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I enjoyed the read but it stopped short, and I think people in the west too readily latch on to the "anti-colonialism" part of the 30+ year Vietnam war. Certai
by gedy 2y ago
I enjoyed the read but it stopped short, and I think people in the west too readily latch on to the "anti-colonialism" part of the 30+ year Vietnam war.
Certainly fighting the French was motivated by this, however the last 20 years of the war it was more a civil war between the communists and not-communists, a North vs South civil war, and proxy fight backed by both the USSR and the west.
I don't have references handy but it's interesting to read the experiences and feelings of the Viet Minh in South Vietnam, and how they were sidelined once the North took over. Also Vietnam invading Cambodia soon after points out that fighting colonialism was not a prime motivation of the northern leadership.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoVietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power (who were not only massacring their own population, but also attacking the Vietnamese border areas). How does that prove that the Vietnamese war against the Americans was not anti-colonial?
- gedy 2y agoThey occupied Cambodia for 11 years, so it's a stretch to say they were adamantly against the idea of foreign interference. Khmer Rouge were nasty to their own civilians, but so were the Viet Cong, especially early on in the conflict and to the south after the war.
- notahacker 2y agotbf, whilst the Viet Cong were often nasty to their civilians, the Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of their own population and had made multiple advances into Vietnam to continue a genocide that had started with ethnic Vietnamese living within Cambodia. It's not really a tenable argument the Viet Cong didn't have just cause for invasion or that their military sticking around whilst the remaining Khmer Rouge cadres waited for an opportunity to return resembled Western colonialism, and the Khmer Rouge is not fondly remembered by Cambodian nationalists or royalists or anticommunists Hun Sen, the Cambodian they installed as deputy PM is still in power having allied with just about every faction in Cambodian politics in various elections and coups; not a testament to the vibrancy of Cambodian democracy but a testament to how the real distinction wasn't between an independent Cambodia and occupation, but between the Khmer Rouge and everything else.
- corimaith 2y agoYou could say the exact same about Saddam Hussein
- notahacker 2y agoIt does miss the bit where Saddam Hussein invades Key West and massacres all its inhabitants...
- xuki 2y agoI'm Vietnamese so I'm obviously biased, but what option did they have? If they left immediately, Khmer Rouge would be back in no time and the cycle would begin again. I don't think the politburo enjoyed occupying Cambodia, as Vietnam was severely punished by the international community for the occupation. It probably pushed back Vietnam's development 10-20 years.
- gedy 2y agoI'm not saying there were great alternatives or that it was it was even wrong, just that it's incorrect/naive to call the (then) North Vietnamese gov't "freedom fighters" motivated primarily by anti-colonialism. For sure the propaganda to everyday citizens and soldiers was that it was, but it's pretty clear that was just propaganda at this point.
- rqtwteye 2y agoMy read is that started as anti colonialism against the French but then the big powers took sides so the Vietnamese started fighting each other. The sad thing is that a lot of problems could have been avoided if the Americans in the 50s wouldn't have been so scared of any kind of communism or socialism. They messed up Iran, they drove Egypt into the arms of the Soviets, and they may have even had friendlier relationships with Fidel Castro.
- WeylandYutani 2y agoAh but you forget that the economic exploitation of the former colonies was supposed to continue. It is not so much communism that frightened the West as it was nationalism.
- refurb 2y agoThis misses a lot of nuance. Vietnam’s independence took a back seat after WW2 for the US because France made regaining its colony contingent upon playing along with NATO. France floated the idea of aligning with the USSR to scare its Western allies. So for the US it decided Europe was the more important sphere. The US’s main strategy with the communism was one of containment - see George Kennan’s Security Council memo. Why containment? Because the USSR was exporting revolution. The US could take the stance of doing nothing, but then the USSR would have free rein. And it wasn’t a matter of “let the people in those countries go communist if they want to”, because with USSR support a minority of people could impose communism on a population that wasn’t interested in it. Hence containment - just slow or stop other countries from going communist by matching what the USSR was doing - bankrolling and training political groups in those countries. So doing nothing with Vietnam and letting France regain their colony aligned with containing further expansion of communist in South East Asia. If Vietnam went back to a French colony, then communism wouldn’t take hold (or it would at least be difficult for it).
- rsoto2 2y agoYeah the Cambodian-Vietnamese war wasn't colonialism. " In the first major clash between the two former allies, the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army (KRA) invaded the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc on 1 May 1975 (barely 24 hours after Saigon fell), claiming it was historically part of Kampuchea's territory.[17] Nine days later, on 10 May 1975, the KRA continued its incursion by capturing the Thổ Chu Islands, where it executed 500 Vietnamese civilians. "
- gedy 2y agoThey occupied Cambodia for 11 years though.
- CalChris 2y agoThe Vietnam War was anticolonial against the French, Japanese and French in succession. It didn’t suddenly become not anticolonial when the US entered en mass after the Tonkin ‘crisis’. It remained anticolonial when China attached.
- gedy 2y agoI didn't say it wasn't anti colonial at all, but by the time the US got actively involved it was certainly also/mostly a civil war/communist revolution.
- CalChris 2y agoHo Chi Minh petitioned for Vietnamese independence at the Paris Peace Talks in 1919. He was turned down by the Big Four including France's Clemenceau and the United States' Woodrow Wilson. BTW, the Viet Minh were our allies during WWII.
- ViktorRay 2y agoBTW, the Viet Minh were our allies during WWII. I’m afraid I don’t understand the point you are making. Even Mao Zedong’s Communist Party were western allies during World War II. For that matter Stalin’s Soviet Union was also a western ally during World War II. After World War II everything changed. That being said...you make a good point for bringing up the Paris Peace Conference. It is most certainly true that many of the issues in the world today are a direct result of what happened at that Peace Conference. And it is indeed very fascinating that Ho Chi Minh was apparently at that conference.
- CalChris 2y agoI think it's more correct to say the CCP allied with the KMT during WWII, or rather during their Second Sino-Japanese War. We made contact with Mao's CCP but the vast amount of supply + support with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. My point was that the Viet Minh were people we could work with. We had worked with them during WWII. And by extension, we work with them now. The Vietnamese have a constant fear of being colonized by China. So we don't have to worry about that. Instead we literally forced them to ally with Russia. Dulles, Johnson, Nixon, ... and that crew were short sighted and stupid, but certain. The Vietnam War was cast as anti-communism to a gullible American public. But the Vietnamese don't see it that way and today it isn't that way. Now, the US Navy makes port calls in Cam Ranh Bay. There has been no change of regime in Vietnam. Yeah, Ho Chi Minh was at Paris but not Potsdam. He'd have been great to work with. He even worked in the United States for General Motors. He knew us well.