Warfare and the acceptance of casualties

[Rickshaw]

I find it interesting that the nations we pratically wiped out Germany, Japan became very close allies while our more recent limited engagements have all left enemies behind that continue to hinder peace.

Germany and Japan became allies because they were modern nations with large and skilled populations, history of industrialization, established tradition of modern effective central government, civil service beaucracy, legal structure needed for efficient implementation of policy. They also occupy the front line between the American block and the Soviet block, and they were worth the cost of making them take their place on our side.

The nations we fought in since then were all small fry of little skill, economic potentisal and intrinsic value, no concept of modern legal structure, and no system for efficient implementation of policy. Such civil service beaucracy they might have had was hastily dismissed by the US and thus lost as a tool for implement American occupation policy in one case. They weren't really worth fighting for in the first place and isn't worth a whole lot whether they are now for us or against us. If they are for us then they are more liability then asset, if they are against us we couldn't care very much less.

What you say is absolutely correct if we were talking exclusively about the speed of the recovery of the 'civil society' ans their economies but having a 'modern' system would not mean much to me when you've just incinerated millions of my countrymen (and probably my family as well)

Also counter to these countries so-called modernity they sure acted like barbarians when it came to war. I think it would be more accurate to say that they became allies not because of their modern systems but because we ruthlessly destroyed the systems they had in place and they had to become part of the US sphere IMHO.

In the other cases our 'weak' form of war left too much of the old system in place, for example, how many Nazi's were there after the war ended, now how many Taliban are left over in A-stan? Might be different if we eradicated them and not actually brought them to the peace table.

There were many Nazis left over after the end of WWII. Many of the most prominent German citizens, both sides of the Iron Curtain were actually Nazis who had changed their spots most successfully. Many officials of the new governments were minor Nazis who had escaped punishment for their complicity in the crimes of the previous regime. The Allied occupation simply could not have functioned without them. They had the experience and the ability to run government so often they simply were put back in their old positions and told to get on with it. The "de-Nazification" programme was largely a joke. If all the "t's" were crossed and the "i's" dotted, a few humbling apologies were uttered, the whole process was over and done with. Never also forget that both sides of the Curtain were quite happy to utilise Nazis to further their own defence programmes without questions being asked. Von Braun was perhaps the most prominent of those in the US.

It was simply impossible to remove or eliminate all the Nazis. Germany would have been a wasteland and the Allies no better than those they defeated. The execution lines would have been tremendous. The same in Afghanistan. The Afghans are the Taliban. The Taliban did not and do not exist separate to the Afghani population. They are a part of it and that is why "hearts and minds", which you and OBB have dismissed so readily is so important in conducting a COIN war. We saw how fruitless the American approach of "grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" was in Vietnam. Even the US Military recognised that and that is why General Petraeus turned to the acknowledged masters in COIN when rewriting the US Army's Counter-Insurgency Manual in the early two thousands. Simply "killing people" and "breaking stuff" fails dismally in such a situation.

 

[Rickshaw]

If the US had not interfered, the Communists would have won the elections which were called for under those accords and no second Indochina War would have eventuated.

True. Instead of fighting the commies in VN, the US might have had to fight them in New Guinea or Australia.

i have a question about that statement. according to the pentagon papers a memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:

• 70% - To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat.
• 20% - To keep [South Vietnam] (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
• 10% - To permit the people [of South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way of life.
• ALSO - To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used.
• NOT - To "help a friend"

isn't that quite a stretch to say that new guinea or australia was going to be a war zone?

Vietnam was never going to be in "Chinese hands". OBB obviously still believes still in the "Domino Effect".

As we know and knew, Vietnam and the Chinese were merely allies of convenience during the first and second Indochinese wars. There were over a thousand years of enmity between the two societies. The Vietnamese were no more going to allow the Chinese to occupy their country than they were prepared to let the Americans do it. In 1969, as part of the Cultural Revolution, Beijing and the fUSSR and Hanoi fell out. Whereas previously Soviet supplies had flowed across country, on the Chinese railways to North Vietnam, the Chinese Red Guards, under Mao's direction began attacking and vandalising the trains destined for Hanoi. This in turn forced the Russians to resort to increase supply by ship into Haiphong Harbour.

Then you have the American rapproachement with Beijing under Nixon, which rather destroyed 20% of the reasons why the US was in Vietnam.

As for the 10% to allow the Vietnamese to "enjoy a freer, better life", one wonders how that was justified in the face of the South Vietnamese government's oppression of the population, it's corruption and of course, such things as the Phoenix Programme?

 

[Abraham Gubler]

which goals?

Drive the communists out of South Viet Nam and end their war of conquest. This was accomplished. And a few years later, the North tried again, found the US was unwilling to go back, and conquered the South.

Interestingly on this issue, the lack of American support for South VietNam in 75, Admiral James Holloway III (USN CNO at the time) wrote that the game had changed between 72 (when the US thumped North VietNam to keep them out of the South) and 75. In particular that establishing relations with China and an effective anti-Soviet alliance had moved the strategic border of containing the Soviet Union from the intra Viet DMZ to the Yalu River (China-Russia border). So South VietNam was no long of the same strategic importance to the American Cold War strategy. The frontline had leapfrogged VietNam transforming it overnight to unimportant side show.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

However, I would argue that there is a consistent trend in putting colonial troops into some of the roughest areas (in U.K. strategy). I suspect that one of the reasons is that political fallout is minimized in the home country (U.K.) if casualties are from a smaller colony.

Not at all. The British Dominion (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) troops, which is very different to Colonial (where most of the population were not of British or other European stock), became shock troops for the Empire because they had higher motivation and fitness on average compared to the troops raised from the UK. They were proven time and time again on average better troops. All to do with the more well fed (childhood protein intake is the most important variable in adult intelligence), rural and independent upbringing available out in the settler dominions compared to the motherland. South Africans fall under this banner as well but usually as individuals because of the mixed loyalty of the Afrikaner population thanks to the Boer War and all that.

I would also suggest that colonial troops tend to be fighting for more abstract reasons (i.e. they've never seen what they are defending) and that colonial populations are used to making sacrifices for distant 'mother countries' - which makes them somewhat amicable.

The dominion troops knew exactly what they were fighting for in the same wars as the UK troops. The threats in WWI and WWII were global in scope and not just about defending Sussex from invasion.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

i have a question about that statement. according to the pentagon papers a memo from the Defense Department under the Johnson Administration listed the reasons for American persistence:

Every government department publishes thousands of memos per annum that don’t necessarily encapsulate the strategic thinking of the Government.

American involvement in South VietNam was clearly explained at the start of that conflict: to keep the Communists from taking over. While the domino theory has been apparently revised as a nonsense as part of the general effort to portray the VietNam War in the worst possible light it was a real issue in the 60s, 70s and into the 80s for countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillipines. All of which fought Communist insurgencies during these times. And would have had a much harder run of it in the 60s and 70s if so much Communist effort hadn’t been expended in Indochina.

While its perhaps a bit of a stretch for the Communist push to reach New Guinea and Australia it would have been a very, very serious event if it had reached Malaysia and Indonesia with anywhere near the strength that had been deployed in VietNam. A serious Communist insurgency with external support in Malaysia and Indonesia could have disrupted vital trade routes and seriously harmed the economies of the western alliance. Which would have strengthened the Soviet Union and prolonged the Cold War.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Why do you want to limit the discussion solely to "modern" and "Western?"

'cause "Modern and Western" are considered the most advanced societies.

While true, it's irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Why would the Communists want New Guinea or Australia? :

Really? Really?

Communism is a *universalist* ideology.

Is it?

Yes.

Why then did Communist ideologues believe that societies needed to reach a particular stage in their development in order to be "ripe for revolution". That stage was industrialisation and when revolutionaries such as Mao and Ho proposed that it was not necessary, they were invariably initially brought to heel and then later purged.

Mao wound up ruling China with an iron commie fist, you may recall.

And since the communists were more than happy to take over relatively backwater and undeveloped China (and Viet Nam, and try for Angola and everywhere else), your own argument answers why they'd want New Guinea and Australia.

Communism is no more "universalist" than is Capitalism. :

So... entirely universalist, then. The difference, of course, is the communism will *force* everyone it can into the system, where capitalism will buy its way in. No matter how powerful the communist police state may be, there will always be a capitalist black market working away...

 

[Rickshaw]

Why would the Communists want New Guinea or Australia? :

Really? Really?

Communism is a *universalist* ideology.

Is it?

Yes.

Then you are mistaken.

Why then did Communist ideologues believe that societies needed to reach a particular stage in their development in order to be "ripe for revolution". That stage was industrialisation and when revolutionaries such as Mao and Ho proposed that it was not necessary, they were invariably initially brought to heel and then later purged.

Mao wound up ruling China with an iron commie fist, you may recall.

Mao claimed he was a Communist but virtually everything he did ran counter to Communist theory.

And since the communists were more than happy to take over relatively backwater and undeveloped China (and Viet Nam, and try for Angola and everywhere else), your own argument answers why they'd want New Guinea and Australia.

Some Communists were "more than happy", however the mainstream Communists weren't. They believed society had to reach the correct stage to become Communist. Neither China nor Vietnam were industrialised, hence not considered "ripe for revolution".

Communism is no more "universalist" than is Capitalism. :

So... entirely universalist, then. The difference, of course, is the communism will *force* everyone it can into the system, where capitalism will buy its way in. No matter how powerful the communist police state may be, there will always be a capitalist black market working away...

No, as I keep pointing out, it is obvious you do not understand what you're talking about. The Communists split over the matter of whether an agrarian society could have a Communist Revolution. Mao's group took control of the Chinese Communist Party, the Soviet Union's proteges lost that argument and ended up exiled or dead.

Whether there is a black market or not, Capitalism is like Communism only appropriate in a developed industrialised society. Therefore it is not "universalist". Adam Smith would be turning in his grave hear you comments. He was under no illusions as to the required development to make capitalism work, just as Marx and Lenin were under no illusions as to what they believed was needed to make Communism work.

 

[RanulfC]

OBB;

You have an "issue" with your attempt to correlate the "fall" of Vietnam with the later "expansion" of Communism to Afghanistan. You have already dismissed the Russian "invasion" of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as not being an "expansion" of Communism because Czechoslovakia was already in the "Soviet Sphere of Influance". But this brings up the "problem" with trying to define the Soviet "intervention" into Afghanistan being any different that the previous example. Afghanistan was already well within the "Soviet Sphere of Influance" and in fact had invited Soviet military forces into the country in 1979 to help quell an insurection. The Soviets were reinforcing "communist" rule in Afghanistan after the US had brokered the Egypt/Israel peace treaty which they saw as a military alliance, and the new danger of India as a nuclear power. Once it became clear that the current "government" of Afghanistan was incapable of running the "war" the Soviets took over in an attempt to finish the job and then withdraw. (They had in fact REFUSED military aid to the Afghan government for more than a decades prior to finally agreeing to a limited support pact. In many ways Afghanistan really WAS the Soviet Unions "Vietnam")

The "domino" theory never managed to actually materialize and it was obvious that "communism" was not a monolithic threat as had been played-up in the 50s. The US "intervened" in favor of South Vietnam in a vain attempt to retain the French within NATO (an obvioiusly doomed strategy) and rebuffed the advances made my North Vietnam to support them in a DEMOCRATIC take over of the country. They were then forced to seek help from the Soviet Union (through China at first) which required them to become "communist" in order to gain their support. At the end of the US-Vietnam war China saw Soviet influance being used to further influance the area. (Mostly due to the Vietnamese invastion and ouster of the Cambodian but China supported Khmer Rouge) So the Chinese invaded Vietnam and were less than successful at changing Vietnamese policy.

So it would seem that American involvment in Vietnam did nothing to "deter" Communist expansion and our withdrawing seems to had little or no effect either.

I should also address "Communism" as a "universalist" ideology. At first it was seen as such a "natural" evolution of government and prior to the death of Stalin he and Mao both saw it as being unable to co-exist with any other idealogy. After Stalin died his predicessors no longer saw this as being true. In fact they saw a lot of oportunities in having relations with the west. Mao on the other hand was still very hard line and broke with the Soviet Union over this issue among others. ONE of those "other" issues was groups that had labeled themselves as "Communist" (such and North Vietnam) were in fact NOT practicing or promoting "true" Communism as he saw it. By 1962 the "split" was official. It was not until after the actual conflict between the USSR and China in 1969 that Mao realized he could not take on the world (especially both the US and USSR) and win and sought American aid in countering the USSR. By the 1970s the two biggest Communist nations were pitted in a head-to-head rivalry supporting idealogical counter parties and countering each others attempts to "advance" their communist agendas in the Middle East and Africa. (With the US just sitting back and "nudging" where needed to keep things off balance, the US policy was always that the USSR not China was the "main" Communist threat) By 1979 China had denounced both Mao and the "Cultural Revolution" and were seeking more normalized relations with the United States and had (as had the Soviet Union much earlier) dropped all aspects of Communism being a "universalist" ideaology and had accepted that Communism and Capitalism could co-exist in the world. (Oh the rhetoric is that EVENTUALLY we will come aound to the "right" way of thinking but there is no rush and no need to fight about it)

As far as I am aware the ONLY "Communist" nation that still adheres to the "universalist" ideaology is North Korea much to China's dismay since it makes dealing with them much more difficult.

So no, OBB is quite wrong, well more correctly very, very much "out-of-date" with the current ideology of Communism as of the mid-60s.

Randy

 

[Avimimus]

Why would the Communists want New Guinea or Australia? :

Really? Really?

Communism is a *universalist* ideology.

Is it? Why then did Communist ideologues believe that societies needed to reach a particular stage in their development in order to be "ripe for revolution". That stage was industrialisation and when revolutionaries such as Mao and Ho proposed that it was not necessary, they were invariably initially brought to heel and then later purged.

Communism is no more "universalist" than is Capitalism. :

I thought we'd gotten beyond this (after all, I just saw the Sapphires an Australian movie about entertaining troops in Vietnam that was partly filmed in Communist Vietnam)

The great irony here: Both the Communists (well some of them) and the Capitalists believed in Domino theory. Both sides vastly over-estimated the seductive allure of communism or how easily people would see taking out elites as being in their own interests...

There is more agreement between the two extremes than your moderate, middle-road, muddling, English Labour party member would have... for example. He'd probably wonder why anyone who could have democracy, compromise, some conservative predictability, and a bit of health-care would possibly prefer totalitarianism...

My 2 cents... and my encouragement to get back on topic...

i.e. How important is it for a military nation to be willing to endure casualties? etc.

 

[Avimimus]

However, I would argue that there is a consistent trend in putting colonial troops into some of the roughest areas (in U.K. strategy). I suspect that one of the reasons is that political fallout is minimized in the home country (U.K.) if casualties are from a smaller colony.

Not at all. The British Dominion (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) troops, which is very different to Colonial (where most of the population were not of British or other European stock), became shock troops for the Empire because they had higher motivation and fitness on average compared to the troops raised from the UK. They were proven time and time again on average better troops. All to do with the more well fed (childhood protein intake is the most important variable in adult intelligence), rural and independent upbringing available out in the settler dominions compared to the motherland. South Africans fall under this banner as well but usually as individuals because of the mixed loyalty of the Afrikaner population thanks to the Boer War and all that.

I would also suggest that colonial troops tend to be fighting for more abstract reasons (i.e. they've never seen what they are defending) and that colonial populations are used to making sacrifices for distant 'mother countries' - which makes them somewhat amicable.

The dominion troops knew exactly what they were fighting for in the same wars as the UK troops. The threats in WWI and WWII were global in scope and not just about defending Sussex from invasion.

Thank you for your input - I will definitely incorporate this into my understanding of our history.

Thanks,

 

[Avimimus]

The North "invaders" DID win, remember? Did they or have they progressed beyond securing their borders in Laos and Cambodia?

Yes. Within a few years of the US abandoning VN, the communists invaded Afghanistan. While that proved disastrous for the Soviets, history demonstrated that while the US was fighting communism
in VN, the Soviets did not expend much effort to expand; once the US stopped fighting communist expansion, communists expanded.

Why does anyone think that an alternate history where the US does not stand up to communism leads to communism *not* expanding?

I can't believe I'm being lured into this conversation, but... Didn't most of the support for Vietnam come from Chinese sources - while the invasion (or attempted stabilisation) of Afghanistan came from Russian sources? These two countries weren't exactly on good terms during this period - in fact, by the 1984 the somewhat rabid movie Red Dawn even had the Chinese fighting the Russians...

Of course, I basically agree with you - the sudden spread of left leaning democratic governments throughout South America happens to coincide with the U.S. having all of its resources (including intelligence resources) focused on the middle-east.

So interventions by all three empires in these proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan) may have been useful for tying up each other's resources - a kind of tug-of-war with a few million dead. In which case the U.S. was quite effective in taking on all of Asia.

However, you'll have to convince me of a direct connection between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Symbolically both the U.S. and Russia had similar experiences, but I don't see the Chinese/Vietnamese connection to Afghanistan, given their relative alienation from Moscow.

 

[TaiidanTomcat]

I just saw the Sapphires an Australian movie about entertaining troops in Vietnam that was partly filmed in Communist Vietnam)

in fact, by the 1984 the somewhat rabid movie Red Dawn even had the Chinese fighting the Russians...

I like that your example of "bad relations" is a fictional movie from the 1980's, rather than the actual border skirmishs that happened between the two in the 1960s, and the animosity that followed decades after.

why are we mentioning movies in a thread that is struggling with historical perspective already? :-\ saphires was partly filmed in communist vietnam... proving??

 

[bobbymike]

I find it interesting that the nations we pratically wiped out Germany, Japan became very close allies while our more recent limited engagements have all left enemies behind that continue to hinder peace.

Germany and Japan became allies because they were modern nations with large and skilled populations, history of industrialization, established tradition of modern effective central government, civil service beaucracy, legal structure needed for efficient implementation of policy. They also occupy the front line between the American block and the Soviet block, and they were worth the cost of making them take their place on our side.

The nations we fought in since then were all small fry of little skill, economic potentisal and intrinsic value, no concept of modern legal structure, and no system for efficient implementation of policy. Such civil service beaucracy they might have had was hastily dismissed by the US and thus lost as a tool for implement American occupation policy in one case. They weren't really worth fighting for in the first place and isn't worth a whole lot whether they are now for us or against us. If they are for us then they are more liability then asset, if they are against us we couldn't care very much less.

What you say is absolutely correct if we were talking exclusively about the speed of the recovery of the 'civil society' ans their economies but having a 'modern' system would not mean much to me when you've just incinerated millions of my countrymen (and probably my family as well)

Also counter to these countries so-called modernity they sure acted like barbarians when it came to war. I think it would be more accurate to say that they became allies not because of their modern systems but because we ruthlessly destroyed the systems they had in place and they had to become part of the US sphere IMHO.

In the other cases our 'weak' form of war left too much of the old system in place, for example, how many Nazi's were there after the war ended, now how many Taliban are left over in A-stan? Might be different if we eradicated them and not actually brought them to the peace table.

There were many Nazis left over after the end of WWII. Many of the most prominent German citizens, both sides of the Iron Curtain were actually Nazis who had changed their spots most successfully. Many officials of the new governments were minor Nazis who had escaped punishment for their complicity in the crimes of the previous regime. The Allied occupation simply could not have functioned without them. They had the experience and the ability to run government so often they simply were put back in their old positions and told to get on with it. The "de-Nazification" programme was largely a joke. If all the "t's" were crossed and the "i's" dotted, a few humbling apologies were uttered, the whole process was over and done with. Never also forget that both sides of the Curtain were quite happy to utilise Nazis to further their own defence programmes without questions being asked. Von Braun was perhaps the most prominent of those in the US.

It was simply impossible to remove or eliminate all the Nazis. Germany would have been a wasteland and the Allies no better than those they defeated. The execution lines would have been tremendous. The same in Afghanistan. The Afghans are the Taliban. The Taliban did not and do not exist separate to the Afghani population. They are a part of it and that is why "hearts and minds", which you and OBB have dismissed so readily is so important in conducting a COIN war. We saw how fruitless the American approach of "grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" was in Vietnam. Even the US Military recognised that and that is why General Petraeus turned to the acknowledged masters in COIN when rewriting the US Army's Counter-Insurgency Manual in the early two thousands. Simply "killing people" and "breaking stuff" fails dismally in such a situation.

You obviously didn't understand my comment, of course there were Nazi's left in Germany and probably a lot of militarists left in Japan as well but they were not a military force sitting around the country and across borders, heavily armed, in protected regions of say Poland with the goal of destabalizing Germany. I mean today the Nazi salute is illegal. Has A-stan made the Black Turban of the Taliban illegal?

The Taliban parade around as Taliban and are invited to run in elections and come to the negotating table. I don't remmeber Nazi's still with military units wearing uniforms taking part in local elections or 'negotiating' with the previaling victors of WWII.

 

[chuck4]

Why would the Communists want New Guinea or Australia? :

Really? Really?

Communism is a *universalist* ideology.

Is it? Why then did Communist ideologues believe that societies needed to reach a particular stage in their development in order to be "ripe for revolution". That stage was industrialisation and when revolutionaries such as Mao and Ho proposed that it was not necessary, they were invariably initially brought to heel and then later purged.

Communism is no more "universalist" than is Capitalism. :

No, Some flavors of communism might focus on specific parts of the world demographics, but there are enough different flavors of communism such that no matter which country you are, there would be some communists taking his aim at you.

Notice most (if not all) communist nations did not actually espouse "Marxism", Instead they ALL espoused "Marxism-Leninism".

The subtle difference is Lenin contradicted orthrodox Marxist theory and claimed that even largely agrarian societies with limitied industrialization, such as Czarist Russia, were also ripe for leadership by communist party, and under communist party they can be rapidly brought to the level of industrial development suitable for true communism. This is how Lenin justified inciting a nominally marxist revolution in the relatively backward Czarist Russia. "Marxism-Leninism" is how communist parties the world over justify being in power eventhough no communist country iwas actually as quite as highly developed and industrialized as leading capitalist powers, and therefore none of the countries communists ruled would have been judged suitable for communist rule by orthrodox Marxist theory.

Mao took Leninism one step further. He asserted that communism didn't need industrialization or even urbanization at all. He decreed that communism can start in the country side and be moved primarily by peasants. Indistrial workers, essence of Marxist communism, would just sort of follow along. This is officially styled "Marxism-Leninism enhanced with Thoughts of Mao". Communist party of China pay lip service to it even today, eventhough the chinese communist party these days worry more about capital asset pricing models than worker's paradise. But back in the day of Vietnam war, I think Mao would be happy to take communism to the cannibals of Papua New Geniea. Cuba and Russia both followed along in places like Angola, even if they didn't actually admit they were doing what Mao espoused.

The ultimate development took place under Pol pot. Pol pot didn't just think communism didn't need industrialization or urbanization. He thought industriliation and urbanization were bad for communism. So he killed two million urbanized cambodians in an effort to return Cambodia to bronze age. Pol pot probably wouldn't be said if he actually made cannibals out of Cambodians.

 

[Avimimus]

I like that your example of "bad relations" is a fictional movie from the 1980's, rather than the actual border skirmishs that happened between the two in the 1960s, and the animosity that followed decades after.

why are we mentioning movies in a thread that is struggling with historical perspective already? :-\ saphires was partly filmed in communist vietnam... proving??

Proving that Vietnam's unification wasn't quite as frightening as people expected. As for Red Dawn: It is striking that the film writers/producers were aware of the actual border clashes. I'm used to most people I know not being aware of such things - but even a movie with such an unlikely (and perhaps hysterical) plot was aware of the disunity.

 

[chuck4]

I like that your example of "bad relations" is a fictional movie from the 1980's, rather than the actual border skirmishs that happened between the two in the 1960s, and the animosity that followed decades after.

why are we mentioning movies in a thread that is struggling with historical perspective already? :-\ saphires was partly filmed in communist vietnam... proving??

Proving that Vietnam's unification wasn't quite as frightening as people expected. As for Red Dawn: It is striking that the film writers/producers were aware of the actual border clashes. I'm used to most people I know not being aware of such things - but even a movie with such an unlikely (and perhaps hysterical) plot was aware of the disunity.

The reason why unification of Vietnam wasn't quite as frightening as people expected was because the United States got an tacit alliance with China in return for leaving Vietnam, and for the rest of the cold war, China acted as a massive check on Vietnam and Soviet Union's ability to leverage their success in the Vietnam war into the conquest of the rest of South East Asia mainland.

China hated and feared the Soviet Union because Soviet Union was strong and right on their borders. China hated and feared the United States because so long as we are waging a war in Vietnam we are also strong and right on their borders. So long as we stayed in Vietnam, they hated and feared us just a bit more than they hated and feared the Russians because we were shooting up their neighborhood, and the Russians weren't. The moment we left Vietnam they suddenly lost much of the practical reason to hate us, and China and the US got along fine for the rest of the cold war because now China and the US hated eachother far less than each feared and hated the Soviet Union. Common fear and hatred binds a alliance together just as well as mutural friendship and ideological agreement.

While the withdraw from Vietnam looked humiliating to the general public, the US in fact came out of the conflict strategically well ahead of where we went in, because we lost Vietnam but got china out of the bargain. We didn't bulldoze the Chinese communist establishment. But we figured out that communists though they were, their interests with respect to the greater communist power block can in fact be made to align with ours provided we sacrafice some much lesser interests, like Vietnam.

Knowing whose interest is what, and how to align other people's interest with your own abjective is a far more effective way of conducting strategic competition than trying to bulldoze the institutions, cultures and ideologies of everyone who on some level disagree with you. In one case, people who don't like you still sometimes work for you. In the other case everyone who don't like you works against you.

 

[chuck4]

As far as I am aware the ONLY "Communist" nation that still adheres to the "universalist" ideaology is North Korea much to China's dismay since it makes dealing with them much more difficult.

Actually, North Korea ditched the "Universalist" ideology a long time ago, around 1992, when they dropped all mentions of "Marxism-Leninism" from their official documents, from their constitution downwards. Instead, they adopted an ideology as non-universalist as can be imagined, called "Juche", which basically means self-sufficiency in the sense of cutting all reliance by North Korean on the outside world. Kim Jung Un doesn't even have the fig leaf of some overarching transnational secular ideology to justify his rule. The Kim regime has resorted completely to the crude smoke and mirror tricks of claiming his grand father to be semi-divine.

In fact, the pudginess of his face, so startlingly different from the emaciated maggardness of the average citizen, is being taken as indications of divinity, not claptocracy, by the brainwashed North Korean masses.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

The reason why unification of Vietnam wasn't quite as frightening as people expected was because the United States got an tacit alliance with China in return for leaving Vietnam, and for the rest of the cold war, China acted as a massive check on Vietnam and Soviet Union's ability to leverage their success in the Vietnam war into the conquest of the rest of South East Asia mainland.

True that but also the effect of the VietNam War was from 1965-75 to consume VietNamese communist efforts at further expansion. While by the end of the 1970s they had taken over Cambodia and Laos which they had considered since the 1940s a natural part of their domain.

If they had a free run in the 1960s to do what they did in the 1970s they wouldn’t have had China to act as a check (as China was self absorbed in the Cultural Revolution at this stage) and they would have had much better logistics and so on. It is quite reasonable to assume that there could have been a very serious Communist insurgency in Thailand and maybe even the fall of this country to Communism in the 60s. If so then Mayasia is highly vulnerable and they could even potentially link up with the Communists in Indonesia before their destruction in 65-66.

China hated and feared the Soviet Union because Soviet Union was strong and right on their borders. China hated and feared the United States because so long as we are waging a war in Vietnam we are also strong and right on their borders.

China’s big fear in VietNam was the same as in Korea in the 1950s that the US would use occupation of the North to mount an invasion of China. When the US occupied North Korea they launched their counter attack and probably would have done the same if the US had driven ground forces into North VietNam.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

As far as I am aware the ONLY "Communist" nation that still adheres to the "universalist" ideaology is North Korea much to China's dismay since it makes dealing with them much more difficult.

Actually, North Korea ditched the "Universalist" ideology a long time ago, around 1992, when they dropped all mentions of "Marxism-Leninism" from their official documents, from their constitution downwards. Instead, they adopted an ideology as non-universalist as can be imagined, called "Juche", which basically means self-sufficiency in the sense of cutting all reliance by North Korean on the outside world. Kim Jung Un doesn't even have the fig leaf of some overarching transnational secular ideology to justify his rule. The Kim regime has resorted completely to the crude smoke and mirror tricks of claiming his grand father to be semi-divine.

In fact, the pudginess of his face, so startlingly different from the emaciated maggardness of the average citizen, is being taken as indications of divinity, not claptocracy, by the brainwashed North Korean masses.

North Korea uses ideology like Communism and the made up Juche as fig leafs for external consumption. Juche was invented as a propaganda tool after Mao started publishing ideology. What Mao could do a Kim can do too.

They have always been and will always be a racist imperialist state with ideology copied page by page from the WWII Imperial Japanese. Obviously but with Japan and Emperor crossed out and replaced by Korea and Kim.

They have used this ideology constantly since the late 1940s and it is very effective. In a nutshell the belief system is Koreans are the world’s most racially pure people and this makes them innocent and therefore vulnerable to external corruption so only the amazing military genius of the Kim family can save them.

But it’s good that somewhere in this thread someone pointed out the difference between Marxist-Leninism and Maoism to a classical Marxist perception of Communism.

 

[Bill Walker]

However, I would argue that there is a consistent trend in putting colonial troops into some of the roughest areas (in U.K. strategy). I suspect that one of the reasons is that political fallout is minimized in the home country (U.K.) if casualties are from a smaller colony.

Not at all. The British Dominion (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) troops, which is very different to Colonial (where most of the population were not of British or other European stock), became shock troops for the Empire because they had higher motivation and fitness on average compared to the troops raised from the UK. They were proven time and time again on average better troops. All to do with the more well fed (childhood protein intake is the most important variable in adult intelligence), rural and independent upbringing available out in the settler dominions compared to the motherland. South Africans fall under this banner as well but usually as individuals because of the mixed loyalty of the Afrikaner population thanks to the Boer War and all that.

I would also suggest that colonial troops tend to be fighting for more abstract reasons (i.e. they've never seen what they are defending) and that colonial populations are used to making sacrifices for distant 'mother countries' - which makes them somewhat amicable.

The dominion troops knew exactly what they were fighting for in the same wars as the UK troops. The threats in WWI and WWII were global in scope and not just about defending Sussex from invasion.

Thank you for your input - I will definitely incorporate this into my understanding of our history.

Thanks,

Sorry to be away from this interesting thread, but I have been travelling.

It is important to note that "Dominion" troops from Canada in the First World War were very different from Canadian troops later on. A very large per centage of "Canadians" who volunteered for the Canadian Army in the First War were born in England (including two of my granduncles and my grand father), or first generation Canadians born of English immigrant parents. They thought they were very much fighting for Sussex (or Kent or whatever). This changed with time. The losses suffered by the Canadian Army under UK direction made even the recent immigrants realize that Canada had different goals that the Mother Country.

 

[Avimimus]

Does anyone know a good history of the relationship between Canadian troops and other forces? Thanks.

The reason why unification of Vietnam wasn't quite as frightening as people expected was because the United States got an tacit alliance with China in return for leaving Vietnam, and for the rest of the cold war, China acted as a massive check on Vietnam and Soviet Union's ability to leverage their success in the Vietnam war into the conquest of the rest of South East Asia mainland.

True that but also the effect of the VietNam War was from 1965-75 to consume VietNamese communist efforts at further expansion. While by the end of the 1970s they had taken over Cambodia and Laos which they had considered since the 1940s a natural part of their domain.

If they had a free run in the 1960s to do what they did in the 1970s they wouldn’t have had China to act as a check (as China was self absorbed in the Cultural Revolution at this stage) and they would have had much better logistics and so on. It is quite reasonable to assume that there could have been a very serious Communist insurgency in Thailand and maybe even the fall of this country to Communism in the 60s. If so then Mayasia is highly vulnerable and they could even potentially link up with the Communists in Indonesia before their destruction in 65-66.

China hated and feared the Soviet Union because Soviet Union was strong and right on their borders. China hated and feared the United States because so long as we are waging a war in Vietnam we are also strong and right on their borders.

China’s big fear in VietNam was the same as in Korea in the 1950s that the US would use occupation of the North to mount an invasion of China. When the US occupied North Korea they launched their counter attack and probably would have done the same if the US had driven ground forces into North VietNam.

This conversation is getting quite interesting.

How do you two interpret the role of U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge (post-withdrawal) factors into all of this?

 

[Orionblamblam]

You have already dismissed the Russian "invasion" of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as not being an "expansion" of Communism because Czechoslovakia was already in the "Soviet Sphere of Influance".

Perhaps "influence" is too weak of a word. "Under control of" might be better. Afghanistan was not being controlled by the Soviets.

So it would seem that American involvment in Vietnam did nothing to "deter" Communist expansion and our withdrawing seems to had little or no effect either.

I will again point out that Communism expanded prior to VN, stalled during, attempted expansion after.

I should also address "Communism" as a "universalist" ideology. At first it was seen as such a "natural" evolution of government and prior to the death of Stalin he and Mao both saw it as being unable to co-exist with any other idealogy.

Communism as a general idea *requires* that everybody play along. It's been like that since the pilgrims tried and failed to set up a communist utopia in the Americas 400 or whatever years ago.

So no, OBB is quite wrong, well more correctly very, very much "out-of-date" with the current ideology of Communism as of the mid-60s.

Errr... please explain to me how communism - not nation- or -person specific variants of it, but communism as a general principle - *isn't* a universalist ideology. Where in the basic idea that *everybody* works and *everybody* divvies up the product is "you can opt out" implicit?

 

[Abraham Gubler]

It is important to note that "Dominion" troops from Canada in the First World War were very different from Canadian troops later on. A very large per centage of "Canadians" who volunteered for the Canadian Army in the First War were born in England (including two of my granduncles and my grand father), or first generation Canadians born of English immigrant parents. They thought they were very much fighting for Sussex (or Kent or whatever). This changed with time.

I can’t speak with too much authority about Canada but in Australia and NZ that was most definitely not the case. Though both Australia and NZ in 1914 were far more homogenous societies than Canada was at the time. Down under Soldiers enlisted evenly across the national demographic and with the prime political motivation of defending the Empire as an entirety from German domination. No doubt this was helped somewhat by nearby German military presence in the South Pacific and a long standing fear in Australia and NZ of national vulnerability to naval attack by another world power.

The losses suffered by the Canadian Army under UK direction made even the recent immigrants realize that Canada had different goals that the Mother Country.

Canadian losses in WWI were en par with those of other combat corps engaged in the fighting. I’m not sure what the different goals were? Defeating the Germans seemed to still be the Canadian Govt’s commitment up until the end of the war.

 

[Abraham Gubler]

Does anyone know a good history of the relationship between Canadian troops and other forces? Thanks.

I have a copy of the “Canadian Corps in WWI” by Rene Chartrand and it’s a great little book about Canucks in the big one.

How do you two interpret the role of U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge (post-withdrawal) factors into all of this?

The Khmer Rouge fought the NVA. Enemy of my enemy is my friend.

 

[Rickshaw]

Why do you want to limit the discussion solely to "modern" and "Western?"

'cause "Modern and Western" are considered the most advanced societies.

While true, it's irrelevant to the discussion.

Why? "Warrior ethos" is and I made the point only some members of the US military talk in those terms. Such wankery is looked down on elsewhere.

 

[Rickshaw]

There were many Nazis left over after the end of WWII. Many of the most prominent German citizens, both sides of the Iron Curtain were actually Nazis who had changed their spots most successfully. Many officials of the new governments were minor Nazis who had escaped punishment for their complicity in the crimes of the previous regime. The Allied occupation simply could not have functioned without them. They had the experience and the ability to run government so often they simply were put back in their old positions and told to get on with it. The "de-Nazification" programme was largely a joke. If all the "t's" were crossed and the "i's" dotted, a few humbling apologies were uttered, the whole process was over and done with. Never also forget that both sides of the Curtain were quite happy to utilise Nazis to further their own defence programmes without questions being asked. Von Braun was perhaps the most prominent of those in the US.

It was simply impossible to remove or eliminate all the Nazis. Germany would have been a wasteland and the Allies no better than those they defeated. The execution lines would have been tremendous. The same in Afghanistan. The Afghans are the Taliban. The Taliban did not and do not exist separate to the Afghani population. They are a part of it and that is why "hearts and minds", which you and OBB have dismissed so readily is so important in conducting a COIN war. We saw how fruitless the American approach of "grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" was in Vietnam. Even the US Military recognised that and that is why General Petraeus turned to the acknowledged masters in COIN when rewriting the US Army's Counter-Insurgency Manual in the early two thousands. Simply "killing people" and "breaking stuff" fails dismally in such a situation.

You obviously didn't understand my comment, of course there were Nazi's left in Germany and probably a lot of militarists left in Japan as well but they were not a military force sitting around the country and across borders, heavily armed, in protected regions of say Poland with the goal of destabalizing Germany. I mean today the Nazi salute is illegal. Has A-stan made the Black Turban of the Taliban illegal?

Many people other than the Taliban wear black turbans. Its traditionally also worn by Mullahs in Sh'ite societies. Outlawing it would be as pointless as outlawing the Nazi salute. All you do is drive those people who favour such things further undergound - exactly where you don't want them.

I'm sorry I took your comment at face value. However, if that wasn't what you intended why type what you did?

The Taliban parade around as Taliban and are invited to run in elections and come to the negotating table. I don't remmeber Nazi's still with military units wearing uniforms taking part in local elections or 'negotiating' with the previaling victors of WWII.

I think you'll find the difference is that victory was clear and definite in Germany whereas in Afghanistan at the moment it is still very much in contention.

If the US had not pulled most of its forces out of Afghanistan to chase Weapons of Mass Distraction and other rabbits down holes in Iraq, the Taliban would more than likely have been placed in such an untenable position that they couldn't have staged their comeback after 2001.

If the US had not allowed the Pakistani ISI to keep funding and supplying the Taliban, then they would have been driven to the fringes of Afghani political life.

If the Coalition forces which replaced the US had been more willing to suffer casualties and venture out and contest the most important theatre in the war in Afghanistan with the Taliban - the hearts and minds of the population, then the Taliban would have found it very hard to make their comeback. This of course returns to the original point of the thread, Casualties. Suffering them in Western Democracies is electoral suicide, even if those lives are spent in achieving an objective.

The Afghan War is littered with such errors of strategy unfortunately. The Taliban made their share but the West has definitely IMHO snatched defeat from the jaws of victory upon several occasions.

 

[Rickshaw]

Why would the Communists want New Guinea or Australia? :

Really? Really?

Communism is a *universalist* ideology.

Is it? Why then did Communist ideologues believe that societies needed to reach a particular stage in their development in order to be "ripe for revolution". That stage was industrialisation and when revolutionaries such as Mao and Ho proposed that it was not necessary, they were invariably initially brought to heel and then later purged.

Communism is no more "universalist" than is Capitalism. :

No, Some flavors of communism might focus on specific parts of the world demographics, but there are enough different flavors of communism such that no matter which country you are, there would be some communists taking his aim at you.

Notice most (if not all) communist nations did not actually espouse "Marxism", Instead they ALL espoused "Marxism-Leninism".

The subtle difference is Lenin contradicted orthrodox Marxist theory and claimed that even largely agrarian societies with limitied industrialization, such as Czarist Russia, were also ripe for leadership by communist party, and under communist party they can be rapidly brought to the level of industrial development suitable for true communism. This is how Lenin justified inciting a nominally marxist revolution in the relatively backward Czarist Russia. "Marxism-Leninism" is how communist parties the world over justify being in power eventhough no communist country iwas actually as quite as highly developed and industrialized as leading capitalist powers, and therefore none of the countries communists ruled would have been judged suitable for communist rule by orthrodox Marxist theory.

Mao took Leninism one step further. He asserted that communism didn't need industrialization or even urbanization at all. He decreed that communism can start in the country side and be moved primarily by peasants. Indistrial workers, essence of Marxist communism, would just sort of follow along. This is officially styled "Marxism-Leninism enhanced with Thoughts of Mao". Communist party of China pay lip service to it even today, eventhough the chinese communist party these days worry more about capital asset pricing models than worker's paradise. But back in the day of Vietnam war, I think Mao would be happy to take communism to the cannibals of Papua New Geniea. Cuba and Russia both followed along in places like Angola, even if they didn't actually admit they were doing what Mao espoused.

The ultimate development took place under Pol pot. Pol pot didn't just think communism didn't need industrialization or urbanization. He thought industriliation and urbanization were bad for communism. So he killed two million urbanized cambodians in an effort to return Cambodia to bronze age. Pol pot probably wouldn't be said if he actually made cannibals out of Cambodians.

Yes, but that rather proves that those Communists weren't really interested in Communism, per se. Pol Pot for an example drew his inspiration more from the existentialists of France in the 1950s and 1960s than he did Marx, Lenin and Mao. His political ideology was considered odd even by other Communists. Mao similarly utilised the "tag" communist and communism to describe his own peculiar ideology which was more intended to maintain him in power than it was to necessarily develop China as an industrial power house. He was the master of "divide and rule" and only made token efforts towards socialism in his reign.

Revolutions of any kind need fertile ground in order to flourish. Local Communists took advantage of that, often against the direct orders of the Kremlin. In order to do so, they distorted their ideology to suit the situation.

 

[Rickshaw]

You have already dismissed the Russian "invasion" of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as not being an "expansion" of Communism because Czechoslovakia was already in the "Soviet Sphere of Influance".

Perhaps "influence" is too weak of a word. "Under control of" might be better. Afghanistan was not being controlled by the Soviets.

Wasn't it? The Saur Revolution of 1978 was a Communist revolution. The Soviets didn't invade until Christmas 1979, 18 months later. Using your previously stated views, according to your logic, the Soviets were in control of Afghanistan, as Communism was a monolithic movement controlled from the Kremlin. If that was true, why did the Kremlin have to invade? Why did they assassinate Hafizullah Amin? Afterall, he was a Communist. :

 

[bobbymike]

There were many Nazis left over after the end of WWII. Many of the most prominent German citizens, both sides of the Iron Curtain were actually Nazis who had changed their spots most successfully. Many officials of the new governments were minor Nazis who had escaped punishment for their complicity in the crimes of the previous regime. The Allied occupation simply could not have functioned without them. They had the experience and the ability to run government so often they simply were put back in their old positions and told to get on with it. The "de-Nazification" programme was largely a joke. If all the "t's" were crossed and the "i's" dotted, a few humbling apologies were uttered, the whole process was over and done with. Never also forget that both sides of the Curtain were quite happy to utilise Nazis to further their own defence programmes without questions being asked. Von Braun was perhaps the most prominent of those in the US.

It was simply impossible to remove or eliminate all the Nazis. Germany would have been a wasteland and the Allies no better than those they defeated. The execution lines would have been tremendous. The same in Afghanistan. The Afghans are the Taliban. The Taliban did not and do not exist separate to the Afghani population. They are a part of it and that is why "hearts and minds", which you and OBB have dismissed so readily is so important in conducting a COIN war. We saw how fruitless the American approach of "grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow" was in Vietnam. Even the US Military recognised that and that is why General Petraeus turned to the acknowledged masters in COIN when rewriting the US Army's Counter-Insurgency Manual in the early two thousands. Simply "killing people" and "breaking stuff" fails dismally in such a situation.

You obviously didn't understand my comment, of course there were Nazi's left in Germany and probably a lot of militarists left in Japan as well but they were not a military force sitting around the country and across borders, heavily armed, in protected regions of say Poland with the goal of destabalizing Germany. I mean today the Nazi salute is illegal. Has A-stan made the Black Turban of the Taliban illegal?

Many people other than the Taliban wear black turbans. Its traditionally also worn by Mullahs in Sh'ite societies. Outlawing it would be as pointless as outlawing the Nazi salute. All you do is drive those people who favour such things further undergound - exactly where you don't want them.

I'm sorry I took your comment at face value. However, if that wasn't what you intended why type what you did?

The Taliban parade around as Taliban and are invited to run in elections and come to the negotating table. I don't remmeber Nazi's still with military units wearing uniforms taking part in local elections or 'negotiating' with the previaling victors of WWII.

I think you'll find the difference is that victory was clear and definite in Germany whereas in Afghanistan at the moment it is still very much in contention.

If the US had not pulled most of its forces out of Afghanistan to chase Weapons of Mass Distraction and other rabbits down holes in Iraq, the Taliban would more than likely have been placed in such an untenable position that they couldn't have staged their comeback after 2001.

If the US had not allowed the Pakistani ISI to keep funding and supplying the Taliban, then they would have been driven to the fringes of Afghani political life.

If the Coalition forces which replaced the US had been more willing to suffer casualties and venture out and contest the most important theatre in the war in Afghanistan with the Taliban - the hearts and minds of the population, then the Taliban would have found it very hard to make their comeback. This of course returns to the original point of the thread, Casualties. Suffering them in Western Democracies is electoral suicide, even if those lives are spent in achieving an objective.

The Afghan War is littered with such errors of strategy unfortunately. The Taliban made their share but the West has definitely IMHO snatched defeat from the jaws of victory upon several occasions.

Unfortunately you miss the nuance and subtlety in my posts and then take several paragraphs to make the point I was making in my original post.
...."The difference was victory was clear and definite.........." which was exactly my point. You sure like the sound of your voice...or keyboard in this case.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Why do you want to limit the discussion solely to "modern" and "Western?"

'cause "Modern and Western" are considered the most advanced societies.

While true, it's irrelevant to the discussion.

Why?

THe subject is "Warfare and the acceptance of casualties." The west is hardly the sole area of warfare, and "modern" is hardly the only period of time in history.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Using your previously stated views, according to your logic, the Soviets were in control of Afghanistan, as Communism was a monolithic movement controlled from the Kremlin.

It's kinda hard to debate someone who makes such vast, and incorrect, leaps.

 

[chuck4]

You have already dismissed the Russian "invasion" of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as not being an "expansion" of Communism because Czechoslovakia was already in the "Soviet Sphere of Influance".

Perhaps "influence" is too weak of a word. "Under control of" might be better. Afghanistan was not being controlled by the Soviets.

Wasn't it? The Saur Revolution of 1978 was a Communist revolution. The Soviets didn't invade until Christmas 1979, 18 months later. Using your previously stated views, according to your logic, the Soviets were in control of Afghanistan, as Communism was a monolithic movement controlled from the Kremlin. If that was true, why did the Kremlin have to invade? Why did they assassinate Hafizullah Amin? Afterall, he was a Communist. :

What exactly do you suppose is the invasion of Afghanistan, or the invasion of Hungray in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the threatened invasion of Poland in 1982, if not Kremlin's effort to assert and maintain direct and close control over all different flavors of communism? Obviously Kremlin succeeded in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But for the fact that China was too big to invade, Mao wouldn't have survived the split with Kremlin either. Obviously, anologous to the Catholic doctrine of there can be no salvation outside the church, Soviet Union believes there can be no communism but that which is ruled from kremlin.

 

[RanulfC]

I can't believe I'm being lured into this conversation, but... Didn't most of the support for Vietnam come from Chinese sources - while the invasion (or attempted stabilisation) of Afghanistan came from Russian sources?

No the Chinese initially were supporting the North Vietnamese forces but the Russians soon stepped in when the Chinese got tired to the NV forces not following their orders or even cooperating well during battle. The Chinese actually turned to beefing up their border forces with the USSR (Russia) during this time because of continuing border incidents. After the North won the war and consolidated Vietnam they turned and invaded and outsted the Chinese backed government of Cambodia which in turn led the Chinese to "invade" Vietnam which was rebuffed.

These two countries weren't exactly on good terms during this period - in fact, by the 1984 the somewhat rabid movie Red Dawn even had the Chinese fighting the Russians...

Once the Russian/USSR government backed off from the "universilist" stance that Communism and Capitalism could not share the same world, the Chinese government basicly "broke" relations with Moscow. By the mid-70s the Chinese were activily opposing Soviet expansion efforts with US backing and in many cases without it. Once Mao was dead and the "Gang-of-Four" coup defeated the Chinese officially backed off from the "universilist" stance as well and began to open up to western marketing. China still consideres Russia a major threat despite the rhetoric directed at the United States. They greatly fear the Russian oil-profit driven military modernization.

Of course, I basically agree with you - the sudden spread of left leaning democratic governments throughout South America happens to coincide with the U.S. having all of its resources (including intelligence resources) focused on the middle-east.

The sudden spread had a lot less to do with "active" support from Russia and/or China and more from long-term disgust with the widespread "Oligarchy" nature of even the most "democratic" of the governments in South America. "Communist" was a label applied to any rebel group not matter what their actual politics simply because it made a better case for US aid. The majority of the "Communist" support during the time was Cuba acting as a clearing house for Communist-Block weapons and equipment but there was rarely any direct "support" from any of the Communist Nations. (Cuba itself was acting for itself and mostly for its own economic interests rather than actual political interests.)

So interventions by all three empires in these proxy wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan) may have been useful for tying up each other's resources - a kind of tug-of-war with a few million dead. In which case the U.S. was quite effective in taking on all of Asia.

Depending on who we were "tangling" with at the time we usually had "help" from either the Chinese or the Soviets which made our job a whole lot easier

However, you'll have to convince me of a direct connection between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Symbolically both the U.S. and Russia had similar experiences, but I don't see the Chinese/Vietnamese connection to Afghanistan, given their relative alienation from Moscow.

There wasn't any "direct" connection nor was one the instigation of the other as OBB is suggesting. Afghanistan had requested Russian troops and support to surpress internal rebellion that was being supported by surrounding Muslim states and individuals. Russia did NOT want to get involved but was eventually talked into doing so. Once involved they found the "Communist" Afghan government totally incapable of keeping order or power and so "intervened" to prosecute the war and promptly found themselves in about the same situation that they had put the United States into in Vietnam. They eventually withdrew for about the same reasons the US did from Vietnam but without leaving any viable "defences" behind.

The rebels declared victory and took over the government at which point the Taliban executed or exiled any opposition by force and declared themselves the de-facto government of Afghanistan. They then started trying to wipe out the "rebels" they created and got about as far as anyone does in that country...

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

As far as I am aware the ONLY "Communist" nation that still adheres to the "universalist" ideaology is North Korea much to China's dismay since it makes dealing with them much more difficult.

Actually, North Korea ditched the "Universalist" ideology a long time ago, around 1992, when they dropped all mentions of "Marxism-Leninism" from their official documents, from their constitution downwards. Instead, they adopted an ideology as non-universalist as can be imagined, called "Juche", which basically means self-sufficiency in the sense of cutting all reliance by North Korean on the outside world. Kim Jung Un doesn't even have the fig leaf of some overarching transnational secular ideology to justify his rule. The Kim regime has resorted completely to the crude smoke and mirror tricks of claiming his grand father to be semi-divine.

In fact, the pudginess of his face, so startlingly different from the emaciated maggardness of the average citizen, is being taken as indications of divinity, not claptocracy, by the brainwashed North Korean masses.

You're "technically" correct of course however they still trot out the "Communist-Universalism" rhetoric when they talk about "reunifing" Korea under their rule. I'm not exactly sure WHY they keep it up but that's their nominal "justification" for continuing the state of war. (The real reason as we all well know is to keep the military going to keep the population in line)

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

The reason why unification of Vietnam wasn't quite as frightening as people expected was because the United States got an tacit alliance with China in return for leaving Vietnam, and for the rest of the cold war, China acted as a massive check on Vietnam and Soviet Union's ability to leverage their success in the Vietnam war into the conquest of the rest of South East Asia mainland.

True that but also the effect of the VietNam War was from 1965-75 to consume VietNamese communist efforts at further expansion. While by the end of the 1970s they had taken over Cambodia and Laos which they had considered since the 1940s a natural part of their domain.

If they had a free run in the 1960s to do what they did in the 1970s they wouldn’t have had China to act as a check (as China was self absorbed in the Cultural Revolution at this stage) and they would have had much better logistics and so on. It is quite reasonable to assume that there could have been a very serious Communist insurgency in Thailand and maybe even the fall of this country to Communism in the 60s. If so then Mayasia is highly vulnerable and they could even potentially link up with the Communists in Indonesia before their destruction in 65-66.

Actually they had no real ambition in the '60s beyond reunification of Vietnam. They did not take on Cambodia and Laos until they percieved Chinese influance as becoming too wide spread around them. (Of course there was an almost universal hatred in Vietnam for the Khmer Rouge as well) Vietnam and China never got along very well and the Vietnamese "Communists" really disliked Mao-Brand Communism from the very start. Ho Chi Minh was not well liked at all by Mao as he was too favorable towards democracy, (he had originally asked for United States support to hold elections and democratically reunite Vietnam but the US was trying desperatly at the time to keep France in NATO and did not want to support the "anti-French" North) and not "Communist" enough but his standing kept the Chinese from doing more than complaining about his being in charge. Once Russia began to support the North the Chinese lost any influance they had over them and Vietnam and China's relations became antagonizistic.

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

You have already dismissed the Russian "invasion" of Czechoslovakia in 1968 as not being an "expansion" of Communism because Czechoslovakia was already in the "Soviet Sphere of Influance".

Perhaps "influence" is too weak of a word. "Under control of" might be better. Afghanistan was not being controlled by the Soviets.

No the word you wanted was "influanced" because the entire reason for the invasion of Czechoslovakia was because the Soviets were UNABLE to control the Czech government which was looking to begin "reforms" of Communist system there.

So it would seem that American involvment in Vietnam did nothing to "deter" Communist expansion and our withdrawing seems to had little or no effect either.

I will again point out that Communism expanded prior to VN, stalled during, attempted expansion after.

Which had nothing to do with Vietnam there were several other factors involved. A major one was the transitions of power and control within the USSR and the need to ensure a "realignment" and recovery from the rule of Stalin which wasn't fully done until the late 1970s. The ONLY thing the Soviets contributed during the Vietnam war was weapons and equipment in an attempt to influance Vietnam away from China. They had hope of tying the United States down in Asia, and possibly seeing Vietnam as a "freindly" power but they also knew that the "Communist" flavor of Vietnam was far and away from theirs.

The "attempted" expansion after Vietnam was taking advantage of several outbreaks of spontanous "Communist" insurgancies which were Communist in name only and really just propaganda to intice support from the US or the USSR for local rebel groups or recently "independent" governments. These were not "calculated" or planned moves by China, or Russia but in fact simply local groups seeking support of one or the other superpowers by "claiming" the same philosophy.

I should also address "Communism" as a "universalist" ideology. At first it was seen as such a "natural" evolution of government and prior to the death of Stalin he and Mao both saw it as being unable to co-exist with any other idealogy.

Communism as a general idea *requires* that everybody play along. It's been like that since the pilgrims tried and failed to set up a communist utopia in the Americas 400 or whatever years ago.

No because a "Communist" sociaty can exist in harmony with a non-Communist society because they can still interact on many levels without conflict. Unfortunatly the Marxist-Lennist-Stalinist form of "Communism" can not compete with an open economy and therefore stagnates and eventually dies economicly.

For your information by the way I should point out that there is a vast and fundemental difference between "Communism" as practiced by the USSR and China and "commune-ism" which while similar in philosophy is wholly different in both practice and history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commune

The Pilgrims "commune" experiment failed not do to any outside source but from a fundemental flaw in human nature. Other "commune" experiments have prospered and expanded. In short your "argument-proof" of the failure of "Communism" by the Pilgrims is historically inaccurate as well as not relevent as they were "commune-ists".

So no, OBB is quite wrong, well more correctly very, very much "out-of-date" with the current ideology of Communism as of the mid-60s.

Errr... please explain to me how communism - not nation- or -person specific variants of it, but communism as a general principle - *isn't* a universalist ideology. Where in the basic idea that *everybody* works and *everybody* divvies up the product is "you can opt out" implicit?

Very easy actually, you don't participate. The "for-profit" partners of the original Pilgrim colony were NOT obligated to participate in or benfit from the general working of the "commune" and neither were those who choose to leave the commune and establish a seperate colony or move to other colonial settlements if they choose. Many returned once the "commune" experiment was declared a failure and the governance of the colony had changed. The major difference between 1960s "Communism" and any form of "commune-ism" is the former forbids you to "opt-out" while the latter encourges you to do so if you are NOT going to participate.

From what I've seen historically and in the real-world, both "pure" Communism and commune-ism seem to only work at the very basic agrarian/subsistance level while some form of Capitalism in required for higher levels of technological/prosparity and improved conditions. The world governments/people are still groping towards a working balance of socialism/capitalism for the most part but are hampered by the attitudes and "conditioned-responses" from the last century of conflict between the "systems".

Randy

 

[RanulfC]

This conversation is getting quite interesting.

Thanks! We'll be here all week! Try the Veal!

How do you two interpret the role of U.S. support for the Khmer Rouge (post-withdrawal) factors into all of this?

The US was supporting the Khmer Rouge for stable relations with China, and to take a "dig" at Vietnam who pretty much hated the regime. The effects on US popular opinion of "government" in general took a heavy hit for that support and has never fully recovered. In effect the US made the same mistake that they made initially with Vietnam. We should have put off China's request for support and let the regime stand or fall on its own. In the end the support hurt us much more than Vietnam and China lost their influance anyway. Personnally? I'd have figured a better strategy would have been to act as a go between for China and Vietnam to try and normalize relations which would have put a crimp in the Soviet plans for the area but being so near the end of the war which was seen publically and politically as a "loss" it probably wasn't a viable option.

Randy

 

[chuck4]

I can't believe I'm being lured into this conversation, but... Didn't most of the support for Vietnam come from Chinese sources - while the invasion (or attempted stabilisation) of Afghanistan came from Russian sources?

No the Chinese initially were supporting the North Vietnamese forces but the Russians soon stepped in when the Chinese got tired to the NV forces not following their orders or even cooperating well during battle. The Chinese actually turned to beefing up their border forces with the USSR (Russia) during this time because of continuing border incidents. After the North won the war and consolidated Vietnam they turned and invaded and outsted the Chinese backed government of Cambodia which in turn led the Chinese to "invade" Vietnam which was rebuffed.

Vietnam war was fought against the backdrop of the split between Soviet Union and China. Both Soviet Union and China supported Vietnam, but both did so for different reasons.

Soviet Union supported Vietnam out of the revolutionary imperialist paradigm which stipulated that communism ought to expand by whatever means necessary whereever there is opportunity. China supported Vietnam out of conviction that the US objective is to destroy North Vietnam and use unified Vietnam as a basis from which to invade China.

At the same time Vietnam war was being fought, China was attaining her nuclear capability. Since China was hostile to both US and USSR, its nuclear program was regarded with alarm in both Washington and Moscow. Both initially considered military action to stop Chinese nuclear program in the same way military action is being advocated to stop Iranian program now. But sometime early in Johnson Administration's second term, a high level decision was made to tolerate the Chinese nuclear program, and to also prevent the Soviet Union from taking unilateral action to stop Chinese nuclear program. Furthermore, this decision was communicated to the Chinese along with evidence that Soviet Union was in fact preparing for unilateral air action to disrupt Chinese nuclear program. This sharpened Chinese hostility towards the Soviet Union, and eventually precipitated sharp armed conflicts on the Sino-Russian border in 1969.

In 1969, at the height of culture revolution, there was serious and genuine fear in Beijing that Moscow would in fact attack China in strength. The Chinese also assessed that American war in Vietnam was in trouble and America is looking for a way out. This led to Mao attempting to seek accommodation and diplomatic relation with the US by a number of overtures: 1: Mao communicated to the US that Chinese personalle in in North Vietnam to support Vietnam war would be pulled back to China, 2: Incursions by Guam based B-52s into Chinese air space while on the direct route to and from Vietnam would not be resisted by force. 3: China would not help North Vietnam break the American mining blockade of Vietnamese ports by letting Vietnam use Chinese ports.

This was of course seen as a stab in the back by Vietnam. But it built the foundation of a reporachment between US and China. For China, the basis of the reproachment was American departure from Vietnam. For the US, the basis was a mutural understanding of common interest against the Soviet Union.

 

[RanulfC]

What exactly do you suppose is the invasion of Afghanistan, or the invasion of Hungray in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, and the threatened invasion of Poland in 1982, if not Kremlin's effort to assert and maintain direct and close control over all different flavors of communism? Obviously Kremlin succeeded in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But for the fact that China was too big to invade, Mao wouldn't have survived the split with Kremlin either. Obviously, anologous to the Catholic doctrine of there can be no salvation outside the church, Soviet Union believes there can be no communism but that which is ruled from kremlin.

No the "Catholic Church" analogy is a little to shallow. The invasions of Hungary for example was to put down an anti-government rebellion. Since Hungary had sided with Germany in the invasion of Russia, Russia felt justified in the post war period in installing and supporting a "Russian-Style" Communist government which was not popular with the people. Being the government was their puppet state they had to intervene militarily to keep it in power.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia, the governments broad program of liberalization and democratization directly threatened the Soviet Unions defense (the loss of Czechoslovakia to the west which was a very real fear in the Kremlin at the time would neutralize the ability of Russia to provide defense in depth in a war with NATO and the loss of the Czechoslovakian industry base would have been a serious blow to any war production plans) and the overall liberalization policy of the new government was seriously weakining the ability of the Soviets to monitor Czechoslovakia and its people. In the end they still had to allow some liberalization within Czechoslovakia and other "Warsaw" block nations to maintain relationships with the various nations.

In Afghanistan they were "invited" in to keep the ruling "Communists" in power but declined to intervene for the longest time. When they did they had no choice but to take direct control when they found the majority of the "ruling" party was in fact already working for the rebels and there was no popular support for the government. They had not wanted to become involved at all but once they had they feared a take over by pro-western rebels if they did not commit major forces to the area. In the end they still got a "hostile" government but one that was not aligned with or amiable to western influances.

The threaten invasion of Poland was just that, a "threat" not so much to keep them "Communist" but to keep them in the disintergrating USSR and Warsaw pact.

Russia had no real option in reigning in Mao, an open war with China would give the west far too much of an opening to even be considered. Assassination was not viable because of the cult-of-personality that Mao had with the Chinese people, and the know animosity between Mao and Moscow. The best they could do was try and thwart any plans Mao had of expanding "his" Communism which is why they supported Vietnam during the war and after.

Buy the late 50s early 60s the Sino-Soviet "Communist" solidarity was a thing of the past and they had become as much "enemies" as the USSR and the West were. It still took almost another decade for the idea of "World-Wide-Communism" to fall out of favor and it wasn't until the late 80s that the Domino effect theory finally was put to rest. Communism was simply not up to being as "monolithic" as had been assumed in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

Randy