40 ms·

> Things that were worth dying and killing for 50 years ago are still important, but they're fights for young people. So what was behind the Vietnam War that w

> Things that were worth dying and killing for 50 years ago are still important, but they're fights for young people. So what was behind the Vietnam War that was worth dying and killing for? What would you have died and killed for, when young?

vasilipupkin 11y ago
At the time, there was an existential struggle going on between Soviet Union and Europe/US. Vietnam war was ultimately the wrong turn in that struggle, but it was far less obviously wrong at the time.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The so-called "domino theory" hypothesized that Communism could be modeled as a sort of ideological contagion. If one country became Communist, its neighbors were more likely to become Communist. So if left unchecked, Communism would spread throughout the world in a giant, red wave, leaving America as the last remaining bastion of freedom in the whole universe. This theory was given additional credence because apparently, the Communists believed in it, too. Well, it turns out that theory was just so much hot air.
  - vasilipupkin 11y ago
    yes. But it wasn't obvious at the time. Part of the reason it turned out to be hot air, because communists failed to execute on this strategy, at least in part because they had to fight against non communists. It was a dynamic system, not a static one
  - mafribe 11y ago
    In what sense was it hot air? Saloth Sar (better known as Pol Pot), radicalised by the French communist party, trained in Moscow, Belgrade and Beijing, took over neighbouring Cambodia, aided by the communists in Hanoi. Indeed the Cambodian Communist party was an offshoot of Viet Nam's People's Army (the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam). The domino theory was a good one, because, as you point out yourself, it described the explicit modus operandi of the communists. Where it failed, it failed primarily because the communists received serious pushback.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      It failed because the "domino" states represented an additional support burden on the Communist core states of Russia and China, who were themselves split ideologically. The Cold War basically prevented some internal conflict within the Communist Bloc by providing an external menace and scapegoat. But it was also economic warfare, turning what would have been a shooting war into another kind of money-spending contest. Rather than building momentum, additional satellite nations just stressed the central powers economically. In theory, it would have been a self-supporting revolution, but in practice, it looked like just another overextended empire. But it's too easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. They had no way of knowing back then the typical failure modes of Communist nations. My hypothesis is that a better anti-Communist strategy would have been for the non-Communist nations to offer generous asylum/refugee-based immigration programs to those fleeing from the threat of Communist rebels in their home countries. Aside from that, stay out of the internal politics of the Communist bloc. Sadly, this is now untestable, so nobody should give it more than a few moments of light consideration.
      - mafribe 11y ago
        The Cold War basically prevented some internal conflict within the Communist Bloc by providing an external menace and scapegoat. That's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure I can agree with it. Before the Sino-Soviet split, the communist world was really just one state, the Soviet union and everybody else was but a satellite. better anti-Communist strategy would have been for the non-Communist nations to offer generous asylum/refugee-based immigration programs That is more or less exactly what West Germany did with refugees from East Germany. It was extremely successful, until the East build the wall and made fleeing next to impossible.
  - scarmig 11y ago
    Laos, Cambodia ended up Communist (though, ironically, it was Kissinger and the USA who ended up tolerating the Khmer Rouge as a pawn against the USSR and Vietnam, and Vietnam who ended up removing the Khmer Rouge from power and replacing them with a puppet state). It's also worth mentioning that Malaysia was fighting off a Communist insurgency, though that was pretty much dead by 1960. And, perhaps most importantly, Indonesia had the largest (non-ruling) Communist Party in the world, with a seven figure membership. Had Vietnam been re-united under Communist rule, it's hard to anticipate how it would have developed. (1965 ended any chance of Communist revolution, there, though, with the US-supported mass murder of 500k+ CP members and Indonesian Chinese). Even India and then-East Pakistan had to deal with a background level of Communist terrorism. We've got the benefit of the present to be able to poo-poo others' choices, but it was a genuinely big deal back then, and even now I'm not sure how things would have developed differently with a united Communist Vietnam in 1960. ETA: Thailand and the Phillipines also had fairly active Communist insurgencies, though it seems their governments were able to put them down without too much difficulty. ETA Again: As another counterfactual to build intuition: had the KMT beaten Mao in the 1940's, would there be a Communist Vietnam? A North Korea? The latter almost certainly not. The former is less definite--I'd personally expect an authoritarian anti-colonial regime. Something like Burma, with better outcomes than it because of regression toward the mean. A Communist Vietnam conditioned on a Nationalist China seems highly unlikely to me.
    - mafribe 11y ago
      Exactly. Korea itself of course has been dealing with communists. Burma and Laos had communist insurgencies. The CP of Laos, too, is an offshoot of the Vietnamese CP. Most of Africa and South America had strong communist parties too. It's quite simple. The CI (communist internatinal) was a world-imperialist organisation, and was trying to take over governments all over the world, following the Leninist model that had been 'successful' in Russia.
      - scarmig 11y ago
        I look at it more in terms of concrete, material support: if you're geographically near a Communist state, that Communist state has a strong interest in undermining your government for its own ends. It's also far easier for them to supply material and men, rely on social networks to diffuse propaganda, etc. A Communist Vietnam IMO makes a Communist Indonesia and even India much more likely (which would be a disaster on a huge scale); South Africa or Peru, though, next to no effect, or maybe even a negative effect. The real genius of Kissinger was realizing the abstraction of a unified Communist block was pretty faulty, and national interests superseded any ideological fidelity to the Communist cause.
user_0001 11y ago
Protecting your country, friends and family from an aggressive, invading force? Ridding your country of a brutal, corrupt puppet dictatorship propped up by said aggressive, invading force? I think most people would see that as a valid reason to kill and die for. Hell, said aggressive, invading force even convinced their young it was worth to go kill and die to do the invading, should be a piece of cake to convince those being attacked
- sillygeese 11y ago
  I meant that from the American perspective, but alright. > Protecting your country, friends and family from an aggressive, invading force? And on the invaders' side? What exactly were the American soldiers dying and killing for? > Ridding your country of a brutal, corrupt puppet dictatorship propped up by said aggressive, invading force? How about just going for the dictators specifically? The Vietnamese people declaring that they will kill any dictator the US installs there might have done the trick, as opposed to dying by the millions fighting the vastly superior American military. But it's not that simple either. Think of something like North-Korea. Any sane person there sees that what's going on is totally. fucking. fucked. up. But even if someone thinks freeing people from the insanity there is worth dying for, what if his death didn't actually result in the insanity ending? .. Fear, is sadly what keeps mass-murdering tyrannical regimes in power.
  - ionised 11y ago
    > And on the invaders' side? What exactly were the American soldiers dying and killing for? Rich old men back home.
    - sillygeese 11y ago
      Yes, or more accurately: the psychopath rulers and their cronies back home. That's what I've been getting at, as you probably gathered. In other words, ordinary people don't actually have a good reason to die and kill for X in a war, because X is always rulers and wars are always about their personal gain at the expense of countless ordinary people.

vasilipupkin 11y ago

At the time, there was an existential struggle going on between Soviet Union and Europe/US. Vietnam war was ultimately the wrong turn in that struggle, but it was far less obviously wrong at the time.

logfromblammo 11y ago
The so-called "domino theory" hypothesized that Communism could be modeled as a sort of ideological contagion. If one country became Communist, its neighbors were more likely to become Communist. So if left unchecked, Communism would spread throughout the world in a giant, red wave, leaving America as the last remaining bastion of freedom in the whole universe. This theory was given additional credence because apparently, the Communists believed in it, too. Well, it turns out that theory was just so much hot air.
- vasilipupkin 11y ago
  yes. But it wasn't obvious at the time. Part of the reason it turned out to be hot air, because communists failed to execute on this strategy, at least in part because they had to fight against non communists. It was a dynamic system, not a static one
- mafribe 11y ago
  In what sense was it hot air? Saloth Sar (better known as Pol Pot), radicalised by the French communist party, trained in Moscow, Belgrade and Beijing, took over neighbouring Cambodia, aided by the communists in Hanoi. Indeed the Cambodian Communist party was an offshoot of Viet Nam's People's Army (the armed forces of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam). The domino theory was a good one, because, as you point out yourself, it described the explicit modus operandi of the communists. Where it failed, it failed primarily because the communists received serious pushback.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    It failed because the "domino" states represented an additional support burden on the Communist core states of Russia and China, who were themselves split ideologically. The Cold War basically prevented some internal conflict within the Communist Bloc by providing an external menace and scapegoat. But it was also economic warfare, turning what would have been a shooting war into another kind of money-spending contest. Rather than building momentum, additional satellite nations just stressed the central powers economically. In theory, it would have been a self-supporting revolution, but in practice, it looked like just another overextended empire. But it's too easy to criticize with the benefit of hindsight. They had no way of knowing back then the typical failure modes of Communist nations. My hypothesis is that a better anti-Communist strategy would have been for the non-Communist nations to offer generous asylum/refugee-based immigration programs to those fleeing from the threat of Communist rebels in their home countries. Aside from that, stay out of the internal politics of the Communist bloc. Sadly, this is now untestable, so nobody should give it more than a few moments of light consideration.
    - mafribe 11y ago
      The Cold War basically prevented some internal conflict within the Communist Bloc by providing an external menace and scapegoat. That's an interesting theory, but I'm not sure I can agree with it. Before the Sino-Soviet split, the communist world was really just one state, the Soviet union and everybody else was but a satellite. better anti-Communist strategy would have been for the non-Communist nations to offer generous asylum/refugee-based immigration programs That is more or less exactly what West Germany did with refugees from East Germany. It was extremely successful, until the East build the wall and made fleeing next to impossible.
- scarmig 11y ago
  Laos, Cambodia ended up Communist (though, ironically, it was Kissinger and the USA who ended up tolerating the Khmer Rouge as a pawn against the USSR and Vietnam, and Vietnam who ended up removing the Khmer Rouge from power and replacing them with a puppet state). It's also worth mentioning that Malaysia was fighting off a Communist insurgency, though that was pretty much dead by 1960. And, perhaps most importantly, Indonesia had the largest (non-ruling) Communist Party in the world, with a seven figure membership. Had Vietnam been re-united under Communist rule, it's hard to anticipate how it would have developed. (1965 ended any chance of Communist revolution, there, though, with the US-supported mass murder of 500k+ CP members and Indonesian Chinese). Even India and then-East Pakistan had to deal with a background level of Communist terrorism. We've got the benefit of the present to be able to poo-poo others' choices, but it was a genuinely big deal back then, and even now I'm not sure how things would have developed differently with a united Communist Vietnam in 1960. ETA: Thailand and the Phillipines also had fairly active Communist insurgencies, though it seems their governments were able to put them down without too much difficulty. ETA Again: As another counterfactual to build intuition: had the KMT beaten Mao in the 1940's, would there be a Communist Vietnam? A North Korea? The latter almost certainly not. The former is less definite--I'd personally expect an authoritarian anti-colonial regime. Something like Burma, with better outcomes than it because of regression toward the mean. A Communist Vietnam conditioned on a Nationalist China seems highly unlikely to me.
  - mafribe 11y ago
    Exactly. Korea itself of course has been dealing with communists. Burma and Laos had communist insurgencies. The CP of Laos, too, is an offshoot of the Vietnamese CP. Most of Africa and South America had strong communist parties too. It's quite simple. The CI (communist internatinal) was a world-imperialist organisation, and was trying to take over governments all over the world, following the Leninist model that had been 'successful' in Russia.
    - scarmig 11y ago
      I look at it more in terms of concrete, material support: if you're geographically near a Communist state, that Communist state has a strong interest in undermining your government for its own ends. It's also far easier for them to supply material and men, rely on social networks to diffuse propaganda, etc. A Communist Vietnam IMO makes a Communist Indonesia and even India much more likely (which would be a disaster on a huge scale); South Africa or Peru, though, next to no effect, or maybe even a negative effect. The real genius of Kissinger was realizing the abstraction of a unified Communist block was pretty faulty, and national interests superseded any ideological fidelity to the Communist cause.

user_0001 11y ago

Protecting your country, friends and family from an aggressive, invading force? Ridding your country of a brutal, corrupt puppet dictatorship propped up by said aggressive, invading force? I think most people would see that as a valid reason to kill and die for. Hell, said aggressive, invading force even convinced their young it was worth to go kill and die to do the invading, should be a piece of cake to convince those being attacked

sillygeese 11y ago
I meant that from the American perspective, but alright. > Protecting your country, friends and family from an aggressive, invading force? And on the invaders' side? What exactly were the American soldiers dying and killing for? > Ridding your country of a brutal, corrupt puppet dictatorship propped up by said aggressive, invading force? How about just going for the dictators specifically? The Vietnamese people declaring that they will kill any dictator the US installs there might have done the trick, as opposed to dying by the millions fighting the vastly superior American military. But it's not that simple either. Think of something like North-Korea. Any sane person there sees that what's going on is totally. fucking. fucked. up. But even if someone thinks freeing people from the insanity there is worth dying for, what if his death didn't actually result in the insanity ending? .. Fear, is sadly what keeps mass-murdering tyrannical regimes in power.
- ionised 11y ago
  > And on the invaders' side? What exactly were the American soldiers dying and killing for? Rich old men back home.
  - sillygeese 11y ago
    Yes, or more accurately: the psychopath rulers and their cronies back home. That's what I've been getting at, as you probably gathered. In other words, ordinary people don't actually have a good reason to die and kill for X in a war, because X is always rulers and wars are always about their personal gain at the expense of countless ordinary people.