Chomsky on Vietnam

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Apr 10 12:20:24 PDT 2002


Bradford DeLong wrote:


>>I asked Noam Chomsky if I had remembered correctly that he argues
>>that the U.S. didn't lose the Vietnam War. He responds:
>>
>>>Your memory is right. I had, actually, always assumed that the US
>>>would win the war for simple power reasons, just as it wins every
>>>war. That is, win the war in terms of its actual aims, even if
>>>not its maximal ones. The actual aims, which were always pretty
>>>clear I thought and could hardly be denied after the Pentagon
>>>Papers came out, were to prevent the "virus"-"rotten apple" effect
>>>of successful independent development...
>
>Now, the development of South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia,
>Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Singapore since 1960 has been the fastest
>in the world, ever. So that if U.S. policy was to stop "development"
>in the region, U.S. policy was a catastrophic failure. But I suppose
>development wasn't, in some sense, "independent"--that these
>countries are still clients of the United States out of which
>"surplus" is being pumped at a furious rate.
>
>Why should I not conclude that this is total lunacy?

Because, as you said yourself, of the word "independent." SK itself benefited enormously from U.S. military procurement - not just in terms of demand, but in terms of know-how. One of the reasons Korean construction firms became world players was that they learned how to handle big projects by building bases for the U.S.

Doug



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