Theatre Of War:

Nathan Felix: Morgenthau and the Realist Understanding of the Vietnam War

Adam Dyck: Apocalypse Neo


Jesse Michaud: Eurocentrism in the Cold War; Vietnam


Kaden Terepocki: Self Determination and Relevance of Violence

Nathan Felix:

Communism vs. Democracy

According to Hans J. Morgenthau, depending on the time and place, a region may or may not be receptive to a particular political philosophy

‘Communism has been successful wherever its tenets of social, economic, and political equality appeal to people for whom the removal of inequality has been the most urgent aspiration. Western philosophy has succeeded wherever in popular aspirations political liberty has taken precedence over all other needs.’ -Morgenthau

Morgenthau, along with over 5000 scholars from universities and colleges across America advocated for the withdrawal of American troops and the neutralization of South Vietnam

‘What the peoples of Asia wanted above everything else was freedom from Western colonialism. What chance was there for democracy to succeed in the struggle of ideas as long as democratic philosophy was contradicted by the life experiences of the peoples of Asia?’- Morgenthau

Adam Dyck

While classical realism would oppose the American intervention in Vietnam, neo-realists such as Kenneth Waltz would disagree.

Neo-realists stress that intervention could be justified in preventing the USSR from making “relative gains”, as well as preventing China from becoming too powerful in their own right and forming an inherently less stable tri-polar system

“There is no one in this room that needs a blueprint of how important it is to us that Japan stay outside the Iron Curtain. A nation of 90 million industrious and inventive people, tied in with Communist China… would indeed pose a threat to use that would be very grave indeed” - President Eisenhower.

While failure in Vietnam was tied to domestic unrest, on a geopolitical level the United States did not suffer significantly.

We can’t know what the cost of not intervening would have been in terms of further Asian bandwagoning.

must crush capitalism

Jesse Michaud

-
The Cold War is often misinterpreted as simply a conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.

- Neo-Realism presents very little dialogue as to what the Vietnamese themselves wanted.

- The very concept of interventionism as it played out in the cold war was a Eurocentric dialog.

White Men Help White Men.

- The South-Vietnamese were more interested in freeing themselves from western imperialism than they were concerned about their “right to democracy”.

- The peoples of Vietnam wanted the dignity of being ruled by one of their own nation.

Kaden Terepocki

Post Colonialism

• Realism explains events from top to bottom
• From the view of the superpowers
• Post Colonialism seeks a bottom, up view

Viet Cong

• Was the brutality necessary?
• "Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon" 
• Decolonization in two views
• "Violent victory over the settler is the victory of the native's humanity"

Untitled Slide

Dau Tranh Strategy:
Viet Cong Manifesto

Political Struggle

• Dan Van: Action among your people
• Binh Van: Action among enemy military
• Dich Van: Action among enemy's people

Military Struggle

• Phase 1: Organization and preparation
• Phase 2: Terrorism/Guerilla warfare
• Phase 3: Conventional warfare

3 ways to succeed

• Guerilla warfare
• Assistance from socialist countries
• Changing social and political climates

Who were the viet cong?

• Guerilla fighters
• Men and women
• Lowest class
• "Lumperproletariat" -Fanon
• Ex: Criminals, vagrants, unemployed

Explanation for Communist victory

• South Vietnamese were proxy Americans
• North Vietnamese more experienced
• Brutality of Viet Cong
• "Cleansed" of colonized status 
• Self-determined

Freedom!

"For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring the bread and, above all, dignity"

-Frantz Fanon

"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees"

-Jean-Paul Sartre