Seld-defeating US foreign policy

[Tyler Durden]

Will Morton wrote...

>    In addition, the whole of Indochina was (and is) a clusterfuck of 
>rivalries and feuds going back centuries.  The (relatively) sudden 
>appearance of a bunch of new regimes, all with revolutionary mindsets 
>through which to apply their old vendettas, probably made the bloodshed 
>inevitable - although US intervention undoubtedly made it worse.

Basically the way I see it. I've felt for a long time that the US (even 
while pursuing it's questionable goals) should have jumped all over the 
chance to buddy-up with China after the Sino-Soviet split, and knowing Mao's 
practicality I'd bet he could have been pursuaded (hell, not long after it 
was Mao and Zhou who initated contact with the US). Relations with Vietnam 
and Cambodia could have proceeded very differently in that environment. 
Would the cultural revolution still have happened? Probably. Would the 
Khmers have gotten into power...possibly but I actually doubt it.

But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too 
ideologically blind to see the obvious. As a result we continued to 
mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really 
making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful 
but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see 
that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in 
Asia). And we're doing it again...(eg, we had some chances with Iran 
recently that we passed up...that was really stupid, and the Iranians seem 
to know it).

-TD

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