Vietnam: the defeat of the United States, which became the prologue to its victory in the Cold War
In the foreground are the creators of future US geopolitical victories who survived the defeat in Vietnam. In particular, the current hero of the day, who has established relations between the United States and Maoist China
About the dramatic fall of Saigon in 1975, and with it the transformation into history American project called "Republic of Vietnam", a lot has been written. But no less interesting are two global aspects, in terms of their consequences, connected with this event and having a significant impact, including today.
First: the transformation of American society in terms of its mental attitudes; the result of which was a change in the White House strategy for the implementation of expansionist ambitions.
And as a result: the defeat in Indochina turned out to be a geopolitical success for the United States in general in the vastness of Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans and the Maghreb, and even for some time (in relation to Yeltsin's Russia, Shushkevich's Belarus, Ukraine and, albeit with reservations, Nazarbayev's Kazakhstan) - post-Soviet space.
The second aspect is also of far from academic interest. We are talking about events that took place half a century ago around South Vietnam, but less known. Which is unfair. For those distant years became the geopolitical maximum of the Soviet Union in the international arena, including in Asia. But more on that in the next post.
Two Americas
So let's take a look at the first aspect.
The early XNUMXs can be called the era of the great, driven by superpower military parity, balance, and the starting point of US victory in the Cold War.
The fact is that the fall of Saigon in 1975 was not only a geopolitical defeat for the United States and a shock to the political establishment and society - hence the terms that after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan came into our everyday life: "post-traumatic syndrome" and "lost generation".
At first glance, an overseas expedition, insignificant for a superpower, which does not affect the territory of the mother country, in the age of television and live reporting from the scene, for the internal foundations of America was a shock that forced the Nixon administration, and then Ford, to think within the framework of the paradigm later formulated by Andropov: “We do not know the country , in which we live." We are talking about the anti-war movement and the differentiation of society on the principle of attitude towards Vietnam veterans.
The first "Rambo" is about this. The film shows the rejection by society in the person of the sheriff (by the way, a veteran of the Korean War) - or at best his indifference - to the hero played by Stallone.
As an example of the differentiation of American society, I will cite another - perhaps the best on the topic of Vietnam - the film "Platoon", and as an antithesis to it: the famous Woodstock rock festival saturated with the ideas of pacifism in 1969, and also the scandalous film that stirred up the United States two years earlier the story of the deprivation of the champion title of Mohammed Ali, who refused to serve in the army. Ali justified his decision as follows:
Two Americas, two worlds not only incomprehensible but hostile to each other under one roof.
But at the same time, on Capitol Hill, both from the defeat and from the split in society, they drew the appropriate conclusions. And they didn’t just make the transition to a professional army (in general, the problems that the American Armed Forces faced in Indochina and partly covered in the fundamental work of Lieutenant General Davidson “The Vietnam War (1946-1975)” require a separate discussion - I think, relevant for us in the context of present events), which began in 1973.
In the United States, they began to apologia and glorify military service in the public mind. The result exceeded expectations. I remember once I heard from a friend who a few years ago witnessed the following scene: in the waiting room of one of the American airports, several military men suddenly appeared, and everyone in the room suddenly applauded them, and it’s not a fact that those guys were participants military operations.
Half a century ago, with regard to veterans who returned from Vietnam, and just military personnel, this was unimaginable.
Further, the United States in Vietnam used monstrous carpet bombing and was on the verge, according to Davidson, of launching a nuclear strike. But it is precisely after the failure of the aggression that the Pentagon either reduces the war exclusively to air and missile strikes, as was the case during the aggression against Yugoslavia, or, if a ground operation is indispensable (Iraq 2003), it tries to attract as many satellites as possible to it.
At the same time, a calculation is made on the inability of a weaker adversary to provide effective and, most importantly, long-term resistance (in the same 2003, a significant part of the Iraqi troops remained in their places of permanent deployment, not taking part in repelling American aggression); or the Pentagon chooses countries that don’t really have an army - Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989: Operation Just Goats . Either the CIA is relying on destructive forces within the state - the DRA, Libya, Syria.
When something went wrong
And if something does not go according to a pre-planned scenario - the failed operation "Eagle Claw" in April 1980 to free the employees of the American embassy in Tehran taken hostage; the October 1993 battles of American special forces with Somali rebels in Mogadishu, reflected in the good film Black Hawk Down; finally, the offensive of the Taliban officially banned in Russia on the territory of Afghanistan in 2021 - then the White House simply turns off, in order to avoid serious losses, the military presence in the country or the region as a whole.
War in the post-heroic era
An interesting - and in the quote below one should see the reverse side of the mentioned apology for military service in the public mind - an explanation of one of the psychological reasons for this is given by the American military historian and military strategist Luttwak in his book “Strategy. The logic of war and peace":
“To lose several hundred soldiers in some insignificant business, to lose several thousand in a small war or an expeditionary campaign, used to be quite an ordinary thing for the great powers (for example, the war with the sepoys, which was difficult for the British colonialists in 1857-1859, did not shock British society - I. X.)".
At the end of the last century, things have changed:
“It is enough to recall,” writes Luttwak, “how the Americans immediately left Somalia after the loss of 18 soldiers in October 1993, to reveal the unreality of the concept of a great power today.
To their glory or to their shame, the Americans could draw any, even larger conclusions from this event, while retaining the right to special impressionability, which forces a complete change in their policy after the murder of 18 professional volunteer soldiers. We add that these were soldiers from the country where death from a gunshot weapons registered every 14 minutes. However, this is by no means an exclusively American dignity (or disaster - how to look).
To their glory or to their shame, the Americans could draw any, even larger conclusions from this event, while retaining the right to special impressionability, which forces a complete change in their policy after the murder of 18 professional volunteer soldiers. We add that these were soldiers from the country where death from a gunshot weapons registered every 14 minutes. However, this is by no means an exclusively American dignity (or disaster - how to look).
Not without reason, after the overthrow of Saddam and the beginning of the guerrilla struggle in Iraq, the Americans drove satellites from almost all over the world into the country they had torn apart - almost fifty states, even Fiji was not forgotten. If only other people died - Bulgarians, there, Georgians, Romanians or Mongols, but if only their own - to a minimum. If only the shadow of a "second Vietnam" would not fall on America.
And I believe that if Saigon had not fallen in 1975, the expansion of the United States would have been less international in nature and would have relied less on the efforts of diplomacy, putting together all sorts of "Iraqi freedoms", etc.
But Gorbachev planted a kind of pig in the White House, annihilating a superpower with a far from exhausted potential without pressure from outside. We will talk about this in more detail in the article that analyzes the second aspect.
The sudden self-liquidation of the Internal Affairs Directorate and the USSR weakened the United States too much and literally leveled their interest in Sovietology, which had a negative impact on research important for formulating the basic principles of the White House's foreign policy strategy in relation to the post-Soviet space and the countries of the former socialist camp.
USA on the way to a new Saigon
The mastodons of the political establishment that took shape during the Cold War warned about the dangerous consequences of ill-conceived US moves in Eastern Europe.
For example, the famous author of the "Long Telegram" Kennan was an opponent of NATO expansion to the East. They didn't listen. In a word, American diplomacy failed and overlooked the transformation of the Kremlin's foreign policy strategy from the shameful Kozyrevism (at that time, however, there was no strategy at all) to Primakov and further to Lavrov.
And the year 2014 became a bucket of cold water for the White House, when the generally successful expansionist policy for it was interrupted by the return of Crimea to Russia, the formation of Novorossia, oriented towards Russia and not subject to the puppet Kiev regime.
The actions of our Aerospace Forces in Syria also slowed down the confident pace of American imperialism. Both became a kind of second Saigon for the gentlemen from Capitol Hill. Not as brutal as in 1975, but still a serious geopolitical defeat.
The headache for the United States was added by China, which has squeezed into the category of superpowers and challenged yesterday's hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the scale of the challenge should not be exaggerated, because Beijing is more likely to engage in dialogue with Washington than confrontation with it.
The dominance of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region is also now being challenged by North Korea, forcing the South Koreans and the Japanese to jitter after each launch of a ballistic missile.
Unbroken by sanctions, Iran is stepping on the heels of American interests in the Middle East, claiming a sphere of influence in the Shiite part of Iraq, and also, relying on Hezbollah, in Syria and Lebanon.
All this once again testifies: the country that won the Cold War, but it should not rest on its laurels, like France, lulled by the Versailles Treaty of 1920, is an example of examples. It should be ready for new geopolitical challenges.
But sometimes it is the defeat that makes the state stronger. Actually, the failure in Vietnam, I repeat, was a good lesson for the White House, from which he drew the appropriate conclusions, eventually becoming the world hegemon.
And I think that overseas people are seriously analyzing the miscalculations in European politics in the second half of the nineties and the beginning of the 181049s, which resulted in the loss of Crimea as a promising naval base in Eastern Europe (see about this: https://topwar.ru/2021- nerealizovannye-plany-k-6-godu-ssha-sobiralis-prevratit-sevastopol-v-zonu-rotacionnogo-bazirovanija-korablej-7-go-flota.html?ysclid=llvs4ch795261010mzXNUMX), from a strategic point of view, incomparably more important than Camp Bondsteel on Serbian territory occupied by Washington-controlled Albanian gangs and Ramstein in Germany.
To oppose the United States to the global South, which does not exist in reality, is, I think, reckless, which I писалrecently.
Our conditional Mukden as a step towards a future victory
As for Russia, our March 2014 triumph was followed by the September and November conditional Mukden 2022, from which, I am sure, the right conclusions were also drawn, which will serve as a guarantee of future victories.
To be continued ...
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