Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> Eisenhower's policy on Vietnam steadily fell apart during his the course
> of his presidency because it was based on Eisenhower's key wrong
> assumption (which became part of the foundations of the cold war
> framework, and whose falsity Vietnam so clearly laid bare): that the
> stronger party always wins a non-nuclear war. Whatever his merits as a
> general of conventional armies, he shared with most such generals a
> thorough incomprehension of the dynamics of guerrilla war.
>
Only a small minority of guerilla wars have been successful; Malaya and the Philippines (both times) are rather more typical than was either Vietnam or Cuba. And as Chomsky has pointed out, Vietnam was damaged sufficiently that the revolution (as opposed to the War for Independence) never really got established; certainly Vietnam is not a very vivid model _now_ of a strong, independent nation outside the imperialist framework. So one could say that the Eisenhower strategy worked, though not necessarily in the way it was originally intended.
One can reasonably doubt (while hoping to be wrong) that guerilla warfare is any longer feasible. The U.S. probably cannot vigorously kill several million Iraqis, hence low level resistance can probably continue there until we (and other popular forces elsewhere) can make a continuation of the occupation politically untenable. But the Iraqis could never actually win a guerilla war.
Of course what will result from that withdrawal will be a rather unpleasant Iraqi regime, which will nevertheless willingly sell its oil to one or another or all of the imperialist powers. That might or might not actually hurt the U.S. enough to give the U.S. left (also Chavez, other similar independent powers) some elbow room for struggle.
But for the present, the Truman-Eisenhower policies have worked pretty well. The U.S. is still hegemonic outside of the daydreams of the video-game entranced.
Carrol
> Michael
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