Rostow: "Both the NICs (New Industrial Countries) and the ASEAN members roughly quadrupled their real GNP between 1960 and 1981. They were, socially and politically as well as economically, quite different countries than they had been when Southeast Asia went through the crisis of 1965. "
Rostow was certainly consistent in his anti-Communism.
Great post.
Can you present a positive case and/or a summary for his argument here?
Yes, a lot of people don’t know that the southern half of the Korean peninsula was mostly farmland. Most of Korea’s industry in 1945 was in the north.
Only in the sense that Robert E. Lee ended the American Civil War.
Yeah thats a good analogy as Robert E Lee, as we all know, was a foreign minister who was not involved in the earlier stages of the Civil War at all, and only brought in in the final years of the war by a political faction who promised “peace with honor” 
You appear to have missed the point I was making. The comparison between Kissinger and Lee is that both men ended a war by admitting their side had lost. That was not the ending either man had been working for.
In what sense was it not? His foreign policy career began with Nixon’s election, who ran under the slogan “peace with honor”. Finishing the war was the primary goal of opening years of his career in foreign policy (and remains his primary legacy, alongside the detente with soviets and China). He was spectacularly immoral and violent in how he chose to try and bring it about, but it was exactly what he was working for.
I thought I did. ASEAN countries were at an early stage of a rapid development process, one that occurred from 1960-1980. Laos’ fate was tied to Vietnam’s. Thailand adjoined Laos geographically. Thailand couldn’t stand up to a Communist insurgency that received massive aid along its border. They could and did handle a purely home grown insurgency during the era.
Strong dominos won’t fall. Weak ones do. By 1975 Thailand was a strong domino. In 1965 it wasn’t. Similarly for other ASEAN countries.
I lack the regional expertise to evaluate the above hypothesis. Over at Wiki, I see that insurgents in Thailand killed 1450+ soldiers, police and officials in 1969-71. So there was certainly the core a Communist guerrilla force there. Could it have been scaled up? I don’t know. I lack the regional and military knowledge. Communist insurgency in Thailand - Wikipedia
Thailand sent 40,000 troops to fight in Vietnam, and their efforts are currently viewed favorably in Thailand. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/opinion/thailand-vietnam-war.html
I do have an answer to the OP though. There’s no absolute consensus that all US deaths in Vietnam were in vain. It’s debatable, even setting aside Chefguy’s broader and well-taken argument.
“Peace with Honor” is a nebulous phrase - which was probably the point. Nixon and Kissinger could later argue that whatever actually happened was retroactively the goal they had been working for.
But back in the period between 1969 and 1973, it was clear that the goal they were working for was the same as previous administrations had been working for (and the one I mentioned above) - an independent and stable Republic of Vietnam. At the very least, they wanted a South Vietnam that would hold up long enough for American troops to withdraw and American politicians not to be associated with the fall of South Vietnam when it occurred. They were basically hoping they could get North Vietnam to hold off for around five years or so before invading. “Vietnamization” and a “decent interval” in the language of the time.
So Nixon and Kissinger achieved nothing in 1973 that couldn’t have been achieved in 1969. Or 1964 or 1954.
Well, all we have to do is approach the question from the opposite direction. Did all of those deaths accomplish even one meaningful thing that made that horrible sacrifice of human lives worth while? The answer is a resounding, “NO!”
Following Rostow, all those deaths may have provided the foundation for the economic development of most of the Tiger Cub economies, consisting of Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia. That’s over 470 million people today. (The fifth member, awkwardly, is Vietnam). Tiger Cub Economies - Wikipedia
The Soviet Communist model was an economic dead-end, later abandoned by the Chinese and Vietnam, with only the authoritarian aspects retained. If we want to evaluate the significance of US military action in Vietnam, we have run the counterfactual: we have to consider what would have happened if we didn’t escalate in, say, 1965. The answers aren’t obvious, but it’s not difficult to point to some subsequent positive developments. If the dominoes fell during the 1970s, would that have affected China’s internal politics to the benefit of the hard-liners? Beats me.
And Nixon in fact scuttled peace talks in 1968 (probably the most treasonous of his many crimes), as he didn’t want the war to end before he was president. So he in fact prolonged the war for an unnecessary 4 more years.
“4 more years” was kind of his thing.
Running on a campaign of “Twenty-one more months” would have given away the twist ending.
Which is why so many of us will never forgive him.
Heh, when he died they cancelled classes at my college the day of the funeral. That was the only day I was glad he ever walked the earth.
Another thing I might mention: While much of '60s culture was adopted by the Thais – sexual freedom, dope-smoking, clothing and hair styles – anti-war sentiment was almost nonexistent. Thailand sent a lot of troops to Vietnam to bolster the US effort. A former colleague of mine, an Englishman, arrived in Bangkok in 1969 and is still there today. He had a lot of stories about that time period. One of them was the '60s music in the bars and clubs. The Thai bands played a lot of Western music of the day, with the Beatles particularly popular. They would play “A Day in the Life,” but when they got to the line, “The English Army had just won the war,” they would always sing, “The Thai Army had just won the war.” This was invariably met with raucous cheering and yahooing from the audience.
To be clear, I’m coming down on the side of, “No clear consensus.” I’m skeptical of this domino theory though. Thailand sent 40,000 troops to Vietnam, out of a population of 30.9 million. Eventually 3.1 million US citizens would serve in Vietnam from a 1965 population of 195 million. So the US committed 1.6% of its population while Thailand sent 0.2%. Thai soldiers reportedly served honorably but it doesn’t look to me like the Thai government viewed the conflict as existential. Methinks they would have a better grasp of the fundamentals than the US.
The Communist system was never going to be economically superior to capitalism by any metric, though the West didn’t recognize this until much later. How fast were these dominoes suppose to fall? According to Rostow, the Tiger cubs were much stronger by 1975. It sounds to me that under the worst case scenario (with 20-20 hindsight about Communist economic capacity) that Thailand and Burma would fall, but not Malaysia. That’s speculation of course: I don’t have a deep understanding of Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Malaysia, or Indonesia.
It’s understood that the US overestimated the attraction of Communism during the 1960s and underestimated the importance of nationalism. It’s understood that the Vietnam conflict lined up authoritarian governments against authoritarian governments. It’s understood that Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were countries with very marginal strategic significance themselves. It’s understood that declaring victory and getting out requires a lot of political finesse. But the OP’s question still can’t be conclusively answered in the affirmative IMHO.