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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 ove
by 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 agoIt 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 agoThe 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.