Why did the US reconcile with Vietnam before Cuba?

[Peremensoe]

@Simplicio

…even Vietnamese-Americans who fled after the war and hate the Communist gov’t are pretty invested in maintaining the personal and financial ties they have with people back in the old country. They travel back and forth to visit frequently, send money back to family members and generally invest a lot of time in keeping abreast of what’s going on with the friends and family they left behind.

As such, their hatred of the Communist gov’t doesn’t extend to an interest in establishing sanctions that would make such activities more difficult, and in all probability do much more to hurt the friends and family members they left behind then do anything to really damage the Communists. As such, there’s never been a strong voting block calling for such sanctions.

That makes perfect sense to me. What’s different about (the older generation of) Cubans in America?

[halman]

Castro’s revolution against the American puppet government was a popular one, which was the result of American exploitation of Cuba and Cubans. Vietnam was not a revolution against America, it was a civil war, which we choose to get involved in. I still hate the term ‘Vietnam War’ because we never declared war on Vietnam. It was all a ‘police action’.

A good many of the Cuban refugees were helping the Americans exploit their countrymen, which is why they fled the country. They want things to go back to the way that they were, because they were powerful then.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

Oil was discovered offshore from Vietnam.

The USA likes to be friends with oil-producing countries, just like an alcoholic likes to be friends with his bartender.

[steellord321]

cuban missile crisis was a far graver threat to national security than vietnam ever could’ve been

most politicians and the public as well wanted to move on from vietnam, since it was such an epic failure

[Lumpy]

@steellord321

cuban missile crisis was a far graver threat to national security than Vietnam ever could’ve been

Only in 20/20 hindsight. The reason the USA spent 15 years trying to prevent the conquest of South Vietnam was the fear of the “Domino Effect”: Today Vietnam, tomorrow Burma, Thailand and East Pakistan (as it was known then). It was believed that Communism was conquering the world one guerrilla war at a time, with each newly conquered country becoming a haven and supply route for the next one. That’s why the US government went absolutely ape-shit about the Sandinistas taking over Nicaragua: Cuba had always been galling, but because it was an island not sharing any land border with another country it was considered containable. Nicaragua seemed destined to be the North Vietnam of Latin America, the base from which guerrilla war and revolution was exported to the rest of the hemisphere.

[XT]

@t-bonham@scc.net

Oil was discovered offshore from Vietnam.

The USA likes to be friends with oil-producing countries, just like an alcoholic likes to be friends with his bartender.

Oil and gas were discovered after this dispute started, which was decades ago. Also, it’s highly unlikely the US would be getting much if any oil from wells in the South China Sea. We get most of our oil from Canada and Venezuela (and almost none from the Gulf), and that’s unlikely to change.