been better off not to have fought. The First World War was like that too. The reasons for fighting were vague. The winners were worse off after the war than before.

During human evolution men who were victorious in war had more children who survived and reproduced than men who avoided war, so a tendency to fight wars is instinctive for men.

For women there was no advantage in fighting. If their side lost their husbands and male relatives were killed, and they were carried off. If their side won they had to share their husbands with captive women. Consequently, as women achieve more political power countries become more peaceful.

I think The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher) and Golda Meir would disagree, as would Catherine the Great. War has always been about ideology and land, in that order. Any argument about children and birthrates is an attempt to explain war, not predict or describe it.

As for winners and losers, Vietnam was just what the communists needed to expand their influence and extend the cold war another 15-20 years.

And to think, if only the French could have controlled their colonies the Vietnam war would be nothing but a footnote.

[darrakk]

If you feed a stray cat, then soon you'll have lots of stray cats to feed. If we paid to end a war, then soon we would be in lots of wars with aggressors hoping to get paid.

Like North Korea? I am not saying that bribing the north Vietnamese would have been successful, but who do you think would have sold them all their TVs and "modern conveniences"? The biggest problem with bribery is this: how many millions would it take to make you forget about Russia and China?

[Dorkstoevsky]

Sure, give those gooks a few shiny consumer goods and they'll forget their dumb ideals. Let's pretend for a moment that Cecil was seriously suggesting this. What would prevent Vietnam taking the cash and then continuing to fight for a unified Communist Vietnam? What could the US do? Send the troops back in?

Why did you feel it necessary to use such a hurtful name? You could have made your point perfectly well without resorting to racial slurs.

[Dorkstoevsky]

As for winners and losers, Vietnam was just what the communists needed to expand their influence and extend the cold war another 15-20 years.

And to think, if only the French could have controlled their colonies the Vietnam war would be nothing but a footnote.

Vietnam has been invaded and controlled by countless other countries, not just France. Given the poor treatment of native Vietnamese during that time, it's not much of a shock that Communism took hold with the false promise of equal treatment for all citizens. What you're saying is basically your wishing that the Vietnamese people would have been treated and controlled even MORE tightly than they already were. I'm not saying I agree with Communism or that the Vietnamese were right in going to war in the first place, but you can't just ignorantly make such a flippant remark that it never would have happened if the French had maintained their invasion of the country with an iron grip. It happened BECAUSE of French's occupation, and Japan before them, and China before THEM. The people had simply had enough.

[C K Dexter Haven]

Keep whipping that dead horse, hippie.
MODERATOR NOTE: Cylar, you are clearly using "hippie" as an insult, and that's against the rules. Personal insults are not permitted in this forum, as you well know. Desist. It is surely possible to discuss something as far away and long ago as the Viet Nam war without resorting to name-calling. Don't do this again, please.

ASIDE, AS A POSTER, NOT A MOD: Frankly, as soon as one side starts name-calling, I always feel they've lost the debate.

[aruvqan]

Oh for heaven's sake, whatever. Keep denying that the communists wanted to consolidate their control of Vietnam and didn't care who got trampled on in the process.
How about it really is none of our [US] business what format a country's government is going to take ... if it isn't a US protectorate, it is none of our business what they do internally - communist or 'free'.

The only reason for pitching in on a war is a pre-existing treaty for mutual defense which requires us to pitch in with men or materials. [Or if their opponent launches an attack on us.]

[Milton Findley]

Having spent three tours in Vietnam, I take a somewhat different perspective. I have examined history in some detail over the years. In WWII, the goal was to defeat Facism. 405,399 dead Americans. Mission accomplished. In Korea and in Vietnam, the goal was to defeat, or at least contain, Communism. Just shy of 100,000, and again, mission accomplished. We are now engaged in a war against terrorism, and technology has held casualties down to a very low level, our military casualties are less than twice the number of civilian casualties that occurred on day one.

Hard to find a history book that even mentions the sorts of things that are being argued on this page after the arguers have died off.

[Fiendish Astronaut]

Having spent three tours in Vietnam, I take a somewhat different perspective. I have examined history in some detail over the years. In WWII, the goal was to defeat Facism. 405,399 dead Americans. Mission accomplished. In Korea and in Vietnam, the goal was to defeat, or at least contain, Communism. Just shy of 100,000, and again, mission accomplished.


I've spent some time in modern Vietnam and by what possible measure could you say that Vietnam was mission accomplished? Vietnam is united under a communist flag, Saigon is currently called Ho Chi Minh City, communist posters pepper the sides of streets, soldiers walk around wearing communist uniforms. The Vietcong never had any intention of expanding their version of communism beyond their borders, they just wanted to unite the nation under their flag. This is what they always claimed and just prove this they cleaned up the holocaust caused by the Khmer Rouge in neighbouring Cambodia before pulling out, although that country is now communist.

The 2-3million Cambodians who lost their lives and it's brief extremist-communist status would certainly not have occurred had the US not deliberately destabilised a secure and functioning Cambodian government during the war. So if anything, it could be argued that American interference caused the spread of communism rather than restricting it. And it caused unimaginable amounts of suffering to people throughout the entire region. I would not call that mission accomplished unless I was some sort of sick comedian.

My time in Vietnam has made me realise one thing though. Capitalism alone is all it takes. Coca Cola and other brands will do in a couple of decades what millions of tons of bombs could never do.

[Fiendish Astronaut]

Sorry, Cambodia is not now communist, Laos has been since the war though. Cambodia adopted an extremist form of communism as the US pulled out, forcing the population into a peasant based agricultural economy and resetting the year to zero. This 100% would not have happened without the Americans. The Vietnamese communists overthrew them and now the country is a constitutional monarchy.

"Mission accomplished"? I still can't believe that.

[willjohn]

Too late to worry now, isn't it? Australian men my age were conscripted to fight in that stupidity, many of them came back badly injured, mentally ill or alcoholic.

Those that survived all that have either retired or are close to it.