You are ignorant on the subject.
I take the word of Americans who were actually on the ground there and they agree almost to a man that it was a mistake. Armchair Generals need not apply.
You have a very slanted view on this and would be better off doing some research.
Ho Chi Minh didn't give a rats ass about the people or reunification unless he and his henchmen were in power.
So you think the Vietnamese people are unhappy today? Nothing could be farther from the truth. Their only worry now is China.
From the war I mean and stopped America?
And no, I'm not talking about mere protesting only. . . .
A lot of people over and over keep saying that it was wrong and that America was evil for fighting it. . . . . . . . . If that is so, Why didn't the world protect it?
And as for America -> blockade it, Sanction it, Threaten invasion if it still pursues the war. . . .
That could have saved millions of lives. . . .
So why didn't the world do anything and instead just complained about it?
You are the most ignorant person that I ever had a discussion with on this.
For many who study foreign affairs, the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake brought about by U.S. leaders who exaggerated the influence of communism and underestimated the power of nationalism.
Another interpretation, a fourth one, has recently emerged, now that the Vietnam War is history and can be studied dispassionately by scholars with greater, though not unlimited, access to records on all sides.
The emerging scholarly synthesis interprets the war in the global context of the Cold War that lasted from the aftermath of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In this view, Vietnam was neither a crime, a forfeit nor a tragic mistake. It was a proxy conflict in the Cold War.
Today has little to do with then......................got it?
Read up on Ho Chi Minh and get back to us.
Go to Vietnam, and watch any citizen talking bad about the government and see what happens to them.
So if the Soviet Union wasn't boycotting the UN Security Council at the time and they exercised their veto on UNSCR 83, then would intervention in the conflict still have been justified?
Um, I'd hardly call the US a "colonial nation"....
We tried to save Vietnam. I did two tours there during the war and we never lost a major battle. We hit a lick for freedom there and made the lousy Marxist Communists pay a steep price for their Pyrrhic "victory."
We could have won that war if the Jane Fonda liberals weren't such a bunch of bleeding heart ******s.
Do you favor appeasement of Putin like Trump is doing? History does seem to repeat itself. As far as getting involved in civil wars I'm afraid our track record speaks for itself. BTW I don't believe Korea was a "normal" civil war, it was more like a military coup assisted by China. I don't believe that N. Korea's leader ever had the support of the people like Ho had in Vietnam.
Here's the way I figure it...and credit where credit is due, I got this viewpoint from a chapter in Henry Kissinger's classic book Diplomacy - I highly recommend reading it if you haven't already.
Basically, there are two schools of thought where it comes to American Foreign Policy... Wilsonian Idealism and (Teddy) Rooseveltian Realism. Basically, Wilsonian Idealism involves the fostering of regional alliances and intervening on behalf of weaker allies when they are threatened by stronger neighbors. It was pretty much the dominant ideology of the Cold War. Rooseveltian Realism divides the world up into spheres of influence dominated by the great powers... it involves taking a hard-eyed look at the world and only intervening when our direct national interests are threatened. A Rooseveltian Realist probably would have intervened in Korea because of the threat to Japan (being, at the time, within our sphere of influence) but would have taken a dim view of intervening in Vietnam (viewing it as being more within China's sphere of influence). If the Soviet Union wanted to contest Vietnam falling into China's hegemony, it could have done so and opened up the split between the two nations and the US could have stayed out of it. Hence, Nixon's "triangulation" strategy.
Of course, being the real world, I don't think all that many of our Presidents have been "purists" where it comes to these two strands... their policies have tended to fall somewhere between the two extremes. Kennedy and Johnson's actions in Vietnam were probably more Wilsonian while Nixon's were probably more Rooseveltian, but you get the basic idea.
Where it comes to Trump, I think he's probably the most Rooseveltian we've had since Nixon - even more so than Nixon. He has little use for NATO because that's a textbook Wilsonian organization. The EU is a Great Power, and so should act accordingly by strengthening it's military and establishing it's own sphere of influence. The same with Japan. Not seeing Syria as being within the US sphere of influence, he is more than willing to leave it to the Russians to deal with.... but Russia herself is going to have problems there. Syria is a proxy fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran... and Turkey, for that matter. One of those three will end up the dominant power in the region and probably the next Great Power. Not Trump's concern, though.
You want to know how a Rooseveltian Realist as PM of the UK would have dealt with Hitler? By drawing a line at Western Europe.... stay out of Flanders and Scandanavia, and we'll be fine. Let the Soviets deal with them. Eventually Germany's sphere of influence would have come into conflict with the Soviets and they would have fought it out. Maybe the winner would have been weakened and easier to deal with... or maybe the winner would have emerged as the world's dominant superpower? Who knows? It would have been a very different world, though.
Well the USA does have / did have a range of territorial possessions - the Philippines ?
But generally no, the USA was firmly anti-colonialist
It opposed British control of indigenous peoples for example.
Yet such was its obsession with opposing communism in the 1950's the USA was willing to step into the shoes of the colonial French.
No question about it, the USA was seen as the successors to the French imperial government
In Vietnam they don't refer to the Vietnam War - they refer to the "French War" and the "American War"
The French are an arrogant, stubborn people...they tried to hang on to their empire in the face of world opinion and world views....
They lost badly in Vietnam and Algeria
The British realized the age of European Empires had ended and surrendered heir empire back to the people over which they had ruled.
I firmly believe that the USA's most powerful weapon in the late 50's and 1960's wasn't its military but the $$$
Eisenhower, and then Kennedy should have gone to Vietnam...invited Ho Chi Minh to come to the USA. Supported him and funded public works. Built factories in Vietnam making everything from Coca-Cola to Chevrolet trucks
Father Ho would still have been a communist but he'd have been OUR communist.
Any "realist" would tell you that Hitler was going to invade France no matter what treaty we made. Trump is compromised by Putin period and has no choice but to appease him. He has no concept of what foreign policy even is. He knows about saving his own neck and that's enough for him.
You know, I didn't think it was even possible to underestimate Donald Trump.... but somehow you've managed to do it.
I'm not saying that Trump is right, or that I agree with him... but he's not some comic-book villain. You ought to at least try to understand him if you want to understand what's going on in the world.
I'm a former New Yorker and grew up with Trump. There is a good reason that NY voted so strongly for Hillary and it is because we know him all too well. You are overestimating his intelligence if you think he has a clue about foreign policy. Mueller will be proving that he is compromised by Russia shortly too.
Thank you for your service. America's finest. I do hope you know that nobody's blaming you guy's for that fiasco. You would have gone anywhere we sent you because that's what good soldiers do. It was shameful what our leaders did to you guys. At least when you walk in to a room with your veteran hat on, good people, from all political walks, give you the respect you have earned. I know. That and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee but that kind of respect cannot be purchased. Thank you again.
Do you think our NATO allies should be carrying more of the burden for their security?
We're spending about 3.1% of GDP on Defense....the UK spends about 1.8%. Italy spends 1.7%. Canada spends about 1.3%. Germany spends about 1.2%.... outside of NATO, Japan spends 0.9%.
We spend too much on the military and there is too much wasted as a result. I'm pretty sure other nations are more careful with their money than we are. I also see no sign that we will cut spending if others spend more so that is just more nations wasting more capital with more redundancy. That said all previous President made the same plea, they just did not do it in such an insulting and destabilizing way as Trump. They did not threaten to get out of NATO like he did either. His treatment of our lifelong allies is shameful and disgusting as is his praise of murderous dictators and siding with Putin against our own intelligence agencies. That is not how you get allies to cooperate. Surely you can at least see that unless you are truly blind.
To be fair, I can't recall any other President being all that successful in their nuanced approaches, either. The Cold War ended over 25 years ago... I can't help but think that maybe Trump does have a point - maybe it's past time we adapted our foreign policy to the new post-Cold War realities? If Europe is committed to their Union and Japan in continuing to be an economic super-power... then maybe it's high time they started assuming more of the burdens of that come with being a Great Power?
Do you think our NATO allies should be carrying more of the burden for their security?
We're spending about 3.1% of GDP on Defense....the UK spends about 1.8%. Italy spends 1.7%. Canada spends about 1.3%. Germany spends about 1.2%.... outside of NATO, Japan spends 0.9%.
LBJ tried that approach in his Johns Hopkins Speech. The North Vietnamese just shrugged it off.
The USA spends WAY too much on defense
WAY TOO MUCH
But in answer to your question...yes most NATO countries don't spend enough.
It was probably too late by then
LBJ should have gone to Hanoi
Would've been tough...a apology or two.
Might still have been possible.
Would you concede that if NATO and other allies like Japan increased their defense spending to 2% of GDP then it might conceivably allow the US to reduce their spending to a more reasonable 2.5%?
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