The Cold Warriors
I have no expertise in this field. This post will not be cluttered with links, because I will write from memory and not link to anything. I suppose in a way, this post is a slap in the face of Tom Nichols, who is a subset of the topic, is supposed to be an expert on the topic, and is the author of “The Death of Expertise“. I will attempt to explain how his errors are due to envy and neurosis.
Honestly, my trigger was lest nasty (and less based on envy). Someone asked in a Tweet what is the consensus on the old domino theory which lead to US involvement in the war in Vietnam (which is also called “the American war” by the Vietnamese). I will put my anti Nichols spite after the jump (note I advertised his book). His alleged field of expertise is preventive war. There, that’s another advertisement. Actually I think I will just post a separate post sniping at him.
OK so the Domino theory.
The logic was as follows. In 1938, France, the British Empire, and Czechoslovakia could have stopped Hitler. But all he demanded was the Sudetenland which was predominately inhabited by ethnic Germans. Neville Chamberlain insisted on reaching an agreement. Benes and Daladier had to go along, so the chance to defeat Nazism with heavy but not immense losses was lost.
Heeeyyy wait a minute, wasn’t I supposed to be talking about the 1960s not 1938 ? Yes, but the first problem is that there are influential people in the USA for whom all years are 1938 (note I use the present tense — they are still around and are very dangerous).
The first key methodological assumption of the Domino theory is that all years are 1938 and all negotiations are held in Munich. The second is that Neville Chamberlain made every possible error, so, as long as one did the opposite of what he would have done, everything will be fine. The rest is commentary.
I now invite historians, experts in international relations and political scientists to contest my analysis (knowing that not very many read Angry Bear).
The domino theory maintained that the USA had to stop the Communists in Vietnam or else they would move on to Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, East Pakistan, and India. The logic was exactly (and only) that it would have been better to fight Hitler at the old fortified border between Germany and Czechoslovakia than to let him take the Sudetenland, then the rest of Czechoslovakia, and then fight him in Poland. Notably, Hitler was surprised when France and Britain declared war on September 1 1939. The theory was that, restraint, compromise, or the most dreaded retreat would be perceived as weakness and make further aggression inevitable. One detail was overlooked. Hitler was one person, Khrushchev, Mao and Ho Chi Minh were three different people. The USSR had advanced weapons, the PRC had huge armies, North Vietnam had no fear of either and knew how to play one off the other.
Then Khrushchev was overthrown by the Red Army. The communist Soviet Union had not reached the advanced stage of Communist development which made a Communist military dictatorship possible later in Poland, so the generals gave power to a troika (sleigh pulled by 3 horses). The first among equals was Leonid Brezhnev. The USA still faced 3 adversaries lead by men incapable of pity. Brezhnev was incapable of pity or any other higher mental functioning. He liked clowns. The one key qualification for being Khrushchev’s second in command was being a total idiot (preferably lacking in ambition) and therefore being no threat. From then on, the analogy should have been negotiating with Rudolf Hesse in Munich (Hesse was similarly chosen for his total idiocy).
Notably one of the challenges for the US war effort in South Vietnam was the fact that the Communist Pathet Lao effectively controlled Laos and Communist friendly (and superhumanly vain) Prince Norodom Sihanouk) controlled Cambodia. Notably this is a problem for the domino theory. The dominoes which were supposed to be knocked down by the fall of South Vietnam had it already fallen. Their impact on Thailand was fairly minor (it might not have seemed that way to the Thai communists who fought and died in the jungle, but there were never many of them and almost no one noticed when they gave up and made peace (I forget the date)).
In contrast, US firm resoluteness in Vietnam made a large fraction of the world (and a substantial minority in the USA) hate the US government. It is also estimated to have caused 3 million deaths (from surveys decades later asking people if they had lost relatives).
During the resolute effort against the Hitler like world Communist movement, the USSR and the PRC fought a border war. They became each others’ most bitter enemies — the USA was not even number one on their enemies list. Soon after the final victory of the Vietnamese Communists, there was a brief war between Vietnam and the PRC. The enemy was the enemy of the enemy. The Soviet Chinese war occurred some time during the US war in Vietnam. It should have changed everything. But to completely reverse US policy, US policymakers would have to admit that they had made a mistake, and that is not possible.
The after aftermath is that Communist China became more capitalist than the USA and the USSR collapsed. Impressively right up to the collapse, US hawks insisted that there was a high risk of Soviet conquest of the world. Also impressively the people who clearly demonstrated that they were clueless gained status from the collapse, because it (coincidentally) occurred while Ronald Reagan was in the White House. Oddly, some sincere people including Max Boot and Anne Applebaum took seriously Reagan’s claim to be a principled supporter of freedom around the world. I am not much older than they are and remember the distinction between acceptable authoritarians and unacceptable totalitarians (in other words our sons of bitches and sons of bitches who weren’t ours). I remember the mockery of Carter’s human rights campaign. I remember the US alliance with Argentine fascist mass murderers in opposition to the fascists non mass murdering Sandinistas (currently in power to remind us of the utter worthlessness of the domino theory).
So how can we assess the scientific standing of the domino theory ? How does it compare with the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, the phlogiston theory of burning, the caloric theory of heat, and the four humors theory of health and disease ? Digressions after the jump.
Obviously it does not reach the standing of the Ptolemaic model which is an astounding scientific accomplishment. Ptolemy’s model as written in Almagest gave useful predictions over a thousand years after it was published. This record remains unequaled. It happens not to be true, but it is excellent science. In particular it is often said that while Ptolemy was a great scientist, the medieval Ptolemaic astronomers were the epitome of a sort of bad science — the degenerative research program (google Lakatos). It is often asserted as a known historical fact that, when the model didn’t fit the data, they added fiddle factors in the form of additional epicycles. It is asserted that this lead nowhere useful and never would have, so a scientific revolution was needed. One problem with this story is that there is no historical evidence at all that any Ptolemaic astronomer after Ptolemy added even one epicycle. It is frequently stated as fact, but no archival evidence has ever been presented. In fact, it is pretty clear that Ptolemy’s model with no modifications was used by a Ptolemaic astronomer during Copernicus’s lifetime. The astronomer was named Copernicus (who was Ptolemaic before he wasn’t). He reports the differences between forecasts and measurements. We believe we know what he saw (as we have great confidence in Newton’s model and (irrelevantly in this case) more in Einstein’s. So one can infer the forecasts from the reported forecast errors. They are exactly the forecasts Ptolemy would have made.
So the Ptolemaic model of the solar system and the domino theory are like night and day — roughly tied for best effort ever and in the running for worst human idiocy.
OK Phlogiston. The phlogiston theory of burning asserted that burning was a process of release of a substance called phlogiston. The modern theory of oxidation asserts that burning was the process of adding or combining with a substance called oxygen. Each is reasonable. The phlogiston theory is more intuitive (and unsurprisingly older) because with most burning the ashes weigh less than the burned object. It makes perfect sense. Even when Priestly produced pure oxygen, he quite reasonably described it as air without phlogiston in it (dephlogistonized air). Lavoisier was, for some reason, obsessed with mercury which oxidizes to cinnabar (which is solid but soft and red). He got the money for his research by marrying a tax farmer and then becoming as ruthless as his father in law. (In tax farming the state sold the right to tax revenues to an individual for a fixed amount, then that individual collected taxes for himself). Another of Lavoisier’s inventions was the tariff wall around Paris — people had to pay to enter or leave. He lived just before the French revolution. It isn’t really surprising that he was guillotined). But his obsessive focus on mercury allowed him to notice that the cinnabar weighed more — that the amount of air in a closed system declined as the mercury oxidized, and that the process stopped when the volume of air (under one atmosphere of pressure) decreased by 20%. He noticed more generally that chemical reactions involve constant (complicated) proportions by weight. He invented modern chemistry. But he didn’t show that there was anything wrong with the Phlogiston model except that it didn’t happen to correspond to what was happening on earth (with mercury and a few other elements or, it was later learned, anything). The phlogiston theory is not like the domino theory. It fit some facts. It was reasonable given available evidence.
The caloric theory of heat held that heat is a substance which is released when things cool. It has the defect that it assumes that, because heat has a name, it has an independent existence (and weight and location and such). It’s an OK theory. It’s fault is that it isn’t true. It fits some facts about conservation of heat in closed systems without chemical or nuclear reactions. It’s OK, just not true.
The four humors theory of disease. Bingo. Total nonsense. Also highly profitable nonsense for physicians. It survived a long time. I have no idea of where to find a hint of a clue of any useful application.
John Foster Ptolemy.
It’s not a bad analysis. You can think of Korea as Vietnam: The Prequel. The Domino Theory was pretty bogus and ignored the actual political situation, but foreign relations theory was pretty polarized by then. The great European powers were multilateral, with shifting alliances, for centuries. Now and then there was polarization as with Napoleon and Hitler. Domino Theory was, as you noted, a left over from World War II.
A major difference between the Ptolemaic theory and Domino theory is that the former stood for over a thousand years and was remarkably useful. It was only better observations and longer term data collection that revealed the problems in the geocentric theory. It would be centuries again before anyone noticed the precession of Mercury. One big selling point for the heliocentric theory was that it solved a standing problem in astrology concerning the strength of influence of Mercury and Venus on human fate. Domino theory lasted from the 1950s into the 1980s and was never particularly accurate or useful.
Phlogiston is a better comparison, though it had a longer useful life.
I read this essay carefully, but am unable to understand what it is about. A sentence or so of explanation when possible would be helpful and welcome for me.
Sorry. It is about the domino theory which said we had to stop the spread of Communism and if (and only if) we didn’t fight the Communists in Vietnam then we would have to fight them in Cambodia then Thailand then Burma etc.
I assert it was total nonsense. Every word in my summary refers to an error of thought especially the words “if”, “them”, and “Communism”
It is about the domino theory which said we had to stop the spread of Communism and if (and only if) we didn’t fight the Communists in Vietnam then we would have to fight them in Cambodia then Thailand then Burma etc.
I assert it was total nonsense….
[ Excellent for me, and now after reading the essay again I am impressed with the immediate importance and agree completely with the assertion. There is scarcely a week that passes when an American administration or members of Congress fail to directly threaten another country and implied in the threats is if Cuba can send doctors and nurses to Mexico all of Latin America will be directly threatened. ]
It is about the domino theory which said we had to stop the spread of Communism and if (and only if) we didn’t fight the Communists in Vietnam then we would have to fight them in Cambodia then Thailand then Burma etc.
I assert it was total nonsense….
[ This is precisely what underlines the “Pacific pivot” under President Obama in which the need was found to contain China. So too, the increasingly strident need in this administration to contain or really undermine China to the extent of Senator Schumer finding an internet toy threatening because, well, China.
Iran is a threat even after a multi-nation nuclear program treaty is negotiated. ]
It is about the domino theory which said we had to stop the spread of Communism and if (and only if) we didn’t fight the Communists in Vietnam then we would have to fight them in Cambodia then Thailand then Burma etc.
I assert it was total nonsense….
[ By the way, we dropped more bombs in tonnage on Cambodia during the Vietnam War period than all the bombs dropped in World War II including the atomic bombs:
https://apjjf.org/-Taylor-Owen/2420/article.html
Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War
By Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan ]
https://apjjf.org/-Taylor-Owen/2420/article.html
May 12, 2007
Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War
By Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan
Taylor Owen is a doctoral candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the
University of Oxford. Ben Kiernan is a professor of history at Yale
University.
This administration set out to create a Cold War and leave a Cold War in its wake. Same rationale, with a racial rationale extending to the nineteenth century and the Chinese Exclusion Act, in its wake:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/world/asia/us-china-trump-xi.html
July 25, 2020
Officials Push U.S.-China Relations Toward Point of No Return
Top aides to President Trump want to leave a lasting legacy of ruptured ties between the two powers….
Lol, the administration and its lackeys are in deep with China’s rich. Follow thy money.Especially Miller.
I had number 19 in the draft lottery but I was enrolled in college and got a 2-S until 1974. By then the draft was over. I had a bunch of older friends who enlisted rather than be drafted and served in Thailand, North Dakota and Germany. Then there was Karl. A nice guy but not the sharpest tool in the shed. He is one of the 58,000 on the wall in DC. From the time I was born until after my third birthday my father was in the army and serving in Korea—not combat he was in a MASH unit— but these guys who say that wearing a mask is an infringement upon their God Given rights as an American have no F*** ing clue. Neither does cadet bone spurs. Kerry had it right: “who wants to be the last man to die for a mistake”. The domino theory was bullshit, Truman lost China was bullshit and the current president of the United States is total bullshit. Pardon my French.
This could and should be a superb essay, of immediate importance in that America is being taken into another Cold War and doing all it can bring the rest of the “West” along. The essay is suggestive, but carelessly written so far as though a rough draft.
I would hope this essay will be re-written. (This is meant as a respectful comment.)
Good thought anne.
Terry:
Truman lost China was bull—-…
[ https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1266484352042573832
Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
As the protests in Hong Kong escalated last year: President Trump stood with President Xi and said he would look the other way on China’s abuses. Now President Trump will be remembered as the president who lost Hong Kong.
5:39 PM · May 29, 2020 ]
Terry:
Truman lost China was bull—-…
[ Evidently the Senate Minority Leader approvingly remembers:
Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
President Trump will be remembered as the president who lost Hong Kong.
5:39 PM · May 29, 2020 ]
US leaders were afraid of the independence of brown people well before WWII. Most of the major political events of the 20th century were laid open at Versailles in 1919. Colonialism by any name stinks the same. Dominoes has a certain ring to it like any good cover story while still being true to the reflexive paranoia of capitalists hungering for world domination, the dominance of dominoes. That is the stuff from which all good self-serving rationalizations are made. Intellectuals often explain events in terms of political ideology when racism, depravity, and starvation are more obvious causes. Politics is a convenient fig leaf for thieves and sociopaths.
Excellent commentary all around, and I approve of Anne’s recommendation that this is a foundation to be built upon. Especially, since you combine those observations with Ron’s historical note about the independence and self-determination of brown people. Every hard-working, patriotic, thoughtful, and politically independent political minority gets elected that somehow becomes yet another district that has fallen to SOCIALISM! There is more than ample evidence strewn about that we have a party that treats areas of America as foreigners/invaders if they are represented by minorities that wish to do more with their lives than chattel labor and want a modernized economy.
I love the Kerry quote, Terry. It reminded me off earlier this year (or last) he was questioned by a committee republican about climate change on how political science (Kerry’s degree) was a pseudoscience thus making his testimony irrelevant. I was in bed for a week with irony poisoning.
Even Bert said something cogent! Although, it is McConnell whose father in law is friends and financial partners with high ranking Party officials.
Where is Tom Walker when you need him? Domino theory sounds serious enough, but domino alibi makes more sense.
I’m trapped by family matters today so I can’t give this my full attention — but I always like ask why we defended Korea in 1950 but not in 1940?
My reading tells me that by mid-1972 North Vietnam pretty much understood it had lost the war:
1) The poor bedraggled Vietnamese peasants in the countryside with only about half the WWII American weapons that they needed had cleaned out their Vietcong opposites so completely that an American ambassador could travel about unescorted.
2) This in turn starved out the North Vietnamese main force units (the true invasion) to the point they were eating grass. Their caches of food, medical and military supplies were cleaned out as fast as they could hide them — their logistical nose was cut off.
3) This in turn prompted the North to launch in desperation a conventional (tank led type) invasion with the last 200,000 soldiers left in the North (10-20% of their army) — to be defeated with 50% casualties with South Vietnamese infantry and American air and logistical support.
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam First Edition
There was nothing immoral about defending South Korea from being taken over by a foolish economic system and a repressive police state. Ho’s foolish police state?
After Ho won the election in the North he had 50,000 peasants shot and 100,000 put in re-education camps for being “capitalist exploiters.” Communists have to have their land reform — but 98% of peasants in the North owned the land they tilled (70% in the South) — so they came up with a formula about how many pigs you owned, etc. Even they admitted they might have gone too far.
A year after Ho took over he sent a division to quell rebellion in his own home province — people likely taking exception to stuff like kids being trained to turn in their parents for talking against the state — killing 6,000 peasants.
Before Ho won the election — while still fighting a guerilla war against the legit government (Vietnam freed from French 1949) — he would send his guys into a village — they would read off a list of boys who had joined a government education or sports program — kill the boys — when the people got the idea he would send in a management cadre; the killers would move on to the next village.
All this from a book by french political scientist Bernard Fall — which book was too dry and scholarly for me to read in my 20s. Ho was a blood thirsty monster. The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis Hardcover – June 1, 1967
* * * * * *
In 1965 the free world’s knees were still shaking over two small countries — ironically over their lack of natural resources — almost taking over the world — that’s what it felt like to us anyway. Now the two biggest countries in the world, by land or population, with bombs that could literally leave a half mile wide crater where Hiroshima used to be, were telling us things like “we will bury you”, “your children will live under communism.” We took it as seriously as the seriously scared are capable of taking it.
Nothing immoral about defending Vietnam. Nothing too foolish about being scared. 1965 was communism’s high tide year (ahead of us in space; Russian economy seeming to grow twice the rate of ours — by 1975 it was receding.
Upshot: winning or losing, when we left we took our bat and ball with us — wouldn’t even give the South the money it needed to finish the job. According CIA analyst Frank Snepp, we had a guy on the North politburo who told us the North had finally voted to quit — but later discovered the South was rationing ammunition, etc. and decided to start up again.
True or not, losing all those lives and treasure and then not giving them the money to try and finish the job must be one of the craziest things in our nation’s history — if you ask me anyway. Wouldn’t ever give them the money to finish the job — crazy!
Decent Interval: An Insider’s Account of Saigon’s Indecent End Told by the CIA’s Chief Strategy Analyst in Vietnam
Try the book that changed Anthony Bourdain’s mind on who the bad guys really were. The author’s Northern unit, the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade, went out with 500 and came back with 10.
The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam Kindle Edition
Denis:
Why would you read all of these books on the Vietnam War, our war, where many of my friends perished? I still wonder today why, why I was destined to be here with a wife, family, a home, and people like you to read and talk to from time to time. There are melancholy times and I traced the names, or my kids did for me, of the people I knew. It took me a decade to find one name because I refused to look the one place he might be.
I did some editing and put the titles in for each book rather than just a link. I can show you how to do such if you are interested.
I’m given to making associations, always have been. When Robert made reference to Thomas Nichols’ ‘The Death of Expertise’ in his ‘The Cold Warriors’ it happened again.
—
By the bye, congratulations Robert, your piece stimulated thought and conversation.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
There’s no better feeling than when sailing close to the wind.
—
Associations like: demanding dignity, demanding respect for their opinions, the attractiveness of simple arsed answers to complicated problems, the trashing of pointy-headed intellectuals, the mendacious South, Albert Camus, George W. Bush, Trump’s inability to handle the Corona Crisis, … came a visiting. I am thinking that there must be a common theme here.
Run,
Do you object to defending South Korea? Would you object to defending Vietnam if the South had remained free? I think I read somewhere that the North had 130,000 Southerners shot after the takeover. 2 million left — 1 million by boat — 1 million ended up here. Makes it sound like something truly terrible to fight against for the 20 million Southerners. But you can’t talk to anybody who lost somebody about the war.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/04/the-vietnam-war-as-seen-by-the-north-vietnamese/390627/
The festive mood as wartime ended was followed by what Bui The Giang, an official in Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, called the “disastrous” decade of the 1980s. With untrained officials making economic decisions and the state controlling every sector, growth was stagnating, inflation was high, and poverty was rampant. Bui estimated that one-fifth of the population was starving. “We only had four hours of electricity every day,” Vu’s daughter Linh Chi, now in her 30s, recalled. “Until I was five or six, I didn’t even see a TV.”
But since the market reforms of the late 1980s, life has gradually improved. After years of steady economic growth, the country’s poverty rate fell from almost 60 percent in the 1990s to about 20 percent in 2010. Today, Linh Chi owns a trendy Mexican restaurant in Hanoi. Young Vietnamese and expats jostle for motorbike parking space, Instagramming their $6 burritos.
* * * * * *
Oddly enough all four of my Reeboks and my printer were made in Vietnam.
I just happened to notice that a Vietnam official supposedly called the 1980s a “disastrous” decade. That puzzled me, because I try to know such stuff.
Actually, the decade of the 1980s began with a decline in GDP in 1980 and then grew rapidly in every year after through 1989. Vietnamese per capita GDP grew by 41% through the 1980s. The decade of the 1980s was quite successful economically for Vietnam:
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=65&pr.y=6&sy=1980&ey=2019&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=582&s=NGDP_RPCH&grp=0&a=
October 15, 2019
Gross Domestic Product for Vietnam at constant prices, 1980-2019
( Percent change)
Reading this, I want to hug one of my best friends (the one From high school). He served in Afghanistan, we got close because he loved the language of those he occupied (he did his best so they never felt that way, orders are orders) and I grew up speaking Arabic.
One day they will build another wall of those who passed away occupying people who knew occupation was not the answer. That day we will go and look for the names of the people we already know are on the wall and we will find them and we will be surprised and we will cry.
I appreciate the attempts here to ensure that, perhaps, another generation will not have to make that trip.
Anne,
“Quite successful economically” as compared to what — as compared to how prosperous the South (not to mention the North!) might have been had Ho not started a 15 year long war killing and wounding maybe 10 million people out of a total population of 33 million for example?
There are two experiments as Vladimir Putin said: East Germany and West Germany, and North Korea and South Korea.
I am uninterested in and offended by writing that is meant to frighten and intimidate.
Actually, looking to Vietnam, the decade of the 1980s began with a decline in Gross Domestic Product in 1980 and then grew rapidly in every year after through 1989. Vietnamese per capita GDP grew by 41% through the 1980s. The decade of the 1980s was quite successful economically for Vietnam:
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=65&pr.y=6&sy=1980&ey=2019&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=582&s=NGDP_RPCH&grp=0&a=
October 15, 2019
Gross Domestic Product for Vietnam at constant prices, 1980-2019
( Percent change)
https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2019/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=62&pr.y=7&sy=1980&ey=2019&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=582&s=NGDP_RPCH%2CNGDPRPPPPC&grp=0&a=
October 15, 2019
Gross Domestic Product at constant prices * and Gross Domestic Product per capita based on purchasing-power-parity for Vietnam, 1980-2019
( Percent change)
@Dennis Drew –
What France, and later the US effectively acting as France’s surrogate in the role of paternalistic first world godfather, did to (ostensibly “for” among latent white supremacists) Vietnam was essentially the same as what Belgium did to Rwanda. France did not want to leave a vacuum behind when they freed Vietnam, so they filled it with rivalry which would most certainly turn to endless bloodshed. If France could not have Vietnam then they would insure that it would not be worth having. The US was a loyal ally and fellow traveler. Recall that Hitler had a lot of influential supporters in the US until he didn’t. Brown people are more like our playthings than our fellow humans.
Ron,
Is this anything like what happened in Korea — you know, when a force of millions of soldiers invaded over the border — to, er, uh, “reunite” North and South Korea? See any parallels — like millions of armed invaders? I understand that North Vietnam did not start out invading with tanks — but stealthily through the jungles — which could cause confusion.
I suggest you crack an autobiographical novel by a North Vietnamese soldier whose Glorious 27th Youth Brigade went out with 500 and came back with 10.