> Cambodia also fell to communism, where the new regime murdered between 1.5 million and 2 million of its people
Right. What you're leaving out is that the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia was supported by the US and was overthrown by the communist Vietnam. I'm not trying to downplay the atrocities committed by the Viet Minh/etc. but this is an absolutely bizarre argument to bring up unless you didn't do it on purpose?
If we go back a few decades strategically the war was absolutely unnecessary. Geopolitically Vietnam and the US are natural allies (they hated/fear China far more than the US before the war and the same applies now), yet Truman and his successors literally forced North Vietnam to ally with China and the USSR because they had no other options. Of course not pissing off the French might have seemed like the better options at the time..
In the grand scheme of things, from a western PoV at the time at least two other factors loomed large in geopolitics:
* The French were the pipeline for very hi grade uranium yellowcake out of Africa which was a seething silent unspoken proxy war for Cold War resources. Appeasing the French in many small ways made sense for the US.
* All the European colonial powers were rapidly transitioning to being post WWII former colonial powers and the West was rife with fear that former countries that survived quite well on their own pre European colonisation would turn into anti-West proto communist countries.
Fleeting baby democracies | self governance movements in SE Asia and elsewhere were being crushed and strong man autocracies that paid lip service to being friendly to US hegemony got much support.
Right. What you're leaving out is that the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia was supported by the US and was overthrown by the communist Vietnam. I'm not trying to downplay the atrocities committed by the Viet Minh/etc. but this is an absolutely bizarre argument to bring up unless you didn't do it on purpose?
If we go back a few decades strategically the war was absolutely unnecessary. Geopolitically Vietnam and the US are natural allies (they hated/fear China far more than the US before the war and the same applies now), yet Truman and his successors literally forced North Vietnam to ally with China and the USSR because they had no other options. Of course not pissing off the French might have seemed like the better options at the time..