Who helped Vietnam?

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YMix
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Who helped Vietnam?

Post by YMix »

Doc wrote:However the Soviet Union was the main ally of North Vietnam during the war and after. Not an ally of the US or an ally of the PRC. That China invaded Vietnam over Vietnam's invasion and removal of Pol Pot in Cambodia(Close Chinese ally) makes that pretty plain. Even if many Americans gave a sigh of relief that Pol Pot was removed.
Wrong. Brejnev saw North Vietnam as a spoiler country, to borrow Spengman's phrase, which could ruin his detente with the USA. However, two related factors forced the Soviet Union to help Vietnam. One was the USSR's repeated attempts to become once more the undisputed leader of the international communist movement. The other was its long-running conflict with China. Basically, the Soviet Union was forced to help Vietnam in order to prevent the Chinese from screaming that the USSR was abandoning a fellow communist party in the face of Western imperialist aggression. Well, the Chinese screamed anyway, something the Russians did not like one bit. However, the Soviet Union was also working on the political end by pushing for a meeting of all the communist parties in order to officially rally the movement behind it and against China and its protégé, Vietnam. Given that the failure of North Vietnam's campaign would have meant another US client state on its borders, China was directly interested in USA's defeat. It was China that kept urging the North Vietnamese to fight.

Ironically enough, it was Romania that repeatedly prevented the meeting from taking place. The conflict between the USSR and the P.R. China was a godsend for Romania because it provided a front for our political guerrilla campaign against the USSR. Both Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceauşescu based their foreign policy on the non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states (neamestecul în treburile interne) and sovereignty, The last thing that Romania wanted was to see the Soviet Union firmly in control of the communist movement and enforcing its ideas about the international division of labor (= economic servitude) through Comecon. As a result, the Soviet Union was unable to abandon Vietnam and to rein in China.

Finally, an interesting bit of history that I came across, a view from the other side, so to speak. In early 1966, the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party sent a letter to the Communist Party of China proposing one of the above mentioned meetings of all communist parties, allegedly in order to explore ways of helping Vietnam. Naturally, nobody was stupid enough to believe the official reasons. Ioan Gheorghe Maurer, Prime Minister of Romania, said during the meeting of the Permanent Presidium of the CC of the Romanian Communist Party that he suspected the Soviet Union of foul play:

"[...] a letter that invites China to a meeting in order to organize the resistance against the USA, drafted in such a way that China and Vietnam would refuse to attend, allows the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to evade, in case of aggression against China, the duties arising from their pledges to support China. This letter could be the start of preparatory action in order to leave China to face the USA alone, in case of aggression."

Alexandru Drăghici, the Minister of Internal Affairs, thought that:

"[...] the current position of the USSR is, in a way, a repetition of the situation around WWII, when they signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany in order to keep war away from their borders at any price. They actually support the USA position regarding Vietnam, that the Chinese are to blame, not the USA. [...] I agree that we should play a more active role, but please note that our main position regarding sovereignty, independence etc. was made possible only by [the USSR's] trouble with China. It's clear that, absent these failures to reach an agreement, the USSR would have intervened more actively in our internal affairs."
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monster_gardener
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Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by monster_gardener »

YMix wrote:
Doc wrote:However the Soviet Union was the main ally of North Vietnam during the war and after. Not an ally of the US or an ally of the PRC. That China invaded Vietnam over Vietnam's invasion and removal of Pol Pot in Cambodia(Close Chinese ally) makes that pretty plain. Even if many Americans gave a sigh of relief that Pol Pot was removed.
Wrong. Brejnev saw North Vietnam as a spoiler country, to borrow Spengman's phrase, which could ruin his detente with the USA. However, two related factors forced the Soviet Union to help Vietnam. One was the USSR's repeated attempts to become once more the undisputed leader of the international communist movement. The other was its long-running conflict with China. Basically, the Soviet Union was forced to help Vietnam in order to prevent the Chinese from screaming that the USSR was abandoning a fellow communist party in the face of Western imperialist aggression. Well, the Chinese screamed anyway, something the Russians did not like one bit. However, the Soviet Union was also working on the political end by pushing for a meeting of all the communist parties in order to officially rally the movement behind it and against China and its protégé, Vietnam. Given that the failure of North Vietnam's campaign would have meant another US client state on its borders, China was directly interested in USA's defeat. It was China that kept urging the North Vietnamese to fight.

Ironically enough, it was Romania that repeatedly prevented the meeting from taking place. The conflict between the USSR and the P.R. China was a godsend for Romania because it provided a front for our political guerrilla campaign against the USSR. Both Gheorghiu-Dej and Ceauşescu based their foreign policy on the non-intervention in the internal affairs of other states (neamestecul în treburile interne) and sovereignty, The last thing that Romania wanted was to see the Soviet Union firmly in control of the communist movement and enforcing its ideas about the international division of labor (= economic servitude) through Comecon. As a result, the Soviet Union was unable to abandon Vietnam and to rein in China.

Finally, an interesting bit of history that I came across, a view from the other side, so to speak. In early 1966, the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party sent a letter to the Communist Party of China proposing one of the above mentioned meetings of all communist parties, allegedly in order to explore ways of helping Vietnam. Naturally, nobody was stupid enough to believe the official reasons. Ioan Gheorghe Maurer, Prime Minister of Romania, said during the meeting of the Permanent Presidium of the CC of the Romanian Communist Party that he suspected the Soviet Union of foul play:

"[...] a letter that invites China to a meeting in order to organize the resistance against the USA, drafted in such a way that China and Vietnam would refuse to attend, allows the Soviet Union and other socialist countries to evade, in case of aggression against China, the duties arising from their pledges to support China. This letter could be the start of preparatory action in order to leave China to face the USA alone, in case of aggression."

Alexandru Drăghici, the Minister of Internal Affairs, thought that:

"[...] the current position of the USSR is, in a way, a repetition of the situation around WWII, when they signed the non-aggression pact with Hitler's Germany i order to keep war away from their borders at any price. They actually support the USA position regarding Vietnam, that the Chinese are to blame, not the USA. [...] I agree that we should play a more active role, but please note that our main position regarding sovereignty, independence etc. was made possible only by [the USSR's] trouble with China. It's clear that, absent these failure to reach an agreement, the USSR would have intervened more actively in our internal affairs."
Thank You VERY Much for your post, YMix

Sounds believable*.......... ;) :twisted: :roll:

We Humans tend to be such Depraved Sinful Egotistical Chaos Monkeys who tend to too often become Killer Apes that often the best we can do to promote good or at least keep the level of evil to a sometimes tolerable level is to oppose evils........ Catholic Church vs. Communist Party in Poland is IMVHO a classic example.....


Maybe a reason G_d shut down Nimrod's Space Program ;) :idea: :lol: at the Tower of Babel so we Chaos Monkeys would have to live in smaller gangs..........


And have somewhere to flee if one gang became just too bad.........

This is a Mappo World of mostly at best Anti-Heros like Churchill, Bobby Boothby and Wario ;) ........

A Wario World....... ;) :lol: :roll:

Remembering a story in which humans in a wrecked space ship waiting for a rescue were able to tell the true human chaos monkeys from false alien predators because the true humans bitched and complained and wanted to make sure that they would be compensated...... ;) :lol: :roll:


There are some Saints and Tzaddiks like John Rabe and Chiune & Yukiko Sugihara** but they often pay a high price for helping the rest of us....


*Though what Uncle Ho Chi Minh said about Chinese Dragon Dung stands

**Actually Chiune & John Rabe, his German opposite number, got off relatively lightly........

Often being a major Saint costs some of your blood......... :o

Often all of it..... :shock:
For the love of G_d, consider you & I may be mistaken.
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YMix
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Re: Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by YMix »

monster_gardener wrote:*Though what Uncle Ho Chi Minh said about Chinese Dragon Dung stands.
Of course. Despite the US doctrine that all communists are alike, North Vietnam had a genuine nationalist movement. Much like Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceauşescu and Tito before him, Ho Chi Minh didn't want his country to become anybody's satellite.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
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Doc
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Re: Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by Doc »

YMix wrote:
monster_gardener wrote:*Though what Uncle Ho Chi Minh said about Chinese Dragon Dung stands.
Of course. Despite the US doctrine that all communists are alike, North Vietnam had a genuine nationalist movement. Much like Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceauşescu and Tito before him, Ho Chi Minh didn't want his country to become anybody's satellite.
However Ho Chi Minh owed the Soviet Union big by the end of the war. And again goes back to
Doc wrote:I mean countries that had successful revolutions that the Soviets backed and supported. How's that?
I did not claim they marched in lock step. You claimed I claimed that.

As for Vietnam they turned to the US after the war. They want American help even now given China's leadership's diversion from economic reality and its one child policies. Which again goes back to
Doc wrote:There is a very long and complex history between the US and Vietnam that goes back to WWII. If the Soviet Union had not existed at the end of WWII the US and Vietnam would likely have been allies from then until now.
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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YMix
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Re: Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by YMix »

Doc wrote:However Ho Chi Minh owed the Soviet Union big by the end of the war.
As for Vietnam they turned to the US after the war.
Thanks for proving my point, I guess.
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
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Doc
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Re: Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by Doc »

YMix wrote:
Doc wrote:However Ho Chi Minh owed the Soviet Union big by the end of the war.
As for Vietnam they turned to the US after the war.
Thanks for proving my point, I guess.
thanks for acknowledging that what it was that you understood that I said is nothing like what I meant. :D
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Ibrahim
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Re: Who helped Vietnam?

Post by Ibrahim »

Vietnam was motivated by anti-colonialism, which is something that the US and USSR didn't understand, and which prevented them from cozying up to the CCP as they would happily have tried to annex them in the aftermath.

Giap said as much to McNamara at one of the postwar summits, and Kubrick put it in the mouth of the mouths of one of the French colonialists in the re-cut version of his movie. "If they become communists they will be Vietnamese communists..."


That they should more or less ignore the USSR after the war, and trade with the US today, is quite natural. They just wanted to kick out the colonizers, first the French, then the Americans, and historically the Chinese. The Russians never even got in the door, "thanks for the RPG-7s, Pavel, now f*ck off." So having liberated and secured their country, why not sell textiles to the US? No point holding a grudge when you're the winner.

To try and view this conflict through our Cold War lens is actual an exercise in colonialist thinking. This didn't occur to me until just now as we were trying to do it.
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Re: Chaos Monkey Human Nature.......

Post by Azrael »

Doc wrote:Ho Chi Minh owed the Soviet Union big by the end of the war.
To put things in perspective, the Soviet Union had 3,000 troops in Vietnam. The U.S. had 540,000.

180 times as many.
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Re: Who helped Vietnam?

Post by Azrael »

The Myth that the U.S. military never lost a battle in Vietnam is exposed as a pack of lies.

50 battles U.S. lost in Vietnam War

>> Given the ample historical facts available, many historians are amazed this "we never lost a battle" myth persists. Part of the blame lies with certain professors, who published this myth in articles like: "Lessons of History and Lessons of Vietnam" where in 1986 U.S. Army Major David H. Petraeus (left) wrote: "Vietnam planted doubts in many military minds about the ability of US forces to conduct successful large-scale counterinsurgencies. These misgivings do not in all cases spring from doubts about the capabilities of American troops and units per se; even in Vietnam, military leaders recall US units never lost a battle." Despite this dismal scholarship, Petraeus became a four-star General, partly due to marriage to the daughter of four-star Army General William Knowlton. General Petraeus was in charge of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and since he failed to learn from the Vietnam war, he failed in those conflicts because of persistent myths of U.S. military invincibility. <<
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