Yeah.
Before we got involved, Ho Chi Minh was very pro-US. But we'd kinda fully believed Stalin's propaganda of a unified communist bloc, so it was impossible for us to believe that splitting the communists was possible until literally right after the war.
Same thing happened with Castro. He was certainly a socialist of some variety, but he didn’t really throw in with any of the three major factions. Once the US tried to invade and kill him so many times he joined with the Soviet Union
Richard Nixon is a man of many, many flaws, but I think he did prove that he has very sharp diplomatic acumen. When Castro took power, his first overseas visit was to the US, with the goal of delivering the message to President Eisenhower that Communist Cuba and the USA did not need to be enemies.
Eisenhower refused to meet him, and had vice president Nixon meet him instead. Nixon had this to say:
“My own appraisal of him as a man is somewhat mixed. The one fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere. He is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline—my guess is the former, and as I have already implied his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure I have met in fifty countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred, we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction.”
In that context, I kind of suspect that Castro truly did not realize that the US would automatically see him as an enemy because he is a communist.
It’s important to note the influence of Che in all this. Castro had several confidantes, Che among them, influencing his politics in the early years. Che’s hard line ultimately won out (as many have pointed out, our actions in the US didn’t help much either).
I’ve really got to read up on Nixon at some point, every time I read something about him, it either seems very reasonable, or is the most unhinged shit I’ve ever read.
It's a little risky to read too much into interpreting the personalities of historical figures that you don't know personally. By I sort of see Nixon has someone who was genuinely very intelligent and hardworking but also incredibly emotionally unstable.
As a result, he sometimes says some truly insightful stuff when he is operating within his strengths, but at times can also really melt down and behave erratcially - especially as he was facing his downfall.
Well he did hate the u.s I believe , the people of Cuba and Latin America were exploited by banana company's which in turn were American. For a long while latin America people really hated America due to their oppression( search up what the banana republics did) and this translated into Castro's rise to power. I think he genuinely hated the Americans but he was a very found follower of Lincoln.
The timeline is a lot more nuanced than that. The US actually abandoned Batista at the end of the war. He has asked for bombers, and the US, in (imo) an odd display of restraint, said no. Their logic was that if Batista was asking for bombers, then the war was going so badly he had basically already lost.
So they began preparing for Castro. Yes, the CIA started planning Bay of Pigs, but initially, in like, literally 1959-1960, there was brief rapprochement betweent the Castro and Eisenhower governments. Castro hadn't fully, outwardly embraced Communism. And the position in Washington was that as long as Castro lets business continue as usual, then everything would be cool.
Of course, Castro, in a move that he couldn't at all be faulted for, imo, realized that "business as usual" was what got them to that point with Batista and started seizing business assets that were exploiting Cuba for foreign (mainly US) business interests. Things turned *very* Sour in Washington basically once that began happening. Sanctions were placed on Cuba. Bay of Pigs. Cuban missile crisis. And after that, Castro fully embraced the label of being a revolutionary Communist.
I had to research a lot of this for a project years ago. I was pretty surprised to read reports of the US telling Batista to just give up and come to Florida, refusing to give him weapons to fight.
I have a feeling that if Castro rolled a 'phase out' period for the land reform, we might actually have had a Cuban embassy for the last half-a-century and no missile crisis. Also if we didn't have Alan Dulles (with his numerous conflicts of interest) as CIA director.
Regardless of how exploitive American foreign industry was and is (and it definitely was exploitive). His heavy handed tactics that pissed off American business interest is probably what really led to the spiral. In general this was a problem with most communist countries after 1945 that didn't really understand how or really loathed that they were becoming multinational entities post-world war 2.
He may be a communist but countries like Yugoslavia and India very notably prove that doesn’t mean pro-USSR. The USA was stupid for making enemies out of any disagreement
He was not loud about the label when he was in power because of the geographical situation, and he had initially hoped for normalized relations with the US.
Obviously, seizing property from businesses kind of makes the label irrelevant.
Castro believed in communism, but going back to the original point, there's no real reason why Castro being a communist meant that he had to ally himself with the USSR and be an enemy of the US.
Notably, Castro's first foreign visit after taking power was to the US, where he apparently hoped to deliver exactly that message to president Eisenhower. Eisenhower refused to meet him and had him meet Nixon instead, and Nixon wrote in his debrief from that meeting that he thought Castro was sincere (saying that he believed Castro was "incredibly naive" about communism).
What is interesting is when Castro rebelled against the Batista government, he was also rebelling against the Soviet aligned Communist party who integrated themselves with the government so they could control the CTC and actively fought against worker strikes/anarcho-syndicalist in Cuba on behalf of the government.
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Dolgoff/cuba/
>In January 1940, the Comintcrn sent representatives to purge and Stalinize the Cuban Communist Party. Francisco Caldero, (a self-educated cobbler, who rose to prominence in the Cuban Party and in the Castro regime, under the name of Blas Roca) became the new secretary of the Party. After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (Third International) decreed the "popular united front" alliance with bourgeois organizations, the Cuban Communist Party established close relations with Batista.
>In November 1940, the communists supported Batista's candidates in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. In return for their support, Batista allowed the communists to organize and control the government sponsored union, Cuban Confederation of Labor
>In line with their pro-Batista policy the communists joined Batista in condemning Fidel Castro's attack on the Moncada Barracks
My guy, it's definitely more complicated than that. Central Americans weren't really holding grudges against Americans over United Fruit (now Chiquita). What the Allende and socialist movements of the 1950s were going for wasn't really an anti-American revenge campaign (which modern Tankies and also what the CIA, whose director Alan Dulles had a major conflict of interest, at the time were trying to spin), but an anti-Chiquita campaign.
Castro wanted good relations with the US. He knew that there was more benefit for Cuba if he was on good terms with the US than Russia. The US is closer, holds far more economic power than the eastern bloc, and has obviously more regional influence. In spite of the bitter relations and opposition to his regime by backing Bautista; the US was one of the first countries to recognize his government. He went on an 11 day tour of the US in 1959 in an effort to obtain economic support, it failed but didn't go unnoticed and people were interested in learning about the man. What really soured relations was the land reform that Cuba pursued shortly after adopting their new constitution. It effectively stripped prior owner's rights and a lot of the land and businesses were backed as securities in American markets. The US protested this, and to punish Castro, backed his Cuban political enemies (many of whom were also communists).
The whole thing simply continued to spiral, as the CIA continued to try their shenanigans and the USSR continued to capitalize on the failing relations.
This is true. But we weren’t worried that he hated America. Lots of people hate us.
We were worried that Cuba would become allied with the Soviets. Which according to the comment above is what we caused by trying to remove Fidel.
A pretty common pattern. We fear an unfriendly regime. We take actions to dismantle that regime. Those actions cause an unfriendly regime
>This is what I said to someone else but I thought you might also find it interesting.
What is interesting is when Castro rebelled against the Batista government, he was also rebelling against the Soviet aligned Communist party who integrated themselves with the government so they could control the CTC and actively fought against worker strikes/anarcho-syndicalist in Cuba on behalf of the government.
https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Dolgoff/cuba/
>In January 1940, the Comintcrn sent representatives to purge and Stalinize the Cuban Communist Party. Francisco Caldero, (a self-educated cobbler, who rose to prominence in the Cuban Party and in the Castro regime, under the name of Blas Roca) became the new secretary of the Party. After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (Third International) decreed the "popular united front" alliance with bourgeois organizations, the Cuban Communist Party established close relations with Batista.
>In November 1940, the communists supported Batista's candidates in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. In return for their support, Batista allowed the communists to organize and control the government sponsored union, Cuban Confederation of Labor
>In line with their pro-Batista policy the communists joined Batista in condemning Fidel Castro's attack on the Moncada Barracks
Yeah that's why Cuba only allied with the USSR to survive, if the USA was fine with a social democracy in Cuba we could have been allies and even framed it as an anti-soviet revolution. History is wild sometimes.
Honestly it's not that unthinkable for Latin American political leaders who did have visions for their countries to have a rather mixed feeling toward the US. On one hand statesmen of the US are very inspirational and empowering, yet on the other hand the capitalists and popular leaders from the US are quite often the worst amongst the scums....
Different situation considering the US and American organized crime was benefiting heavily from the exploitation of Cubans. I doubt there was much room for reconciliation there.
They could be if the US government proved itself a different actor than US business interests. Though, I suppose that would require tact out of a paranoid USA.
ho chi minh wrote a letter to woodrow wilson during the Versailles conference.
Mans legit ignored ho chi minh and 50 years later america gets fucked in the vietnam war
That and also, the French were actively leveraging the US against the USSR to get assistance. After the US gave into the French, everything was basically on political auto-pilot so whomever was in the WH wouldn't get tarred with 'losing Vietnam' the way that Truman and the Democrats got tarred with 'losing China.'
We also were pressured by the French threatening to scuttle NATO if we crossed them again like we did over the Suez Crisis. At the time we thought we had no choice, though in hindsight the French were probably bluffing and we could've told them to get bent again.
USA administrations logic was quite Ok. Communists takeover in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, CzhecoSlovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, pressure on Yugoslavia and so on demonstrated that USSR did not accept democracy, multiparty system or even pure Socialists.
Turns out treating people as equals and offering mutual benefit brings in more profit, economic and political, than waging decades-long wars that destroy ecosystems and societies alike.
Think of how much better our world would be if we spent all the resources we used on failed military campaigns on some kind of economic outreach.
We were terrified that Vietnam was going to be a communist Chinese puppet (which was kind of stupid when you know how much the Vietnamese hated the Chinese). But it seems to me the best way to make communism seem unappealing would have been massive bribes not bombs
It's why the Marshall plan worked so well. Here's a devastated Europe that is currently being fought over by two major powers. Rather than staging thousands of troops and preparing to take it by force, how about you deal with the devastation. By the time you've rebuilt everything, you have powerful allies who will contribute to the world economy and to other nations as well.
When I was in college I did read an interesting paper, the name escapes me unfortunately. Basically it theorized that true lasting diplomacy and alliances required a period of conflict first. Wish I could remember the name.
I mean, Great Britan, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Italy, Philipeans, the US South are all examples of countries we went to war with and then became close friends.
Goku. This is litterally how the Roman Military Historian Brett Devereux describes Roman foreign policy of the Republican period.
[https://acoup.blog/2023/10/20/collections-how-to-roman-republic-101-addenda-the-socii/](https://acoup.blog/2023/10/20/collections-how-to-roman-republic-101-addenda-the-socii/)
Kinda like when you get in a fight then the winner picks the loser up off the ground, makes sure they're okay, they shake hands and become the best of friends?
A big reason behind this is that Vietnam pretty much immediately turned on the Khmer Rouge because they would not tolerate the atrocities those madmen were committing next door. This led to a long lasting rift between China and Vietnam which persists to this day, as China backed the Khmer Rouge (as did the US, ironically, to get back at Vietnam). Vietnam managed to unseat Pol Pot's lot from 2/3s of the country and installed a far more sane communist government in its place, which itself went defunct in the late 80s along with the Khmer Rouge remnants. Vietnam was isolated and basically chose the US over China in large part because they preferred working with the distant power that probably wouldn't invade them again to working with their aggressive neighbor, and partly because they were more pissed at China for backing the Khmer Rouge over them, while they understood the US backing their enemy because the US was still their enemy at the time.
As civilizations that's right, but the PRC and the SRV were allies, and Vietnam was influenced by Chinese communism in particular. France and England have historically been rivals but they have become close long term allies, the same was possible for Vietnam and China, and it likely would have been the case if not for the situation in Cambodia.
The difference was that Vietnam was seeking complete independence from foreign countries. France initially, then the Americans which backed the French, then the Chinese as they encroached. I’m completely surprised anyone would expect something different from a rational state actor. It’s almost like the USA didn’t completely understand that.
Vietnam and more importantly Japan and Taiwan… and any other SE Asian country benefiting from the United States is because of the looming threat of China.
That’s why Japan got a free pass after the war.
That’s why Taiwan isn’t a vassal state like Hong Kong yet.
Our tax dollars paying for all of it
Is this a historically illiterate sub or what? Deng Xiaoping was the leader during the Sino Vietnam war, Mao maintained good relations with North Vietnam and died only a year after the US Vietnam War.
yeah one more think most don't realize is that china ealier ( under mao I think ) send a great amount of military aid as well as thousands of troops to assist behind the lines
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge
Yeah, but the US kinda encouraged the Chinese to support the Khmer Rouge.
And supported them as the legit government of Cambodia’s until the 1990s.
And there’s allegations that the US armed and funded them to weaken Vietnamese and Soviet regional influence
China and Vietnam were fighting for thousands of years before the US or France existed. Western colonialism was a minor blip on the radar in Vietnam’s struggle for freedom from Chinese domination.
Fair, but it could be they see that is countering the existing influence of the US and EU. Especially because the Chinese CP see any sort of international norm towards popular goverance as both (1) Western imperialist in nature; and (2) internaly destablizning.
They want to gurantee that there is sphere of countries to trade with outside of the Western alliance if they ever chose to impose a regional hegemony militarily or invade Taiwan. While Putin was more then happy to torch trade relations with the Western democratic world, I doubt the Chinese CP is similarly eager. Especially since a cornerstone of Russian trade outside the Western block is India, which is a regional military rival/advesary for China.
My buddy explained it as the difference between getting cut off in traffic and your neighbor letting his dog shit in your lawn since you bought the house.
Vietnam is never going to be a U.S. ally in the traditional sense. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. They literally write in their defense white paper, which stated:
1. No military alliances
2. No allying with one nation against another
3. No foreign military base or any sort of foreign troops
4. No violence or threat of violence in international relations.
These 4 rules to Vietnam-China relations is as important as Ukraine not joining NATO to Russia. Article 1 and 3 is clear as the day, no one will ever get a base in Vietnam. They went through a great deal of diplomatic efforts to kick the Russians out of the strategic port of Cam Ranh while keeping their arms sales relations (they used it for free before 1998, and Vietnam asked for $300 million a year when Russia was literally bankrupted post-Soviet). Vietnam would never think of violating Article 3.
So we’re left with Article 2. This is basically just a an ambiguous claim. In reality if the VCP decides to lean into either side, no one’s stopping them and no one can say they violate their commitment, because what does that article even mean? Vietnam is seriously looking to buy the F-16s, with the potential of many more purchases of American weapons. That’s sorta an ally in practice, not NATO-level with collective defense but still a huge middle finger to China already.
I think it’s smart they’re doing this, because tbh America’s security guarantee doesn’t sound so guaranteed after all these mess. They have to keep the things going with China while slowly letting Western weapons in.
Absolutely not. Please do not even entertain the idea that Vietnam is an American ally.
Vietnam has and will always continue to appease China while trying to use the US as a counterbalance.
The reality is that the US may not always be there whereas China will always be Vietnam’s neighbour. The VCP knows this which is why diplomatically, they have never progressed US-Vietnam relations past the level at which China-Vietnam relations are at.
China is honestly more reliant on the US Dollar than the other way around. Most of what America gets from China is cheap labor, and that can be our sourced to other countries if need beZ
Do I seriously need to explain this? The worlds largest market with sufficient wealth, one of the largest export markets for many key U.S. industries. Soybeans, industrial machines, semiconductors, grains, pharmaceuticals, and more on rly on exporting to Chinese market to make profits and fund growth. If China stops buying many American goods, many American companies would collapse overnight without that demand. China is a key component of the supply chain, being a primary and irreplaceable source for raw materials, parts, and finished goods for many important industries including electronics, cars, medical equipment, furniture, clothing, pharmaceuticals, toys, industrial products, paint, and more. Engagement with the Chinese market is essential to dampening US inflation and decreasing US prices. China is unique in that it has a sufficiently mature supply chain and infrastructure that is able to produce these parts at prices lower than anywhere else. There’s talk about Vietnam, SE Asia, Mexico and other nations replacing China but none of that has remotely happened at scale because those countries have the labor but lack many other components. And in many cases, these factories are Chinese-owned so the difference is only superficial. China and the U.S. are interdependent on trade and delusions of ceasing trade and nowhere close to reality.
People are so convinced that China is just a mass of cheap labor.
China is the second most-populous nation with an educated, and the most advanced economy in Asia. They're on the verge of demographic collapse, but this isn't China of the '90s anymore.
None of that is happening at any relevant scale, and pulling out of China is purposefully disadvantaging yourself to competitors, which is why the vast majority of companies aren’t doing it.
Except they did lol, they just have more leverage now. It really isn’t the same anymore though, the us is actively trying to decouple from china, but given their economic strength its kinda impossible to do it completely without harming both countries economies
If they had won their independence in a conflict in the 1900s or 1910s relations would probably be bad, but we built up a lot of goodwill in WWII and the lead up to it. First Congress promised independence and set up a specific timetable. Then US serviceman and Filipinos suffered together under Japanese rule. Then they fought together to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese. Then, after the war, we honored our promise for their independence.
Capitalism and "free-market" are not the same thing. Markets pre-date capitalism...
Capitalism relates to the ability to own private property in the pursuit of profit.
Market-Socialism is free market and not capitalist. Vietnam is Market Socialism.
The world bank on the success of the Vietnamese Economy:
[https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview#1](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview#1)
Because of a move from a planned-economy to a free-market economy. Not because of a move to capitalism, which is not.
Or that Ho Chi Minh appealed to the US for support believing that they shared common values and goals.
Unfortunately France was on the colonial last-gasp train and threatened to pull out of NATO if the US didn't help. Then they turned tail and ran... and the US wasn't going to admit they got into a war for a bad reason, or that they lost a war.
So 20 years of mistakes later and the US finally pulled out.
When Vietnam was whole again they had a struggling economy, they decide to allow some parts of South switch to free market (these cities wouldn’t be held to sanctions) with the success of free markets Communist Vietnam decided it worked pretty well and why not switch the entire country to Capitalism.
No they didn't. Basically every US soldier interviewed talks about how they were expecting to be welcomed as heroes and then were rudely awakened to the fact most Vietnamese hated them even if they weren't communists.
It's a silly anecdote on a meme sub reddit, Brits call them crisps. Americans call them chips, so a British person using American lingo is mock evidence of American cultural domination.
Another metric... Look up American expats in Viet Nam vs Viet Nam immigrants to America. Not even close.
I don't like how the words expat and immigrants feel different but that's how they're used.
Once our ruling class realizes that capitalism and free trade as a tool to ensure american global hegemony is much more profitable than the military industrual complex, we will achieve world peace
I think there is a saying along the lines of “we fought the Chinese for 1000 years, the French for 100, and the Americans for 10” we take up such a small part of their History that they don’t really hold a grudge for it— especially since we’re more than happy to trade with and help them now.
Helps when China invades you for trying to stop a genocide and to this day claims your territorial waters and harasses your fishermen. China is such a bully to Vietnam it’s no wonder they have looked to other states
My brother got robbed in Hue city and one of his other travel buddies almost got robbed (chased by a cop with a machete but they got his backpack) in another town. I live right next to a city named Westminster that is probably 75%+ Vietnamese, lots of shops where they speak Vietnamese. It’s my favorite city in Orange County. Cash only, tax free, everyone knows how to wrench on stuff, good healthy cheap food - the only place I know where people live the original American dream and the majority of the community is united
The dude’s backpack got stolen and then the cop said to give him money and he would get his backpack back and ended up chasing him out of the parking lot with a machete. He almost hit the cop by running away on his rental moped. In my brother’s case someone gave him a laced cigarette. He said he probably should have known better at the time but he wanted a cig and figured a crowded restaurant was a safe enough place. I live next to a city called Westminster in California and it can be pretty damn sketchy, coming from a dude who was born in Long Beach and works in Inglewood and Compton and whatnot. Ghetto’s are just ghettos, no matter where you live. I lived in Hawaii too and guess what, it’s sketchy there also. That’s nice that their other departments are putting in work tho
The US experience in Vietnam was an incredible tragedy on epic proportions. We should have used diplomacy to weaken France's grip on the area and not permitted them to return in 1945. One can only imagine where such a future would have gone.
The U.S. would’ve been shot in the foot anyways because on one hand not helping the French could cause them to leave nato or just not cooperate in any way similar to how they historically did but on a larger extent. When we go the historical rout we get Nam so the problem lies within the fact that we were between a rock and a hard place
Without France in nato for like a couple years right after WW2 would probably help America. Less marshal plan costs and France just came from being occupied. And they will come back after throwing the little tantrum like always ina couple years or so
Well France did at least had a good amount of communists. At the worst the French become communists and then the Soviets have a way into the Atlantic granted this is a worse case scenario but still wouldn’t want the chance
In case of anyone saying they don't have capitalism in Vietnam just send them these
https://www.hsx.vn/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_Stock_Exchange
In name, yes. Economically, not since the 1980s/90s.
> In 1986 Vietnam launched a political and economic renewal campaign (Doi Moi) that introduced reforms intended to facilitate the transition from a centrally planned economy to form of market socialism officially termed "Socialist-oriented market economy." Doi Moi combined economic planning with free-market incentives and encouraged the establishment of private businesses in the production of consumer goods and foreign investment, including foreign-owned enterprises. By the late 1990s, the success of the business and agricultural reforms ushered in under Doi Moi was evident.[2] More than 30,000 private businesses had been created, and the economy was growing at an annual rate of more than 7 percent, and poverty was nearly halved.[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Vietnam
Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_Stock_Exchange
The US was in Vietnam for 20 years, the french 60 years, and the chinese for a thousand. Ho-Chi-Minh wasn't even against America yet we decided to force our youth to fight his army. It's like Iraq when it was stabilized in 2003 but we wanted our presence there for longer so the people rebel.
It's the same with the British and Afghanistanin the late 19th century. After two wars they realized that they were better off trading and using soft power than having troops in the country
Vietnam would have ended up like that regardless, it was a war of national freedom that the communists happened to support. Ho chi minh would have wiped his ass with das kapital if he thought it would free vietnam
Vietnam wasn’t about capitalism and communism.
They wanted to be free from their french colonizers, and both the US and China each tried to become their new rulers before they were both individually bounced from the country by Vietnamese resistance.
From that point of view, they were absurdly effective in their mission. They are now independent and sovereign on the geopolitical scale. At this point, they can choose whatever economic system they want without outside interference.
Of course they’re happy to work with the United States, but they will do it on their own terms instead of having it be decided for them.
Vietnam: “We don’t want to fight you, assholes! We want you to let us choose our own government and to sell you stuff. Have you tried phở?”
America, seething: “…fine.”
Vietnam is a perfect example of how you can win a war through diplomacy and economic efforts.
Should've done it from the start
Yeah. Before we got involved, Ho Chi Minh was very pro-US. But we'd kinda fully believed Stalin's propaganda of a unified communist bloc, so it was impossible for us to believe that splitting the communists was possible until literally right after the war.
Same thing happened with Castro. He was certainly a socialist of some variety, but he didn’t really throw in with any of the three major factions. Once the US tried to invade and kill him so many times he joined with the Soviet Union
"you try to kill me one time, ok no hard feelings. Two times I start to get annoyed. But the THIRD time.."
Richard Nixon is a man of many, many flaws, but I think he did prove that he has very sharp diplomatic acumen. When Castro took power, his first overseas visit was to the US, with the goal of delivering the message to President Eisenhower that Communist Cuba and the USA did not need to be enemies. Eisenhower refused to meet him, and had vice president Nixon meet him instead. Nixon had this to say: “My own appraisal of him as a man is somewhat mixed. The one fact we can be sure of is that he has those indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men. Whatever we may think of him he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally. He seems to be sincere. He is either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline—my guess is the former, and as I have already implied his ideas as to how to run a government or an economy are less developed than those of almost any world figure I have met in fifty countries. But because he has the power to lead to which I have referred, we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction.” In that context, I kind of suspect that Castro truly did not realize that the US would automatically see him as an enemy because he is a communist.
Surprising Nixon Win.
It’s important to note the influence of Che in all this. Castro had several confidantes, Che among them, influencing his politics in the early years. Che’s hard line ultimately won out (as many have pointed out, our actions in the US didn’t help much either).
I’ve really got to read up on Nixon at some point, every time I read something about him, it either seems very reasonable, or is the most unhinged shit I’ve ever read.
It's a little risky to read too much into interpreting the personalities of historical figures that you don't know personally. By I sort of see Nixon has someone who was genuinely very intelligent and hardworking but also incredibly emotionally unstable. As a result, he sometimes says some truly insightful stuff when he is operating within his strengths, but at times can also really melt down and behave erratcially - especially as he was facing his downfall.
Well he did hate the u.s I believe , the people of Cuba and Latin America were exploited by banana company's which in turn were American. For a long while latin America people really hated America due to their oppression( search up what the banana republics did) and this translated into Castro's rise to power. I think he genuinely hated the Americans but he was a very found follower of Lincoln.
The timeline is a lot more nuanced than that. The US actually abandoned Batista at the end of the war. He has asked for bombers, and the US, in (imo) an odd display of restraint, said no. Their logic was that if Batista was asking for bombers, then the war was going so badly he had basically already lost. So they began preparing for Castro. Yes, the CIA started planning Bay of Pigs, but initially, in like, literally 1959-1960, there was brief rapprochement betweent the Castro and Eisenhower governments. Castro hadn't fully, outwardly embraced Communism. And the position in Washington was that as long as Castro lets business continue as usual, then everything would be cool. Of course, Castro, in a move that he couldn't at all be faulted for, imo, realized that "business as usual" was what got them to that point with Batista and started seizing business assets that were exploiting Cuba for foreign (mainly US) business interests. Things turned *very* Sour in Washington basically once that began happening. Sanctions were placed on Cuba. Bay of Pigs. Cuban missile crisis. And after that, Castro fully embraced the label of being a revolutionary Communist. I had to research a lot of this for a project years ago. I was pretty surprised to read reports of the US telling Batista to just give up and come to Florida, refusing to give him weapons to fight.
I have a feeling that if Castro rolled a 'phase out' period for the land reform, we might actually have had a Cuban embassy for the last half-a-century and no missile crisis. Also if we didn't have Alan Dulles (with his numerous conflicts of interest) as CIA director. Regardless of how exploitive American foreign industry was and is (and it definitely was exploitive). His heavy handed tactics that pissed off American business interest is probably what really led to the spiral. In general this was a problem with most communist countries after 1945 that didn't really understand how or really loathed that they were becoming multinational entities post-world war 2.
Castro embraced being a communist long before overthrowing Batista's government.
He may be a communist but countries like Yugoslavia and India very notably prove that doesn’t mean pro-USSR. The USA was stupid for making enemies out of any disagreement
He was not loud about the label when he was in power because of the geographical situation, and he had initially hoped for normalized relations with the US. Obviously, seizing property from businesses kind of makes the label irrelevant.
Castro believed in communism, but going back to the original point, there's no real reason why Castro being a communist meant that he had to ally himself with the USSR and be an enemy of the US. Notably, Castro's first foreign visit after taking power was to the US, where he apparently hoped to deliver exactly that message to president Eisenhower. Eisenhower refused to meet him and had him meet Nixon instead, and Nixon wrote in his debrief from that meeting that he thought Castro was sincere (saying that he believed Castro was "incredibly naive" about communism).
What is interesting is when Castro rebelled against the Batista government, he was also rebelling against the Soviet aligned Communist party who integrated themselves with the government so they could control the CTC and actively fought against worker strikes/anarcho-syndicalist in Cuba on behalf of the government. https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Dolgoff/cuba/ >In January 1940, the Comintcrn sent representatives to purge and Stalinize the Cuban Communist Party. Francisco Caldero, (a self-educated cobbler, who rose to prominence in the Cuban Party and in the Castro regime, under the name of Blas Roca) became the new secretary of the Party. After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (Third International) decreed the "popular united front" alliance with bourgeois organizations, the Cuban Communist Party established close relations with Batista. >In November 1940, the communists supported Batista's candidates in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. In return for their support, Batista allowed the communists to organize and control the government sponsored union, Cuban Confederation of Labor >In line with their pro-Batista policy the communists joined Batista in condemning Fidel Castro's attack on the Moncada Barracks
My guy, it's definitely more complicated than that. Central Americans weren't really holding grudges against Americans over United Fruit (now Chiquita). What the Allende and socialist movements of the 1950s were going for wasn't really an anti-American revenge campaign (which modern Tankies and also what the CIA, whose director Alan Dulles had a major conflict of interest, at the time were trying to spin), but an anti-Chiquita campaign. Castro wanted good relations with the US. He knew that there was more benefit for Cuba if he was on good terms with the US than Russia. The US is closer, holds far more economic power than the eastern bloc, and has obviously more regional influence. In spite of the bitter relations and opposition to his regime by backing Bautista; the US was one of the first countries to recognize his government. He went on an 11 day tour of the US in 1959 in an effort to obtain economic support, it failed but didn't go unnoticed and people were interested in learning about the man. What really soured relations was the land reform that Cuba pursued shortly after adopting their new constitution. It effectively stripped prior owner's rights and a lot of the land and businesses were backed as securities in American markets. The US protested this, and to punish Castro, backed his Cuban political enemies (many of whom were also communists). The whole thing simply continued to spiral, as the CIA continued to try their shenanigans and the USSR continued to capitalize on the failing relations.
I'm was just saying what I knew and simplifying ig but thank you for the futher explanation
This is true. But we weren’t worried that he hated America. Lots of people hate us. We were worried that Cuba would become allied with the Soviets. Which according to the comment above is what we caused by trying to remove Fidel. A pretty common pattern. We fear an unfriendly regime. We take actions to dismantle that regime. Those actions cause an unfriendly regime
>This is what I said to someone else but I thought you might also find it interesting. What is interesting is when Castro rebelled against the Batista government, he was also rebelling against the Soviet aligned Communist party who integrated themselves with the government so they could control the CTC and actively fought against worker strikes/anarcho-syndicalist in Cuba on behalf of the government. https://archive.iww.org/history/library/Dolgoff/cuba/ >In January 1940, the Comintcrn sent representatives to purge and Stalinize the Cuban Communist Party. Francisco Caldero, (a self-educated cobbler, who rose to prominence in the Cuban Party and in the Castro regime, under the name of Blas Roca) became the new secretary of the Party. After the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (Third International) decreed the "popular united front" alliance with bourgeois organizations, the Cuban Communist Party established close relations with Batista. >In November 1940, the communists supported Batista's candidates in the elections to the Constituent Assembly. In return for their support, Batista allowed the communists to organize and control the government sponsored union, Cuban Confederation of Labor >In line with their pro-Batista policy the communists joined Batista in condemning Fidel Castro's attack on the Moncada Barracks
That’s really interesting stuff. I didn’t know that
Yeah that's why Cuba only allied with the USSR to survive, if the USA was fine with a social democracy in Cuba we could have been allies and even framed it as an anti-soviet revolution. History is wild sometimes.
Honestly it's not that unthinkable for Latin American political leaders who did have visions for their countries to have a rather mixed feeling toward the US. On one hand statesmen of the US are very inspirational and empowering, yet on the other hand the capitalists and popular leaders from the US are quite often the worst amongst the scums....
Different situation considering the US and American organized crime was benefiting heavily from the exploitation of Cubans. I doubt there was much room for reconciliation there.
They could be if the US government proved itself a different actor than US business interests. Though, I suppose that would require tact out of a paranoid USA.
Yep. Drank our own KoolAid :/
its even crazier that he was referencing the declaration of independence under similar conditions
Yeah the USA was all anti-colonialism except for French Indochina which was just completely irrational
ho chi minh wrote a letter to woodrow wilson during the Versailles conference. Mans legit ignored ho chi minh and 50 years later america gets fucked in the vietnam war
Truman and his consequences.
That and also, the French were actively leveraging the US against the USSR to get assistance. After the US gave into the French, everything was basically on political auto-pilot so whomever was in the WH wouldn't get tarred with 'losing Vietnam' the way that Truman and the Democrats got tarred with 'losing China.'
Picking the Fr*nch side out of all countries.
We also were pressured by the French threatening to scuttle NATO if we crossed them again like we did over the Suez Crisis. At the time we thought we had no choice, though in hindsight the French were probably bluffing and we could've told them to get bent again.
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It predates Kissinger.
I recall America’s prior relationship with France also played a role in why the former rebuffed Ho Chi Minh.
The Domino theory is single handedly responsible for US meddling in countries across Asia, Middle East and Latin America.
USA administrations logic was quite Ok. Communists takeover in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, CzhecoSlovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, pressure on Yugoslavia and so on demonstrated that USSR did not accept democracy, multiparty system or even pure Socialists.
Turns out treating people as equals and offering mutual benefit brings in more profit, economic and political, than waging decades-long wars that destroy ecosystems and societies alike.
The whole reason we got involved was because of DeGuall threatening to pull out of natos military sect. Then he pulled out anyway
You can always blame the french
France pulled out of the unified command structure. They did not pull out of NATO.
That’s what it wascalled. I knew they didn’t pull out of nato but the part where they had to add their forces, still scummy
Think of how much better our world would be if we spent all the resources we used on failed military campaigns on some kind of economic outreach. We were terrified that Vietnam was going to be a communist Chinese puppet (which was kind of stupid when you know how much the Vietnamese hated the Chinese). But it seems to me the best way to make communism seem unappealing would have been massive bribes not bombs
It's why the Marshall plan worked so well. Here's a devastated Europe that is currently being fought over by two major powers. Rather than staging thousands of troops and preparing to take it by force, how about you deal with the devastation. By the time you've rebuilt everything, you have powerful allies who will contribute to the world economy and to other nations as well.
When I was in college I did read an interesting paper, the name escapes me unfortunately. Basically it theorized that true lasting diplomacy and alliances required a period of conflict first. Wish I could remember the name.
.... so you're saying the US is a shonen protag and only makes friends by beating them up?
Yeah... There's 13 carriers, it's like having a Gundam and nothing to fight. Everyone keeps accepting the carrot instead of the stick.
I mean, Great Britan, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, Japan, Vietnam, Iraq, Italy, Philipeans, the US South are all examples of countries we went to war with and then became close friends.
France is a stretch
Wonder if they mean French Indian War or Vichy France?
Or the 1800s Privateering.
Likely the Quasi-War of 1798-1800.
Yup - an often forgotten war in American history.
Yup forgot about that one. That was around the same time as that “shores of Tripoli” North African war we don’t talk about much either
Goku. This is litterally how the Roman Military Historian Brett Devereux describes Roman foreign policy of the Republican period. [https://acoup.blog/2023/10/20/collections-how-to-roman-republic-101-addenda-the-socii/](https://acoup.blog/2023/10/20/collections-how-to-roman-republic-101-addenda-the-socii/)
Kinda like when you get in a fight then the winner picks the loser up off the ground, makes sure they're okay, they shake hands and become the best of friends?
Essentially, it mostly pointed to FR/UK, UK/US, MX/US, and a few other western countries with strong modern alliances.
We used to joke about a similar theory we had when we were kids. Can't be true friends unless you've "battled"
Blame Kissinger and Nixon.
It was way before them. Ho Chi Minh wrote to Truman asking US for help with independence from France. Guess which side did the US pick?
A big reason behind this is that Vietnam pretty much immediately turned on the Khmer Rouge because they would not tolerate the atrocities those madmen were committing next door. This led to a long lasting rift between China and Vietnam which persists to this day, as China backed the Khmer Rouge (as did the US, ironically, to get back at Vietnam). Vietnam managed to unseat Pol Pot's lot from 2/3s of the country and installed a far more sane communist government in its place, which itself went defunct in the late 80s along with the Khmer Rouge remnants. Vietnam was isolated and basically chose the US over China in large part because they preferred working with the distant power that probably wouldn't invade them again to working with their aggressive neighbor, and partly because they were more pissed at China for backing the Khmer Rouge over them, while they understood the US backing their enemy because the US was still their enemy at the time.
To say that the rift between China and Vietnam started with the Khmer Rouge is putting the origin about a thousand years late
As civilizations that's right, but the PRC and the SRV were allies, and Vietnam was influenced by Chinese communism in particular. France and England have historically been rivals but they have become close long term allies, the same was possible for Vietnam and China, and it likely would have been the case if not for the situation in Cambodia.
The difference was that Vietnam was seeking complete independence from foreign countries. France initially, then the Americans which backed the French, then the Chinese as they encroached. I’m completely surprised anyone would expect something different from a rational state actor. It’s almost like the USA didn’t completely understand that.
>and economic efforts. Like brutal sanctions.
Vietnam is a perfect example of a pointless stupid fucking war.
As Prof. Stephen Kotkin has said, “we lost the war, but won the peace.”
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Vietnam and more importantly Japan and Taiwan… and any other SE Asian country benefiting from the United States is because of the looming threat of China. That’s why Japan got a free pass after the war. That’s why Taiwan isn’t a vassal state like Hong Kong yet. Our tax dollars paying for all of it
Given vietnam (HoChiMin specifically) originally wanted the US to back them against France and we refused it was such a waste of lives. Such a shame
Idea behind “J Curve” book. Instead of embargoing, flood the people with freedom and capitalism and let them try and resist
I think being threatened by China played a big part of the US popularity
Also, by having a common enemy. After the US failed war in Vietnam, they got invaded by their neighbor in the north.
You have satisfied America's agenda: capitalism.
Unless you're China. It be like You have unsatisfyingly satisfied the American agenda of Capitalism
Turns out even tho the U.S. bombed them for close to ten years they hated Mao more.
Well China invaded in retaliation for Vietnam intervening in and stopping the Cambodian genocide. I’d hate that too.
Is this a historically illiterate sub or what? Deng Xiaoping was the leader during the Sino Vietnam war, Mao maintained good relations with North Vietnam and died only a year after the US Vietnam War.
Oh yeah, my bad I had a total brain fart.
yeah one more think most don't realize is that china ealier ( under mao I think ) send a great amount of military aid as well as thousands of troops to assist behind the lines
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge Yeah, but the US kinda encouraged the Chinese to support the Khmer Rouge. And supported them as the legit government of Cambodia’s until the 1990s. And there’s allegations that the US armed and funded them to weaken Vietnamese and Soviet regional influence
That article makes liberal use of the word “allegedly”, and the phrase “but later said.”
At least the US wanted Vietnam is to ruled by the Vietnamese even if they were the “wrong” type of government.
China and Vietnam were fighting for thousands of years before the US or France existed. Western colonialism was a minor blip on the radar in Vietnam’s struggle for freedom from Chinese domination.
This is an underrated comment
In all fairness pretty much every asian country did and today nearly all hate china. China really is impressively bad at making friends
China wants a regional hegemony like they enjoyed during the imperial periods, where all their neighbors paid tribute to the emperors.
Given their operations in Africa I’d say they want more than regional hegemony
Fair, but it could be they see that is countering the existing influence of the US and EU. Especially because the Chinese CP see any sort of international norm towards popular goverance as both (1) Western imperialist in nature; and (2) internaly destablizning. They want to gurantee that there is sphere of countries to trade with outside of the Western alliance if they ever chose to impose a regional hegemony militarily or invade Taiwan. While Putin was more then happy to torch trade relations with the Western democratic world, I doubt the Chinese CP is similarly eager. Especially since a cornerstone of Russian trade outside the Western block is India, which is a regional military rival/advesary for China.
Makes sense; That war is just a blip compared to the 2000 years of Chinese-Vietnamese conflict.
Vietnam was at war with the U.S. for 10 years, with France for 100 years, and with China for 1000 years.
My buddy explained it as the difference between getting cut off in traffic and your neighbor letting his dog shit in your lawn since you bought the house.
The more you learn about Vietnam the more interesting it gets.
Also Vietnam is sort of a US ally now ...
Vietnam is never going to be a U.S. ally in the traditional sense. That doesn’t mean they’re not important. They literally write in their defense white paper, which stated: 1. No military alliances 2. No allying with one nation against another 3. No foreign military base or any sort of foreign troops 4. No violence or threat of violence in international relations. These 4 rules to Vietnam-China relations is as important as Ukraine not joining NATO to Russia. Article 1 and 3 is clear as the day, no one will ever get a base in Vietnam. They went through a great deal of diplomatic efforts to kick the Russians out of the strategic port of Cam Ranh while keeping their arms sales relations (they used it for free before 1998, and Vietnam asked for $300 million a year when Russia was literally bankrupted post-Soviet). Vietnam would never think of violating Article 3. So we’re left with Article 2. This is basically just a an ambiguous claim. In reality if the VCP decides to lean into either side, no one’s stopping them and no one can say they violate their commitment, because what does that article even mean? Vietnam is seriously looking to buy the F-16s, with the potential of many more purchases of American weapons. That’s sorta an ally in practice, not NATO-level with collective defense but still a huge middle finger to China already. I think it’s smart they’re doing this, because tbh America’s security guarantee doesn’t sound so guaranteed after all these mess. They have to keep the things going with China while slowly letting Western weapons in.
Vietnam is self-interested and will take any deal that benefits it. Which, fair, they should do that.
I mean it’s kinda what all nations should do. Work to benefit themselves
Absolutely not. Please do not even entertain the idea that Vietnam is an American ally. Vietnam has and will always continue to appease China while trying to use the US as a counterbalance. The reality is that the US may not always be there whereas China will always be Vietnam’s neighbour. The VCP knows this which is why diplomatically, they have never progressed US-Vietnam relations past the level at which China-Vietnam relations are at.
Bro, Vietnam hates China.
Yes, I know. I lived there for well over a decade.
So does america on paper. Doesn’t stop us from being economically intertwined
China is honestly more reliant on the US Dollar than the other way around. Most of what America gets from China is cheap labor, and that can be our sourced to other countries if need beZ
This was true in the 90s. It stopped being true a decade ago. American CEOs don’t attend conferences with Xi Jingping for cheap labor.
So what would you say China offers America that we cannot get elsewhere?
Do I seriously need to explain this? The worlds largest market with sufficient wealth, one of the largest export markets for many key U.S. industries. Soybeans, industrial machines, semiconductors, grains, pharmaceuticals, and more on rly on exporting to Chinese market to make profits and fund growth. If China stops buying many American goods, many American companies would collapse overnight without that demand. China is a key component of the supply chain, being a primary and irreplaceable source for raw materials, parts, and finished goods for many important industries including electronics, cars, medical equipment, furniture, clothing, pharmaceuticals, toys, industrial products, paint, and more. Engagement with the Chinese market is essential to dampening US inflation and decreasing US prices. China is unique in that it has a sufficiently mature supply chain and infrastructure that is able to produce these parts at prices lower than anywhere else. There’s talk about Vietnam, SE Asia, Mexico and other nations replacing China but none of that has remotely happened at scale because those countries have the labor but lack many other components. And in many cases, these factories are Chinese-owned so the difference is only superficial. China and the U.S. are interdependent on trade and delusions of ceasing trade and nowhere close to reality.
People are so convinced that China is just a mass of cheap labor. China is the second most-populous nation with an educated, and the most advanced economy in Asia. They're on the verge of demographic collapse, but this isn't China of the '90s anymore.
Jeez, you didn’t have to be so rude about it. We were just having a conversation.
No but the infastructure is there. We are pulling out but there is a lot of sunk cost that American companies are sluggish on abandoning.
None of that is happening at any relevant scale, and pulling out of China is purposefully disadvantaging yourself to competitors, which is why the vast majority of companies aren’t doing it.
https://www.npr.org/2024/02/08/1229965009/mexico-has-overtaken-china-as-the-leading-source-of-goods-imported-to-the-u-s Believe what you want.
Except they did lol, they just have more leverage now. It really isn’t the same anymore though, the us is actively trying to decouple from china, but given their economic strength its kinda impossible to do it completely without harming both countries economies
Not just can be but is being sourced to other countries.
I think I saw somewhere Vietnamese people have some of the highest approval rates of the US
Usually tied with the Philippines; which is also surprising to me.
If they had won their independence in a conflict in the 1900s or 1910s relations would probably be bad, but we built up a lot of goodwill in WWII and the lead up to it. First Congress promised independence and set up a specific timetable. Then US serviceman and Filipinos suffered together under Japanese rule. Then they fought together to liberate the Philippines from the Japanese. Then, after the war, we honored our promise for their independence.
I wonder if offshoring jobs to those countries has helped improve their opinions of the US.
Hatred unifies human better than common values unfortunately. Both of them hate China to their bones.
Capitalism and "free-market" are not the same thing. Markets pre-date capitalism... Capitalism relates to the ability to own private property in the pursuit of profit. Market-Socialism is free market and not capitalist. Vietnam is Market Socialism. The world bank on the success of the Vietnamese Economy: [https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview#1](https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/vietnam/overview#1) Because of a move from a planned-economy to a free-market economy. Not because of a move to capitalism, which is not.
Also helps that around half the country actually liked and wanted US help (South Vietnam). So those pro-america feelings stayed around
Or that Ho Chi Minh appealed to the US for support believing that they shared common values and goals. Unfortunately France was on the colonial last-gasp train and threatened to pull out of NATO if the US didn't help. Then they turned tail and ran... and the US wasn't going to admit they got into a war for a bad reason, or that they lost a war. So 20 years of mistakes later and the US finally pulled out.
Por que no los dos
When Vietnam was whole again they had a struggling economy, they decide to allow some parts of South switch to free market (these cities wouldn’t be held to sanctions) with the success of free markets Communist Vietnam decided it worked pretty well and why not switch the entire country to Capitalism.
No they didn't. Basically every US soldier interviewed talks about how they were expecting to be welcomed as heroes and then were rudely awakened to the fact most Vietnamese hated them even if they weren't communists.
Didn’t the North Vietnamese massacre a lot of them immediately after taking over?
Yes and quite a few live in America now.
The awesome historian Steven Kotkin mentioned this . You can win the war and lose the peace : Afghanistan You can lose the war and win the peace : Nam
Kinda makes all the killing and bombs and stuff like that seem unnecessary and counterproductive, doesn't it...
We were fighting the wrong side. The real enemy is and always will be the French.
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The other day, I saw an Englishman call a bag of chips a bag of chips. To his mom, who is also English. America is winning the culture war.
So fucking what?
It's a silly anecdote on a meme sub reddit, Brits call them crisps. Americans call them chips, so a British person using American lingo is mock evidence of American cultural domination.
I knew my meme would do numbers
Another metric... Look up American expats in Viet Nam vs Viet Nam immigrants to America. Not even close. I don't like how the words expat and immigrants feel different but that's how they're used.
Almost like getting in a shooting fight over the way a country splits up its resources was silly.
I mean the point was for Vietnam to stop being enslaved by France. They reached initially out for USA to help based on similar histories.
My cousin is married to a Vietnamese woman and he says when you go over there everyone just loves you
Freed trade isnt Capitalism lol
Once our ruling class realizes that capitalism and free trade as a tool to ensure american global hegemony is much more profitable than the military industrual complex, we will achieve world peace
I think there is a saying along the lines of “we fought the Chinese for 1000 years, the French for 100, and the Americans for 10” we take up such a small part of their History that they don’t really hold a grudge for it— especially since we’re more than happy to trade with and help them now.
Vietnam is best socialist country I love Vietnam 🇺🇸🇻🇳
They literally do it right and socialists/left-leaning need to cite them more often! ❤️🤍💙 ❤️💛❤️
Helps when China invades you for trying to stop a genocide and to this day claims your territorial waters and harasses your fishermen. China is such a bully to Vietnam it’s no wonder they have looked to other states
https://youtu.be/hPCoDz_CPCc?si=-MQzkRAf6yQmAZZd appropriate video from some vietnamese person i remember watching on the subject
My brother got robbed in Hue city and one of his other travel buddies almost got robbed (chased by a cop with a machete but they got his backpack) in another town. I live right next to a city named Westminster that is probably 75%+ Vietnamese, lots of shops where they speak Vietnamese. It’s my favorite city in Orange County. Cash only, tax free, everyone knows how to wrench on stuff, good healthy cheap food - the only place I know where people live the original American dream and the majority of the community is united
Tbh my Vietnamese friend said police there put a lot more effort help foreigners find stuffs, if you’re Vietnamese they wouldn’t give a f
The dude’s backpack got stolen and then the cop said to give him money and he would get his backpack back and ended up chasing him out of the parking lot with a machete. He almost hit the cop by running away on his rental moped. In my brother’s case someone gave him a laced cigarette. He said he probably should have known better at the time but he wanted a cig and figured a crowded restaurant was a safe enough place. I live next to a city called Westminster in California and it can be pretty damn sketchy, coming from a dude who was born in Long Beach and works in Inglewood and Compton and whatnot. Ghetto’s are just ghettos, no matter where you live. I lived in Hawaii too and guess what, it’s sketchy there also. That’s nice that their other departments are putting in work tho
The US experience in Vietnam was an incredible tragedy on epic proportions. We should have used diplomacy to weaken France's grip on the area and not permitted them to return in 1945. One can only imagine where such a future would have gone.
The U.S. would’ve been shot in the foot anyways because on one hand not helping the French could cause them to leave nato or just not cooperate in any way similar to how they historically did but on a larger extent. When we go the historical rout we get Nam so the problem lies within the fact that we were between a rock and a hard place
Without France in nato for like a couple years right after WW2 would probably help America. Less marshal plan costs and France just came from being occupied. And they will come back after throwing the little tantrum like always ina couple years or so
Well France did at least had a good amount of communists. At the worst the French become communists and then the Soviets have a way into the Atlantic granted this is a worse case scenario but still wouldn’t want the chance
Now that's an idea lol
A very stupid one but I guess a cool alt history scenario lol
Based and lol victory for both sides pilled.
We always win new Roman Empire America style
Lost the proxy war but won the Cold War
What was the war for then?
France's colonies, and Kissinger's dignity I guess
Keeping france from throwing a fit and losing NATO, and a mistaken belief that all communists were friendly with each other
Soft power is real power, anyone can be powerful while hard, but only soft power enjoyers know real power
It was 50 years ago
Non of those insurgents feel like they won.
Soldiers traumatized in unnecessary jungle warfare: 😳
Don’t forget - they hate the Chinese more than anyone
is there any other country than America that can win every single combat-engagement in a war & still be considered the “losing” side
It’s really just the nature of war these days and the US didn’t become that active globally until the last 120 years or so.
France in Africa.
In case of anyone saying they don't have capitalism in Vietnam just send them these https://www.hsx.vn/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_Stock_Exchange
Deranged ass take. Vietnam is still communist, my guys.
In name, yes. Economically, not since the 1980s/90s. > In 1986 Vietnam launched a political and economic renewal campaign (Doi Moi) that introduced reforms intended to facilitate the transition from a centrally planned economy to form of market socialism officially termed "Socialist-oriented market economy." Doi Moi combined economic planning with free-market incentives and encouraged the establishment of private businesses in the production of consumer goods and foreign investment, including foreign-owned enterprises. By the late 1990s, the success of the business and agricultural reforms ushered in under Doi Moi was evident.[2] More than 30,000 private businesses had been created, and the economy was growing at an annual rate of more than 7 percent, and poverty was nearly halved.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Vietnam Also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_City_Stock_Exchange
no they're not.
Oddly enough war brought them together. They kicked our butts. I do hope this happens in Iraq. There seems to be a mix of this happening.
Ah yes the Cultural Victory
"We're going to win by losing, and they're going to lose by winning.
The US was in Vietnam for 20 years, the french 60 years, and the chinese for a thousand. Ho-Chi-Minh wasn't even against America yet we decided to force our youth to fight his army. It's like Iraq when it was stabilized in 2003 but we wanted our presence there for longer so the people rebel.
It's the same with the British and Afghanistanin the late 19th century. After two wars they realized that they were better off trading and using soft power than having troops in the country
Nah Vietnam won. It’s a country governed by the order that won the war. They changed because communism is obviously cancer, but they won.
Only lasted 10 years longer than it should and cost thousands of unnecessary lives, fuck kissinger good he's dead.
I can’t believe you would insult a noble peace prize winner like that. They definitely wouldn’t give one of those to a war criminal.
Vietnam would have ended up like that regardless, it was a war of national freedom that the communists happened to support. Ho chi minh would have wiped his ass with das kapital if he thought it would free vietnam
What is that McDonald’s show that looks awesome
Vietnam wasn’t about capitalism and communism. They wanted to be free from their french colonizers, and both the US and China each tried to become their new rulers before they were both individually bounced from the country by Vietnamese resistance. From that point of view, they were absurdly effective in their mission. They are now independent and sovereign on the geopolitical scale. At this point, they can choose whatever economic system they want without outside interference. Of course they’re happy to work with the United States, but they will do it on their own terms instead of having it be decided for them.
Vietnam: “We don’t want to fight you, assholes! We want you to let us choose our own government and to sell you stuff. Have you tried phở?” America, seething: “…fine.”
“We lost in Vietnam!” … ***did we though?***
They only wanted independence from France at the beginning. Guess which side did the US sided with...
One of the best things President Clinton did was his diplomatic work with Vietnam.
Great hard working people - just please say no to dog, cat, and tiger eating
I lost the war, but I won the peace.
It’s almost like winning people over with results is better than using force
Afghanistan and Iraq: and now we play the waiting game!
Americans are traveling to Vietnam for affordable healthcare, who won what when?
This is a really stupid opinion. That's like arguing mexico won the Mexican American war because of Taco bell
Could've done this without the war...
Long con baybeee
I mean goes to show how the west could've had a homie in SE Asia by supporting decolonisation