Several months ago, I wrote a series about Ho Chi Minh. In the research for the series, there were still parts of the story that didn’t really make sense.
Thank you for this. After being drafted in the infantry and spending 1969 in Vietnam, and losing 57,000 fellow Americans it’s nice to know more about how we got into this mess.
Absolutely! If you read the McNamara memo, he outlines three fronts (in addition to the Russian northern front) for the containment of China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.
Thanks for this post! I had started reading the 7,000 page report a couple yrs ago but didn't get past some of the 1945-1950 section, but did see that part about the Americans being called stupid after the 1960 coup.
Daniel Ellsberg released a RAND report on the Taiwan Straits crises before his death. I found an unredacted copy on IA:
While not as publicized as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1958 Taiwan Straits crisis details (and posted by the late Daniel Ellsberg in 2021) the near-miscalculations of Chinese Communist and Chinese Nationalist forces in the vicinity of present-day Kinmen islands.
There are some similarities with the post-1945 PRC and Vietnam, in that there were a few diplomatic opportunities for the PRC to be more allied to the U.S but by the time of the PRC's 1949 victory, the u.s had lost that chance. In the Treaty of San Francisco, the U.S left open the fate of Formosa after Japan's surrender, and "handing" it off to the ROC was not set in stone yet. They also considered claiming the territory or being a protectorate, although the 1979 TRA could have the same effect.
The book Formosa Betrayed by George Kerr and the movie are terrific. In the book, he even mentions a State Department official who confuses Taiwan for Hainan in a conversation with him, leading him to think that the Department was fairly clueless about certain events on the other island.
Surprisingly, some U.S cables from Khomeneni in Iran go back to the 1960's, which suggest Persia's future leaders were also open to collaboration.
Thank you for this. After being drafted in the infantry and spending 1969 in Vietnam, and losing 57,000 fellow Americans it’s nice to know more about how we got into this mess.
So would you say that South Vietnam was basically the same as a South Korea? After all, South Korea was also an American invention.
I find this interesting because it appears to me that the Vietnam was was basically a what if scenario if the Korean War failed.
Absolutely! If you read the McNamara memo, he outlines three fronts (in addition to the Russian northern front) for the containment of China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.
Thanks for this post! I had started reading the 7,000 page report a couple yrs ago but didn't get past some of the 1945-1950 section, but did see that part about the Americans being called stupid after the 1960 coup.
Daniel Ellsberg released a RAND report on the Taiwan Straits crises before his death. I found an unredacted copy on IA:
It includes memoranda from other post-WWII periods that underscore the dangers of nuclear warfare: https://archive.org/details/The1958TaiwanStraitsCrisisADocumentedHistory_201712
Abridged supplement (not a substitute): https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_memoranda/RM4900.html (Some margins are more legible in this version, even though it is missing 46+ pages)
While not as publicized as the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1958 Taiwan Straits crisis details (and posted by the late Daniel Ellsberg in 2021) the near-miscalculations of Chinese Communist and Chinese Nationalist forces in the vicinity of present-day Kinmen islands.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/us/politics/nuclear-war-risk-1958-us-china.html I did manage to read the 1958 reports, unlike the PP.
There are some similarities with the post-1945 PRC and Vietnam, in that there were a few diplomatic opportunities for the PRC to be more allied to the U.S but by the time of the PRC's 1949 victory, the u.s had lost that chance. In the Treaty of San Francisco, the U.S left open the fate of Formosa after Japan's surrender, and "handing" it off to the ROC was not set in stone yet. They also considered claiming the territory or being a protectorate, although the 1979 TRA could have the same effect.
The book Formosa Betrayed by George Kerr and the movie are terrific. In the book, he even mentions a State Department official who confuses Taiwan for Hainan in a conversation with him, leading him to think that the Department was fairly clueless about certain events on the other island.
Surprisingly, some U.S cables from Khomeneni in Iran go back to the 1960's, which suggest Persia's future leaders were also open to collaboration.