> The US succeeded brilliantly in its major war aims, though it
> didn't attain its maximal goal of conquering Vietnam. The
> major goals throughout were to prevent the "virus" of "radical
> nationalism" from "infecting" other reasons (to use the
> terminology that appeals to high planners)
The US Empire killed a lot of people in Indochina, but couldn't prevent powerful, agile developmental states from emerging in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and even Vietnam itself. Arguably, one of the reasons the developmental state took off in China so quickly was the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 - China's elites were freed of the nightmare of a direct US intervention, which allowed them to cashier the hugely wasteful Third Front industrialization project and redirect the resources into rural developmental. The rest is, as they say, East Asian history.
-- DRR