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 Originally Posted by Poopadoop
I think ideology was the key issue in that war. Don't think you won that aspect since the whole country went commie. But for that matter, so what? The concern at the time was that communism would spread throughout SE Asia. Didn't happen.
That's fair.
It did take 20 years before the US re-opened formal relations with Vietnam. While the relationship has only gotten stronger since Clinton, it's missing the point to connect the dots without the 20-years in between.
Originally Posted by Poopadoop
Yeah, and not sure any Vietnam vet would appreciate someone saying you won the culture war, thus implying it was worth their sacrifice. Was the war itself a necessary condition leading to BR and MacDs getting franchises in Hanoi? Kinda doubt that.
Those vets are not political or economic experts, so their opinions or hurt feelings over the reality of the outcome isn't relevant to this discussion, right?
Don't get me wrong. America pretty much shit on the Vietnam vets, and that was appalling.
I'm not arguing that we should have sent them to Vietnam.
I'm not trivializing the effect the deployments had on those vets.
It's just a different discussion than what we're talking about.
IDK exactly what you mean by "necessary" in the above. It certainly accelerated the presence of US interests in the region, and cemented them.
Maybe it was necessary to get those things on this time-scale, I guess.
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That war was a draw. But, it was partly predicated on the same 'domino effect' idea as Vietnam, like communism was this virus that was going to spread all over the world. Not an outlandish idea in the 1950s, but didn't really turn out to be true.
'Cause GI Joe was there, obv.
The fall of the Soviet Union didn't happen in a vacuum. It wasn't all US maneuvering, but Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, others... all proxy conflicts in the cold war.
Ong makes a good point that sometimes war isn't about making a profit. It's about outspending your opponent and crushing their economic viability. This happens all the time in US legal cases. They're called SLAPP cases. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. In effect, it's when a large, wealthy entity files frivolous lawsuits against smaller, less wealthy competition. This ties up the smaller entity's funds, forcing them out of the public sphere, whether as a business competitor or a news agency reporting unfavorably against them.
If this happens on smaller scales, it would be naive to say it doesn't happen on bigger scales.
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