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The 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 a

The 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 1y ago
I 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 1y ago
  Ho 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 1y ago
    BTW, 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 1y ago
      I 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.
      - ViktorRay 1y ago
        Ah now I understand what you are saying. Thank you for clarifying.
corimaith 1y ago
Depends if you believe having Comunnists in charge as opposed to literally everybody else can be labeled as "anti-colonial". Then again, "anti-imperialism" often goes hand in hand with authoritarianism.
- CalChris 1y ago
  Actually, anticolonial means opposition to or resistance against the system where one country controls another. It really has nothing to do with their system of government. BTW, they're run by the socialists now and, thanks to Clinton and McCain, we have normal relations with them. The US Navy makes port of call visits to Cam Ranh Bay. Maybe if we'd just done a deal with that former line manager for General Motors we could have made those port of call visits earlier and saved $800B, a 100K US lives and a couple of million Vietnamese dead. You know, mercantilism.
  - corimaith 1y ago
    >It really has nothing to do with their system of government. It's about who has the power here, which is the same principle you would take against a colonial authority. There is no right why Ho Chi Minh and the CPV should rule autocratically against the wishes of other factions. When they are sending that same opposition to concentration camps it is functionally no different to colonial authority. >$800B, a 100K US lives and a couple of million Vietnamese dead. You know, mercantilism. If North Vietnam didn't invade and kept to themselves we'd also save all that money and lives, and the Vietnamese wouldn't waste decades of economic stagnation. But, in the words of the late Lee Kuan Yew, the war at least gave other Southeast Asian nations the critical time to build their economies against Communism.
    - CalChris 1y ago
      Yeah, keep thinking it was about Communism. We backed the Viet Minh during WWII and we backed the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to big bad Vietnam (where our Navy now makes port calls), even to the point of defending the Khmer seat at the UN well after they lost until 1993. Because Communism.
refurb 1y ago
Like most complex topics, it’s a little bit of both - anti-colonial and civil war. The communist side pushed the anti-colonial narrative because it benefited them - “the only true independent representative of the Vietnamese people.” which made Vietnamese fighting Vietnamese more palatable. But this ignores that there were many competing factions in 1945, all vying for power in an independent Vietnam - VNQDD, Dai Viet, Revolutionary party, etc. In the North they were eliminated leading up the August revolution when the communists first took power. And while the North liked to call the South “puppets” due to the support it received from the US, the North received substantial support from the USSR and China (which it kept very quiet). So one could argue both North and South wanted an independent Vietnam - I think that is well supported. So saying it evolved into a civil war is correct. Of course that definition is muddied by the proxy war the great powers were carrying out through their support.
- CalChris 1y ago
  > But this ignores that there were many competing factions in 1945, all vying for power in an independent Vietnam - VNQDD, Dai Viet, Revolutionary party, etc. You're leaving out France. At Potsdam, Vietnam was to be partitioned but France asked for and got her colony back.

gedy 1y ago

I 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 1y ago
Ho 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 1y ago
  BTW, 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 1y ago
    I 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.
    - ViktorRay 1y ago
      Ah now I understand what you are saying. Thank you for clarifying.

corimaith 1y ago

Depends if you believe having Comunnists in charge as opposed to literally everybody else can be labeled as "anti-colonial". Then again, "anti-imperialism" often goes hand in hand with authoritarianism.

CalChris 1y ago
Actually, anticolonial means opposition to or resistance against the system where one country controls another. It really has nothing to do with their system of government. BTW, they're run by the socialists now and, thanks to Clinton and McCain, we have normal relations with them. The US Navy makes port of call visits to Cam Ranh Bay. Maybe if we'd just done a deal with that former line manager for General Motors we could have made those port of call visits earlier and saved $800B, a 100K US lives and a couple of million Vietnamese dead. You know, mercantilism.
- corimaith 1y ago
  >It really has nothing to do with their system of government. It's about who has the power here, which is the same principle you would take against a colonial authority. There is no right why Ho Chi Minh and the CPV should rule autocratically against the wishes of other factions. When they are sending that same opposition to concentration camps it is functionally no different to colonial authority. >$800B, a 100K US lives and a couple of million Vietnamese dead. You know, mercantilism. If North Vietnam didn't invade and kept to themselves we'd also save all that money and lives, and the Vietnamese wouldn't waste decades of economic stagnation. But, in the words of the late Lee Kuan Yew, the war at least gave other Southeast Asian nations the critical time to build their economies against Communism.
  - CalChris 1y ago
    Yeah, keep thinking it was about Communism. We backed the Viet Minh during WWII and we backed the Khmer Rouge as a counterweight to big bad Vietnam (where our Navy now makes port calls), even to the point of defending the Khmer seat at the UN well after they lost until 1993. Because Communism.

refurb 1y ago

Like most complex topics, it’s a little bit of both - anti-colonial and civil war. The communist side pushed the anti-colonial narrative because it benefited them - “the only true independent representative of the Vietnamese people.” which made Vietnamese fighting Vietnamese more palatable. But this ignores that there were many competing factions in 1945, all vying for power in an independent Vietnam - VNQDD, Dai Viet, Revolutionary party, etc. In the North they were eliminated leading up the August revolution when the communists first took power. And while the North liked to call the South “puppets” due to the support it received from the US, the North received substantial support from the USSR and China (which it kept very quiet). So one could argue both North and South wanted an independent Vietnam - I think that is well supported. So saying it evolved into a civil war is correct. Of course that definition is muddied by the proxy war the great powers were carrying out through their support.

CalChris 1y ago
> But this ignores that there were many competing factions in 1945, all vying for power in an independent Vietnam - VNQDD, Dai Viet, Revolutionary party, etc. You're leaving out France. At Potsdam, Vietnam was to be partitioned but France asked for and got her colony back.