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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (108439)	7/27/2003 10:00:23 PM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<<But the price he paid was that he made a deal with the communist "devil" and that was the form of government they demanded in return for their support.>> I believe this is true -- but notice that neither the Russians nor the Chinese play any role now, and the institutions of government there are free to evolve. Vietnamese people demanded market reforms many years ago. The reforms are incomplete, but you will find that the Vietnamese people themselves adjust very quickly to markets. Ho Chi Minh is still regarded with great respect in Vietnam. And Vietnam is free from foreign domination. We went to war. They proved they were willing to fight to the last man, woman and child. Their suffering was remarkable. Their determination and staying power was remarkable. They won. Now they are free. We could have made better choices. Ho wrote to the State Department asking for our help. He got no reply.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (108439)	7/28/2003 9:23:36 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

NO ONE really knows for certain what Ho Chi Minh's early history was, let alone his real name. But he definitely received formal training in the Soviet Union as early as 1934, and was likely on the Communist payroll much earlier than that during his time in France. I have no disagreement with that. Ho was a nationalist before he ever encountered communism, and like many nationalists, he was drawn to communism because it was the only political philosophy of the day that even recognized the colonized peoples. It’s also worth noting that in the 1930s a lot of people really believed that capitalism had failed, and were casting around for alternatives; given the appalling corruption and cruelty of French colonial rule, it is hardly surprising that a Vietnamese would be drawn to an anti-Western philosophy. I don’t see his early history as being particularly relevant. Our man on the spot, an experienced intelligence operative, was telling us three things: - The French are finished - If we support the French we will be tarred with that brush - We have a chance at managing Ho He was absolutely right on the first two points, I see no reason to suppose that he couldn’t have been right on the third. HCM was apparently like most people seeking power and control.. He was willing to bide his time to achieve his goals, compromising with rivals and adversaries until he consolidated his power into his hands. I have no doubt that Ho was a communist, and that he sought power. I have never seen any suggestion, though, that he did not first and foremost seek freedom of his country from foreign domination. Now how much control he permitted the Soviets to retain over him during this rule is always a question that only the "secret files" would be able to answer... This raises an interesting question, and leads us to one of the great errors of the cold war. It is common for Americans to assume that Communism was a centrally directed and unified attack on the west, and that all who subscribed to the Communist ideology were under Soviet control. This was understandable before the Sino-Soviet split in ’48, but after that it was clear that it had never been the case. Our insistence on seeing unity where there was none, and that took the "divide and conquer" weapon out of our arsenal. I've seen no evidence suggesting that Ho was under Soviet control after he left that country. There was no aid to create dependence, and no physical means of control. Any control that the Soviets exerted would have had to have been ideology, and while Ho was doubtless a Communist, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that he was a Russophile. To the contrary, several reports from people who knew Ho suggested that he experienced considerable personal discrimination in Russia, and that while his faith in Communism as a philosophy was untouched, he had a less than positive impression of Russians. That wouldn’t surprise me: most Vietnamese I’ve met, including a number of ardent Communists, have had less than positive impressions of Russians. But I think it's pretty apparent that without Soviet (and Chinese) aid, he was playing both of those communist rivals off against one another, thus insuring he received the maximum amount of support. But the price he paid was that he made a deal with the communist "devil" and that was the form of government they demanded in return for their support. All a moot point in ’45. There was no chance of Soviet aid, and China was not yet Communist. The only place Ho could turn was the US, and he had reasons to turn that way: the American decision to spin off the Philippines was known and admired among Vietnamese, and Roosevelt was known to have no sympathy for a French return. We had an opportunity to be the devil to whom Ho sold his soul; we declined, and the Russians and Chinese stepped into the gap. There is, of course, no guarantee that we could have controlled, or if necessary removed, Ho. In retrospect, though, such a course would probably have offered a greater chance of success than the one we took, which was, as we were warned, a dead end from the beginning.