AHC-WI less "Vietnams" more "Falklands' "?
- Thread starter Riain
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Lord_Vespasian
Banned
He's not saying it was. He's saying have less conflicts with local nations be Vietnams, Koreas, and Afghanistan and more like the Falklands campaign, quick, decisive, and a clear victory for the stronger country
Ambitions of the Objectives of said powerfull nations will need to be drastically scaled back and they will also have to drastically reconsider what a victory is.
Lord_Vespasian
Banned
Agreed. They also need to learn what battles are worth fighting and which are not. France pulling out of Indochina and supporting a united Vietnam against communist China could lead to France pulling a Francasie with South East Asia bar Burma and Thailand
Lord_Vespasian
Banned
Viet Minh and their extreme anti-colonialism wouldn't be as attractive if France just left peacefully. Why would people be against France and America giving financial and military aid, especially with communist China the on their border. If I recall Algeria didn't exactly leave peacefully and they're in the Francafrique
Lord_Vespasian
Banned
Ho Chi Minh was actually planning to insititue a real democracy, France's oppression and America's fears of dominoes forced them to turn to the only power and ideology that was expliictly ant-colonialist, Communism. I say this as a staunch anti-communist, Ho Chin Minh and the Viet Minh did not set out to make a communist Vietnam. Vietnam is one of the greatest tragedies of the post-WW2 era, it could've easily been another South Korea or Japan, a free and open Western influenced nation, as it is becoming now, back in the 50s and 60s. The stubbornness of de Gaulle and France in general turned what should've been a peaceful exit and a future ally to both France and America into decades long suffering and the severing of Western relations.
Very few Cold War conflcits involved one nation just going into another nation, with an entirely distinct culture and political system, and making a permanent grab for its territory, without some pre-existing ambiguity about jurisdiction. Most of the conflicts could probably be construed as civil wars in one way or another, and/or as major powers protecting their periphary, but stopping short of incorporating the territory into the metropolitan(eg. Russia invading Afghanistan).
I realize that Argentina did have some longstanding legal argument for ownership of the Falklands, but for all practical purposes, there was nothing Argentinian about the islands at all, and it's not like there was any political tumult(like, say, Afghan fundamentalism) that was likely to spread across the water onto the mainland.
Now, the point is, I think it's the civil-war or ethnic-conflict aspects of the Cold War theatres that give them their "drawn-out, lower intensity aspects". You have a lot of people in the colony of the satellite who want to keep fighting, but with minimum commitment from the metropolitan. Whereas with the Falklands, it was a lower-rated power trying to grab land from a top-rated one, with everyone in the contested territory supporting one side. (Had opinion on the islands been divided between pro-British and pro-Argentinian, with the latter taking to guerilla warfare against both the British and the pro-British islanders, it might have been a rather different conflict.)
^ TL/DR: There were factors present in most Cold War conflicts(eg. civil war and ethnic struggle) that weren't present in the Falklands.
The closest I can think of to a real-life "Cold War Falklands" would be the invasion of Grenada, which the US undertook for anti-Soviet reasons, but which was very much a lightning-speed, high-intensity operation, unrelated to any significant cultural or ethnic differences on the island itself. The situation becomes even more parallel if you think of the anti-Bishop coup as essentially equivalent to the invasion of the Falklands, ie. an illegitimate disruption of the political structure by a violent force. The only difference is that the US wasn't defending its actual territory, but very few Cold War conflicts involved direct threat to the metropolitans.
I realize that Argentina did have some longstanding legal argument for ownership of the Falklands, but for all practical purposes, there was nothing Argentinian about the islands at all, and it's not like there was any political tumult(like, say, Afghan fundamentalism) that was likely to spread across the water onto the mainland.
Now, the point is, I think it's the civil-war or ethnic-conflict aspects of the Cold War theatres that give them their "drawn-out, lower intensity aspects". You have a lot of people in the colony of the satellite who want to keep fighting, but with minimum commitment from the metropolitan. Whereas with the Falklands, it was a lower-rated power trying to grab land from a top-rated one, with everyone in the contested territory supporting one side. (Had opinion on the islands been divided between pro-British and pro-Argentinian, with the latter taking to guerilla warfare against both the British and the pro-British islanders, it might have been a rather different conflict.)
^ TL/DR: There were factors present in most Cold War conflicts(eg. civil war and ethnic struggle) that weren't present in the Falklands.
The closest I can think of to a real-life "Cold War Falklands" would be the invasion of Grenada, which the US undertook for anti-Soviet reasons, but which was very much a lightning-speed, high-intensity operation, unrelated to any significant cultural or ethnic differences on the island itself. The situation becomes even more parallel if you think of the anti-Bishop coup as essentially equivalent to the invasion of the Falklands, ie. an illegitimate disruption of the political structure by a violent force. The only difference is that the US wasn't defending its actual territory, but very few Cold War conflicts involved direct threat to the metropolitans.
longsword14
Banned
DeGaulle was not the president during the First Indo-Chinese War. He only became the president when he set up the 5th Republic.
He was a committed communist. His background was in communist circles, and if he had any intention not to have a communist Vietnam there is not much to show for it.
There were many others in Vietnam who were anti-colonialist yet weren't communist. There was more to the communist party in Vietnam than that.
What ? A nation born out of war that existed only by force of arms which was later governed as a dictatorship ? Vietnam had all these things minus the prosperity and economic progress.
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Well, he did explicitly model their Constitution on the American version, and he went to them first for help in their independence struggle. The US turned him down, so he had to look elsewhere.
longsword14
Banned
Yet for some reason VM never bothered with elections nor hesitated in purging the shit out of their enemies. I don't think that is in the US constitution, along with a lot of other reprehensible things.
Lord_Vespasian
Banned
Listen, I am not pro-communist. But it is a fact that Ho Chin Minh planned to have a democracy, he explicitly went to America first to try and get help. I'm not defending communism but its clear that Minh fully embraced it because America, the strongest democracy in the world, refused to help free them. Communists were the only one supporting the Vietnam independence movement post WW2
Yes, but even a Yugoslavia by the South China Sea would have been preferable to mess France and the US created, whether you look at it at a humanitarian or realpolitik viewpoint.
Lord_Vespasian
Banned
Agreed. I'm a patriot, a nationalist, hate communism, and even I believe Vietnam was a complete and total screw-up by the French and then Americans
longsword14
Banned
There is no such proof. And I wrote all that to refute the whole "US Consitution" bit.
True. South Vietnam should not have collapsed.
Short struggles where you can pull out the troops soon after means something stable is left in the wake (or I guess alternatively you could just plan on re-doing the war over and over again...happy Groundhog Day, everybody!)
So what’s a scenario where you can pop in, knock the enemy down, and count on the locals to manage things from there? I hate to be a pessimist, but it really doesn’t seem likely.
Maybe if the world were balanced even more in favor of one ideology over another- say increase the capitalist advantage by another few orders of magnitude- you could have a situation where the international order creates a standard rapid deployment force that gets sent to the flare-up spots, swats them down, then let’s the local authorities manage the aftermath.
I suppose it would also work with a similar disproportionate win for the communists.
So what’s a scenario where you can pop in, knock the enemy down, and count on the locals to manage things from there? I hate to be a pessimist, but it really doesn’t seem likely.
Maybe if the world were balanced even more in favor of one ideology over another- say increase the capitalist advantage by another few orders of magnitude- you could have a situation where the international order creates a standard rapid deployment force that gets sent to the flare-up spots, swats them down, then let’s the local authorities manage the aftermath.
I suppose it would also work with a similar disproportionate win for the communists.