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I just googled when 'The Ugly American' came out. 1958! Nobody can say "noone could have known". I'm not an expert on Vietnam, but I'll just say that whateve

I just googled when 'The Ugly American' came out. 1958! Nobody can say "noone could have known". I'm not an expert on Vietnam, but I'll just say that whatever their problems with a Chinese merchant class, the problems with a Western burning-villages class were probably bigger at the time.

wahern 5y ago
I'm not trying to defend American policies in Vietnam. But Vietnam became independent in 1954, albeit split between North and South. The Vietnam War as typically understood by Americans, and as encompassing most well known atrocities, wouldn't begin for another 10 years. Also, American and, more generally, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist discourses tend to infantilize people in these countries. I doubt the Vietnamese had a simplistic, love-hate relationship with either the French or the Americans even after the innumerable atrocities. Just like in every other nation even the masses were and are capable of complex strategic, mixed-motive thinking. Look at the sheer devastation America has caused in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet AFAIU neither most Iraqis nor most Afghanis wish for U.S. involvement to completely disappear. Americans would never believe themselves capable of pressing a war out of pure spite, anger, or retaliation; yet we somehow think other groups do? IOW, there's something problematic in thinking that what fundamentally drove the Vietnamese was a response to American atrocities. Far more likely (and consonant with the notion that all communities around the world tend to behave similarly) is that those atrocities exacerbated underlying, primary dynamics. Afterall, the merchant class by definition didn't tend to live on rice farms. They were centered in the cities. The U.S. tried to implement many of the same policies the British did in Malaysia. During the communist insurgency in Malaysia the British corralled ethnic Chinese (the primary supporters of communism, such as they were--i.e. it wasn't that simple) into cities and towns. (To this day ethnic Chinese can't own rural farms outright in Malaysia.) But Chinese communities were already mostly urban, and were of course a minority (20-30%). It was a plan that arguably worked by accident. But such a strategy was never going to work in Vietnam because the dynamics were totally flipped. That would have been much more obvious if the U.S. saw the ethnic divisions for what they were.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- refenestrator 5y ago
  Maybe trying to exploit and maximize ethnic differences in other countries is fundamentally a bad idea in the medium/long term.
  - wahern 5y ago
    Absolutely, except in this case the U.S. wasn't even capable of that. They missed the importance of the ethnic dynamics, apparently too focused on political and economic dynamics that were at best comorbidities and at worst reflections and mirages. From the random CIA dispatch reports from Laos and Indonesia I've read, low-level American officials were capable of regional socio-political savvy. I just don't think that appreciation ever translated up the chain. So, for example, people have claimed that the U.S. incited genocide in Indonesia. That seems both true and false. True because low-level CIA officers certainly seemed to understand how political and ethnic divisions overlapped and therefore how their anti-communist campaigning could and did devolve to ethnic cleansing. But I don't think leaders in Washington appreciated that at all. Perhaps mostly out of a racist disinclination to consider such aspects, but oblivious nonetheless.
peteretep 5y ago
> the problems with a Western burning-villages class "Murder, kidnapping, torture and intimidation were a routine part of Viet Cong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) operations during the Vietnam War. They were intended to cow the populace, liquidate opponents, erode the morale of South Vietnamese government employees, and boost tax collection and propaganda efforts. Estimates of the total number of South Vietnamese civilians killed by the VC/PAVN between 1954 and 1975 range from 106,000 to 227,000." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_of_Vietnam_use_of_terror_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...

wahern 5y ago

I'm not trying to defend American policies in Vietnam. But Vietnam became independent in 1954, albeit split between North and South. The Vietnam War as typically understood by Americans, and as encompassing most well known atrocities, wouldn't begin for another 10 years. Also, American and, more generally, anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist discourses tend to infantilize people in these countries. I doubt the Vietnamese had a simplistic, love-hate relationship with either the French or the Americans even after the innumerable atrocities. Just like in every other nation even the masses were and are capable of complex strategic, mixed-motive thinking. Look at the sheer devastation America has caused in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet AFAIU neither most Iraqis nor most Afghanis wish for U.S. involvement to completely disappear. Americans would never believe themselves capable of pressing a war out of pure spite, anger, or retaliation; yet we somehow think other groups do? IOW, there's something problematic in thinking that what fundamentally drove the Vietnamese was a response to American atrocities. Far more likely (and consonant with the notion that all communities around the world tend to behave similarly) is that those atrocities exacerbated underlying, primary dynamics. Afterall, the merchant class by definition didn't tend to live on rice farms. They were centered in the cities. The U.S. tried to implement many of the same policies the British did in Malaysia. During the communist insurgency in Malaysia the British corralled ethnic Chinese (the primary supporters of communism, such as they were--i.e. it wasn't that simple) into cities and towns. (To this day ethnic Chinese can't own rural farms outright in Malaysia.) But Chinese communities were already mostly urban, and were of course a minority (20-30%). It was a plan that arguably worked by accident. But such a strategy was never going to work in Vietnam because the dynamics were totally flipped. That would have been much more obvious if the U.S. saw the ethnic divisions for what they were.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
refenestrator 5y ago
Maybe trying to exploit and maximize ethnic differences in other countries is fundamentally a bad idea in the medium/long term.
- wahern 5y ago
  Absolutely, except in this case the U.S. wasn't even capable of that. They missed the importance of the ethnic dynamics, apparently too focused on political and economic dynamics that were at best comorbidities and at worst reflections and mirages. From the random CIA dispatch reports from Laos and Indonesia I've read, low-level American officials were capable of regional socio-political savvy. I just don't think that appreciation ever translated up the chain. So, for example, people have claimed that the U.S. incited genocide in Indonesia. That seems both true and false. True because low-level CIA officers certainly seemed to understand how political and ethnic divisions overlapped and therefore how their anti-communist campaigning could and did devolve to ethnic cleansing. But I don't think leaders in Washington appreciated that at all. Perhaps mostly out of a racist disinclination to consider such aspects, but oblivious nonetheless.

peteretep 5y ago

> the problems with a Western burning-villages class "Murder, kidnapping, torture and intimidation were a routine part of Viet Cong (VC) and People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) operations during the Vietnam War. They were intended to cow the populace, liquidate opponents, erode the morale of South Vietnamese government employees, and boost tax collection and propaganda efforts. Estimates of the total number of South Vietnamese civilians killed by the VC/PAVN between 1954 and 1975 range from 106,000 to 227,000." from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_of_Vietnam_use_of_terror_in_the_Vietnam_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong_and_People%27s_Army_...