> -- 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