Dominos Again

Ross responds on the domino theory, and I'm totally unconvinced.

I'll just say it again. The case for staying in Vietnam had nothing to do with Mozambique (and I think Ross's assumption of a tight causal link between events in Vietnam and events in Africa lacks evidence) and everything to do with American security. But as to the key issue of American national security, the hawks were completely wrong. Indochina going Communist had no deleterious effect whatsoever on the physical security or material living standards of Americans. The effort to prevent Indochina from going Communist, by contrast, had a large and very deleterious effect on the physical security of a huge quantity of Americans.

Communist victory in Indochina was, obviously, a disaster for Indochinese anti-Communists, but by the same token US military involvement in Indochina killed and maimed vast quantities of Indochinese people.

UPDATE: Check out Michael Hirsch's column.

Comments

Note that Ross's argument repeats one made by Michael Lind. Not his most convincing book, but he tends to have at least enough documentation to hang a theory on, if not always all that much more.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 23, 2007 1:32 PM

matthew, i would hardly say that i'm a regular reader of ross douhat, but i've read him enough to say: why do you treat him seriously?

i nearly stopped at the notion that southeast asia "went" communist (an immensely stupid remark) and i did stop at the notion that "with the benefit of hindsight."

since, with the benefit of hindsight, the anti-vietnam position was 100% correct, why is he flapping his gums about wrong-headed positions? what is it with right-wingers that they have no foresight at all, just some kind of obsession with seeing movies as a substitute for reality?

Posted by howard | August 23, 2007 1:41 PM

Not tat it matters to you of course, but if your blog becomes too much responding to Jonah Goldberg aka Ross Douthat, I certainly will be readig less.

Posted by Armando | August 23, 2007 1:49 PM

What would really have been in the U.S. security, national, political, and economic interest would have been to support and encourage Vietnamese independence free of French colonialism.

There would have been no reason the U.S. could not have allied and supported a free, democratic, and independent Vietnam even if it were socialist, other than maniacally harmful ideologies by the lunatics who dominated policy and commentary.

Posted by El Cid | August 23, 2007 1:49 PM

Are we really still debating this? Is our idiot President using an idiotic war fought and lost because of idiotic leadership to justify another idiotic war fought and lost because of idiotic leadership?

The current state of politics baffles me.

How can the MSM just let Bush say this garbage without calling him on it? I

What a joke.

Posted by The CarpetMuncher | August 23, 2007 1:58 PM

There would have been no reason the U.S. could not have allied and supported a free, democratic, and independent Vietnam even if it were socialist

Yup. But it didn't, and ended up instead aligning itself with the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese. Could have had a friend, held out for a puppet, and ended up settling for a genocidal enemy of an enemy.

Posted by Ryan | August 23, 2007 2:32 PM

Matt, don't change your style in response to comments like the ones above that you get whenever you respond to Douthat or David Brooks--I read you because you have the intellectual integrity to take your opponents seriously and to address their ideas on the substance.

Matt is clearly right on this issue, but if you think Ross Douthat is an idiot or an evil-doer, you are wrong on both counts. Assuming your ideological enemies are stupid/evil is an indication you are not being very rigorous in how you evaluate the issues. Many of the people on all sides of the ideological divide are brilliant and deep thinkers who love their families and wish the best for America and the world. I find too often that the commentators on this blog are eager to assume that the right wing is full of numbskulls who enjoy eating babies. If you think that's the case, that's your loss.

Posted by Wilson | August 23, 2007 2:33 PM

Wilson, speaking as one who dissed douhat but who also believes in the search for honest conservatives, what, exactly, is the non-stupid/angelic basis of douhat's comments?

look, we all get stuff wrong sometimes, but it's one thing to get stuff wrong sometimes and it's another to base your worldview on foolishness. whenever i see something by douhat, it has been foolish, and i don't understand taking our limited time on the planet and occupying it with debating foolishness.

as for brooks, in has case, it's not foolishness, it's flat-out dishonesty (which, to give douhat credit, isn't something i've seen him indulge in). why are we supposed to take a regularly dishonest person seriously? just so we can feel good about how open-minded we are?

bruce bartlett, bruce fein, john cole, sebastian holdsclaw, brink lindsay - these are people on the other side of the ideological divide i'm always happy to read, because while i may think they are wrong-headed, they are honest and not possessed of foolishness. maybe i haven't read enough douhat and he belongs in this list too, but david brooks? please.

Posted by howard | August 23, 2007 2:43 PM

"There would have been no reason the U.S. could not have allied and supported a free, democratic, and independent Vietnam even if it were socialist, other than maniacally harmful ideologies by the lunatics who dominated policy and commentary."

Yes, but:

1. You underestimate how many of those lunatics there were. In fact, the position of the lunatics - i.e. the response to the "Who lost China?" question - was really the only chink in the Democrat's dominance in US politics that the Republicans could use - otherwise, the Republicans were likely doomed. So, there was probably no way to dislodge the Republicans from constantly harping on the "Who lost China?" meme - and that was what ultimately led to the US being in Vietnam.

2. Hatred of even moderate socialism runs extremely deep in the US. The Fundamentals (the basic books that founded the fundamentalist movement in the 1910s) spend as much time attacking socialism as any other topic. Since the books link all other modern evils (evolution, etc) explicitly to socialism, it's effectively impossible to disentagle that hatred.

3. The US spent huge amounts of money and effort successfully suppressing even fairly moderate socialism - examples prior to Vietnam include Japan and Italy. It would be difficult for the apparatus to let a minor country like Vietnam go it's own way when the US had barred much more important nations from doing so.

Posted by burritoboy | August 23, 2007 2:51 PM

Wilson,

The fact that Ross is not stupid (clearly) and not an evil doer (arguably - that is, no more so than the average contemporary U.S. citezen), and yet holds some of the truly bizarre opinions that he does - is just evidence of what a sad state this nation is in. In any truly rational nation, someone with Matthew's foreign policy views would be considered a hawk - yet in the United States his views are so (relatively) "dovish" that he barely inhabits the "left" fringe of respectable opinion. While the 55 post war years were bad enough, in the past 7 years the center of gravity in this country has moved tot he extent that barking warmonger lunacy has become the "moderate" position of the political center.

Posted by LarryM | August 23, 2007 2:58 PM

The North Vietnamese victory was primarily a victory for Vietnamese nationalists – ironic because Vietnam, like the rest of Indochina, as demonstrated by Benedict Anderson in ‘Imagined Communities’, was a construct, the result of successive French colonial administrations treating the geographic area as a unified entity.

Anyone familiar with the Pentagon Papers will remember the Vietnamese Communist Party had become the main repository for Vietnamese Nationalism. If you were Vietnamese and interested in actively opposing the foreigners you perceived as controlling your country, you were probably involved with Communists. But the core fact was: Vietnamese nationalism was what animated the struggle, not communism.

Undoubtedly Soviet propagandists found it easier to paint the United States and the ‘capitalist powers’ to be in retreat after the withdrawal from Vietnam, just as Fascist propagandists claimed they were in the ascendant after Spain fell to Franco. But like whenever Osama Bin Laden taunts the United States as a paper tiger (borrowed from Mao), claiming history to be on your side doesn’t make it true.

That events in Mozambique had a causal relationship with events in Vietnam was largely dependent on us, along with the Soviets, believing (or pretending) they did. Similarly, the Spanish civil war was the result of long-standing fissures within Spanish society, not the apocalyptical struggle between communism and fascism that many in the 30s were convinced it was.

The American withdrawal from Vietnam might have ennobled Marxist intellectuals and militants active in the third world, but the anti-colonial movements they were working inside largely moved according to their own, unique dynamics. Of course they were affected by then popular intellectual currents and might have depended on Soviet funding, but they were primarily animated by other things than global communist revolution.

In tying anti-colonial movements together based on a common use of Marxist rhetoric and slogans, western, primarily American-based analysts de facto accepted Marxist liberation ideology, internalising it into their assumptions. It was from Marxist foundations that the domino theory was built.

The domino theory's main attraction then (and sadly, apparently still) was that it lent not-connected events a degree of intellectual coherence they didn’t otherwise deserve.

Posted by wsam | August 23, 2007 2:58 PM

But as to the key issue of American national security, the hawks were completely wrong.

MY: While I agree with the general thrust of your argument against the Douthats of this world, I’m afraid that you yourself will remain stuck in the same groove of superficial counter-argument until you begin to examine the foundations of your own thinking in terms of such empty categories as “hawks”.

General Eisenhower, on his way out the door, had courageously tried to focus the national attention on the very roots of the problem when he identified the “military-industrial complex” as an essential structural factor accounting for US foreign policy decisions. This was a good beginning, but much work has been done since then to fill out the picture.

It would be interesting to hear from you how you relate your own argument to an understanding of those issues.

Posted by Justin X | August 23, 2007 3:11 PM

Matt Yglesias frequently gets the past wrong because he's so young. If you were alive between 1975 and 1979, it was clear that there was a domino effect going on, scattered around the world. The wind seemed to be blowing in the direction of communism, with them making advances in Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, and, almost, Portugal.

In hindsight, we now know that the Soviets were picking up the useless countries, while capitalism was strengthening itself relative to communism in countries that really counted like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and West Germany. By 1975, the emergence of the four tigers in East Asia showed Asians that capitalism was a better future for them than communism. That hadn't been at all clear in, say, 1965.

In places like Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, capitalism wasn't doing much better in 1975 than in 1965 at making people better off, so communism remained plausible to important elements. But, as it turned out, so what? We now know that those countries aren't going to be major economic players, so it doesn't matter what their economic system is. But we didn't know that as clearly then.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 3:16 PM

Steve,

If Matt gets stuff wrong because he's so young, what's your excuse?

To take one example. Do you think Ethiopia being ruled by a king, Haile Selassie, living god to Rastas everywhere, had something to do with Marxism's appeal?

Posted by wsam | August 23, 2007 3:38 PM

But we didn't know that as clearly then.

So, what you're saying is, you were wrong. And Matt is too young to be understanding enough of why you were wrong.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 23, 2007 3:40 PM

"In places like Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, capitalism wasn't doing much better in 1975 than in 1965 at making people better off, so communism remained plausible to important elements."

If you're calling what was going on in Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and Afghanistan in 1975 "capitalism," then you're in no position to criticize anyone else for failing to understand "the subtleties of the history."

The primary reason why capitalism fared well in East Asia in the 1970s, and not very well in Africa and Latin America, is that countries like Taiwan and South Korea were actively engaging in the global market economy, whereas Africa and Latin America were being aggressively plundered by both corrupt regimes and Western business interests with the full support of the United States. Had the Cold War actually been contested between "capitalist democracies" and "totalitarian states," as the propagandists would have it, the outcome would never have been in doubt in the first place, and the Viet Cong and Sandinistas wouldn't have had such an easy time recruiting for their cause.

We weren't fighting for either capitalism or democracy in Vietnam. We were trying to keep the remnants of the French colonial empire from becoming Soviet client states. In most of the rest of the world, we were arming our sons of bitches to keep countries out of the hands of their sons of bitches. Only the sort of people who were prone to seeing our sons of bitches as the heroic vanguard of capitalism and democracy would look at the history of the late 1970s and see a "domino effect." The rest of us just see a great deal of senseless bloodshed, to no great historical end.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 23, 2007 3:45 PM

Owing to superior maturity, Sailer’s hindisght is always 20/20, of course.

But I wonder why, if the “wind” of capitalism is so strong and powerful, his “we” don’t simply let it blow, but regularly seek to strong-arm its way into countries like Iraq backed by the full “shock and awe” of the US military and hordes of incompetent advisers hired by the Heritage Foundation.

Posted by Justin X | August 23, 2007 3:57 PM

"In most of the rest of the world, we were arming our sons of bitches to keep countries out of the hands of their sons of bitches."

And as wsam pointed out, the Vietnamese Communists weren't really "their sons of bitches" in the end anyway. And that's a reality that was identified long before we were up to our waist in Vietnam, that the dynamic of the struggle was a nationalist or anti-colonial one rather than a pro-communist one.

Posted by Kurzleg | August 23, 2007 3:59 PM

If you were alive between 1975 and 1979, it was clear that there was a domino effect going on, scattered around the world.

Speaking as one who was alive and adult back then, stuff and nonsense! There was no discernable domino effect resulting from Vietnam, and nobody--not even those on the extreme right who thought the DFH's lost the war--claimed otherwise at the time.

Posted by rea | August 23, 2007 4:08 PM

steve means to say "if you were alive between 1975 and 1979 and of a certain political predisposition," certain things looked clear.

but it was entirely possible to be alive in 1975 and 1979 and think the whole notion of "winds blowing in the direction of communism" was batshit deranged. it didn't take no stinkin' retrospect.

i will, however, stipulate that the republican party and ronald reagan played that card very well in that period....

Posted by howard | August 23, 2007 4:11 PM

These comments reflect why the public doesn't trust liberal Democrats with protecting America's interests and why the Democratic candidates have to engage in ritual pronouncements about how they just might attack somebody in order to reassure the public.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 4:29 PM

I take it you're not interested in discussing the merits of the issue (the domino theory, to refresh your memory), then, Steve?

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | August 23, 2007 4:36 PM

Sailor,

What your comments show is that right wingers still live in a fantasy land where Rambo and Red Dawn are documentaries, where the USSR was some all powerfull enemy that was this close to defeating the west and forcing us all to live like East Germans, and only macho men like Reagan, Cheney, Bush et al can protect us.

You'd think the fall of the Soviets and subsequent flow of information that showed how weak they really we're would have proven that even the "soft on Commie" Dems who downplayed the threat over the cold war period were overestimating the threat.

But apparantly not, American's love them the smell of simplistic jingoism and war mongering in the morning and anyone who is actually sane about foreign policy will never get elected. Now they've just replaced evil commies with evil muslims, works better since brown people are more scary anyway.

Posted by Eric K | August 23, 2007 4:42 PM

As I noted at Ross's site in response to Sailer's comment, there was a domino effect if you conflate any military style leftist movements in any country on any continent with what happened in Vietnam. In this view, countries with deeply individualized circumstances, be it Nicaragua, Angola, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, etc. are all lumped together as if a monolith, a deeply ahistorical world view.

The reality is that none of these movements posed a security threat to the U.S. despite the hysteria of right wingers to the contrary.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | August 23, 2007 4:47 PM

Even though the hawks may have been making this claim, I'm not sure that anyone believed it.

"Back in the real world, though, the essence of the matter was that hawks were warning that the survival of political democracy around the world quite literally depended on South Vietnam staying in non-Communist hands."

The fundamental reason for the war was that we needed to prove that we were tougher and more manly than the Russians.

Posted by FS | August 23, 2007 4:50 PM

Sailer is misrepresenting the domino theory. The domino theory was not primarily a theory that "more communist countries anywhere" = "even more communist countries in the future anywhere". Instead, the domino theory was specifically modeled around the experience in North Korea - China turned communist and therefore was able to prop up North Korea during the North Korean war. That was clearly what was Eisenhower's intention when he first annunciated the theory by name in 1954 - and he was specifically referring precisely to Indochina and modeling his remarks after the North Korean experience. Eisenhower specifically defines the method of the domino geographical concerns - communist countries turning nearby (particularly adjacent) countries communist. It was a geopolitical argument, not a world-spirit argument.

Sure, some of the particularly more hallucinatory anti-communists expanded the "domino" to mean some sort of global thing - "capitalists have 156 countries and the commies have 112! We must prevent revolution in at least 20 countries!" But that was more of a thing people in the later 1960s and 1970s would say, not how the domino theory was thought of when the US entered Vietnam.

Posted by burritoboy | August 23, 2007 5:18 PM

The left suffers a bad case of convenient amnesia on this topic. The current claim is:

"We knew that capitalism was so much superior to socialism economically that capitalism was inevitably bound to win, so we didn't need a huge military to win the Cold War."

Well, I remember the 1970s vividly, and that isn't what the respectable left was saying at the time at all. From 1929 onward, much of the left had considered communism superior to capitalism economically. Even in the 1970s, the mainstream left (e.g., John Kenneth Galbraith) thought capitalism's edge over communism in productivity was only modest. With all the economic troubles visible in the capitalist world (and the communist world's troubles largely hidden), few at the time were boasting that capitalism would bury communism in a sea of high quality consumer goods.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 5:58 PM

So, what we saw were two classic next-door dominoes (Cambodia and Laos) follow South Vietnam and then a lot of bandwagon dominoes around the world follow in the next few years.

And, please, let's be clear on the timing. The North Vietnamese Army started its big offensive against South Vietnam in December 1974. The U.S. Congress, which had moved far to the left in the wake of Watergate, wouldn't allow air strikes to stop it, as the U.S. had stopped the similar 1972 NVA offensive with relatively few American casualties.

In January 1975, the South Vietnamese government tried to evacuate its northern provinces, but botched the difficult job of a fighting retreat, and so from January onward, the NVA's victory was inevitable (just as the German victory over France in 1940 was inevitable after the first few days, but took about 6 weeks to formalize). Communists then took the capitals of Cambodia and Laos around the same time as Saigon fell in the spring of 1975, but the first domino had tipped in January (or possibly before when Congress wouldn't allow airstrikes).

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 6:07 PM

In defense of that Democratic Congress, while it may seem nuts today for the U.S. to not use airstrikes to stop a tank invasion of an ally, we shouldn't project our utter air superiority of today back on the 1970s. Today, we use our stealth planes and cruise missiles to take out enemy ground-based air defense radar, and then carry on with minimal casualties. Back then, however, Soviet surface-to-air missiles were a major threat to our aircraft. The air war over Vietnam in the early 1970s cost us a lot of planes and airmen, and was increasing the number of POWs held as bargaining chips by the North Vietnamese. So, we should be sympathetic to the Democratic Congress.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 6:13 PM

The seventies were of course not the height of communism (What communism ? the S. U., China, Albania?)
The seventies did see the height of Influence of the third world.
Just one example:
Back then, many people believed that in Angola was fight a proxy war: MPLA the Soviet pawn, UNITA the western pawn. We do know now that both groups played east and wets for suckers.
And that happened all in all in many third world countries.

I mean, can anybody repeat the old canard: "pro western UNITA" without laughing?

Posted by IM | August 23, 2007 6:24 PM

Right, Jonas Savimbi was a classic charismatic African Big Man in the Idi Amin mold. He snookered some young American Republicans just like the young Scottish doctor in "The Last King of Scotland" fell so hard for Amin. The young Republicans were so happy to hear this ultra-African superstar tell them the same things they believed about free markets. (And being for Savimbi shows you're not racist!) It was love at first sight. In reality, Savimbi didn't care about ideas, just about Savimbi and his extended family.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 6:39 PM

"Young Republicans" is a little misleading, you make it sound like a bunch of naive young college kids got snookered. I'd hardly describe Jeanne Kirkpatrick and The crowd at The National Review as "young"

And that young doctor wised up about Amin fairly quickly, when Did Kirkpatrick et al stop defending right wing thugs?

Posted by Eric K | August 23, 2007 6:49 PM

Sailer's right about those post-Vietnam communist dominoes, but there was also a significant non-communist domino: Iran. Our turning tail from Southeast Asia encouraged the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries to attack us. They would have never invaded the embassies of China or Russia.

Eric K.: Jeanne Kirkpatrick was actually a Democrat.

Posted by Juan | August 23, 2007 6:58 PM

Juan,

Kirkpatrick used to be a registered Democrat, so did Strom Thurmond, so what. By the late 70s she had fully aligned herself with the conservative repbulican right and of course served in the Reagan admin, and was a darling of The National Review set. If she never bothered to change her party affiliation it doesn't change the fact that she was a right winger.

Posted by Eric K | August 23, 2007 7:03 PM

Sailer's right about those post-Vietnam communist dominoes, but there was also a significant non-communist domino: Iran. Our turning tail from Southeast Asia encouraged the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries to attack us. They would have never invaded the embassies of China or Russia.

Wow, you'd almost think it was a good idea to have had the CIA overthrow the government of Iran and institute a tyrant whose inevitable collapse led to the very nasty things you mention.

It's almost as if it's bad policy to institute thugs & criminals around the world as allies. It's almost as if when nasty, brutish thugs hold on to power until the very last collapse, they're often overtaken by other nasty types.

Who would have thunk it?

Who would have thought that imposing draconian tyranny and murder and torture on Iran would have led to anything bad?

Who but super-awesome brilliant right wing and liberal hawk thinkerz would have concocted such a super-awesome brilliant way of setting up such awesum world stability!!!

Why didn't we use such awesum brilliant strategerizing here at home more often? Problem with a slave holding South? No problem, pay off the military to have a murderous, torturing thug rule the American South as a fiefdom of the North, saying we had to do so because otherwise we risked separation and Civil War.

God, those farsighted, brilliant, incredible intellectuals like Jeanne Kirkpatrick might have thunk of that!!!

Posted by El Cid | August 23, 2007 7:06 PM

"Our turning tail from Southeast Asia encouraged the Iranian Islamic revolutionaries to attack us. They would have never invaded the embassies of China or Russia."

Right! In the same year the islamists in Afghanistan reacted to the Soviet Invasion with flowers and candys!

Posted by IM | August 23, 2007 7:11 PM

Courtesy of Sailer and Juan, we once again see the classic correlation=causality fallacy. (Sailer has made a career out of this)

The Domino Theory foresaw a situation in which each nation that fell to communism would provide backing and support for the next revolution. As with a chain of dominoes, each one that falls causes the next one to fall. We'd lose Thailand, Burma, and on and on. That's very obviously not what happened in the 1970s.

By 1975, the Communist "bloc" was splintering. Communist China was locked in a virtual cold war with the USSR and tilting its alignment toward the US. Vietnamese and Chinese Communists were barely cooperating with each other. Soviet proxies in the Middle East were getting pounded by Israel. India had long since stopped flirting with the Soviets.

On the other hand, the seed money the Soviets had been investing in Third World Revolutionaries was starting to come to fruition. And several Third World countries fell, independently, to rebellions that were supported by the Soviets to varying degrees.

But was this a "domino effect?" Of course not. The Viet Cong made precisely zero contributions to the Sandinistas and the various African revolutions.

People then, as now, who have a vested interest in promoting paranoia can draw lines connecting random events and "prove" that somehow event A "emboldened" our enemies and caused event B. It's a con game. There's no direct connection between these events, and you could just as easily blame the fall of the Shah on disco music as on Vietnam. The Shah had been digging his own grave for a quarter-century and we paid for the shovels.

But, hey, I can't PROVE that the student revolutionaries weren't mystically emboldened by bad Vietnam mojo. Nor can I prove that Gloria Gaynor didn't inspire the Ayatollah with her hit single "I Will Survive." So there you go.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | August 23, 2007 7:50 PM

Why the fuck does anyone care which dirtbag countries here and there would or would not have "gone Communist," and why, when the mother ship was about to implode anyway? Get a life. WHAT THE FUCK DOES ANY OF IT SAY ABOUT THE NEED TO "WIN" IN VIETNAM??? To what end? You wanna still, to this day, have a big army in Vietnam holding China at bay? Christ almighty what is wrong with people.

Steve Sailer, whatever your knowledge about the particulars of the 1970s you're clearly a fucking moron arguing about nothing. Not only that, you already admitted that in hindsight it was all misguided rubbish, and you're still hammering away at it. Why?

Posted by Bill | August 23, 2007 8:16 PM

On 8/23/07 at 6:07pm, Steve Sailor wrote

So, what we saw were two classic next-door dominoes (Cambodia and Laos) follow South Vietnam and then a lot of bandwagon dominoes around the world follow in the next few years.

And, please, let's be clear on the timing. The North Vietnamese Army started its big offensive against South Vietnam in December 1974. The U.S. Congress, which had moved far to the left in the wake of Watergate, wouldn't allow air strikes to stop it, as the U.S. had stopped the similar 1972 NVA offensive with relatively few American casualties.

In January 1975, the South Vietnamese government tried to evacuate its northern provinces, but botched the difficult job of a fighting retreat, and so from January onward, the NVA's victory was inevitable (just as the German victory over France in 1940 was inevitable after the first few days, but took about 6 weeks to formalize). Communists then took the capitals of Cambodia and Laos around the same time as Saigon fell in the spring of 1975, but the first domino had tipped in January (or possibly before when Congress wouldn't allow airstrikes).

Congratulations, Steve. You've managed to get just about everything wrong. Here's a word that you should stamp on your forehead: Context.

Like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos came under communist control at the end of the Vietnam war. However, to claim that this was the result of them jumping on some sort of "bandwagon" is preposterous.

The conflicts that developed in all three countries grew out of their common experience of and responses to (1) the extremely harsh colonial governance of the French before and for 9 years after WWII; and (2) the extension, in effect, of that colonial dominance by the U.S.--first in the form of military aid to the French, then increasingly in direct U.S. military involvement.

The history and culture of each country was critical to the shape of its response to the U.S. military/political presence. The Vietnamese, in particular, were driven by a long tradition of staunch nationalism and resistance to foreign occupation. Cambodia tried to remain neutral during the war by playing both ends against the middle, but its position was untenable. Looking the other way out of weakness as the North Vietnamese and Vietcong used eastern Cambodia as sanctuary and a smuggling route, Cambodia began to experience increasing military pressure from U.S. forces as Richard Nixon spread the war to that country. U.S. bombing of Cambodia was of such intensity that there was scarcely any part of the country that was not pulverized by our massive air raids. The scale and intensity of that destruction is widely considered by scholars of that conflict to be the major cause of the bizarrely inhuman behavior of the Khmer Rouge when they finally took control of Cambodia. (Please note: I am not claiming that the politics and policies of the Khmer Rouge were determined by the U.S. bombing campaign. Rather, I'm referring to the insane cruelty of that organization, as reported by Sidney Shanberg and many other reporters and eyewitnesses at the time.)

All of this was preceded by 30 years of American involvement in Indochina, direct and indirect, during which time the U.S. brought to bear against 3 impoverished agrarian societies the weight of the most powerful military machine in history. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than were dropped in all of WWII and used defoliants, napalm and various antipersonnel weapons on a massive scale. Large parts of the country are still unable to support plant life as a result.

All of this destruction was in support of a regime that had little popular support, having been created by the U.S. We created the nation of South Vietnam on paper (the preamble to the SEATO Treaty in 1954, to be precise--at the same time as we declared publicly to abide by the 1954 Geneva Treaty provisions, despite the fact that SEATO was created for the specific purpose of obstructing that treaty). We were directly or indirectly responsible for the overthrow of 5 different South Vietnamese governments between 1963 and 1965. (See George Kahin's Intervention for details.) The South Vietnamese government and economy were entirely dependent on U.S. military aid for their continued existence.

Whatever you call it, this was not self-determination, and the defeat of South Vietnam was not the falling of a domino to some transnational monolithic communist behemoth. South Vietnam was a house of cards and having been propped up by the US at a cost of many lives, lots of money and a severe weaking of our international stature, it couldn't stand indefinitely.

Your claim that the fall of Saigon was caused by a congressional stab in the back overlooks another aspect of that sorry history-- the credibility issue. When the US became involved diplomatically at the end of WWII by choosing to allow the French to regain their former colony, we did so in a vain attempt to gain French support for the development of the European Defence Community (a failed precursor to NATO). As we took on increasingly the role of the French in their conflict with the Vietminh, the rationale became containment of communism. By the time LBJ inherited the conflict, the excuse became first fear of political attacks by Republicans, then one of political reputation ("I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war," said LBJ.), and finally one of national credibility. Given the shifting excuses (not to mention the continaully worsening situation on the ground), it's no wonder that our leaders were unable to develop a coherent explanation for our involvement in that conflict when addressing the public. Without an explanation that made sense and with facts on the ground continually contradicting official pronouncements, is it any wonder that the public became increasingly skeptical, then outright opposed to the adventure? People who berate Congress for finally responding to what had by that time become overwhelming public sentiment in favor of withdrawal from Vietnam overlook the fact that a war started on a dubious pretext, rationalized via a series of shifting justifications (themselves continually contradicted by events) and conducted to support an artificial government with little or no public support is a war that is bound to be lost. (There is also the minor detail that the U.S. is supposed to be a democratic country. Presumably, public opinion does --or should-- matter for something.)

It is infuriating that having been through this sort of thing 32 years ago, our country is led by people too arrogant, stubborn and just plain stupid to avoid repeating it. The least you can do, since you've taken it on yourself to express an opinion about it, is to study the history of that conflict seriously.

Posted by dolphy | August 23, 2007 8:29 PM

"So, what we saw were two classic next-door dominoes (Cambodia and Laos) follow South Vietnam and then a lot of bandwagon dominoes around the world follow in the next few years."

We did see two dominoes fall (both small countries who had been massively destabilized precisely by the Vietnam war), and then........nothing. Nothing very important happened in Thailand, nothing much changed in Burma. If the domino theory was correct, we would have seen an intensification of communist insurgency (particularly in Thailand), not it weakening and eventual petering out entirely.

Also importantly, is that the domino theory had approximately zero evidence in Europe. The Soviet empire extended to precisely those pieces of land it had conquered from the Nazis, and no farther. There was little indication at all geographic proximity cause European communist movements. The biggest communist movements in postwar Europe were in Italy, which only had a small border with Yugoslavia (which wasn't part of the Soviet empire anyway). Germany and Austria, which both had huge borders with the Soviet empire, had only minor communist movements.

There is no such thing as bandwagon dominoes. The theory specifically is a geopolitical argument, not a theory of ideas.

Posted by burritoboy | August 23, 2007 8:58 PM

One obvious example of the classic domino theory in action was that Cuba going Communist in 1959-60 allowed the Soviets to use the Cuban domino to pursue a much more aggressive policy to topple more dominos in Africa in the 1970s-1980s. In return for huge subsidies, Cuba provided the Soviets with a part-black Third World army for use in Africa, with the Cuban military eventually operating in 16 African countries, with a fair amount of success, such as in Angola.

Ultimately, of course, this was just a waste of money for the Soviets because African dominoes, even ones with oil like Angola, aren't much worth having because the local population doesn't produce much of anything. But, I sure don't recall liberals pointing _that_ out back then! It was too racist a thought to even consider.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 10:27 PM

Burritoboy writes:

"Also importantly, is that the domino theory had approximately zero evidence in Europe."

First, he's forgetting the events in Portugal in 1974-76, where a military coup became increasingly pro-Soviet in 1975 with Portugal on the edge of becoming the Cuba of Western Europe before pro-Western officers overthrew the leftist officers.

Second, "Finlandization" was strong tendency of major parties of the left in Europe in the post Vietnam era when America looked like a loser, with a sizable chance that one or more NATO countries would move toward neutrality. Remember the Soviet-supported Nuclear Freeze movement? Indeed, the survival of NATO wasn't assured until the elections of 1983: especially the West German election of Kohl, and his coalition only won by a 55-45 ratio, along with the re-election of Thatcher over the leftist Foot, and the Italian election.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 23, 2007 10:35 PM

Why bother arguing with Sailer? He's a guy who has based his career around trying to prove blacks are genetically inferior to whites. He's a guy, who growing up an orphan who didn't know what his background was, suspected he could be part Jewish because he self-described himself as having an inquisitive mind, which sounds like something out of weird anti-Semitic literature. His website it listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group/site. He's a very disturbed person who is to be mocked and pitied, not engaged.

Posted by Reality Man | August 23, 2007 11:31 PM

Steve,

Your analysis underestimates the role of nationalism as the prime determinant in determining the course of the spread of Communism. As stated upthread, Ho Chi Minh, despite socialist leanings, admired the US for our overthrow of British colonial rule. The Communists won in Vietnam because they were forcefully advocating the unification and self-determination of a distinct ethno-linguistic group, while the US and South Vietnamese were fighting to keep an illegitimate state with extremely unpopular leadership alive. China, too, fell to the Communists not because the US effort there was insufficient but because in the context of the Chinese Civil War, the population judged that the Communists made a far greater effort at repelling the hated Japanese than the Nationalists did.

A lot of Americans tend to overstate our ability to produce friendly political situations in foreign countries. What often is overlooked is the desire of nationals within a particular country to determine their fate without interference from foreign powers.

Posted by Matt Schiavenza | August 24, 2007 12:17 AM

"Why bother arguing with Sailer?"

Because often, as in this thread, he makes rational, well thought-out, fact-based contributions to the discussion, and he usually doesn't resort to the lazy combination of dishonesty and ad hominem attacks you served up in your last comment.

Posted by Juan | August 24, 2007 12:21 AM

The Vietnam War was a huge mistake on both sides. Washington should have seen that nationalism was more important than communism, but, then, Hanoi should have seen it, too.

LBJ saw it more clearly than most -- he kept trying to buy off Hanoi with giant aid projects modeled on the Tennessee Valley Authority, but the communists were determined to stick with communism.

And, from the point of view of the self-interest of Communist Party members, who is to say they were wrong? The Party is still in power after all these years, just as the Communist Party still rules China and Cuba.

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 24, 2007 12:26 AM

Communists seem to have had difficulty embracing democracy voluntarily, unlike the right-wing autocracies in South Korea, Taiwan, Chile and elsewhere did. Chile was fortunate to have some smart economic policies implemented during Pinochet's regime (e.g., the social security reform) that are still paying dividends for that country, which has long had the best-run economy in South America.

Posted by Juan | August 24, 2007 12:36 AM

Pinochet brought neither stability nor democracy to Chile. Chile was not a Communist dictatorship.

Chile was the longest standing democracy in South America. Allende was pursuing mild reform policies which were viewed as too radical by the fascist right and their American funders.

Pinochet ended, rather than assisted, a long-standing tradition of democracy.

His economic policies were not some positive reforms and the lousy advice from the Chicago boys mainly consisted of massive sell-offs of Chilean natural resources such as copper and forests.

One of the stinkiest claims of the right wing and liberal hawks is that the Chileans should have been greatful for the idiot Pinochet and his rotten dictatorship and his hired free-market maniac advisers following Milton Friedman.

Pinochet didn't save Chilean democracy, he tried to kill it, and the Chileans rebelled and took it back from him. Pinochet lost power, he didn't give it up, the Chileans took it back away from him.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 8:45 AM

Actually, Portugal of the early 1970s' isn't a story of Communist bugaboos averted; rather it is a great story of the collapse of a long-standing fascist regime which was beaten by the colonial rebellion of Angola and Mozambique.

The real freedom fighters were the Angolans and Mozambicans, whose victory against Portuguese colonialism caused the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship.

Fascists often lose power when their one claim to fame, military prowess, is proven false. (The same may be happening here, as the popular fascist elements of Bush Jr. and the Reaganite movement have been brought into question by their massive incompetence in Iraq.)

The military officers who aimed to end the military dictatorship in 1974 Portugal were joined en masse by the Portuguese civilians, who bravely knew it was time to end the stinky right wing dictatorship under whom they had endured.

So the Angolan and Mozambicans who fought off and eventually freed themselves from the Portuguese Estado Novo fascists (no thanks to the US, whose right wingers and liberal hawks immediately began backing 'contra' style armies to crush their independence) can take no small credit for having delivered Portugal out of a backwards, Francoist fascist regime into a modern liberal democracy.

Far from some spooky Communist tyranny averted by Portuguese rightists, the fall of the fascists and the beginnings of the liberal democracy brought about by Angolan and Mozambican rebellion and military officers' revolt is celebrated still as "Freedom Day" in Portugal.

Unless, that is, we are reading our history books from FrontPageMag and other Horowitzian maniacs.

Posted by El Cid | August 24, 2007 8:57 AM

El Cid,

Really well said. And our right wing friends might want to look at both Portugal and Spain and see how the removal of a fascist regime can be the path to prosperity. Under Franco and Salazar, the Iberian peninsula was backward, poor, and undesirable. It is now a place of incredible cosmopolitan vibrancy.

Posted by Klein's Tiny Left Nut | August 24, 2007 10:18 AM

Steve,

The disenchantment that leftist political parties in Western Europe felt toward Cold War policies in the late 70s and early 80s is not an example of the domino theory in action. You are conflating the choices & decisions made by part of the electorate in Western European democracies with the menace of global Communism. That is very disingenous on your part.

Posted by eltoro | August 24, 2007 10:59 AM