America won the vietnam war

[DougShrapnel]

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If anything Vietnam hurt the cold war.

[/ QUOTE ] Knowing that the USA is serious about stoping the spread of communism wasn't a major deterant for contries considering that political system.

How long does it noramly take from, A few people within a country who want to change ideologies, to the revolution of that country.

Actually I'm gonna have to do some more research on this. Considering both Loas and Combodia went communist in the same year that the vietnam war ended. As well as Afganistan acouple of years after.

[lehighguy]

What happened in Vietnam had little to do with communism. I suspect even the communist didn't believe in communism. They discarded it as a political system fairly quickly. Today there the only part of communism left is the dictorial one party part. Vietnam has a mostly capitalist economy with all of the usual third world corruption.

In order to gain independence from France the Vietnamese needed weapons and support. The US shuned them, so they turned to the Soviets. I don't think they really cared who gave them the support and they adopted whatever idealology lead to independence. Most Vietnamese didn't know or care about communism, they just saw the US as another invader. They fought against something rather then for something. Vietnam was about nationalism not communism.

US pressence in Vietnam was seen as imperialistic throughout the region and thus we lost credibility and support in other countries.

Without US involvement in the region things would have turned out exactely the same. Yes, it all might have been better if we won, but that was not possible.

[Dynasty]

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No. That's what the Cold War was. We won the Cold War. But, we lost in Vietnam.

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Is there any way for me to draw the conclusion that without the Vietnam war the Cold war would not have succeded. ?

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It's an arguable point. You could say the Communists victory in Vietnam was a pyrrhic victory.

I don't think it's a good arguement. The Soviet Union was very active in Central America after the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. They were enboldened by the U.S.'s defeat.

[twowords]

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I think it is, and as far as I know no one else has agreed with me.

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No I've heard this argument made. It claims that the US needed to play a limited role in Vietnam in the interest of perceptions and containment, but never needed to win. Therefore, everything more or less went as planned and as was necissary.

The more common arguments believe the war to be the greatest failure of our history. They are: 1) The US, obessed with containment and Soviet perceptions, escalated an unnecessary war in an irrelevant region and 2) The US was justified to go into Vietnam in stopping the spread of communism, but too many limitations were placed on our armed forces for them to win.

[Iplayboard]

If you think that the government in Vietnam was a threat to spread to other parts of the region, then u have a limited knowledge of Asian history/culture.

Even if the United States did successfully stop the spread of communism, so [censored] what? Communism was completely overblown as a threat to this country. None of the countries in world history have ever had a real communist government. I assume you've never read the Communist Manifesto.

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If you think that the government in Vietnam was a threat to spread to other parts of the region, then u have a limited knowledge of Asian history/culture.


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I think you're being sarcastic, but incase you aren't, then for the record...

A) The region was in shambles

B) There's this thing that happens following a Communist revolution...millions and millions of people die. Ever heard horror stories from the Vietnamese communities in Cali? Ever heard of the Cambodian killing fields?

C) Note that when Communist revolutions happen in one country, they tend to happen in neighboring countries as well, hence the threat to millions of lives by "the government in Vietnam"

[ChipWrecked]

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B) There's this thing that happens following a Communist revolution...millions and millions of people die. Ever heard horror stories from the Vietnamese communities in Cali? Ever heard of the Cambodian killing fields?

C) Note that when Communist revolutions happen in one country, they tend to happen in neighboring countries as well, hence the threat to millions of lives by "the government in Vietnam"

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The Hmong people in Laos are still being butchered by Communist troops.

[Dynasty]

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Communism was completely overblown as a threat to this country.

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That's just not true. The Soviet Union was a genuine threat. Their stated goal was to spread their form of communism (whether it's "pure" communism or not) worldwide. They were more than willing to use military force to accomplish their goals.

Half of Europe was conquered by the Soviets during World War II. They expanded their military influence to Southeast Asia and Central America. The thread Moscow represented was great than that of Nazi Germany.

[Iplayboard]

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That's just not true. The Soviet Union was a genuine threat.

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I'm not trying to say that the Cold War somehow wasn't serious. Just that Communism as an ideolgy, not whatever the [censored] the Soviets were doing, was not a big threat at all to the United States. The Soviets were ENORMOUS nationalists, which is very opposite the doctrine of Communism. They weren't trying to spread Communsim to the rest of the world as a liberating force, they just wanted to dominate and occupy those places.

[Cyrus]

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The Soviet Union was a genuine threat. Their stated goal was to spread their form of communism (whether it's "pure" communism or not) worldwide. They were more than willing to use military force to accomplish their goals.

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This would be true only if Stalin and stalinism never happened. The Soviet Union, after World War II, continued to act as it did before the war, and that had nothing to do with "world revolution" or "expanding the socialist camp". Stalin was totally against "foreign adventurism". His aim has always been to strengthen the "soviet cradle of the revolution", both inside and outside (i.e. through creating neighboring buffer spheres of defence). Stalin was consistent in this, from the 1920s until is death.

And Stalin's epigones were also nowhere near the threat we painted them out to be, nor did they have the intentions that the West ascribed them. Everything we know and have learned shows that, if anything, the Soviets were even more paranoid about their enemies' intentions than we ever were. The Soviets were in permanent defensive mode - and their quest for a peaceful accomoation with the "imperialist West" was full of suspicion but genuine.

Your version of events is nowhere near what happened.