It's fucking amazing that America had any global allies left after the late 70's early 80's. Between Vietnam just a few years before, the whole Shah bullshit in Iran, and the Gwangju Uprising, we were really pushing the limits of the bullshit people were willing to tolerate. It's amazing anyone managed to continue trusting us after all of that (and, of course, that is just the shit I am aware of, I am sure the scholars of history among us can fill in all the shit I likely missed).
It's a lot more complicated than that. Vietnam was a fuck up because we backed the wrong side, unironically. The RVN was unironically one of the most corrupt shitholes in Asia, which is saying something. The RVN, a military dictatorship, had a military coup in the middle of the Vietnam War, in 1963, just because of how comically, over the top corrupt Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother Ngô Đình Nhu were. There was a coup attempt just two years later in 1965 over unresolved bullshit from the first coup. Revisionist bullshit says the US "supported" the coup in 1963, but that's mainly bullshit. The US provided money to the plotters, but the biggest "help" the CIA gave the coup plotters was just not doing anything and assuring them that, if they won, the US would support their government. It's all detailed in Cable 243 if you give a shit, it's all declassed now.
The fact that the US supported the South at all was pretty retarded. One, it was a direct betrayal of the Viet Minh, who we promised to support in their bid for independence from France if they helped kick out the Japanese during WWII, and, most importantly, US involvement was based on the total bullshit "domino theory." Basically, the idea was "Communism is a monolithic entity, and every country that falls to communism makes it more likely the next one will fall to communism." This was literally the entire reason the US propped up the RVN, despite Ho Chi Min citing
Thomas fucking Jefferson in his reasons for fighting the war of independence. It was simple: red bad, they can't be good. There was absolutely no effort to understand the cultural, ideological, or ethnic factors underpinning the movement. It's very similar to the bullshit we saw in the 2000s and 2010s with supporting "democracy" in the Middle East, where democracy is inherently good and if we just give them a heckin democracy they'll be friends with us, not realizing that they're likely just going to elect the fucking Muslim Brotherhood and try to turn it into a shithole sharia state. What makes this even more comical is that the US made all of these fuckups even though they witnessed the Tito-Stalin Split in 1948 and the Sino-Soviet Split
was actively ongoing. The Americans were terrified that the Vietnamese would team up with the Chinese and take over all of Asia, when, in the grand irony, the first thing the Vietnamese did after winning the war was
fight and win a war against China.
The reason for supporting the crushing of the Gwangju Uprising was sound. This was at the tail end of the Second Korean War, the war in Vietnam was still a fresh wound, and the US was, at this point, deep into the "Hollow Force" era. The Carter administration were terrified that if the discontent were to spread, North Korea would take advantage of the situation and invade, and the United States government straight up didn't have the public support to fight a war in Korea and there was a real question if the United States military even had the ability to prosecute a war. The issue with Iran was very similar. The Shah was a corrupt piece of shit, widely hated, and the US just didn't have the means to prevent the Islamic Revolution. The 70s and 80s were a very, very dark time for the United States, domestically and internationally. You also have to remember that, coinciding with all of this, the US was balls deep trying to prop up our friends in Europe, which was dealing with resurgent Red Brigades and other communist terror groups. France was undergoing a national crisis and very nearly suffered a military coup themselves after the horrific fuckshow that was Algeria. Mind you, Algeria was not a colony to France, they genuinely considered it a part of France proper, and losing it was a serious shock to the system.
If you made it all the way to my conclusion here, I genuinely appreciate you taking the time. My conclusion is such: while it is very easy to Monday morning quarterback each one of these events, and say "well if they did X and Y then they would've gotten Z, which is better than the bullshit we ended up with," you need to understand that, for the most part, all of this was occuring simultaneously. The 70s and 80s was just a string of back to back crises, domestically and internationally. I mean shit, during all of this the US was also dealing with the fallout from Israel's round of wars and the oil embargo, and this was all just set dressing for the horrific era we call the
Carter Economy.
Anyway, I hope this helped shed a little bit of insight. If you have any questions or want to debate one of my points, please feel free. I by no means think I have all the answers and welcome another point of view.
