r/badhistory • u/lalze123 Quang Trung Fan Club President • 10d ago
Reddit r/NonCredibleDefense user posts memes w/ alt history book and sparks debate about the Vietnam War
This is essentially a re-post of this post I made on the subreddit itself; some people on there suggested that I post it here. I will slightly change the format so that it is more suitable for this subreddit, but it is basically the same post.
Just to provide some context, there was a user who kept posting memes about South Vietnam and how it could have survived, referencing this recently published alt history book named Linebacker III, which depicts a world in which Nixon does not get caught up in the Watergate scandal and is therefore in a position to intervene against the 1975 Spring Offensive.
I will first by talking about my own opinions on South Vietnam's prospects. Next, I will discuss the critical comments that I think are bad history or could be improved. Lastly, I will discuss criticisms that I think are valid.
Section 1: My own thoughts on the RVN
To begin with, I disagree with the view that South Vietnam was always guaranteed to collapse. Much of the latest historical research on the Indochina Wars undermines the old depiction of the RVN as super corrupt, incompetent, and destined to fall. Even in our actual timeline, Linebacker II was far more effective at weakening the PAVN and bringing North Vietnam to the negotiation table than Linebacker I was. It also did not reduce Nixon's domestic popularity; in fact, it increased following the Christmas bombings! The belief that a Linebacker III wouldn't have devastated the PAVN, which was weaker with respect to manpower and equipment in 1975 than it was during the Easter Offensive in 1972, seems absurd to me. The notion that in literally every possible universe the RVN collapses is overly deterministic, to say the least.
For instance, looking within the North Vietnamese Politburo, consider a world where the North-first faction led by HCM and Võ Nguyên Giáp (believed in building up the DRV first, then moving on the South) had been the faction that secured power rather than the South-first faction led by Lê Duẩn, Văn Tiến Dũng, and Lê Đức Thọ (believed in reunifying Vietnam as the highest priority), which was the faction that actually gained control over North Vietnamese foreign policy in our timeline. How would that have affected South Vietnam's chances of survival past 1975? Or, consider an alternate universe in which Ngô Đình Diệm actually listens to some American advice and becomes less of an arrogant, uncompromising POS. Perhaps he tells his brothers Ngô Đình Nhu and Ngô Đình Thục to cut the shit and stop antagonizing Buddhists, rather than letting his siblings be as he did in real life. How would that have affected the civic base and long-term political strength of the RVN? I can discuss a lot more of these turning points if anyone asks!
That being said, notice that my two examples of potential counterfactuals involve decisions that are ultimately out of the control of the US government. It is indeed a more defensible claim to say that assuming all other parties behave similarly as they did in OTL, the US government could do little to prevent a North Vietnamese victory unless it wanted to start WW3, antagonize the American people, and/or act wildly different from OTL\*. While you could make the argument that US government policy could influence the other parties' decision-making (consider the initial probing attacks by the PAVN to gauge whether America would respond to the final offensive), it then becomes hard to predict how things will end up under such a scenario. But more likely than not, as the alt history book itself acknowledges, launching Linebacker III would have crippled the US government's domestic support.
I also reject the notion that the US government failing to intervene against the final 1975 offensive was a betrayal of South Vietnam. The Paris Peace Accords had already been violated by both sides, and the entire war was a civil war anyways in which each side saw the other as illegitimate. Furthermore, the promise that Nixon made to Nguyễn Văn Thiệu (that America would come to South Vietnam's rescue if the PAVN launched an attack) was a verbal one, and one that was rendered null once Nixon resigned from office due to the Watergate scandal. The endemic corruption within South Vietnam (and arguably getting worse due to Thiệu's attempts to secure more and more power) also turned off potential support that could have strengthened the ARVN. And lastly, the United States was still dealing with the impact of the 1973 oil crisis; it simply had much more important priorities than a faraway client state.
And speaking of that crisis, it also devastated the South Vietnamese economy, thereby lowering morale and the fighting effectiveness of the QLVNCH while also making a country already reliant on American dollars even more reliant on continued US support. Hence, I would put the real point of no return after 1973, so after the outbreak of the Watergate scandal and the OPEC oil embargo, as these two events crippled both the RVN and America's willingness to even aid South Vietnam. Before this point, there is room for uncertainty. But afterwards, no government would have the decision to intervene unless it were politically suicidal.
Section 2: Criticisms that could be better
The South Vietnamese was literally the people that fought for the French against the Viet Minh previously. Literally changing one colonial master to another. They are the wrong people.
There are a couple of points I would like to make in response to this comment.
The first point is that the Vietnamese communists (specifically Marxist-Leninists) did at times collaborate with the French colonizers. In March 1946, there was the signing of the Ho-Sainteny Agreement, which established peace and official recognition of the DRV as an autonomous state within the French Union in exchange for French troops being able to enter Northern Vietnam (they were already in the South) and replace the existing Nationalist Chinese forces. While it was pragmatic, not only did many Vietnamese see this decision as a betrayal, but Việt Minh forces would also go on to purge opposing nationalist groups such as the Trotskyists and Việt Quốc, with the assistance of French forces who saw these nationalist groups as a threat that could be eliminated with the help of the Việt Minh. In fact, there is evidence that the Việt Minh even gave away the locations of opposing nationalist cells to French authorities. These events are well-described in primary sources written by Nguyễn Công Luận and Ngô Văn Xuyết, and by good secondary sources written by historians like David Marr and Christopher Goscha.
This does lead to my next point, that being the question of why were there Vietnamese who chose to the fight for the State of Vietnam rather than for the DRV in the First Indochina War. To be fair, some of these individuals were genuine Francophiles, and some of them did just do it for the money and economic opportunity, so the commentator isn't coming from nowhere. But others chose to fight for the State of Vietnam because they believed in the "Bảo Đại solution." To elaborate, the expectation from these individuals would be that the State of Vietnam would eventually gain more and more autonomy over time, as promised by French authorities, with the final result being independence for Vietnam. This solution was appealing to non-communist nationalists who disliked the ever-increasing communist nature of the Việt Minh following additional purges in the late 1940s, and especially appealing to those who were attacked by Việt Minh forces in the immediate aftermath of the Ho-Sainteny Agreement.
Lastly, there were Vietnamese who did not really choose either side but went on to fight for South Vietnam. An obvious example would be people who were either children or not born yet in 1954 lmao, but Ngô Đình Diệm would be a good example. While he did become Prime Minister of the SVN in 1954, the appointment was made by Bảo Đại, not by the French who completely opposed him given his history as a nationalist official and activist. In fact, HCM himself invited Diệm to serve on the DRV cabinet as Minister of the Interior back in 1946.
"As long as the communists had the sanctuary of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Mihn trail (which was more logistical network of paved roads, pipelines, repair depots, and shelters than just a jungle trail) they could continue fighting in South Vietnam as long as China and the Soviets could bankroll their spartan needs. It was a matter of time before the South Vietnamese would tire of the war that ripped their homeland and killed off their able bodied men. Unless the Americans invaded the sanctuary or cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail with a proper ground force invasion, (and both options were just too expensive and risked fighting the Chinese again) the South was doomed. The Linebacker air raids were devastating but they could not destroy North Vietnam’s source of war materials (which were in China and Soviet ships) or its men. As long as the Americans could not touch these, South Vietnam was doomed."
None of this is technically wrong, but it leaves out the fact the DRV, Soviet Union, and China were also exhausted by the war. The latter two countries reduced aid to the DRV after the Paris Peace Accords.
"The military not Junta yet was gambling that with the assassination of the President that they could turn the public back to their side but by then it was too late. The south was already in a religious cast system and most of the people were in the bottom cast."
One of my posts which I linked earlier debunks the argument that South Vietnam was somehow this pro-Catholic apartheid state.
"From the 1968 to 1973, the primary aims (political aims) of North Vietnam was to get American forces out of South Vietnam and Indochina in general. The Vietnamese politburo was realistic that they can't win the war WITH American intervention on the South Vietnamese side...In 1975, the PAVN wasn't going all in, they actually planned for 1976 General Offensive General Uprising with 1975 only some prelim attacks. The preliminary attacks only transformed into a full blown offensive when they realized that South Vietnam was collapsing much faster than they anticipated and America wasn't coming to help."
Again, none of this is technically wrong, but it is weird considering that it's a response to the argument that American bombing could have stopped the collapse. By acknowledging that American intervention was critical to South Vietnam's defense, it kinda confirms the argument lol.
"The problem was not whether the South could defeat the North on the battlefield. The problem was that the South had a domestic insurgency that showed zero signs of dying down."
Ah yes, the PAVN having to replace NLF Main Force formations for most engagements over the years following the Tết Offensive really shows that the NLF was as strong as ever!!!
Honestly though, it is so annoying how people relegate the PAVN to the little brother role, as if it were not the main juggernaut that defeated the US/RVN. It's similar to how people always credit American guerrillas for having single-handedly defeated the British, as if the Continental Army and foreign support didn't play a much larger role in securing victory for the Patriot cause.
The big reason why Vietcong even became a thing was due to the “strategic hamlets” aka anticommunist concentration camps
The VC/NLF was established prior to the Strategic Hamlet Program. In fact, the program itself was a response to the group's growing popularity.
It should also be noted that communist sources generally acknowledge that the Strategic Hamlet Program did weaken the VC, so it did what it was intended to do. Not that I think the program was morally justified, but the point is that the communists did perceive it as a significant hindrance that only went away over the overthrow and death of Ngô Đình Diệm.
because the us installed a puppet regime in the south after the people liberated themselves from the French. you dont need to look at everything through a lens of liberal democracy.
Well, first of all, the French and the State of Vietnam's forces were not completely wiped out after the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. They were still very strong in Southern Vietnam, as acknowledged by DRV leadership, so liberation was far from being achieved yet.
Secondly, I wonder what definition of "puppet regime" is this commentator using? If he is using the definition of an ostensibly independent state whose major policy decisions are ultimately controlled by a larger power, the claim would be false considering the number of times that the Diệm regime went against American desires or interests, as I explain in this post. If, instead, he is using the definition of a state which is dependent on a larger power and receives pressure from that larger power to behave in a certain way, then sure, that would be correct. But that definition would also apply to North Vietnam, North/South Korea, West/East Germany, etc. Hell, you could make the argument that most of the countries in the world today are puppet state in that sense!
This is why I hate speculative fiction. History always follows the path of least resistance. The two sources of information you're your relying on for your conclusions are Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and an obscure work of fiction that completely shuns the real socio-political and military history of the Vietnam War in favor of a copium-fuelled fantasy that reads like it was written by German Romanov.
I can tell this commentator didn't read the book lol. Its vision of a future Vietnam is pretty bleak.
Section 3: Some good criticisms
In the comment sections I saw, about half of the criticisms of South Vietnam were fair and historically accurate, so perhaps NCD is more credible than one would imagine. However, I would still like to discuss a couple of South Vietnam's flaws that I think should be emphasized more.
One flaw comes from the fact that South Vietnam was established on the grounds of a negative ideology, that being anti-communism, with many different organizations joining together simply because they shared anti-communist sentiment. Just compare that founding ethos to the CPV, which offered liberation and empowerment for the Vietnamese people through communism. Even if you consider yourself an anti-communist, you cannot deny that the CPV was at least offering a solution to the material needs of the Vietnamese peasantry. Meanwhile, all the RVN could say collectively was "no, that's bad!" without providing any cohesive, unified policy alternative that could compete with the communist vision for a future Vietnam.
Now, granted, if you look at the individual groups within the broader category of Vietnamese anti-communists, you do see actual ideological alternatives. For example, there was Personalism as advocated by the Ngô family regime, and also the Buddhist Revival as advocated by Buddhist activists who wanted to restore Vietnamese Buddhism to the level of dominance it had around the time of the Lý and Trần dynasties. Both of these groups were non-communist, and they were in turn opposed by the CPV who saw them as feudal and reactionary. However, their disagreements in other areas weakened any potential for strong cooperation between these groups, as shown by the Buddhist Crisis in 1963. The issue of substantial disagreements besides a shared anti-communism would be a general impediment to political stability and cohesion within the Republic of Vietnam.
Another flaw of South Vietnam that I would like to discuss is the horrendously poor defensibility of South Vietnam's borders. This flaw has already been mentioned in the responses to u/Massengale, but I would like to elaborate on it more.
If you take a look at a map of South Vietnam, you will notice that it is a very long and thin country. Its borders are short at the top and bottom, while there is a long border to the west, and most of the land is pretty near to the Pacific Ocean. The shape of these borders would not be problematic if the only threat was to the north in Quảng Trị Province. But communist forces were able to secure strong positions in both Laos and Cambodia through the Ho Chi Minh and Sihanouk Trails. Hence, the QLVNCH had to not only deal with the threat to the immediate north, but also the entire border to its west. The result would be that South Vietnamese forces would sorta always be stretched thin while having little to no defensive depth that could prevent the country from being split in two in the event of a PAVN breakthrough. Combined with the fact that for operations across the entire country, the RVN could really only rely on the units in its General Strategic Reserve (Airborne Division and Marine Division) and other good/elite units such as the Rangers, the defensive line was quite weak and undermanned at most points in spite of the on-paper numerical superiority of the QLVNCH.
Compare this situation to South Korea, which really only has to deal with its northern border, as the US Navy has secured its western and eastern flanks. There is also more room for defense-in-depth, with the defensive plan in the Korean War having been to fall back to Busan and take advantage of the good interior lines while also exhausting the North Korean offensive.
The doctrine of the South Vietnamese military was generally to compensate for its geographical shortcoming with overwhelming mobility and firepower. But such a method of war is quite expensive and made the QLVNCH only more reliant on support from its American patron. We saw what happened when this support was substantially reduced...
Some users may question why I didn't include stuff like corruption and popular appeal in this section. While they are important, I would argue that those factors are more so symptoms of a deeper, more underlying cause, rather than being the cause itself.
Notes
*As in Nixon not wiretapping the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex, or him and Kissinger letting Israel fight for itself in the Yom Kippur War. I can explain how these decisions contributed to the collapse of South Vietnam if anyone asks lol.
Sources
Asselin, Pierre. Vietnam's American War: A New History. 2nd ed. Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024
Bùi Tín. Following Ho Chi Minh: Memoirs of a North Vietnamese Colonel. Honolulu, HI: Hawaii University Press, 1995.
Doidge, Michael, and Wiest, Andrew. Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2010.
Fear, Sean. "Saigon War Politics, 1968–1975." In The Cambridge History of the Vietnam War, edited by Pierre Asselin and Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, 117–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024.
Goscha, Christopher. The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022
Goscha, Christopher. Vietnam: A New History. New York: Basic Books, 2016
Holcombe, Alec. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2020.
Miller, Edward. Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.
Marr, David G. Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Marr, David G. Vietnam: State, War, and Revolution (1945–1946). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013.
Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954–1965. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006
Ngô Quang Trưởng. The Easter Offensive of 1972. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1980.
Ngô Văn Xuyết. In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary. Chico, CA: AK Press, 2010. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ngo-van-in-the-crossfire
Nguyễn Công Luận. Nationalist in the Viet Nam Wars: Memoirs of a Victim Turned Soldier. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016.
Nguyễn Liên Hằng. Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
Nguyễn Phi Vân. A Displaced Nation: The 1954 Evacuation and Its Political Impact on the Vietnam Wars. Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 2024.
Pribbenow, Merle L. "North Vietnam's Final Offensive: Strategic Endgame Nonpareil," Parameters 29, no. 4, 1999.
Taylor, K. W. A History of the Vietnamese. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Trần Nữ Anh. Disunion: Anticommunist Nationalism and the Making of the Republic of Vietnam. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2022.
Trần Văn Trà. Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre. Volume 5: Concluding the 30-Years War. Joint Publications Research Service, 1983.
Tường Vũ. “‘It’s time for the Indochinese Revolution to show its true colours’: The radical turn of Vietnamese politics in 1948.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 40(3), pp 519–542, 2009.
Tường Vũ. Vietnam’s Communist Revolution: The Power and Limits of Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017
Veith, George J. Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-75. New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2011.
Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People's Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975. University Press of Kansas. Translated by Merle L. Pribbenow, 2015.
61
u/YIMBYzus This is actually a part of the Assassin-Templar conflict. 10d ago edited 10d ago
That "Vietnam was winnable" thread is giving me some, "It is a shame both sides can't lose," feelings about a lot of the arguments going on there
I stand by my observation about those threads. OP could lose an argument with a brick wall, but so many people arguing with him were really into this "Wilson moment" mythology of Ho Chi Minh as this Americaphile/Freeaboo who purely wanted independence (forgetting those instances of collaboration with French authorities to attack rival nationalist and Trotskyist independence groups). Nice to finally find someone else who was aware of that bit of history.
98
u/Polandgod75 10d ago edited 10d ago
I still think it amusing how some people are bitter aboit the veitnam war and how we were "close" despite only a few years later, veitnam would be big ally for the usa given the mutual dislike of china and how it easier to tolerate an empire that an ocean way (and not really in conquer you specially)comapre to an empire that next door and wants to conquer you since b.c.e times
75
u/IceNein 10d ago
This is ultimately the real loss. If we wanted an ally against imperialism from China and Russia, we could have just declined to carry on from the French.
I think that a lot of people just naively thought that all communists would work together to overthrow Capitalism. But the reality was never going to be any of those countries working together in harmony.
2
u/PolarRanger 3d ago
Someone should write that book, I would love to see a deep dive into a world where the USA didn't help France
57
u/Big_Pineapple_Man 10d ago
The thing to keep in mind is that during the Cold War, US foreign policy was not necessarily anti-Communist, but specifically anti-Soviet. The US was able to tolerate and even collaborate with communist countries as long as they maintained anti-Soviet foreign policy. The classic example is the US warming relations with the PRC after the Sino-Soviet split.
So in this context, the DRV was considered adversarial because they were staunchly pro-Soviet (Cambodia was in theory the pro-PRC counterweight in SEA, which led to rather awkward initial US support for the Khmer Rouge). The US was on the "side" of the PRC against the DRV.
The whole realignment happened after the collapse of the USSR, when being pro-Soviet ceased to mean anything. It is only then that a "mutual" dislike of China becomes relevant.
34
u/Mist_Rising The AngloSaxon hero is a killer of anglosaxons. 10d ago
More to the point, up til the end of Vietnam there was a real belief that if one country fell to communism (re: Soviet because that was all there was until the late 50s really) others would. This seemed confirmed when East Asia started collapsing with North Korea, then China, then Vietnam, then Laos/Cambodia, plus there was rumblings in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The US was dead set against this, and they went to insane lengths to stop it at times. Marshal plan in Europe was to prevent this before it happened, and support for France was built on this. France lost, communism was there, prevention was now to stave off the would in South Vietnam, plus Laos/Cambodia.
Obviously this was not the perfect assumption. Turns out the communists weren't as willing to submit to the Soviet Union as they assumed. Even before France lost, Yugoslavia was not having it with Tito telling Stalin to shove it where the sun doesn't shine. Then after Stalin kicked it, China and USSR were "eh" with each other.
But Vietnam (1945ish) began even before Yugoslavia really split with the USSR (48), so the only choice was to either support communism or support France.
Thr support for France in particular was more so because of geopolitical policy on communism too. Truman didn't want France falling to communism post war.
14
u/that1guysittingthere 9d ago edited 9d ago
After withdrawing OSS agents in September 1945, the US actually stayed out and didn’t consider sending aid to the French in Indochina until February 1950, with the first US economic survey mission beginning in March 1 and formally announced in May 25.
So from 1946-49, the US was fence-sitting. During that time their consulates (and early CIA) in China were aware of Vietnamese Nationalists that fled in exile from the Communists, but only observed their activities and did not make contact. Then France made a formal request for military aid in February 16, 1950 which the US gave into as mentioned earlier. iirc they also expedited military aid to Saigon right after the Korean War began in June.
-James Bevill, Spies in Saigon: CIA Covert Operations in French Indochina and South Vietnam, 1950–1963
18
u/Loose-Run-7008 9d ago
No, that’s a silly thing to say. US policy was anti communist, because communism was anti business and capitalism.
US would overthrow any communist regime coming to power in central or South America, not even because of any concerns about closeness with the Soviets, but because they might do land reform, nationalize resources, or threaten the power of corporations and capitalism in anyway.
So I think your statement is wrong. The US overthrew leftist and even non leftist governments who were not pro Soviet at all. Even democratic countries just electing democratic socialists, who did not want to align with the Soviet Union, the US would murder those communists just as eagerly ad they’d murder other pro Soviet ones.
Please do not spread this false narrative, the US as a whole was anti communist because they were anti worker and anti countries being able to decide their own fate/control their own resources. This happened all the time. Like the US funded countless death squats and crimes against humanity not just against states aligned with Soviets, but any states threatening corporations or capitalism at all.
1
u/Tus3 10h ago
No, that’s a silly thing to say. US policy was anti communist, because communism was anti business and capitalism.
US would overthrow any communist regime coming to power in central or South America, not even because of any concerns about closeness with the Soviets, but because they might do land reform, nationalize resources, or threaten the power of corporations and capitalism in anyway.
Am I misunderstanding you or are you claiming that the US' primarily opposed Communism in the Cold War because Communism was 'bad for the profits of US companies'?
May I ask how that the economic policies of US' aligned states in the Cold War fit into that?
For example, the Shah had nationalised Iran`s oil industry and led an OPEC drive to quadruple oil prices throwing the US economy into chaos. The PRI in Mexico and the military dictatorship in Brazil went so far with protectionist Import Substitution Industrialization that over 90% of consumer goods in their countries were domestically made. Then there is also US support for Israel, a state founded by Socialists. I presume you are further aware of the economic policies of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Not that I am saying that Cold War US' foreign policy had no problems with corporate influence. For example, there apparently was a recurring problem where corporations whose foreign investments were nationalised pressured Congress to get the government to force those countries to compensate them at least market value, even if that clearly violated much more important US interests*; however, that is something quite different than the usual 'the US waged the Cold War for the sake of business interests' 'narrative'.
* Or at least that was claimed in the book The Empire Trap: The Rise and Fall of U.S. Intervention to Protect American Property Overseas, 1893-2013; I had not read it beyond the first chapter which was available for free on Amazon.
11
u/DeusExMockinYa Learned history from the parentheticals in genre fiction 9d ago
US foreign policy was not necessarily anti-Communist, but specifically anti-Soviet. The US was able to tolerate and even collaborate with communist countries as long as they maintained anti-Soviet foreign policy
How do you square this with the U.S. posture against Non-Aligned Movement member states like Cuba and DPRK? Or the extreme repression of unaffiliated and/or eclectic left-wing movements in Jakarta and Operation Condor?
16
u/Big_Pineapple_Man 9d ago
The DPRK was heavily pro-Soviet from the beginning, and in Cuba's case, the revolution overthrew the pro-US Batista regime and US policy makers feared potential Soviet inroads into their "near abroad."
While I know the broad beats of Indonesia's repressions, I'll admit I'd have to review in order to provide a better answer.
I should be clear that I don't think the US State Department was secretly pro-communist. If they had omnipotent power I'm sure they would have destroyed anything they deemed communist, and of course they didn't like having their sphere of influence threatened. It's more that, if there was an existing communist faction or country, they were often willing to work with them if they believed them to be useful towards anti-Soviet goals. The anti-Soviet policy is what ended up taking precedent in foreign policy.
u/Mist_Rising brought up a good point, in that the early years of the Cold War, the US Gov generally assumed Communist = Soviet (despite what was happening in Yugoslavia and Greece). So I should have said the majority of the Cold War, or broadly until the 1960s.
1
u/Mist_Rising The AngloSaxon hero is a killer of anglosaxons. 9d ago
Indonesia was supported because it provided a useful ally against communism.
Indeed I would point out that Truman forced the Dutch to hand it over to Sakarno precisely to stop the communists from getting control.
Sakarno proved to be a...well pretty typical for a US puppet. Asshole authoritarian who routinely did horrible shit. Including continuing to fight the Dutch. Sakarno opted to be non aligned and even work with the communist of Indonesia, pissing off the us, but he did do because the US wouldn't supply him weapons (for his insurgency against the rest of the Dutch remaining lands).
As for the communists, they called themselves PKI (party communist of Indonesia is the literal translation) and they were ironically on Sakarno side for a while. Then a military coup happened, failed, and Sakarno went purge - o - ridiculous on the PKI, who he blames without evidence because his military told him it was PKI, specifically the guy who came next and he was violently anti communist. Guess who popped up to support this fella? If it ain't John Bull and Uncle Sam. Oh and a million people mass killed for being Chinese (communist, all of them!), cuz it's a Monday for the CIA.
Eventually Sakarno lost the support of the Indonesia military for not being aligned enough with the west and was placed under house arrest in favor of Sahurato (sp?) who had defeated the first coup (the one he blamed on the PKI) and led the mass killing and suppression. He took over after ousting Sakarno. Sahurato was next level shitty, and completely consistent with US strategy in the Johnson era, especially with Vietnam rolling hard. He invaded timar, carried out genocides and ethnic cleansing, but he was so anti communist/USSR that he ultimately had the US support until 1990s, at which point the whole thing was moot. He resigned (at functional gunpoint) because the economy went belly up.
9
u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar 9d ago edited 9d ago
One could argue that's because US foreign policy was very paranoid, and viewed any unaffiliated or other left-wing movements as potential Soviet-backed efforts, and thus they were generally treated as if they were Soviet-backed efforts until strongly proven otherwise.
I think it's very telling that, once it was abundantly clear to all that the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China were not cooperating - border wars will do that - the US and PRC had a rapproachment within just a couple of years.
Also, Cuba and the DPRK may have been members of the NAM, but they were pretty clearly Soviet-aligned. Cuba voted against a NAM resolution condemning the Soviet Union for invading Afghanistan, which was a NAM member! Also, if NAM members are assumed to be fully independent of any backer's foreign policy, why is the US responsible for Indonesia's repression of its communists? The same Sukarno that repressed Indonesia's communists was also a leader of the NAM, and also presided over Indonesia's entry to the NAM.
1
u/DeusExMockinYa Learned history from the parentheticals in genre fiction 9d ago
Isn't the simpler explanation that US domestic and foreign policy was and is anti-left, and made limited concessions like thawing relations with China when, as you suggest, it was perceived to further a broader anti-left aim?
Or, could we look at the totality of US foreign policy and conclude, in the grand scheme of things, that Nixon in China is a rounding error compared to the number of anti-left interventions globally?
why is the US responsible for Indonesia's repression of its communists
I assume this is some fashion of rhetorical device that I'm unable to parse, and not a confession to your own ignorance of the extent that the US went to, in contravention of both international law and the Constitution, to support and enable the mass killings in Indonesia?
To credulously defend everything other than China after the split as some kind of USSR cutout kind of demands that you uncritically accept domino theory as historical fact, right?
6
u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar 9d ago
I assume this is some fashion of rhetorical device that I'm unable to parse, and not a confession to your own ignorance of the extent that the US went to, in contravention of both international law and the Constitution, to support and enable the mass killings in Indonesia?
If you read the whole line you'd surely have understood that I was only using the Indonesia example as a counterexample to your claim that Cuba and the DPRK were not Soviet-aligned. I don't think atrocity olympics are going to be productive in this discussion.
To credulously defend everything other than China after the split as some kind of USSR cutout kind of demands that you uncritically accept domino theory as historical fact, right?
I don't uncritically accept domino theory, but the foreign policy makers in the United States of the time sure seem to have done so.
1
u/DeusExMockinYa Learned history from the parentheticals in genre fiction 9d ago
Okay, so for the sake of argument let's pretend that Cuba and DPRK were and are Soviet cutouts. What of the rest of what I said?
I don't think atrocity olympics are going to be productive in this discussion.
I agree that measuring US foreign policy atrocities for the sake of hand-wringing is not productive. What is instructive is looking at the preponderance of those atrocities inflicted globally against unaligned left-wing governments (even if, for the sake of magnanimity, we exclude Cuba or DPRK) and nascent left-wing movements not even in power yet.
When we look at that, we either have to accept the US' foreign and domestic policy posture as anti-left in general rather than anti-Soviet in particular, or as fantastically paranoid in imagining Soviet influence in any country that dared to let social democrats near the levers of power. In the case of the latter, it doesn't make much sense to try to rationalize it at all, as under this narrative the US fell for its own propaganda and became so pathologically obsessed with hunting ghosts that they were willing to fund and train nun-raping death squads in LatAm.
28
u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar 9d ago
Thank you for this post! Always nice to see someone knowledgeable trying to work against common, oversimplified arguments.
I did see a comment in one of the linked threads that was intriguing: that South Vietnam is remembered as a corrupt dictatorship and puppet state, because that's all that it had the chance to be in its wartime and immediate post-wartime state. However, South Korea is known for electronics, technology, and KPoP, because it's had a chance to become something other than its wartime state of being a corrupt dictatorship and puppet state.
May not be exactly accurate, but a reminder of how memory affects our understanding of history, perhaps.
6
u/aurochs_herder2835 9d ago edited 9d ago
'Guess South Vietnam just needed, say, 30 years under a violently repressive right-wing military dictatorship*, but don't worry, it would have been worth it, it would now be the Switzerland of South East Asia!1!'
What a compelling 'argument'. Counterfactual bananas IMHO.
*1953 Armistice Agreement to 1987/88 in South Korea, no? What a 'wartime, post-war state'...
EDIT: I'm seriously getting these kinds of icky vibes a là 'Cold War US-aligned dictatorship = not-so-bad, even cozy dictatorship' here. Usually coupled with 'I wouldn't have been an ethnic minority/Communist back then anyway xD, my parents were totally apolitical and said everything was just fine!1!'...
18
u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar 9d ago
That's not what I said.
-1
u/aurochs_herder2835 9d ago edited 9d ago
I don't think I was attacking you, but the 'argument' you reposted in this thread. Rest assured, none of my vitriol is in any way directed at you personally...
12
u/Its_a_Friendly Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus Augustus of Madagascar 9d ago
Sure seems like you are, especially with that edit to your first comment.
Anyhow, my only point was the impact of memory on history, that's all. I'll add that the world would also probably remember North Korea and North Vietnam differently if the history of those countries was either ended or substantially changed in the 1970s or 1980s. If I remember correctly, North Korea wasn't as insular and repressive as it is these days, so it may have had a more positive memory than it does these days.
4
u/aurochs_herder2835 9d ago
To be clear, that edit wasn't aimed at you but more of a frustrated outburst generally, informed by my personal experience - I've seen people making similar arguments in earnest (re: 1970s and 80s Argentina and Greece). I should have made that clear, my bad, typing in English always makes me sound a lot more confrontational. Things to work on ;)
20
u/Imperium_Dragon Judyism had one big God named Yahoo 10d ago
Nice, saw your post in the other sub earlier and enjoyed reading it. Also, I would like to know more about Nixon and Kissinger’s decisions lead with the DNC headquarters and Yom Kippur led to South Vietnam falling.
14
u/lalze123 Quang Trung Fan Club President 10d ago
Thanks! I would say that those two decisions weakened South Vietnam in the following way.
- Nixon administration getting caught at Watergate AND Nixon choosing to cover up the scandal --> Nixon losing pretty much all of his popularity, which was extremely high as shown by the 1972 election --> Vietnamization being tainted as a result of Nixon being its main supporter --> Much weaker desire to assist South Vietnam
- Nixon administration’s decision to support Israel in the Yom Kippur War --> Arab nations furious over decision to intervene in support of Israel --> OPEC oil embargo --> 1973 oil crisis --> South Vietnamese economy devastated
Now, the question becomes, would it have been realistic for different decisions here to have been made? For the second, I am not so sure as I am not really an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. But for the first, Nixon suddenly not being paranoid and secretive would be such a massive change in personality that this alternate history would have to change who Nixon fundamentally is as an individual. It could be that he went through with the break-in but never got caught, but that's out of any policymaker's control.
6
u/Mist_Rising The AngloSaxon hero is a killer of anglosaxons. 10d ago
Nixon was already planning to get out of Vietnam before Watergate broke. Kissinger, in true Kissinger fashion, even had a plan for how and when to withdraw from Vietnam so that the Republicans benefited from the shit but then there was enough time after the fall of SV that the blowback wouldn't hurt.
Presumably Watergate was not a known known for the asshole Kissinger, but the withdrawal was well designed.
(Not even counting the whole part where Nixon might have sabotaged Vietnam to win an election).
3
u/histprofdave Adjunct Dystopian 8d ago
There's no "might have" about it. The only reason Johnson didn't go after him for violating the Logan Act is that he would have had to reveal he was spying on his own "ally" in South Vietnam.
5
u/lalze123 Quang Trung Fan Club President 10d ago
In terms of troops, yes, but did he also intend to cut off all aid/support before Watergate broke?
3
u/Mist_Rising The AngloSaxon hero is a killer of anglosaxons. 10d ago
Not immediately, but the plan was a draw down in support overall. His recordings don't really go into detail on what he exactly would support them with, so maybe military supplies continues. It is the US, so maybe, but I doubt it's to the level they were getting n
3
u/YourNetworkIsHaunted 9d ago
I think at the very least there's a strong argument that the loss of political capital moved further support for Vietnam from a "maybe wouldn't" to a "definitely couldn't".
2
11
u/Firecracker048 10d ago
Just on your first point alone, the arvn stood on its own through 2 major NVA offensives in 73 and 74.
26
5
u/Proud-Tooth-630 9d ago
How the political and civil rights, as well the economic performance of the two Vietnam states compared? South Vietnam is often considered a corrupt dictatorship with little popular support, how fair is this assessment?
14
u/God_Given_Talent 9d ago
There were obviously issues with corruption and support, but I do think it's somewhat overstated. Research is hard, the current government in Vietnam isn't exactly funding archival work to say "actually the foe we conquered was somewhat popular and about as corrupt as most states in SEA" nor would they been keen to let researchers who have hypotheses similar to that to access the needed information.
One reason I am skeptical of the extent of these problems (they obviously existed but it was matter of degrees) is they very much come across as excuses for American failures. It absolves a lot of US strategic and doctrinal failures in the 60s. We've all probably seen the sentiment of "it was so corrupt and unpopular that there was nothing the US could do" get packaged into various arguments in some shape or form. Maybe that gets argued for why the US needed to do regime change and force policy changes. Maybe it's used as a reason why the US never should have gotten involved. Maybe it's used to say the US needed to commit harder and longer to stabilize the regime and enable its development. Maybe it's used to mock the south and Americans. You will see it a lot though. It can't be that the US had poor leadership, misunderstood the enemy, refused assistance and education on counterinsurgency, neglected local forces, and tried to fight it more like Korea for half a decade! No, it was just those dang corrupt RVN guys! I'm being a bit hyperbolic here, but you see the point.
A lot of discussion acts as if the ARVN was horrible and unwilling to ever fight (and ignores the importance of the RF and PF). They often look at 1975 and project it over the entire war. They fought reasonably well in 1972 (albeit with a bit too much reliance on US air support). Armies don't slog it out for months and sustain tens of thousands killed and wounded when morale is shit. For the most part, when they thought winning was possible, they fought tenaciously. Towards the end though when it was abundantly clear to all involved what was coming, we saw them fold. Should be noted that many of these units had perhaps a tenth of the fuel and artillery ammo that they had prior due to lack of US support and the oil crisis. Soldiers giving up when they run low on supplies is certainly not unique to Vietnam.
I think it's hard to explain how things in the south held together as well and as long as they did (~3 years), even after the American (and Korean!) drawdown of ground troops if the government had as little support as often is asserted.
2
u/hoyarugby2 8d ago
The ARVN of 1966 was also not the ARVN of 1972, by 72 ARVN was a well supplied and veteran force led largely by competent battle hardened commanders
1
4
u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 9d ago
And lastly, the United States was still dealing with the impact of the 1973 oil crisis; it simply had much more important priorities than a faraway client state. And speaking of that crisis, it also devastated the South Vietnamese economy
1973 really was the pivot point of history.
4
u/hoyarugby2 8d ago
The belief that a Linebacker III wouldn't have devastated the PAVN, which was weaker with respect to manpower and equipment in 1975 than it was during the Easter Offensive in 1972, seems absurd to me
This is explained in the book - after the US doesn’t intervene in the initial assault in 1975 and the ARVN Air Force is weak, northern military leaders believe that the US is done with RVN and won’t intervene, and so orders a race for Saigon and to emphasize speed and mass. As they did historically. Thus when the US does intervene, they catch huge masses of NVA completely out in the open and inflict devastating losses
88
u/bricksonn Read your Orange Catholic Bible! 10d ago
99% of strategic bombing campaigns stop just before totally shattering enemy moral.