It wasn’t silly at all. The Soviet Union was a horrible, tyrannical government that placed virtually no value on human life, liberty, or common decency. Even accepting the fact that western governments are prone to hideous acts of violence at times, the fact is that we WERE on the right side of that conflict (I speak as a Canadian, not an American, but we were on the same side) and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan was unjustified and evil.
Whether or not the Vietnam intervention was justified is a separate matter. I will say this; there came a time when the “Government” of South Vietnam was obviously nothing more than a puppet of the U.S. government and had no inherent legitimacy. At that point, the U.S. position is legally and morally questionable at best; even if you accept that Communism is evil, the U.S. was imposing its military will on a foreign people without their consent, and that’s just as bad. Comparisons to Korea are invalid, since South Korea had a legitimate government and its people were strongly supportive of the war.
That said, as Dev Null points out, the U.S. really should have backed Ho to start with. It’s difficult to say exactly when things went wrong, but if you could go back in time and change matters that’s what you would do.
Svinlesha:
How, exactly, is the current Nicaraguan government “right wing?” I do know one thing; the current government was elected in a free and fair election. Ortega’s military junta was a dictatorship. So, in fact, most Nicaraguans DID support that takeover. That’s why they voted for it - twice now, incidentally.
IMHO - The difficulty I have with an often recited US position on the war is that it characterises one side as pursuing an ideological agenda (i.e. Communism in all its forms social, economic, etc) while at the same time painting US involvement as some kind of defensive we’re-here-to-help-democracy-and-freedom story. It just isn’t so.
Off the top of my head, I can’t recall one example of the US voluntarily involving itself overseas without self-interest being the defining criteria (I think all countries have very similar records. Germany declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor, Gulf oil, etc.). This was not some kind of noble protecting-the-world intervention. It was, however, a Communism-is-no-kind-of-market-for-US Inc intervention.
Nor was US involvement defensive, it pursued its ideological agenda just as much as did the Communists. Like the Communists, the US had to assist – and be seen to assist – non-aligned leaders / countries (in order to reassure all the other non-aligned nations – think ‘1950’s’) at a time when both ideologies were battling for as large a slice of the (world) cake as possible (expanding ‘Sphere’s of Influence’). The Communists wanted more because they believed in their social and economic model, the US wanted to feed its Capitalist model.
The ‘Democracy’ argument was just spin, a convenience by which to disguise the real agenda.
Perhaps while Vietnam is termed a ‘war’, with the benefit of hindsight, it can also be seen as a battle lost in a war won as the US now has most of the world as its market and remains the largest economy in the world.
Russia was the “bad guy” because their political doctrine threatened our way of life (at least in theory) Not because they are immoral or conduct war or covert ops differently then we do.
In retrospect it does seem silly. The US and Russia, if not allies, are at least more cooperative. The entire world did not fall to the “red menace”.
You have to remember though, in the fifties and sixties, we had just wrapped up WWII a decade earlier so the memories of Germany storming across Europe will still fresh, Russia was as powerful as the US, they had just built the Berlin Wall and blockaded Berlin from the rest of the world, they were trying to base nuclear missles in Cuba, and communist North Koreans and Chinese were invading South Korea.
We know now that Russia wasn’t “evil” like Nazi Germany was evil. But their actions did appear very threatening.
In what way was the USSR not evil like the Nazis were evil? They invaded other countries and set up puppet governments. They systematically killed tens of millions of political opponents. They denied basic human rights to everyone unfortunate enough to be governed by their regimes. They sought to take over and enslave the entire world. Sounds pretty evil to me.
Getting back to the OP remember that there more Vietnamese killed after the war than during it. I think being in th war may have been justifiable but the way it was fought was unjustifiable.
I believe there was a political “excuse” to get involved in Vietnam, but the real reason we stayed there was simple:
Profit for government contractors that made all the necessary weapons and other supplies. If you take emotion out of the picture you see that war ain’t that bad for the country as long as the enemies bombs don’t hit our soil.
Nations never involve themselves in war unless their leaders see the nation’s self-interest at stake. Why should it be otherwise? The US was not involved in Vietnam to save the world, it was there to protect its perceived interests. Just what were those interests? You keep on asserting the “Communism is no kind of market for US” stuff. Let’s see some references or evidence to back up that opinion.
I would assert that it was the self-same reason that the Soviets were expanding their influence–self-protection. Just so happens that Communism, as practiced, was IMO an despotic, impractical and evil. So I’m glad that we were protecting our interests. Fact of the matter is, capitalism and democracy, as practiced by the West, go hand-in-hand and are synergistic. Best economic model, best political system, best for everybody in the long run. And the power of that system won the cold war.
I would assert that nations never really go to war for ideological purposes, always for pragmatic ones, despite much propoganda to the contrary.
I would like to add a little to what Sam Stone said in regards to the early beginnings of the war. The French left Viet Nam in WWII and Ho Chi Minh set up a guerilla operation to fight the Japanese.
Truman had real doubts about letting the French go back since it was obvious that French Colonialism simply bled the country dry. However, deGaulle basically whined that if the US did not let the French go back into Indo-China, that they would turn communist. So, Truman let them go back in. Ho Chi Minh did not cotton to this idea and the rest is the Viet Nam War.
(My source for this is the excellent last chapter in Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly.)
The “they” that would have turned communist, was the France, not Viet-Nam. In other words, without some of their former colonial holdings, the country of France would have responded to the deprivations following WWII by installing a communist government.
Oh, but we never support such things. You might read a good history of Central America and the actions of our buddies Somoza, General Efraín Ríos Montt and others… Elsewhere we supported the Trujillos, Pinochets and Sukharnos of the world, dictators guilty of everything you mentioned above… charming beacons of democracy, to be sure.
excellent point, although I don’t want to get off topic in a debate over whether Russia was “evil”. We could have an entire thread devoted to that discussion.
In any case, from the end of WWII communism (mostly lead by the USSR and China) was a threat to our Western way of life. I think that we were justified in entering the Viet Nam war if it would help protect that way of life.
Ironically, the turbulance caused by the Vietnam war and even the Cold War itself threatened the American way more than any communist ever did.
So what did 'Nam teach us?
Don’t fight a war on someone elses soil unless you plan to occupy the country indefinitely. A gurilla (like the Viet Cong) dosen’t have to win. All they have to do is “not lose”. If they wait long enough, eventually political oppinion will change and the invaders (US) will go home. (Side note: 50 Years later we still have troops guarding the Korean border)
Make sure the rest of the world backs your policy. Bush did this very well in Desert Storm. We could have conquered and occupied all of North Vietnam but that would have brought the Russians and Chinese into the war. Bush knew to get world support before storming into Iraq.
Democracies should not fight an unpopular war. It wouldn’t matter if we won 'Nam if America destroyed itself in the process.
I’m sure there are other lesson but that’s all I got so far.
So, to answer the original question:
Yes, we should have gotten involved in 'Nam. BUT we should have been smarter about our involvement.
And the US and allies had bigger things to worry about during the cold war than whether or not some tin pot dictator was dropping a few political opponents out of a helicopter. You can combine all US-supported dictatorships since 1900 and you will still never get close to a tenth of a Pol Pot, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedung or Iosef Stalin.
The Sandanistas were elected in a free and fair election. The 1990 election you are talking about had massive US financial support for the Chamorro’s campaign. Is that free and fair, considering that we recently freaked out about China doing the same thing, on a much smaller scale, to us?
Some interesting stuff Chomsky has to say about the election, notably that the elections may have turned out the way they did based on US threats:
Yeah, of course you’re right, Rick, when you point out that the Nicaraguan gov’t. is freely elected, but, uh, I didn’t mean that the current Nicaraguan gov’t. is right-wing (although it might be; I don’t keep up with Latin American politics all that much anymore). When I wrote that the US “fueled a right-wing takeover,” I was referring specifically to the Reagan administration’s support of the Contras – you remember, that fun-lovin’ bunch of child-rapin’, nun-killin’, coke-snortin’ “freedom fighters”. However, as I’m sure as you’re aware, the Contras lost; after which the brutal left-wing dictator Daniel Ortéga turned around and set up a free election, as you so rightly point out, [only backwards]. The US funneled huge sums of money in to support Ortega’s opponent, and guess what – she won. (Proving yet again that there’s more than one way to skin a cat.) And what happened after that? Yes, the brutal Ortéga stepped down – see, you just can’t trust those slimy left-wing dictators.
Had Reagan achieved his objectives, however, there would not have been a free election in Nicaragua – instead, there would have been a military dictatorship á la Pinochet, Somoza, Batisté, and so on. The list is too tedious to repeat here, but I’m sure you get the picture. At any rate, you surely understand that the majority of Nicaraguans DID NOT support the Contras.
This topic is a particular interest of mine. I strongly sugegst you read Stanley Karnow’s book Vietnam for a very thorough history of Vietnam over the last thousand years, and especially since 1945.
Opinions vary, of course, but I will give mine and try to correct factual errors as they appear in the thread, hoping I don’t make too many!
I would say the main factors for the conflict were (explained below)
Death of President Truman
Forces of Colonialism and the French re-occupation
Inability of U.S. to see the communism in China and the Soviet Union had different agendas and were at odds
The American governments hatred of communism in principle
This is partially correct but a little misleading. France basically ran Vietnam starting around 1700. During WWII, French influence was diminished since they were concentrating on other affairs. Ho Chi Minh strongly supported the Allies in southeast Asia in the hopes his effort would be rewarded by independence. There is evidence he did support American democracy and capitalist ideals at first. He worked as a chef in some of Paris’s finest restraurant and many of his speeches were clearly copied after American “classics”. Ho thought he had an understanding of sorts with Truman to get independence in return for supporting the Allies. However, Truman died and the incumbent was far less interested in geopolitics. At this time, many countries in Asia were give independence and colonialism was clearly dying. When France decided to go back to the way things were before, Ho tried to get the Americans involved on his side. When they wouldn’t, he decided “it is better to sniff Chinese shit for a few years than to eat French shit for another thousand”.
The U.S. never liked Communism. The wealthy in the States had much to lose under such a system (and in practice it was inefficient, so we all did), and since its inception had led public attacks against it through the media and government. What scared the pants off the Yanks was they thought the fight was under control just after WW2. They were spending big money to fight communism in China too, and it looked like the pro-US Chiang Kai-Shek (later ruler of Taiwan) had mainland China under control, too. The newspapers all said the problem with communism in China was well under control, the government believed this too.
But it wasn’t. Chiang was somewhat incompetent, and China fell to Mao and the Communists in 1949. The Americans were stunned. How could this happen? Must have been traitors in high places… leading to the McCarthy hearings. Scared the bejeebers out of the Yanks. If one country could fall, others could too, and Russian communism clearly predicted spreading by a domino effect. It made sense at the time to send troops and influence to Korea and support anti-communist forces in Vietnam too.
What the Americans could have learned from the big fight between China and the USSR is that not all communism is the same. The Chinese did not support global expansion to the same degree as the Bolsheviks and were not teaming up with the Soviets. Tbey were, of course, willing to fund local groups out of self-interest, but wanted nam for themselves more than as more an ideological goal en route to conquer the Earth.
Ho and the Vietnamese felt China was now the only route to independence, and basically routed the French until they fell at Dienbienphu in 1954. It was here the US started getting progressively involved as further presidents got caught up in a regrettabkle quagmire. Troops arrived slowly, not reaching substantial numbers before 1963.
If you’re into gross overgeneralizations, most Vietnamese prefered independence over communism, were never that sold on the ideology and today embrace the free-market as tightly as permitted. The US failed to recognize Nam for what it was on many occasions, not all of them invisible at the time. But there was legitimate concern for Dean Acheson to be worried about the Domino Theory, mainly due to the fall of China and their support of the Koreans.
What I wrote was flippant, but accurate. Ace Face’s comparison of Pinochet, Batista, et al to people like Stalin, et al is ridiculous on its face. These Latin American dictators were horrible, vicious goons, but did not wield the power of that Chinese, Soviet, or North Korean leaders wielded over their populations.
These US-supported dictators could not even effectively supress dissent within their countries, let alone have the political clout to, say, force half their country’s population into agricultural communes. Or, for that matter, kill millions of political opponents, apparently as believed by Ace Face.
The West did not persue an enlightened foreign policy during the cold war, but rather a pragmatic one. Why waste the time, money, and political will reigning in a friendly dictator in South America when we are busy worrying about tens of thousands of MIRVed megaton warheads aimed at our population, mid-ranged ICBMs based in our hemisphere and possible invasion of Western Europe by a foe with a numerical advantage? Which problems have more bearing US and allied national security?
Vietnam was an part of that pragmatism. The South’s government was corrupt, ruthless, and undemocratic, but it was still a chance for the US to confront the Russians indirectly, possible keep a country out of the communist sphere, and demonstrate US resolve against communism.
Not that it’s really any of my business, but as far as I can tell your statement is not accurate, since you seem to be the only one making this comparison. Ace was responding to puddleglum’s assertion that the USSR was evil like the Nazis. Ace pointed out that the American government had committed many of the same atrocities that puddle accused the USSR of. So actually, (shudder), he was comparing the USSR to the US, not to Pinochet or Batista.
I have to wonder as well a bit about your assertions concerning the “effectiveness” of all these minor “tin-pot dictators,” as you so charmingly refer to them. It’s seems way too easy for you to sit back in your position of relative security over there in the Land of Freedom and fob off the occasional massacre committed by US proxies. It might not be so easy if you were Chilean, or Vietnamese. And I mean really, what’s your argument here? “They killed 5 million people, but we only killed 3 million…so we’re better than them, nyaaah, nyaaah, nyaaah.” Sorry, Dev, but I just don’t get it.
I argue that the tendency to reduce the Vietnamese war to a simple conflict between Russia and the States, between “creeping communism” and “democracy”, is a gross oversimplification. As Dr. Paprika points out above, Atchinson might have had his reasons to worry about a Domino Effect, but in the long run they proved to be unfounded. All too often,** Dev**, policy makers used the excuses you refer to in your post above as cover for their own greed and economic interests.
And, to answer the OP, no, I don’t think the Invasion of Vietnam was justifiable.
I’ve never understood how anyone can say that the U.S. and Soviets were just two sides of the same coin. At least while maintaining a straight face.
Sure, the U.S. supported some questionable governments. But the U.S. was fighting a cold war, and you should never judge a country by its allies. Have we forgotten that the U.S. had a lot of ‘despotic’ allies in WWII? The Soviets themselves (under Stalin, no less) for example.
Nicaragua was targeted not just because it was Communist (there were plenty of other Communist countries that the U.S. left alone in this era), but because it was actively exporting Marxist Revolution to other Latin American countries. The Sandinistas were exporting arms to rebels in El Salvador, they were involved in Guatemala, and there is evidence that they had a hand in the Marxist Coup in Grenada which led to that invasion.
Sure, the U.S. isn’t perfect, and it has made some foreign policy mistakes. And yes, there have been atrocities committed by Americans in wartime. But atrocities are committed in wartime by troops of EVERY nation. Take young men, put them under heavy stress, shoot at them, kill some of their friends, and a few will go off the deep end. The question is whether or not these acts are supported by the government, and whether or not they are prosecuted when found.
The United States was never an expansionist power. The U.S. occupied dozens of foreign countries at the end of WWII, and walked out of every one of them. In fact, the U.S.'s natural tendency is to be isolationist. At the end of WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam the U.S. always scaled back its military, sometimes way too far as it did at the end of WWI.
In contrast, the Soviet Union was in fact an evil empire, in every way we understand the term ‘evil’. Stalin slaughtered more people than did Hitler. The Soviets had used every opportunity to invade and occupy foreign countries, starting from the last days of WWII. Human rights were nonexistant, the ‘Gulag Archipelago’ consisted of tens of millions of political prisoners who lived and died in forced labor camps. Whenever subjugated peoples in occupied countries started to get restless, the Soviets would crush the rebellion brutally (East Germany, 1953, Hungary, 1956, Czechoslovakia, 1968). The Soviets were the prime sponsors of international terrorism from the 1950’s until the collapse of the Soviet Union.
It always amazes me that a person who says anything good about Hitler these days is instantly vilified (as he should be), but a thread like this can be full of comments like, “Hey, the Soviets were no worse than the Americans”, and no one cares or notices. The way to combat evil is to have zero tolerance for it and anyone who apologizes, tries to justify, or makes light of it.
In my opinion, Sam Stone is taking reasonable arguments a bridge too far.
The United States has invaded Nicaragua seven times this centurym not just under Reagan, not just do to the Sandanistas. Far from being isolationist, they have always strongly looked after their own interests, especially since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 that states they will act as masters of the Western hemisphere.
That said, compared with other countries the record of the U.S. is quite good and all countries are guilty of bad behaviour. Many countries are guilty of worse behaviour, including the Soviet Union.
There is an intrinsic error in mistaking governmental policy with a country and its people. The average Soviet citizen did not support all actions of the government nor their political philosophy. They want what you want – a high stadard of living. Soviets are not evil anymore than any other person. Why were there people in the gulags in the first place? Communism is not intrinsically evil either but rather based on the contention that Man is basically good. Use of the term “Evil Empire” is just plain silly and ignores most of the realities no matter how snappy it sounds.
You’re right about Hitler though. He was not much worse than many of history’s oppressors in the long run, and I say this as one of Jewish background who’s family suffered considerably due to his policies. The people who make comparisons to Hitler though tend to either strongly support him with dogma that is despicable for other reasons, or make a poor comparison between him and something else that isn’t warranted.
Not sure what sort of cite or reference might help – it was the height of ’The Cold War’…Iron Curtain, Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin Wall, Communist Command economy…… This we know. In direct consequence, there was little or no meaningful trade between the two competing ideologies of which I’m aware. That was a large part of the problem, IMHO. Communism denied to USA Inc. a very significant part of the potential market and threatened even more.
The bigger the market, the more powerful would become the (by far) leading free-market economy.
Ace Face quoted puddleglum’s statement, including “killing tens of millions of political opponents” saying:
“Elsewhere we supported the Trujillos, Pinochets and Sukharnos of the world, dictators guilty of everything you mentioned above”
I don’t beleive an argument can be made that those dictators we supported killed tens of millions of political opponents, or indeed that the US supported or condoned those activities. Furthermore, we haven’t recently done anything like that to our own citizens.
Well, in that case let me explain my position in a little more detail:
The US has always supported, for expedience sake and to support larger goals, governments abhorrent to the “ideals” of the US. Is it wrong? You seem to think it is; I don’t think so. The US supported much, much worse governments in the past to meet our goals, including, I hasten to add, Stalin’s during WWII. The allies gave Russia vast amounts of aid to defeat the current enemy: Nazi Germany. Are you equally prepared to argue that it was wrong to do so in that case?
Again, the worst of the governments supported by the US during the cold war simply do not compare to the worst of the communist governments. Were all communist governments genocidal despots? No. Look at Cuba and Yugoslavia. But for every Cuba and Yugoslavia there was a Cambodia and North Korea.
That said, it does not lessen the human impact on either side of the Cold War, be it innocents in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Uganda, Chile, or wherever suffering was occuring as a result of the Cold War.
I’d buy the economic interests part, but the greed? Certainly you have a cite for that. As to the domino theory, I think an excellent arguement can be made that indeed it was not unfounded, and that the Allied policy of containment, limited confrontation and military (out)spending ended the Cold War, and Communism as practiced. Plus, the West did it without reducing the world to a big glass parking lot. I’d call that a success.
Indeed, Dr. Paprika is correct: the reasons why the confrontation happened in Vietnam are varied, but if it did not happend in Vietnam, the Cold War would have continued elsewhere. And what might have happened then?
Speaking of economic interests and greed, it is in the US interest to promote capitalist/mixed market democracies: they make the best trading partners and typically peacefully coexist. With the cold war over, I expect US policy to continue supporting these governments more and more.