[lbo-talk] Was the USSR a "good try" and valuable counterweight?

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Tue May 4 13:08:45 PDT 2004



> . . . I think that the Cold War was primarily a war against the Soviet
Union, I
> don't believe that the US would've bothered with going to war in e.g.
> Vietnam if not for the Soviets.


> -- Luke

Not necessarily. Recall that Kennan, et al., were primarily concerned with Third World nationalism and the "threat" that smaller countries might extract themselves from the world system that the US was trying to construct and use their resources domestically. The "communist" label was primarily used for public consumption, esp in the cases of Guatemala and the Dominican Repub. Though the US did fight communists in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's nationalist appeal was conceded as early as the Geneva Accords of '54, if not before. (Plus, there were other political groupings opposed to the Saigon regime in the south.) Even without the Soviet Union, I'm certain that these smaller nationalist movements would've still existed, and still would've been crushed by the US.

DP



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