Asymmetrical Information

I think uncle Ronnie does deserve some of the credit and I believe that you make my argument for me at the end of your post (thank you very much).
Yes, their economic system stunk but was also be propped up by the west in many instances as well. Had we trade embargoed them in the 50's and we also leaned on them through European and Japanese trade and made it stick until they cracked, all of this in ADDITION to an arms race they could not afford nor win, I think we could have brought them down by the late 60's or early 70's. That would have solved the Viet Nam issue.
Nixon's détente policy just prolonged the misery.

What if?

According to the Black Book of Communism, communist states murdered around 100 million people during the 20th century, mostly people of their own countries. That toll is not over yet since communist parties still rule over a large fraction of mankind. Who can predict how high the final cost will be?

What if, instead of looking at Vietnam 1975, we look at Europe in 1945. What if America confronted the Russians fully rather than just contained them. It would have been bloody, no doubt, bloody for America for certain. But if communism was finished off then instead of lingering and spreading, and even abiding, how many lives would have been saved? 50 million? Maybe more?

As harsh as some think the Cold War was, it still was a policy of fighting on the cheap, cheap for America, and without full regard for the horrible cost the rest of the world would pay.

The importance of Reagan was not so much the military build up as important as that was, but the desire to roll back communism. And even though Reagan's campaign was fought on the cheap and in the margins, it still marked an important change from the old policy of containment. I think the confrontational policy of Reagan deserves credit. Another president, such as Nixon, might have aided the Soviets to stumble along, in the interest of 'world stability', and prolonging the agony of the fall. Remember how feckless the elder Bush was when occupied Europe began to throw off it's chains? And how Bush made nice with the butchers of Tiananmen Square?

Even if the South Vietnamese were a lost cause in 1975, we should not have abandoned them. We should have given them the chance to survive. Not only did we abondon Vietnam, the craveness of the American lack of will spurred the Soviets into a burst of aggression not seen since the end of WWII. The period from 1975 to 1980 was a disaster.

If Communism had been "done in" in 1945, it would not have had an opportunity to demonstrate that it cannot work. This would have led to LOTS more people trying it out some time in the future. The benefit from allowing it to fall on its own, in both the western and eastern hemisphere, is that we not have experimental evidence that the concept is unworkable. The partition of Germany and Korea (some might include China, but that is a stretch) provided the opportunity to test two divergent political systems in two different cultures, head-to-head. And in both cases, Communism failed - it couldn't (can't) feed people, house them, or provide them with satisfying work. Experimental evidence in a direct comparison is the gold standard of science.

There are still some stalwart intellectuals in the west who will argue that it just wasn't tried "the right way", but they don't have any good examples to point to, so they should just be ignored.

Could the ARVN have beaten the NVA?

Possibly, but we will never know.

North Vietnam by 1972-73 was at the end of its manpower rope. Some North Vietnamese were hiding from conscription, and a trip south to what was viewed as inevitable death.

At the same period, the ARVN were doing something that had never been done before -- repelling armor attacks with unsupported light infantry. Their army had become professional enough to begin rolling back the North.

That ended when the '73 Arab-Israeli war began. Congress cut off all military aid to South Vietnam, using aid to Israel as the lever to pry Nixon's approval. Starved of supplies -- bullets and anti-tank missiles, rather than airstrikes -- the South began a slow collapse as their troops increasingly lacked the means to fight. By the end of the war M-16 bullets were being rationed and surgical dressings were being reused.

Despite this, it still took the NVA two years to beat an almost defenseless foe. What would have happened had we simply given the South munitions for their ground forces, absent any American air or naval support? Hard to tell, but I find it difficult to believe that the North would have made it to "Ho Chi Mihn City" before the end of the Carter Administration.

Could the ARVN have beaten the NVA?

Possibly, but we will never know.

North Vietnam by 1972-73 was at the end of its manpower rope. Some North Vietnamese were hiding from conscription, and a trip south to what was viewed as inevitable death.

At the same period, the ARVN were doing something that had never been done before -- repelling armor attacks with unsupported light infantry. Their army had become professional enough to begin rolling back the North.

That ended when the '73 Arab-Israeli war began. Congress cut off all military aid to South Vietnam, using aid to Israel as the lever to pry Nixon's approval. Starved of supplies -- bullets and anti-tank missiles, rather than airstrikes -- the South began a slow collapse as their troops increasingly lacked the means to fight. By the end of the war M-16 bullets were being rationed and surgical dressings were being reused.

Despite this, it still took the NVA two years to beat an almost defenseless foe. What would have happened had we simply given the South munitions for their ground forces, absent any American air or naval support? Hard to tell, but I find it difficult to believe that the North would have made it to "Ho Chi Mihn City" before the end of the Carter Administration.

The Soviet Unions's demise was no doubt hastened by its extraordinary high rate of military spending, but conservatives give Reagan too much credit. It was Brezhnev who started spending the S.U. into the ground. Maybe we should credit Kennedy with humiliating Krushchev in the Cuban Missile crisis and thereby contributing to his downfall. Also, the Vietnam War was a great drain on U.S. military resources and I wonder if that encouraged the Brezhnev regime to try (successfully) to catch up to the U.S. militarily. If so, then the Vietnam War might have contributed to the demise of the Soviet Union, in a thoroughly ironic way.

Nothing ironic about it. Soviet GDP invested in propping up the NVA was much higher than almost anybody in the West was willing to believe. The true cost to the Soviets weren't known until over a decade afterwards, after the Soviet collapse. A few analyst had it right but the folks with the numbers that were a mere fraction of the reality were the ones who won the ears of the White House and Congress.

Brad - the problem with what you suggest is that there was no way in hell that the Allies were going to continue the war once the Axis was defeated. Repeat, none - the will to fight didn't exist on either side.

It's a nice thought, fifty years after the invention of the H-Bomb. But any analysis you read will make it clear that it wasn't gonna happen.

Thus the Yalta concessions - "how can we create a modus viviendi that stands a snowball's chance in hell of remaining stable?"

Back in 1984, Jonathan Kwitny, a WSJ reporter, published a fascinating book called Endless Enemies. He pointed out that outside of Eastern Europe, the only countries that joined the Soviet empire were the ones where the US had intervened to suppress a local communist movement. Where we let nature take its course, so to speak, and didn't associate the US flag with a bloodthirsty tyrant slaughtering anyone to the left of Walter Mondale, countries affiliated themselves with the West of their own accord.

The question boils down to "was opposing Communism a waste of time?"

Of course not. They laughed at the domino theory, but we spent ten years fighting the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia. They did not ALL fall like dominos, yet some did - Cambodia, Laos - with typically dreadful results.

I don't think that Gorbachev would have decided on his own, hey, let's do some glasnost if there was no power opposing him.

Communism is an evil in itself - look at the results EVERY SINGLE TIME it is tried. Opposing it is simply the right thing to do - even if you don't win every battle.

I've seen this "we should have turned the Cold War hot in '45" variation on the "Better Dead than Red" cliche come up a number of times on another blog I read, and it always amazes me that it has as much leg as it does.

Ben is definitely on the right track. The US was stretched pretty thin across the globe by end of '45. Remember that Hitler was able to make substantial gains in the Battle of the Bulge earlier that year. If I remember correctly, the Army estimated in '41 that we could field approximately 100 divisions and we had hit that number by '45. Anecdotally, my father was drafted into the army in '44 even after suffering substantial burns on his legs in a farm accident. I can't believe that would have happened unless we were scrapping the bottom of the manpower barrel at that point.

Other difficulties that come to mind include having to reverse the substantial shift of military focus from Europe to the Pacific following Nazi capitulation and our rear areas for attacks into Russia would have been in war-ravaged Europe, Japan, or China while the Soviet Union was falling back on interior lines. We would have turned from liberators to occupiers in most of Eastern Europe (see what's happening in Iraq for what that means).

Even if we had been able to eliminate the communist threat from Russia, other threats seem to be totally ignored. Again, look at our current situation. Islamo-facism did not need communism to grow into the weed it is. The Cold War also dampened the nationalism of Western Europe. A rabidly anti-American French-dominated bloc could well have grown sooner if the Communist threat from Russia had not restrained those impulses.

I'll certainly grant that the last 5 decades of world history would have been different if we had dropped the 2nd A-Bomb on the Kremlin. It's a pretty far stretch to say different is the same as better. Most of the time the analysis of the outcome of a major shooting war between the US and USSR focuses on the tragic deaths that occurred under communist oppression in Russia and Eastern Europe, and ignores many other unsavory 'could have beens', as well as the costs of the war in general.

I disagree with the idea that "Anti-communists in the U.S., I sometimes think, don't really show the courage of their convictions when they insist that the Soviet Union fell only because Reagan pushed so hard on them militarily"

1. I have never heard anyone say "only because Reagan...". If the system wasn't flawed Reagan could have done anything he wanted and it would never have mattered.

2. The idea that anti-communist opinion leads to an inevitable communist collapse is ludicrous. While I (as an anti-communist) believe that all communist endeavors will ultimately fail any objective test of economic and social results, that doesn't mean that it cannot be kept in place by force.

Not opposing the USSR would have allowed it to expand and it could have raped the lands it took to pay for empire. That's what they did to eastern Europe. That only stops working when the empire stops expanding.
That was one of the problems of the Roman Empire. They stopped trying to get more and started trying to defend what they had.
Saying we shouldn't have opposed the USSR because the system is flawed and probably/possibly would have fallen is the same as saying that since the Mets stink and they always lose to the Yankees they shouldn't have played last night's game. Ok, that's not a good example since they probably shouldn't have played last night's game, but you get the idea.
But that's a unique and interesting argument. Since we won we shouldn't have competed because we were going to win anyway. I'm more of a free-will than a predestination kind of guy. Except on Tuesdays, then I'm a solipsist.

I more or less agree with this post. Reagan probably "hastened" the fall of the Soviet Union, but at the same time it was a rotten fruit ready to drop anyway.

However....I'm not convinced that the Soviets would have "rolled through much more of Western Europe" etc. This is an old argument, I know, and impossible to prove one way or the other, but Russia has always had a pretty defensive mentality, which shows in its military, which was really not designed to project power the way ours is. I don't want to overstate this argument, but aside from providing money and material, the Soviets didn't do much more than set up buffer states and leave it at that.

And I'm almost afraid to say this for fear of getting jumped on, but while Stalinism was indeed a horrific state, it's well to remember that the previous regime was no bed of roses either. If Russia had had anything close to a decent government before 1917, the revolution likely wouldn't have happened.

(And yes, this is why I feel so strongly about a decent, liberal, reasonably egalitarian society in the U.S. If the poor and working class are treated decently, you don't run the risk of revolution, communist or otherwise.)

Kevin, I'm no fan of the Tsars, but surely you're not trying to compare anything they did with the tens of millions Stalin killed in a single decade while building the New Soviet Man?

Seth Gordon, that argument really doesn't mean anything. If you assume that the US intervened in almost all countries where native Communist movements looks likely to succeed, then it's completly obvious that native Communist movements would take over only when the US had intervened. You except Eastern Europe, but of course those countries fell into the Communist orbit before the US was really willing to intervene. (Until the US did intervene with Greece.)

Thus, I don't think that any conclusion can be drawn. I believe it's a case of correlation, not causation-- strong native Communist movements and high chances of a country falling into Soviet orbit BOTH made it likely for the US to intervene, and was a necessary precursor for the country becoming part of the Soviet orbit.

Kevin's right that some anti-Communists betray their courage, though I think it's valid to say that Communism would fall, so long as the West didn't give up, or that Reagan may have hastened its fall.

I suppose that Kevin reserves equal taunts for some of those on the Left (including many quite respectable members of the Center-Left) who simultaneously called Reagan and others an idiot for claiming that Communism would inevitably fall, yet, because they think Reagan was an idiot, refuse to give him any credit for it falling either? (Of course, many of those try to reconcile the problem by giving all the credit to Gorbachev.)

Just for my own information, I would appreciate some amplification about the "miracles" that saved the USSR in each decade leading up to the 80's. It's an interesting thesis, but at this point I just don't know the specifics of what she's talking about.
My own thought on the matter is that Reagan hastened the demise of the USSR, but that the system probably would have fallen sooner or later anyway. Emphasis on the "probably", however; we tend to underestimate the role that contingency plays in history. (See McPherson, "Battle Cry of Freedom," pp. 857-858) Without Reagan to push it along when he did, who knows what phenomenon might might have occurred to prolong the life of the system and the mischief the system worked?

> If so, then the Vietnam War might have contributed to the demise
> of the Soviet Union, in a thoroughly ironic way.

Serious analysts certainly thought so. Jerry Pournelle (one of
those whose accurate Soviet-military-spending numbers lost out
to the Pollyannas) already in the mid-60's was describing the
Vietnam War as a contest between the US and the USSR over "who
could throw the most hardware into the sea".

> but while Stalinism was indeed a horrific state, it's well
> to remember that the previous regime was no bed of roses either.

Orders of magnitude don't mean anything, eh?

In 1905 the Tsar formed the Duma as an elected advisory body. The Duma went through several incarnations.

In 1916 the Duma was led by Michail (sp?) Rodzianko who warned the Tsar about the possibility of revolution and encouraged Alexander to abdicate.

After the Tsar's abdication in March 1917, Rodzianko, Alexander Karensky, Georg Lvov and others formed a provisional government based on the Duma.

At this point in Russia's history there is a tentative (lefty, socialist) democracy forming.

The Duma was disbanded and any chance at democracy strangled in the cradle after the Bolshevik revolution October, 1917.

Too bad.

Most of this is from memory so, feel free to fact check it. You might learn something about a neglected bit of history.

Regarding South Vietnam's chances in 1975:

While any game of "what if?" can't ever be definitively answered, the jury is hardly out on the prospects of success for the Saigon regime.

The basis for that statement is the two offensives that the Saigon regime successfully weathered:

1968 Tet Offensive--Key, because it gutted the VC infrastructure. After the Tet offensive, the southern guerilla movement was essentially dead (literally). The failure of the Tet offensive meant that the VC effectively handed the Saigon regime the most important element: time. From '68-'73, the south implemented some reforms, and in combination with Strategic Hamlets and the much-maligned Phoenix program, effectively kept the VC from coming back. It also meant that the North no longer had brigade-level assets in the South Vietnamese rear, tying down forces.

South Vietnamese forces, btw, did reasonably well---certainly better than many on the Left generally credit it. No, they weren't American forces, they were always more fragile, but OTOH, units stood and fought against the VC offensives, and while individual sites (the Citadel in Hue, the US Embassy) were occupied, in the end, it was South Vietnamese, as well as American, forces that triumphed.

1972 Easter Offensive---The other piece of ARVN track records was the '72 Offensive. Having lost the guerilla war, the North now launched a conventional offensive across the DMZ (yeah, they had one there, too). By 1972, most American forces had been withdrawn---so most of this fight was by the ARVN on the ground, supported by US airpower. The bulk of the ground-fighting, however, was by the ARVN.

Again, they held, although some regions were entirely lost (interestingly, to NVA forces coming from Laos and Cambodia---so much for the US widening the war). And the 3rd ARVN division, a new unit, was cut off and overrun (akin to the loss of the 106th Division at the Battle of the Bulge). American airpower, including the aerial mining of Haiphong, was essential---but so was the willingness of ARVN units to fight.

What this suggests is that, w/ two more years of support, and air support at the crucial time, the South Vietnamese probably would have held, although, again, it would've probably lost ground.

Of course, if NVA forces, in conventional formations, had proceeded south towards Saigon (and that IS how they won the war, w/ a conventional assault, NOT through guerilla warfare), then they also would've been subjected to levels of airstrikes the RVNAF could never hope to equal: B-52s and carrier air strikes.

An excellent book on how North Vietnam could have more effectively fought is Col. Harry Summers' "On Strategy". I'd recommend it highly to anyone attempting to better understand that war.

"At this point in Russia's history there is a tentative (lefty, socialist) democracy forming."

Kerensky was an ex-Menshevik, if memory serves correctly. (The Menshevik also formed a democratic government in Georgia, which was toppled by the Bolsheviks).

"The Duma was disbanded and any chance at democracy strangled in the cradle after the Bolshevik revolution October, 1917."

It wasn't the Duma, IIRC; it was the constituent assembly. If memory serves right, the agrarian[Right] Social Revolutionaries (who opposed the Bolsheviks) won the plurality of the seats. It met once, with Bolshevik-sympathizing soldiers in the gallery; when a speaker stood up to make a speech denouncing the Bolsheviks, the soldiers would point their rifles at him.

Special Order # 1 gave the Bolsheviks the support of soldiers; that gave them the power to do what they did. And Russia suffered hugely for it.

"It seems to me that after the initial frenzy of Stalinist/Maoist mad energy, which involved the (I think) historically unique idea of building capital plant out of a low-accumulated capital society simply by murdering whatever number of people were required (25,000 were killed building a single large steel facility in the USSR),....."

Didn't the Mongols do this when they were building their capital city of Jundu? I seem to remember that they grabbed artisans and people with specialist skills and forcibly removed them to the site of the new city. They did this after slaughtering whole populations.

James

"But does it therefore follow, as my triumphant liberal friends have proclaimed, that we should not have opposed the Soviet Union militarily?"

Jane,

You make some reasonable points, but why the cheap shot at your "liberal friends?" I'm not aware of any liberals proclaiming this.

Yeah James, but that that was to build a city (or a palace, or a great wall, or a pyramid).

The soviets used the mass slave labour to build FACTORIES, which then lifts the whole nation into being an industrial power. This was the new idea.

Though the older empires sometimes used slaves to build roads (Rome) or irrigation systems (Persia, China) which also lifted the whole countries productivity.

hi all,

one of the interesting points raised in passing by this discussion, and not really addressed in a sustained way is the way the us got involved in vietnam. they basically interfered in a democratic process to stop communists from coming to power--the irony was that had they kept out, the communists were so unpopular that they would probably never have gotten elected! intefering in the affairs of vietnam helped the north, especially, to paint this as a national war of liberation. not a good move, as it turned out. i wonder how the us will do in iraq?

also,

"I'm no fan of the Tsars, but surely you're not trying to compare anything they did with the tens of millions Stalin killed in a single decade while building the New Soviet Man?"

are we into comparing orders of magnitude here? or are you saying that the longevity of serfdom in russia till the mid 19th century was not also a travesty? please also remember that one outcome of this forced collectivisation and restructuring of the russian economy in the 20s and 30s was that it played an important role in industrializing russia and enabled it to defeat the germans in wwii. one can look to the results of wwi...

so my question: would you countenance the deaths of millions of your countryfolk if it would mean that the majority would survive in a country not run by such as the nazi germans--bent on their own forms of enslavement and extermination? or would you allow things to go on as they had been?

John Keegan suggests in his book the first world war that Russia collapsed because the civilian economy expanded so much and inflation ran wild. He also notes that Russia industrialized tremendously in WW1-- Russia became self supporting in the manufacture of artillery shells, etc.

Khruchshev(sp?) noted that the USSR did not supply its recruits with rifles at the beginning of WW2 -- in fact, if you can believe Enemy at the Gates, the USSR was not supplying rifles to their recruits at the time of Stalingrad.

I suspecta Russia that was NOT Sovietized probably would have done as well industrializing as Soviet Russia, with tremendously human cost.

Cas is the first to try to draw present day dilemmas into the discussion. I’m surprised nobody has mentioned N. Korea yet. Here we have a hard-core Communist holdover and a Government that we need to topple. Do we let it die on its own accord or do we take the Reagan-like aggressive containment approach?

There are benefits and risks associated with every approach, but I think that Reagan’s approach to Soviet bloc was definitely effective and it needs to be employed here as well.

One major problem is that while communist economies all collapse on their own accord, totalitarian political systems do not necessarily fail – if they do, it’s because they are not totalitarian enough - not the case with the Norks. Totalitarian control is capable of sustaining communism long after economic collapse. That is why it is important to challenge totalitarian governments to weaken their grip on power.

The failure of the Soviet Bloc happened because the governments, while brutal and oppressive, were no longer willing to crack down violently on their own people. Their economies had been stagnant and wretched for years. Famine did not bring about collapse anywhere in communism's long and illustrious record with famine. Stalin was a real totalitarian but his successors were successively less so. By ’89, they were not capable of a repeating Budapest or Prague or Tienamen Sq.

Look at current events in Iran and compare them to Iraq (Ok, not all totalitarians are communists, although all communists are totalitarians). The Iranian mullahs are in trouble because they have allowed a small degree of autonomy to the people. They are not like Saddam. Without outside pressure, a man like Saddam may stay in power indefinitely if he has no qualms about terrorizing and murdering as many people as it takes to stay in power, including his own family. The Iranian mullahs may crack down but it is doubtful that we will see anything like the mass executions at Hilla and Karbala or the gas attacks of the Anfal. Critics of neo-cons may say it’s a coincidence but why are these demonstrations in Iran intensifying now that the Mullahs are facing unprecedented pressure with the Americans camped out next door and a demonstrated willingness to act?

Nobody can say for sure what the real situation is in N. Korea, nor what will happen in the future. I would say that despite complete economic collapse, there is no chance of a Velvet Revolution, at least not with the current leadership.

This is why the U.S. must stand firm against the Norks. No deals. Carter/Clinton/Albright detente and South Korea’s Sunshine policy have only served to prop up the current leadership. All food, energy, and economic aide went straight to the regime’s pockets, supporting the Kims, rather than undermining them. The Norks have manipulated everybody and conceded nothing in return. They got their nukes and they bought themselves several more years supply of oil and currency needed for absolute control. Rice shipments are a tool for enforcing loyalty. Appeasement has such a wretched history.

The outcome of Bush’s hard-line approach remains to be seen. But if it works, people will have a harder time discounting Reagan’s influence on the collapse of the Communist bloc. On-going missile research puts pressure on the Norks to continue Taepo-Dong research that they can’t afford. Cutting off aide from the U.S. definitely hurts them. Getting the international community to stop their weapons and drug trade will be another great loss for them. And although China and, surprisingly S. Korea, have disappointed us with their foot dragging, Japan is cooperating whole-heartedly with the crack-down. Japan, has heretofore been a major supplier of technology and hard currency and illicit trade through the large North Korean community in Japan and Yakuza ties.

The Nuke issue makes it much more difficult to stay tough. Many people, want to make a deal to defuse the nuke threat and also get humanitarian aide to famine victims. But the Norks have already broken every promise. Their rabid threats are extremely worrying, but they may also signify terminal desperation.

One thing to keep in mind with Vietnam was that the war essentially went on as long as both parties were willing to fund the proxy fight. Essentially it does become a question of who is willing to keep pouring money down the tubes longer and given the Soviet political environment at the time, it is far from certain that the Soviets would have given up on the venture first, since any democratic regime will have difficulty sustaining its involvement in a "non-essential" hot war for that length of time.

Maybe, as several posters have claimed, by 1972 the ARVN's really were capable of winning the war if we'd kept the materiel coming. But there are two things that make me highly skeptical of such claims:

1) There were so many lies told before. The ARVN's had been routinely fabricating battle reports for 10 years, to exaggerate the significance of their victories and excuse their defeats. ATOH, American intelligence used highly slanted interpretations to minimize the size of the enemy forces. I've heard from an experienced field commander that in planning an operation he would automatically multiply the intelligence estimates by two - and hope that they hadn't missed anything big. It's a big deal when a company whips a battalion; it's less impressive when they ambush a platoon and claim that they fought a battalion and killed hundreds but the commie bastards carried most of the bodies away...

2) The claimed effectiveness in 1972 is an amazing improvement over the conditions that made it necessary for us to save their sorry rears in the first place - without any apparent change in the Saigon political structure, which always had been the main problem. (Many ARVN units always had been pretty good, but even the best troops can't win a war without effective coordination from above and some trust in the units to their left and right to also be competent.)

So it seems more likely to me that the reports that the ARVN's were finally an effective force even under the native government were simply more propaganda, than that there was such a miraculous improvement.

But I wasn't there.

Ref. Viet Nam.
As Victor Hanson makes clear, the US military in particular, and western militaries in general, are particularly lethal. The more US influence there was in the ARVN, the better they got, without the need for political change. As Hanson says, too, it is our society which provides the cultural aspect, not to mention the material aspect, of this combination. And if the ARVN had survived long enough, it is surely possible that Americanized officers would have replaced more traditional forms of government, as in more oriental dictators.
I am in awe of the arguments that the USSR was ripe to fall. My recollection of those times is that the liberals were instructing us on the benefits of communism, at least to those then under it, and its strength and durability. We were going to have to learn to live with it, possibly emulate it. Vigorous opposition was immoral, as well as futile.
Now that the horrid experiment is over, and, worse, that Reagan is getting credit, the new argument is that it would have happened anyway.
Yawn.

Cas:

And, of course, if Communists lose elections, they quietly abide by the results, and come back later? Just like the Bolsheviks did w/ the Constituent Assembly?

Moreover, the argument that it was our intervention that doomed South Vietnam rings about as true as the 1960s and 1970s arguments about the "need" to abandon Taiwan and South Korea. Two nasty dictatorships, headed by military men who had few compunctions about torture, violating human rights, etc. Never mind that they were laying the foundations for subsequent reforms---Mao and Kim Il-Sung (yes, THAT Kim Il-Sung) were the wave of the future. Economic development, "barefoot doctors," and a far more successful model than what Chiang Kai Shek and Park Chung Hee/Chun Doo Hwan had to offer.

Uh-huh. And thirty years later, Beijing and Pyongyang have clearly reformed, eh? Booted out the Communists and a much more liberal set of regimes have arisen, no? Or was that in South Korea and Taiwan, where they DID, in fact, give way to more liberal regimes? Which path was Vietnam more likely to take?

Markm:

While you are correct that there was lots of lying going on, the fact of the matter is that both '68 and more so '72 were primarily fought by South Vietnamese ground troops. Their successes, and their failures, are matters of open record.

Let's face it---the South Korean army was generally pretty piss-poor in 1950. A North Korean repeat invasion in, say, 1960, probably would've made a shambles of the ROKA. Does that mean that therefore they weren't worth supporting but should've instead been left to the tender mercies of Kim Il-Sung?

And, as you note, the political structure was essential as well. But I think your assessment is biased---the government in '68 was NOT that of Ngo in '63. And the subsequent experience, both with the absence of an uprising in '68, and the clear unwillingness of many Vietnamese to live under Hanoi, leading to the Boat People in the late 1970s, suggests that Saigon ultimately HAD reformed from where it was in '63.

Indeed, Vietnamese joint ventures are almost always formed with Vietnamese from the SOUTH, because they understand capitalism, unlike their brethren to the North. This suggests that a very different political culture was already in place by '75.

"But does it therefore follow, as my triumphant liberal friends have proclaimed, that we should not have opposed the Soviet Union militarily?"

Based on this and other things you've posted, your liberal friends anecdotely appear to have outlier opinions. I'm friends with borderline socialists, and none of them would agree with that statement.

The argument wasn't "should we have opposed the USSR", of course; it was:

"Was Reagan's military buildup a necessary requirement for the collapse of the USSR? if not, did it speed things up? If so, was the expenditure (not pocket change) worth it?"

My answer to all three is no; I remember seeing reports from examination of the USSR archives that military spending was flat over the relevant time period.

Jason,

That's odd. Because analysts I've talked to concluded the exact opposite. In particular, they point to the Ogarkov Defense Ministry as one pushing hard for reform of the Soviet military, in order to squeeze more money into high-tech, in order to counter us.

I'd be curious what the time-frame was of the records you looked at, and how that compared w/ some of the stuff my colleagues looked at.

hi dean,

"And, of course, if Communists lose elections, they quietly abide by the results, and come back later? Just like the Bolsheviks did w/ the Constituent Assembly?"

no, not necessarily, but the path taken stripped the south vietnamese gov't of any real legitimacy, and helped make the case for a nationalist war of liberation, which the north would support through thick and thin (and it was the american will rather than the north vietnamese will that finally broke).

"Moreover, the argument that it was our intervention that doomed South Vietnam rings about as true as the 1960s and 1970s arguments about the "need" to abandon Taiwan and South Korea."

i hope you don't mind me observing that these are totally different historical situations.

"In particular, they point to the Ogarkov Defense Ministry as one pushing hard for reform of the Soviet military, in order to squeeze more money into high-tech, in order to counter us."

That sounds like the military reallocating its spennding, not spending more.

One:

"Since the mid-1980s, the Soviet Union has devoted between 15 and 17 percent of its annual gross national product (GNP--see Glossary) to military spending, according to United States government sources. Until the early 1980s, Soviet defense expenditures rose between 4 and 7 percent per year. Since then, they have slowed as the yearly growth in Soviet GNP slipped to about 3 percent."

Two:

"The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense."

On the topic of why we lost Vietnam,
see Hernando de Soto. He claims Ho Chi Min
titled property faster than we did (albiet
collectively) and thus won over the hearts
and minds. Same thing with Mao Tse Tung and
not surprisingly Abraham Lincoln (1862 Homesteaders Act).

cas:

Every historical analogy is imperfect. However, neither South Korea nor Taiwan was necessarily "legitimate" if the South Vietnamese government was "illegitimate." In the 1950s-1970s, none of the three had democratically elected governments, land reform was halting, at best, in all three (yet occurred in all three), they were all run by military governments or military-dominated ones, which suppressed civil rights (Taiwan's state of martial law didn't expire 'til the mid-1990s, iirc).

Yet South Korea and Taiwan are today industrialized democracies---are you really sure that South Vietnam was so hopeless that it couldn't have done the same? Conversely, are you so sure that South Korea would even exist if we'd simply left in, say, 1962? (12 years after we intervened.)

Jason:

Not sure where the first cite gets its data, but I believe that most estimates now place Soviet military spending at 25% or higher of GDP during the Brezhnev years. And as Soviet GDP fell, but Soviet defense spending didn't, it effectively consumed more and more of GDP.

I'm not sure I ever personally bought the "Star Wars killed the USSR" bit, but Lebow and Stein (and similarly leaning folks at the time) had long pooh-poohed the Soviet threat in general. What Ogarkov feared wasn't "Star Wars," but "reconnaissance-strike complexes" exploiting advances in information technology. Lebow and company completely missed that aspect at the time (something a fair number of analysts did, on both sides).

Matt Johnson:

And Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power on the platform of "Bread, Land, Peace." The problem, of course, is that Lenin, Mao, and Ho (and, presumably, Castro and Kim Il-Sung) didn't ALLOW that land to stay in the hands of the people. Whereas in the latter portion of the Vietnam War, iirc, Saigon finally started doing "land to the tiller" programs that DID give people title to the land (too late, viz. the hearts-and-minds issue, as you suggest, unfortunately).

That was just the first link I found; I've seen similar stuff elsewhere. If you have contradictory stuff - namely, that soviet spending as a proportion of GDP went up in the 1980s - I'd be interested.

Wow. This thread is still going. . . Let me try a calculation/knowledge/problem ditty:

Supreme leader (http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=5425) takes command of the evolved language of trade.

The dynamic influences and changing incentive structures of supply & demand, property & choice, are now streamlined to the uber alles commander in chief and central planner.

Accordingly, one of the languages of human society has now been detached from its definition. The numbers no longer have any reference to the input from the participants.

The Veblen engineer constructs the ultimate bridge; in doing so impoverishing the contributing communities to the point of rendering the span useless.

Peerless factories churn out products that nobody wants.

Capital is consumed, people are impoverished, population dwindles (the "in the know" attribute this to the emotions of those involved: the supreme leader is a cranky sort. . . the peasants are greedy. . . etc.)

reader

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