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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 Vietn
by 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 agoExactly. 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 agoI 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.
- mafribe 11y agorealizing the abstraction of a unified Communist block was pretty faulty, and national interests superseded any ideological fidelity to the Communist cause. Interesting perspective. I think sino-soviet split, which was ideological, not nationalist, led Viet Nam to align with Moscow and Pol Pot with Beijing. This split was exploited.
- mafribe 11y agoAs another counterfactual to build intuition: had the KMT beaten Mao in the 1940's, would there be a Communist Vietnam? Moscow sent weapons to Ho Chi Minh's and Pol Pot's armies via China. So it's extremely doubtful.