It has been fifty years since the CIA sent an assessment on
Vietnam to President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and National Security Advisor
McGeorge Bundy, stating that “if the tide of deterioration has not
been arrested by the end of the year, the anti-communist position in
South Vietnam is likely to become untenable.”  The report stimulated
further debate within the administration concerning US policy in
Vietnam, leading to a decision to escalate the war.  US presence in
Vietnam increased from 23,000 military advisors in January 1965 to
175,000 combat troops by August 1965 and to 280,000 by the end of
1966.  US troops would number 550,000 by 1968.  The US military
escalation also included an intensive bombing campaign, in which the
tonnage of bombs dropped on North and South Vietnam was three times
that which the United States let fall on Europe during World War II.
By the end of the war, 58,191 US soldiers and an estimated 4 million
Vietnamese, nearly half of them civilians, would be killed.  In 1975,
two years after the Paris Accords and the withdrawal of US troops, the
military forces of the National Liberation Front and the Democratic
Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) occupied Saigon, leading to the
reunification of the nation of Vietnam and the establishment of the
Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

     The war divided the people of the United States, and it remains
divided today with respect to interpretations of the war.   Our
understanding today of the meaning and the lessons of Vietnam depends
on our understanding of a number of relevant questions.  What were the
historical factors that gave rise to the Vietnamese nationalist
struggle against French colonial rule?  Who was Ho Chi Minh?  Was he a
communist or a nationalist?  What was the Vietminh Front?  What were
the terms of the Geneva Conference of 1954?  What were the NLF and the
Viet Cong?  What have been the developing characteristics of socialism
in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam?  Why did the United States
escalate the war?  What were the origins of anti-communist ideology,
and what was its influence on US policymakers?

     I invite the readers of the Empire list to visit my blog, where a
number of posts since April 23 have addressed these questions.  The
posts include discussion of the Empire of Vietnam prior to French
colonialism; the imposition of the French Colonial Empire and
Vietnamese nationalist resistance to French colonialism; the efforts
of the United States to incorporate Vietnam into the neocolonial
world-system, which has some characteristics of a world-empire but is
in essence a world-economy.  Please find the blog at:
http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-the-view-from-the-south.html.

     The blog posts are as follows:  On the meaning of Vietnam,
04/23/2014; Vietnamese empires, 4/24/2014; French colonialism in
Vietnam, 4/25/2014; What enabled French colonialism?, 4/28/2014;
Confucian scholars and nationalism, 4/29/2014; On the charismatic
leader, 4/30/2014; Who was Ho Chi Minh?, 5/2/2014; Ho encounters
French socialism, 5/5/2014; Ho the delegate of the colonized,
5/6/2014; Ho reformulates Lenin, 5/7/2014; Ho synthesizes socialism
and nationalism, 5/8/2014; Ho’s practical theoretical synthesis,
5/9/2014; The Indochinese Communist Party, 5/12/2014; The Vietminh and
the taking of power, 5/13/2014; Vietnam declares independence,
5/14/2014; France seeks re-conquest of Vietnam, 5/15/2014; The
French-Indochinese War, 5/16/2014; The Geneva Conference of 1954,
5/19/2014; South Vietnam, 5/20/2014; The National Liberation Front
(NLF), 5/21/2014; Construction of socialism in the North, 5/22/2014;
Agrarian reform in Vietnam, 5/23/2014; The failure of US military
escalation, 5/26/2014; The ideology of anti-communism, 5/27/2014; Cold
War ideology & US policy in Vietnam, 5/28/2014; The teachings of Ho
Chi Minh, 5/29/2014; The imperialist lesson of Vietnam, 5/30/2014.


     Charles McKelvey
     Professor Emeritus
     Presbyterian College
     Clinton, South Carolina

     Section on Political Science from the South
     Division of Philosophy and History
     University of Havana
     Havana, Cuba

     Global Learning, LLC
     http://www.globallearning-cuba.com


See the blog at the Global Learning Website, “The View from the South:
Commentaries on world events from the Third World perspective.”  Find
it at http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-the-view-from-the-south.html.