Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (108470)	7/28/2003 7:54:25 AM
From: Brumar89	Respond to of 281500

Opinions about an alternate history scenario. Just wanted to say we should remember that's what this dscussion is about. Having said that, I'll reply: a prominent cluster of nationalist groups backed by Chiang Kai-Shek and his secret police chief Tai Li, who had extensive business interests in Indochina. I'd note these forces couldn't hold onto mainland China. If Americans were in the driver’s seat as guarantors of the freedom of a new republic, with all of the guns, all of the resources, all of the money, don’t you think there might have been a few things that could have been done to influence the direction taken by the new state? Of course. We would be the hegemon there. I can also see the gov't we established would have been seen by many as a puppet controlled by a new colonial power. There's also the issue that southern Asia and Africa were full of colonies just like VN. Were we to have intervened in each of them? Talk about worldwide hegemony. .. a communist-directed movement with an army of 250, 4-5000 “semi-armed” (meaning machetes and a few antique guns) support cadres, It wouldn't stay small after China fell to the Communists. The movement you described did after all defeat the French. (Well, OK, maybe that's not saying too much. <g>) Would you rather have intervened as inheritor of the mantle of the hated and despised French, or guarantors of independence? By the time we did put in troops, the French were gone and SVN was independent. The non-communist leadership there was non-democratic and corrupt. But then so was the communist. Authoritarianism, poverty, misery. That’s what their people already had, and given the quality of the governments the US supported in Vietnam, that’s what they were going to get in any event. OK. The same could have been said of countries like S Korea and Taiwan. Both have become democratic and relatively prosperous. A non-communist S VN could have been well on the path to where these countries are now and would no doubt be far more advanced than present-day unified VN.