I’m a huge nerd when it come to the First and Second Indochina wars. It’s a super interesting mixture of Western colonialism (France), Eastern colonialism (Japan), Cold War (China, USSR, USA, South Korea, AUSNZ), civil war (all the competing factions in Vietnam), guerilla and conventional warfare, geopolitical propaganda, etc
It has something for every history buff.
But I think this article does a nice job of scratching the surface of the mythology that surrounds the American War. If the communists get credit for anything, it’s communication both locally and globally, and their ability to use those stories to unite half of a country to fight and sacrifice for over 30 years to fight opponents (both foreigner and Vietnamese).
I lived in Vietnam for about 5 years and that same mythology is still use by the government to unite people (not a knock as every country does this).
But if you scratch below the surface (as this article does) you pretty quickly find out the national mythology isn’t true at all
But the current government still knows how to leverage the story - a great example is this year’s 50th anniversary of the end of the American War.
Being able to celebrate defeating the US at the same time you’re attempting to strength your relationship with the US is tricky. How did they do it? The 50th celebration is also the 30th celebration of normalization of the Vietnam-US relationship. So they can tell one story locally, and another internationally and win both sides.
gedy 11 hours ago [-]
I enjoyed the read but it stopped short, and I think people in the west too readily latch on to the "anti-colonialism" part of the 30+ year Vietnam war.
Certainly fighting the French was motivated by this, however the last 20 years of the war it was more a civil war between the communists and not-communists, a North vs South civil war, and proxy fight backed by both the USSR and the west.
I don't have references handy but it's interesting to read the experiences and feelings of the Viet Minh in South Vietnam, and how they were sidelined once the North took over. Also Vietnam invading Cambodia soon after points out that fighting colonialism was not a prime motivation of the northern leadership.
CalChris 7 hours ago [-]
The Vietnam War was anticolonial against the French, Japanese and French in succession. It didn’t suddenly become not anticolonial when the US entered en mass after the Tonkin ‘crisis’. It remained anticolonial when China attached.
corimaith 5 hours ago [-]
Depends if you believe having Comunnists in charge as opposed to literally everybody else can be labeled as "anti-colonial". Then again, "anti-imperialism" often goes hand in hand with authoritarianism.
CalChris 2 hours ago [-]
Actually, anticolonial means opposition to or resistance against the system where one country controls another. It really has nothing to do with their system of government. BTW, they're run by the socialists now and, thanks to Clinton and McCain, we have normal relations with them. The US Navy makes port of call visits to Cam Ranh Bay. Maybe if we'd just done a deal with that former line manager for General Motors we could have made those port of call visits earlier and saved $800B, a 100K US lives and a couple of million Vietnamese dead. You know, mercantilism.
gedy 6 hours ago [-]
I didn't say it wasn't anti colonial at all, but by the time the US got actively involved it was certainly also/mostly a civil war/communist revolution.
CalChris 2 hours ago [-]
Ho Chi Minh petitioned for Vietnamese independence at the Paris Peace Talks in 1919. He was turned down by the Big Four including France's Clemenceau and the United States' Woodrow Wilson.
BTW, the Viet Minh were our allies during WWII.
DiogenesKynikos 10 hours ago [-]
Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the Khmer Rouge from power (who were not only massacring their own population, but also attacking the Vietnamese border areas). How does that prove that the Vietnamese war against the Americans was not anti-colonial?
gedy 9 hours ago [-]
They occupied Cambodia for 11 years, so it's a stretch to say they were adamantly against the idea of foreign interference. Khmer Rouge were nasty to their own civilians, but so were the Viet Cong, especially early on in the conflict and to the south after the war.
xuki 5 hours ago [-]
I'm Vietnamese so I'm obviously biased, but what option did they have? If they left immediately, Khmer Rouge would be back in no time and the cycle would begin again. I don't think the politburo enjoyed occupying Cambodia, as Vietnam was severely punished by the international community for the occupation. It probably pushed back Vietnam's development 10-20 years.
notahacker 8 hours ago [-]
tbf, whilst the Viet Cong were often nasty to their civilians, the Khmer Rouge killed a quarter of their own population and had made multiple advances into Vietnam to continue a genocide that had started with ethnic Vietnamese living within Cambodia. It's not really a tenable argument the Viet Cong didn't have just cause for invasion or that their military sticking around whilst the remaining Khmer Rouge cadres waited for an opportunity to return resembled Western colonialism, and the Khmer Rouge is not fondly remembered by Cambodian nationalists or royalists or anticommunists
Hun Sen, the Cambodian they installed as deputy PM is still in power having allied with just about every faction in Cambodian politics in various elections and coups; not a testament to the vibrancy of Cambodian democracy but a testament to how the real distinction wasn't between an independent Cambodia and occupation, but between the Khmer Rouge and everything else.
corimaith 6 hours ago [-]
You could say the exact same about Saddam Hussein
rqtwteye 10 hours ago [-]
My read is that started as anti colonialism against the French but then the big powers took sides so the Vietnamese started fighting each other.
The sad thing is that a lot of problems could have been avoided if the Americans in the 50s wouldn't have been so scared of any kind of communism or socialism. They messed up Iran, they drove Egypt into the arms of the Soviets, and they may have even had friendlier relationships with Fidel Castro.
WeylandYutani 6 hours ago [-]
Ah but you forget that the economic exploitation of the former colonies was supposed to continue. It is not so much communism that frightened the West as it was nationalism.
rsoto2 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah the Cambodian-Vietnamese war wasn't colonialism.
" In the first major clash between the two former allies, the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army (KRA) invaded the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc on 1 May 1975 (barely 24 hours after Saigon fell), claiming it was historically part of Kampuchea's territory.[17]
Nine days later, on 10 May 1975, the KRA continued its incursion by capturing the Thổ Chu Islands, where it executed 500 Vietnamese civilians. "
gedy 9 hours ago [-]
They occupied Cambodia for 11 years though.
ViktorRay 10 hours ago [-]
Imagine if South Vietnam had remained independent. If it had become a thriving prosperous free democracy like South Korea or Taiwan.
Would we still be talking about “Vietnam’s storied anti colonialism” today?
How often do we talk about Korean anti colonialism or Chinese anti colonialism nowadays? Not much. When people talk about Korea and China nowadays it is in the context of the differences between North and South Korea and the differences between mainland China and the free democratic Chinese[1] island that is Taiwan.
When I look back at the American counterculture movement and how triumphant those people were that the Vietnam War was over…and then you read about the end of South Vietnam….the fall of Saigon… and then you look at where South Korea and Taiwan are today….you can’t help but wonder…
And many of these stories of Vietnam are paternalistic. They deny the agency of the South Vietnamese.
[1] By this I mean Taiwan is Chinese in terms of culture.
wqaatwt 10 hours ago [-]
> magine if South Vietnam had remained independent. If it had become a thriving prosperous free democracy
That’s not obvious. For starters South Korea was a brutal and oppressive dictatorship during and after the war (not that much better than NK). It only became a democracy about the same time (coincidentally) as the USSR began collapsing. Same as Taiwan for that matter…
Also it’s a sample of one.. there are plenty of other countries where the US intervened that ended up not doing very well.
> you can’t help but wonder
About what? Waging the war indefinitely or direct invasion of North Vietnam? Because there weren’t really that many other options..
ViktorRay 9 hours ago [-]
It’s not just a sample of one. You are forgetting about the Marshall Plan. About West and East Germany. About when the Berlin Wall came down.
There’s no reason South Vietnam couldn’t have become like South Korea or Taiwan one day. We are all human beings and deep down aren’t we all alike and want the same things?
No, I just don’t think they are applicable. Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were are all very poor and rural Germany was one of the main industrial powers for the at least 50-60 years preceding WW2.
> Marshall Plan
the total inflation adjusted amount of grants and loans that went to Germany was equal to about 32 billion dollars. That’s less than the amount of economic aid US gave to Afghanistan since 2001.
But yeah, I agree that there are no biological reasons preventing any poor or underdeveloped from becoming successful.
rayiner 9 hours ago [-]
> That’s not obvious. For starters South Korea was a brutal and oppressive dictatorship during and after the war (not that much better than NK).
So what? So were most European countries before they became democracies. Name a successful democracy that didn’t go through such a phase to consolidate the state?
pvg 10 hours ago [-]
How often do we talk about Korean anti colonialism or Chinese anti colonialism nowadays?
These are central to the recent histories of both countries and a big part of their own national mythologies. Comes up directly and indirectly all the time.
npn 2 hours ago [-]
> Imagine if South Vietnam had remained independent. If it had become a thriving prosperous free democracy like South Korea or Taiwan.
will never happen.
it annoys me to no end that ever americans out there always assume that the war was between north and south vietnam, while in reality it was not. VCs were mostly southern people, the conflicts were mostly between south vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam which was found and led by southern vietnamese.
which mean the conflict would never stop, even without the help from north vietnam or soviet.
DiogenesKynikos 10 hours ago [-]
> How often do we talk about Korean anti colonialism or Chinese anti colonialism nowadays? Not much.
Americans don't talk much about Chinese anti-colonialism nowadays, but people in other parts of the world (particularly in China and Africa) do.
10 hours ago [-]
Rendered at 07:13:46 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I’m a huge nerd when it come to the First and Second Indochina wars. It’s a super interesting mixture of Western colonialism (France), Eastern colonialism (Japan), Cold War (China, USSR, USA, South Korea, AUSNZ), civil war (all the competing factions in Vietnam), guerilla and conventional warfare, geopolitical propaganda, etc
It has something for every history buff.
But I think this article does a nice job of scratching the surface of the mythology that surrounds the American War. If the communists get credit for anything, it’s communication both locally and globally, and their ability to use those stories to unite half of a country to fight and sacrifice for over 30 years to fight opponents (both foreigner and Vietnamese).
I lived in Vietnam for about 5 years and that same mythology is still use by the government to unite people (not a knock as every country does this).
But if you scratch below the surface (as this article does) you pretty quickly find out the national mythology isn’t true at all
But the current government still knows how to leverage the story - a great example is this year’s 50th anniversary of the end of the American War.
Being able to celebrate defeating the US at the same time you’re attempting to strength your relationship with the US is tricky. How did they do it? The 50th celebration is also the 30th celebration of normalization of the Vietnam-US relationship. So they can tell one story locally, and another internationally and win both sides.
Certainly fighting the French was motivated by this, however the last 20 years of the war it was more a civil war between the communists and not-communists, a North vs South civil war, and proxy fight backed by both the USSR and the west.
I don't have references handy but it's interesting to read the experiences and feelings of the Viet Minh in South Vietnam, and how they were sidelined once the North took over. Also Vietnam invading Cambodia soon after points out that fighting colonialism was not a prime motivation of the northern leadership.
BTW, the Viet Minh were our allies during WWII.
Hun Sen, the Cambodian they installed as deputy PM is still in power having allied with just about every faction in Cambodian politics in various elections and coups; not a testament to the vibrancy of Cambodian democracy but a testament to how the real distinction wasn't between an independent Cambodia and occupation, but between the Khmer Rouge and everything else.
The sad thing is that a lot of problems could have been avoided if the Americans in the 50s wouldn't have been so scared of any kind of communism or socialism. They messed up Iran, they drove Egypt into the arms of the Soviets, and they may have even had friendlier relationships with Fidel Castro.
" In the first major clash between the two former allies, the Kampuchean Revolutionary Army (KRA) invaded the Vietnamese island of Phú Quốc on 1 May 1975 (barely 24 hours after Saigon fell), claiming it was historically part of Kampuchea's territory.[17]
Nine days later, on 10 May 1975, the KRA continued its incursion by capturing the Thổ Chu Islands, where it executed 500 Vietnamese civilians. "
Would we still be talking about “Vietnam’s storied anti colonialism” today?
How often do we talk about Korean anti colonialism or Chinese anti colonialism nowadays? Not much. When people talk about Korea and China nowadays it is in the context of the differences between North and South Korea and the differences between mainland China and the free democratic Chinese[1] island that is Taiwan.
When I look back at the American counterculture movement and how triumphant those people were that the Vietnam War was over…and then you read about the end of South Vietnam….the fall of Saigon… and then you look at where South Korea and Taiwan are today….you can’t help but wonder…
And many of these stories of Vietnam are paternalistic. They deny the agency of the South Vietnamese.
[1] By this I mean Taiwan is Chinese in terms of culture.
That’s not obvious. For starters South Korea was a brutal and oppressive dictatorship during and after the war (not that much better than NK). It only became a democracy about the same time (coincidentally) as the USSR began collapsing. Same as Taiwan for that matter…
Also it’s a sample of one.. there are plenty of other countries where the US intervened that ended up not doing very well.
> you can’t help but wonder
About what? Waging the war indefinitely or direct invasion of North Vietnam? Because there weren’t really that many other options..
There’s no reason South Vietnam couldn’t have become like South Korea or Taiwan one day. We are all human beings and deep down aren’t we all alike and want the same things?
https://youtu.be/5F_aHt34a-g
No, I just don’t think they are applicable. Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam were are all very poor and rural Germany was one of the main industrial powers for the at least 50-60 years preceding WW2.
> Marshall Plan
the total inflation adjusted amount of grants and loans that went to Germany was equal to about 32 billion dollars. That’s less than the amount of economic aid US gave to Afghanistan since 2001.
But yeah, I agree that there are no biological reasons preventing any poor or underdeveloped from becoming successful.
So what? So were most European countries before they became democracies. Name a successful democracy that didn’t go through such a phase to consolidate the state?
These are central to the recent histories of both countries and a big part of their own national mythologies. Comes up directly and indirectly all the time.
will never happen.
it annoys me to no end that ever americans out there always assume that the war was between north and south vietnam, while in reality it was not. VCs were mostly southern people, the conflicts were mostly between south vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam which was found and led by southern vietnamese.
which mean the conflict would never stop, even without the help from north vietnam or soviet.
Americans don't talk much about Chinese anti-colonialism nowadays, but people in other parts of the world (particularly in China and Africa) do.