I’m just finishing Nixonland, which focuses on the military/political intersection of the Vietnam war from the American perspective.
In Vietnam, the decision of whether or not to get involved in the first place, and whether or not to pull out, was indeed highly political. We got entangled (after initially supporting Hochimin) because France claimed that they’d fall under Soviet influence if we didn’t help them keep their colony. Then it was the domino effect theory. And then it was (under Nixon) a hard to parse concern that losing Vietnam would harm America’s stature as a superpower.
Perversely, it was these political concerns that drove some of the intensity of the punishing American bombing. Nixon wanted to show off how violent he could be. There’s a parallel here to the decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima partly to show off our willingness to use a nuclear bomb to the Soviets.
As another example, a key victory in driving the French out was when Hochimin slaughtered an entire dug-in French army corps in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. He lost 3x the men, but it showed France just how much death they’d have to suffer to continue colonizing Vietnam. They did assassinate bureaucrats too. But a lot of those bureaucrats were Vietnamese mandarins. The French already thought they were inferior people, so why would they care? There’s nothing like wiping out a huge number of enemy troops to make them think twice about pressing on.
Violence is a form of signaling. And signaling your willingness to use, escalate, and sustain violence by doing so is part of the political theater. So I’m not really convinced that history shows alternatives to violence to achieve political ends being the norm.
I’m just finishing Nixonland, which focuses on the military/political intersection of the Vietnam war from the American perspective.
In Vietnam, the decision of whether or not to get involved in the first place, and whether or not to pull out, was indeed highly political. We got entangled (after initially supporting Hochimin) because France claimed that they’d fall under Soviet influence if we didn’t help them keep their colony. Then it was the domino effect theory. And then it was (under Nixon) a hard to parse concern that losing Vietnam would harm America’s stature as a superpower.
Perversely, it was these political concerns that drove some of the intensity of the punishing American bombing. Nixon wanted to show off how violent he could be. There’s a parallel here to the decision to bomb Nagasaki and Hiroshima partly to show off our willingness to use a nuclear bomb to the Soviets.
As another example, a key victory in driving the French out was when Hochimin slaughtered an entire dug-in French army corps in the valley of Dien Bien Phu. He lost 3x the men, but it showed France just how much death they’d have to suffer to continue colonizing Vietnam. They did assassinate bureaucrats too. But a lot of those bureaucrats were Vietnamese mandarins. The French already thought they were inferior people, so why would they care? There’s nothing like wiping out a huge number of enemy troops to make them think twice about pressing on.
Violence is a form of signaling. And signaling your willingness to use, escalate, and sustain violence by doing so is part of the political theater. So I’m not really convinced that history shows alternatives to violence to achieve political ends being the norm.
For every dead enemy soldier, you create 2 bereaved parents, 1.5 bereaved siblings, many bereaved friends and a country full of terrified draftees.