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Vietnam Invites US Army to Return
Four decades ago, US forces left Vietnam after a bruising defeat to China- and Soviet-backed communists. Today, Vietnam has asked the US Army to return:
The Army plans to stockpile equipment in Vietnam, Cambodia, and other Pacific countries yet unnamed that will allow US forces to deploy there more rapidly, because key supplies and gear will already be in place. The new caches will be well inside what China considers its sphere of influence.
Army Materiel Command chief Gen. Dennis Via emphasized they will contain equipment for Humanitarian and Disaster Relief operations (HADR), not heavy armored vehicles that fill the rapidly growing European Activity Set. Still, the presence of an American Army cache in Vietnam would be dramatic. Americans best remember our defeat there 42 years ago, but Vietnam has fought a land war and multiple naval clashes with China. Beijing will not be pleased.
During the Cold War, the US contained Russia and China — “encircled” them, from the Communists’ point of view — with large forces forward-stationed at permanent bases on allied territory around the world. Today, such permanent US presence is politically unpalatable, both to the American public and the publics of many otherwise friendly foreign nations. (Our bases in Korea and Japan often inspire local resentment). So American units are mostly US-based and deploy temporarily abroad.
If need be, though, these temporary tours can become a practically permanent presence by rotating a new unit in as soon as the previous one leaves, which is the current practice with brigade combat teams in both Korea and Europe. Such back-to-back rotations require heavy logistical support on the ground, but even occasional small deployments go a lot easier with supplies and equipment already in position.
Oh, how times change. Vietnam and Cambodia are situated well inside of Beijing’s self-defined sphere of influence, so China will no doubt interpret this force projection as provocative. With their territorial claims in the South China Sea, which borders the entire coastline of Vietnam, Beijing will closely monitor several US Navy ships delivering material to their southern neighbor.
How do you think China will deal with our incursion into their backyard and, given China’s ambitions, does the US have any choice but to expand our presence in southeast Asia?
Published in Foreign Policy, Military
Well, the GOP & the occupation crowd didn’t learn anything about fighting wars in less than 7 & 5 years respectively either. Or telling the nation that there would be an occupation or that it would last as long as it did, so maybe the problem is not just that you have a treason party that persuades your electorate to go crazy in less than 8 years!
Also, America did lose. There is no way conservatives are going to persuade anyone to think, we were winning up until early 1975, but then things changed! It’s still America, it’s still the government. The GOP does not own the government nor do conservatives. There’s no way around taking responsibility. 1969 through 1975, the GOP ran the war. If you don’t know how to bend your enemies to your will in that time & you do not know how to persuade the electorate to keep supporting the war, you failed as a movement, as a party, & as a country!
The conservative attitude: We were doing ok! but then were backstabbed!–That’s not politics & it gives no account of elections & public sentiment.
The war had been won. The situation on the ground was nearly stable and was under control. The South Vietnamese were stepping up with our generous support.
Then we were backstabbed.
The reason that conservative messaging failed is that conservatives did not recognize the Leftist anti-war spin that was being served up by the mass media.
Ok, how about 2003? How come the GOP, conservatives, & everyone on the right never learn?
Because the GOP Establishment are still afraid of the Leftist mass media.
Truth will continue to be a casualty until the conservative movement does more than whine about the low state of journalism. We have to directly oppose Leftist mass media and learn to support honest and plain journalism whenever we find it.
We also have to do more than whine about the Leftist faculty at state universities. We have to monitor them and call them out at every opportunity.
I don’t remember what conservative writers talked about how to get the job done in 2003!
Except Mr. Codevilla-
There was a robust debate. Old hands at Defense and State who had been brushed off by the Neocons in the buildup to the war were carping about how they had been right that we would need more people than what we had sent.
Do you not recall all the hoo-rah over “The Surge”?
Major props are due to Team W for correctly assessing the ways things were coming apart, making the needed course correction, and proceeding to set Iraq on a path to stability.
They did this amidst a bitter flood of Stop The War hysterical wailing from the Leftist mass media. They were holding strong for western civilization in very difficult circumstances.
President W deserves credit for the situation he handed off to President O.
President O deserves opprobrium for the treasonous “end of the war” that led to the rise of Islamic State.
The war ended in 1973.
Like the Great War ended in 1918, not 1938.
The surge may have been prudent policy; it certainly required manliness to do it in face of so much opposition. But again: The war started in 2003. Soon after, a completely unannounced occupation started. Then it turned out to be policy for eternity. Mr. W. Bush is apparently fundamentally ignorant about the history he lived through in his youth.
People could argue Vietnam was a shock, shock! Backstabbed! Well, fool me twice-
Seriously? When was the last time a total war didn’t result in occupation?
Do you seriously believe that we would just down weapons, about face, and march right back out? Ridiculous. The occupation of Germany took 10 years. Japan, 10 years as well.
Your own country was occupied for 40. (unjustly, I’ll grant – nonetheless, had Western forces liberated it it still would have been 10 years.)
The problem in Iraq was that we handed sovereignty back too soon.
Romania was only occupied in ’45. I do not believe the Allies could have liberated it. Maybe some crazy Greek invasion & march North in an untenable way… But in the times of European tyranny, Romanians destroyed constitutional monarchy for themselves. The collaborationist regime made Vichy look like Churchill or at least Chamberlain!
Now as to this other matter–you need not tell me. I am not American. I did not lose support for the war or throw the war party out of the majority.
This is what I’m talking about: Politics. You can only fight the wars the American people will tolerate. You need not tell me about how occupation was going to happen. You are dead wrong about total war. It’s granddads stories. I know. It makes the Asian war America fought look quaint. Iraq was a cakewalk. A tyrannic oligarchy was brought down. In a heartbeat. I finally began to believe America still had it in her to face up to evil & face it down. You cannot understand these feelings if you have not met strangers from the very strange world in which we live.
But then America became about telling Shia who wanted vengeance for two hundred years of rape & slavery–that they should be good democrats. Friends with those who had tyrannized them up until five seconds previously!
I started to shake my head. The war of eternity all over again. Then elections came in 2006. Like God, the people turned their face away.
Just because they lacked the ability to fight back does not make the 2003 Iraq war less total. That is exactly what ‘Total” war looks like, at the end the regime of the losing country no longer exists. Took 21 days in the case of Iraq.
Same in Afghanistan in 2001. “Total” war took about 2 months, from the initiation of hostilities until the regime is out of power.
Total war does not mean bringing down a regime. The six-week invasion of France in 1940 was not total war!
The Revolutionary war in America was not total war.
The various wars by which the Latin American regimes came into being: Not total war.
I think you might come to agree-
In America I would argue that it was. That is because I equate total war with unconditional surrender, or utter destruction of the regime. The American Revolutionary war ended British rule in any form in the US.
Yes it was. You seem to equate total war with some extreme measure of suffering, that is not the case.
Do you know anyone else who thinks of things this way or are you satisfied to define these things for yourself?
Waterloo: Total war. The flight from Elba before: Total war. The previous surrender by Napoleon: Total war. Goodness, man!
By all accounts WW2 qualifies – yet for armchair generals it includes unnecessary civilian casualties and suffering.
I go with the group that says WW2 qualifies, but only because of the Casablanca conference which set the terms for the end of the war as “Unconditional Surrender”.
Waterloo was a battle Titus, not a war.
Mr. instugator, let us be a bit more charitable.
I am trying to attract your attention to the fact that France went through three regime changes in one year, only one to do with a battle. All should be total war by your previous best lights. You do me no honor with an answer such as yours.
I implore you to being to reconsider. I have given you examples of wars that lead to regime change but are not in any way total war. Examples could be multiplied at length…
Total war refers to the essence of war. Are you a fan of Clausewitz? Could I recommend his work or your attention? Total war is that war which is not fought for a limited objective, which would set political limits on human action. Total war is usually recognized by extermination, which implies that there is no difference between warriors & those who are not warriors.
See my Bio
Exactly.
Nope – this is degree of suffering aspect that is ancillary to total war. In the past, there are few conquerors (and here I even include the Mongols) who exterminate every living thing (see Tammerlane or Shaka Zulu). Nope, even the Mongols reserved this punishment for individual villages/cities who chose to rebel – then the extermination was limited to those whose economic value (as slaves on the market) outweighed military value (meaning all males above a certain age were slaughtered, along with the infirm).
So, no – I don’t include the inability to distinguish lawful targets from lawful ones in the definition of Total War – merely the appropriate mobilization levels coupled with the demand for unconditional surrender.
The demand for unconditional surrender is surely a leprechaun! There is no great connection between invasions & formal acts like a demand for unconditional surrender!
It is not the demand, but the result – we aren’t talking negotiation.
Not so fast: What if the result is that an invader is defeated! That renders your ‘result’ criterion as weak as the ‘unconditional surrender’!
Titus – pick.
If you think the defn of total war necessitates unnecessary suffering then you are saying that total war = unjust war (per just war theory – seriously, did you read my bio?)
or
Total War = complete civil economic mobilization
or
Total War = destruction of one belligerent’s government via unconditional surrender (otherwise known as capitulation).
I favor the third definition, because it includes cases where one belligerent so outclasses the other that ‘resistance is futile’. Think the conquest of the Incas by Spain.
Spain did not conquer the Incas. A few hundred independent adventurers did. That resistance was futile is not really that obvious. So with the Aztecs before. It could easily have gone another way.
As for the definition: I have already refuted it in a way you do not seem to even acknowledge, much less address: You do not seem to be able to take into account failed invasions!
As for me, I believe total war is the essence of war & that war always tends there: To extermination. It seems unwise, to say the least, to object that extermination is rarely complete. After all, the whore & her own were spared in Jericho!
The importance of just war to this matter–it is nil. Just war may be total war; unjust war may be war that is not total war. You need not apply these or any other categories to my discourse, unless you like running the risk of confusing yourself. A reliable source would be Clausewitz, as I said.
Sorry dude – if your belief that (Total War = a war of extermination) then your definition of Total War cannot include Just War.
By continuing to invoke Clausewitz, you confuse Total War with Absolute War. Here is a link to explain the difference.
Good day to you sir.
Have a good one, Mr. Instugator.