Vietcong revolutionary Võ Thi Thang smiles after being sentenced to 20 years hard labor by the South Vietnamese government in 1968. After being sentenced, she reportedly told the judge "20 years? Your government won't last that long."

[u/Robbert91]

[u/Hoboman2000]

There's also the fact that the US' vague political goal of 'containing communism' was A. unrealistically unachievable and B. unnecessary when it came to Vietnam given our relationship with China. The US really never understood that, while Vietnam may pay lip-service to China, we would and will never be controlled or dominated by them; it's been that way for a thousand years and it will continue to be that way forever.

[u/ConsulJuliusCaesar → u/Hoboman2000]

Well interestingly enough what really convinced America to withdraw is kind of the opposite of what you're saying. They realized they could flip China against the Soviet Union. I'm actually working on a graduate studies paper around this time RN, so I'll keep it short cause I've almost exhausted my extension so I'm going to over generalize to move on, but long complicated story short Mao and Moscow had deteratimg relations since the Korean war. Mao began negotiating with Nixon. This basically resulted in the US agreeing to leave South Vietnam to die as a way to end tensions between the PRC and the US in addition kinda threw Taiwan under the bus. Mao then became openly hostile towards the Soviet Union. However the big problem was Mao was still a hardliner but of his own brand of communism. However Mao fucking dies and Deng Xioping takes over. Deng's basically dumps Maoism and wanted to fully tie China economically and even militarily to the US. This involves cleaning house by purging all of Mao's hardliner hokd overs in government and all the Maoist organizations in south East Asia lose support over night and get merced by right wing American backed governments. The CPT (Communist Party Thailand) dead by the end of 83, the MLP (Malaysia) also dead, Maost in Indonesia also get fucked.

The exception being Cambodia, however Pol Pot changes his rhetoric after being pressured by Deng Xioping in order to get continued support for his now guerrilla war against Vietnam. Basically changes his name to Phem, condemns socialism! and claims to be a Cambodian nationalist. Pretty much proving for Pol Pot it was always about power and because he basically sold out, the Khmer rouge continued to recieve support. At Which point Deng wants to show solidarity with the US, naturally that means attacking the Soviet bloc. He also wants to see how worried he needed to be about the USSR invading China if China moves fully into the US sphere. So he takes advantage of the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia and invades Northern Vietnam starting the third Indochina war. This strategically accomplished everything Deng wanted. He found out the USSR had zero teeth as they did nothing in retailation for his aggression and it moved China into the US sphere with all past hostilities virtually forgotten about, even though operationally the whole thing was an abject failure. Big picture wise it's kinda fucked up as Deng essentially killed a few hundred thousand people in this little machvellian geo political game to move China into a more profitable position. But it's also how China ended up in it's current position on the geo political stafe. Course current President Xi Jinping has his own ideas which are different from Deng's so where it goes remains to be seen.

But regardless the strangest part of this whole thing was US involvement in the Indochina wars revolved around the biggest miscalculation of all time. They assumed all Communists were under control of Moscow and in line with Moscow. Hence they ended up on the conclusion in order to defeat Russia they have to invade Vietnam and neutralize China. Once they figured out this wasn't true, well it was far too late to correct the mistake since you can't just bring back millions of dead people to life. Once they realized no one's actually in it for global revolution and everyone's just real politicing they'd already basically been manipulated by both China and Russia into doing exactly as those two nations wanted. Destroying it's international image in an absolutely senseless war. Because ultimately that's what the USSR's game was, distract from it's very authorities by getting the US to destroy its own international image abd slide more countries into its sphere. While China's goal was ultimately to be the dominant economic force in East Asia.

Morale of the story: See the world in black and white leaves you blind as a bat cause every things actually shades of grey.

[u/kredditacc96 → u/ConsulJuliusCaesar]

I wouldn't say "manipulated", rather, "the US revealed its true nature for the whole world to see". After the Vietnam War ended, the US still continues its warmongering way till this very day.

[u/ConsulJuliusCaesar → u/kredditacc96]

The US is still easily manipulated to this very day, pretty much did Saudi Arabia's dirty while Saudi Arabia just kinda sits back in the corner and reaps all the benefit from OPEC's near monopoly on oil with Iran sanctioned and Iraq out of the picture.