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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: aladin who wrote (26582)	4/22/2002 7:04:47 PM
From: Bilow	Respond to of 281500

Hi John Cananaugh; Re: "Your solution maybe the only one that works, but that is a sad statement on the world." Ignoring power realities in foreign policy only makes the world sadder than it already is. If we glance at a map of China / South East Asia, it becomes very obvious that South Korea is much more easily defended from Chinese influence than South Vietnam is. For those who don't see why, ask unclewest, or measure the land border of South Korea and compare that to the land border of the former South Vietnam. By 1960, history of the Korean war indicated that defending Korea had been problematic at best. We were nearly thrown off the peninsula, and we were unable to keep the North against China. Despite this prior history, the US got into an expensive, long and losing war to support South Vietnam. When they first analyzed the problem, they probably looked at the small, short and easily defended border between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. But this ignored the other long borders of South Vietnam. As soon as the Communists had footholds in Cambodia and Laos the fall of South Vietnam was a done deal. If we'd seen the situation, from a tactical / strategic point of view, we'd have kept the lives of those 50,000+ and used our resources against the Communists at some other, more advantageous battlefield. That's why I'm making a big thing out of the strategic impossibility of our making a long term commitment to the survival of Israel despite the efforts of the whole rest of the world. -- Carl