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Korea: US had demobilized after WWII. Had we (UN or alone) pressed further North, after fully mobilizing, we would have ended up fighting several million, also mobilized Chinese (or more), heavily supported by the Soviet Union.
Vietnam: same story.
From then on: Neverending story. How do you contain a religion?
Rather than my responding post by post (and I reserve the right to respond to individual posts) most of the responses elide two issues:
The enslavement of much of Europe from 1945 to 1989, and the continuing enslavement of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Democratic Kampuchea, and others, with much attendant suffering and suppression of liberties; and
The fact that Communist expansionist attempts posed little risk to the offensive parties.
People don't realize that freedom isn't free. One cannot wish away war and aggression. I can make a very serious argument that if Pyongyang and/or Hanoi were flattened the total number of casualties would have been far less. The attempts to fight half a war certainly didn't pay off. Anytime aggression is rewarded, you get more of it.
This board has hosted plenty of threads about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The elephant hiding in the corner is that modern Japan is hardly an enemy of the U.S. We shouldn't look for wars. But if the people who would be dictators understood that things wouldn't end well they'd think twice about aggression.
Back at the height of the Cold War -- and I'm old enough (b. 1949 - to a family who took an interest in statecraft) to remember the real thing, I would have sided with the OP; now, I'm not so sure, but hindsight is always 20/20.
If we were to have taken a more proactive stance, it would have to have been done early -- perhaps a "decapitation strike" with Josef Stalin, and as many as possible of the "old Bolsheviks" as the only real target. But I doubt that the Soviet citizenry would have risen up, even if our intentions were made clear from the start. And attempts to organize a land-based strike in Eastern Europe would have been suicidal.
It's also important to recognize that the Soviets, and their Peacenik allies on both sides of the Atlantic did not give up easily; as late as 1986, the European disarmament movement and its allies among the American Left, as evidenced by the film The Day After, were trying to convince us that the USSR posed no threat. It was not until Ronald Reagan got his military build-up that glasnost and perestroika became the words of the day.
And we will never learn the extent to which American resolve -- as demonstrated in Korea, in Vietnam, and a dozen smaller theaters, dissuaded Soviet adventurism. To those still with us who participated, as well as to those who gave all, we can never express sufficient thanks.
The good guys finally won -- but it was not by accident.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 01-10-2017 at 06:03 PM..
Rather than my responding post by post (and I reserve the right to respond to individual posts) most of the responses elide two issues:
The enslavement of much of Europe from 1945 to 1989, and the continuing enslavement of China, Cuba, Vietnam, Democratic Kampuchea, and others, with much attendant suffering and suppression of liberties; and
The fact that Communist expansionist attempts posed little risk to the offensive parties.
People don't realize that freedom isn't free. One cannot wish away war and aggression. I can make a very serious argument that if Pyongyang and/or Hanoi were flattened the total number of casualties would have been far less. The attempts to fight half a war certainly didn't pay off. Anytime aggression is rewarded, you get more of it.
This board has hosted plenty of threads about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The elephant hiding in the corner is that modern Japan is hardly an enemy of the U.S. We shouldn't look for wars. But if the people who would be dictators understood that things wouldn't end well they'd think twice about aggression.
1. You assume that things will always end well for us. That's a dangerous assumption.
2. I'm not joking when I say this: since you are so willing to fight, there is a profession out there called "soldier of fortune". As listed in your post, you have your pick -- China, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea, Vietnam. Go ahead and give your life for your beliefs, but don't YOU surrender thousands of lives of young American men that to you are faceless and nameless.
3. There is a very delicate balance SOMETIMES between standing up for democracy and forcing democracy on others. Although I very much disliked him, the former Prime Minister of Malaysia once reminded the U.S. that American democracy is not the only form of democracy in the world, and in fact, we should add that it is not the only legitimate form of government in the world. Other countries, including very close allies, are not close to being democratic.
So more people should have died - and that's precisely what would have been required to defeat-occupy North Korea, North Vietnam (to say nothing of the Soviet Union - which invaded several countries, and China - which was a player in the Korean War and whose troops pushed into South Korean territory after the PRC entered the war) - why, precisely?
Oh, right... because more fighting/killing/dying is invariably a better means to an end. Especially decades in the future, when it's all theoretical and it isn't your butt on the line.
Israel may hold on to her territorial gains, but at what cost? Bombings. Protests. Instability. Segregated population. When will it end?
Say we stopped stuffing the Soviet Union with war supplies, and just kept marching to Moscow after WWII. What chance would we have had to put in a Democracy in these countries that served as the front line for the German advance, the Russian advance and then the hypothetical American one. Nevermind that we were nearly bankrupt by the end of the war, that our trading allies were all destroyed and we still had those pesky imperialism influences. We sack Moscow and say, vote for someone. Do you think they would vote for a sane centrist government? Eastern Europe was behind in infrastructure before the war...who's going to pay to rebuild it.
Democracy works after stability has been achieved and people want the freedom to do more for themselves. When people are frightened, they go to a strong man. Democracy didn't ward off Adolf Hitler in Germany, and the Communists were voted in initially. The Brits failed to setup democracy in the Middle East, and almost all the European powers failed in Africa.
Korea was a war of defense, China's involvement having much more to do with getting blocked from Taiwan than any supreme communist manifesto. Why are we involved in their civil war?
Vietnam was a conflict that could have been avoidable by simply telling the French they were done being imperialists after getting bailed out twice by the US. Ho Chi Minh started as a US ally.
And the thing is...we don't care what happens in Formosa, Pyonyang or Vietnam. The people there do though. When we get involved and things aren't perfect, America is the bad guy, but we say...well what do you expect...things are better. How are we going to make things perfect in Afghanistan. How will we make them perfect in Iraq.
Much better for the US to play defense. Be selective in the wars it is involved in and focus our power on building the lighted city on the hill. The one that attracts the best and brightest minds from a country. The one that has commodities other places call luxuries. We did that and we won. Clinton dropped military spending and the budget was balanced for once.
How did we get from avoid having a standing army to spend 10X more than anyone else on your military every year in peacetime? Did the largest nuclear arsenal in the world defend the Soviet Empire from losing Poland from the military might of the Vatican City (Pope John Paul II)? They can't all be won that way, but there's an influence mix that's worth noting.
Despots and serfs don't evolve to cradles of democracy overnight. Economic development takes stability. Wars destroy stability.
There was more than one reason the USA chose to pursue containment as a policy. The only alternative would have been military confrontation and pushing back communism. There were a number of reasons this was untenable.
1. The USSR had been our ally through World War II. Love em' or hate em' they killed hundreds of thousands of German soldiers that would have killed Americans had we had to fight the war without them. No matter how badly the USSR behaved towards other people there was some residual good will towards them that made a war difficult to imagine.
2. The USA lost 400,000 soldiers in World War II. Our people wanted demobilization and a chance to live and enjoy the fruits of the victory over Nazi Germany. We did not want a war, particularly with a former ally.
3. We demobilized before we understood that the Cold War was developing. The USSR vastly outnumbered us in terms of soldiers, tanks, and airplanes. The only possibility of beating them would have been to have used nuclear weapons. Heaven knows how much devastation this would have caused..
4. Political factions in the USA were strongly against a war with the USSR.
Looking backwards, its sad Eastern Europe had to live under communism for 45 years. However, the containment policy worked well for Americans and for the United States. We prospered and enjoyed peace. We avoided a nuclear war. Harry Truman clearly pursued the correct policy at the end of the war.
There was more than one reason the USA chose to pursue containment as a policy. The only alternative would have been military confrontation and pushing back communism. There were a number of reasons this was untenable.
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Looking backwards, its sad Eastern Europe had to live under communism for 45 years. However, the containment policy worked well for Americans and for the United States. We prospered and enjoyed peace. We avoided a nuclear war. Harry Truman clearly pursued the correct policy at the end of the war.
Good points all but what would have been wrong with fighting back into countries that attacked our allies? I am not advocating that we should have gone on the offensive. But I have read a lot of magazine articles from the era in Commentary Magazine. They considered that it was a serious mistake to let the Communists pick the venue of each fight with no risks, no consequences.
Good points all but what would have been wrong with fighting back into countries that attacked our allies? I am not advocating that we should have gone on the offensive. But I have read a lot of magazine articles from the era in Commentary Magazine. They considered that it was a serious mistake to let the Communists pick the venue of each fight with no risks, no consequences.
I actually agree with that, and I feel that the Domino Theory in SE Asia made sense...even though it only partially happened.
However, I also remember watching one of LBJ' speeches during the Vietnam War (yes, I'm that old), and he started talking about "our good friends the South Vietnamese", and I thought "good friends"? Americans know nothing about the Vietnamese, and most couldn't even point out the country on a map, let alone know anything about its culture.
And so the question becomes when is it in our interest to fight. My partial answer to that is that I don't know...but I know we fought too often in situations that had no real importance to our nation. We played international chess too often, moving the pieces but sometimes not being directly involved.
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