Yeah the world piece like all the wars in the middle east, Vietnam, proxy conflicts all over the world and so on and so on. I'm not blaming the US for all of these wars but they also didn't prevent them. And the US did overthrow many democracies and often made things much worse, Iran being a great example, but there are many others. I could go on.
Peace in Europe was maintained mostly by people in democracies generally wanting to work together. Yes the US had something to do with that as they supported that after WW2 but over the last 50 years, people in democracies generally don't fight each other. And more so by the threat of the Soviet Union that was so clearly the more dangerous option. Its easy to make allies if Stalin is on the other side.
And outside of Europe the US hardly maintained peace.
Nuclear weapons maintained 'peace' between Soviets and the US more then anything else.
And Europe has always pulled its weight in science, technology and engineering.
The US was actually on the right side in that one (just like in Korea). The Communists were not exactly the good guys and their "agricultural and personnel reforms" lead to drastically reduced food production and starvation and death.
Blame the US for real things instead, such as supporting the wrong side in Afghanistan in the '80s or ensuring the survival of the Soviet Union in the '40s.
Tell it to cca 2 millions civilians that died in Vietnam as a direct result of failed US invasion (I really mean just civilians mostly bombed into oblivion, entire human lives list is around 3 million). As in, vast majority of them would be alive is US didn't try their failed adventure. Tonkin gulf is a classic US made up war for power mongering reasons.
Telling 'we're the good guys' while regularly bombing entire villages into oblivion with napalm on some vague suspicions ('we heard some gunshot when flying around so we blasted them' scenarios). My Lai and many others.
If this is how US population views their past fuckups then no wonder we are where we are, objectivity ain't easy if one is on the wrong side, isn't it.
Supporting wrong side in Afghanistan? Against Soviet invasion? Sometimes, often even there are no good sides.
If you guys didn't support Soviet union in 40s (which they vehemently denied since then but its their inferiority complex, the issue with russian mentality since forever), there would be no massive eastern front with most german losses and wehrmacht spread out too thinly, and D day would be crushed like nothing. History would be very different in Europe and globally.
You can go even farther back in time. If the US hadn't massively relieved the famine in Russia in 1920/21 there might have been a chance, Lenin and the Bolshevik regime wouldn't have survived.
I'm sorry but famine help is a good thing, not saving millions of people because it might potentially overthrow a government 'somehow' isn't a great plan.
One can argue FDR later embrace of Soviets was way to early and a direct stab in the back to France and other European powers.
It's not so simple, the rampant corruption under Ngô Đình Diệm, misappropriation of aid, etc. shouldn't just be swept under the rug. Hindsight says remaining capitalist probably would have been better for the average person, but it wasn't so obvious at the time.
Johnson was a warmonger, exaggerating (or possibly faking) the Gulf of Tonkin engagements to justify full escalation was a crime that led to the death of 60,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands more with PTSD, and 2 million+ murdered Vietnamese civilians. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of birth defects caused by agent orange and the still ongoing effort to clean up dioxins from the environment.
That is an objectively incorrect take. A common theme in disastrous US interventions was that they tried to prop-up a failing colonial power, which in this case was France - against the locals who wanted independence. Ho Chi Minh was a French-educated leader who only entered the orbit of the USSR after failing to secure support for Vietnamese independence frome the West.
The US only became actively involved in supporting South Vietnam a decade after it had achieved independence from France in 1955, after the negotiated division into North and South Vietnam in Geneva, and after the last French forces left in 1956.
The cause of that intervention was North Vietnam sending Viet Cong insurgents into South Vietnam, attempting to overthrow the government, and ignoring the South's sovereignty.
That doesn't justify the US's later transgressions while engaged in the war, but their initial support to South Vietnam was neither unjustified nor illiberal.
That is a very particular arrangement of the facts, that really doesn't have the shape of truth to it. Vietnam was a former French colony conquered by the Japanese WW2, that wanted to restore their independence.The Allies liberated South Vietnam, restoring French colonial rule and seeking to reconquer the whole nation. It was deeply unpopular with the people. Moreover the South wanted to conquer the north with French support and US financing, they fought to a stalemate and an uneasy peace.
Who violated the ceasefire under what circumstances is contested, but ultimately does not really matter - neither side wanted peace, and the hostilities would've resumed anyway one way or another.
The end result was that the US antagonized a people who were fighting for their own freedom, and found itself in an unwinnable war - creating an allied (or at least independent) country from a people you bombed to the stone age is an impossible task.
From this follows that no, the US military wasn't just another dozen bombed out villages away from final victory, when it was backstabbed by those peaceniks at home.
An ounce of diplomacy at the right place and time would've been the best for both the United States and Vietnam, and would've netted them everything they wanted on top of international goodwill.
Fair call on the funding, I know the US was paying for the French military's involvement for years. Still, by active support I meant troops on the ground, which happened significantly later.
Who resumed the fighting does matter, as even though Diem refused the 1956 reunification elections that didn't justify resorting to an armed insurgency by the North. It's also not ambiguous, Hanoi's 15th plenum officially authorised that insurgency in 1959 and formed groups 559 and 759, and later the NLF (Viet Cong).
They were already killing hundreds of innocent South Vietnamese village chiefs, teachers, and officials by the late 1950s, trying to create a local insurgency and insurrection. That's what the US got involved with to oppose, and I really can't say it was a morally wrong decision at the time. Hanoi had the option of sticking with diplomacy and chose to send guerrillas south instead. You're giving only the US agency here.
You can be technically 'right' by some definition and an intervention still not being a good thing.
The Southern regime was incredibly corrupt and dominated by land owners. Look at the Philippines for an example of what happens to a US 'colony' where the land lords are in control.
Communist Vietnam did some bad reforms yes, but they also changed and eventually did a lot of good things, turning the country into what it is today.
The US spent decades of war propping up a regime that was mostly incapable and killed a lot of people in the meantime.
Peace in Europe was maintained mostly by people in democracies generally wanting to work together. Yes the US had something to do with that as they supported that after WW2 but over the last 50 years, people in democracies generally don't fight each other. And more so by the threat of the Soviet Union that was so clearly the more dangerous option. Its easy to make allies if Stalin is on the other side.
And outside of Europe the US hardly maintained peace.
Nuclear weapons maintained 'peace' between Soviets and the US more then anything else.
And Europe has always pulled its weight in science, technology and engineering.