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By Root 1686 0

North Vietnamese admitted losing 1 million men in its war with South Vietnam; however, communism and lying go together. Reasonable estimates put communist losses at 2 million, and North Vietnam’s infrastructure was badly damaged. After the United States departed Vietnam, China and the USSR ceased sending aid. Their goals were reached. The United States was humiliated, had lost a long and brutal war in Asia, and under President Carter became less involved with the world. The world became open to aggressive communist adventures designed to bring areas in the Middle East, Africa, and South America under communist control. Monetary debts owed by North Vietnam to China and the USSR for the massive amounts of arms, ammunition, rockets, cannons, and antiaircraft guns, must have been considerable, and that debt went unpaid—forever. Although default was probably expected, the communist giants had economic problems and the default no doubt caused tensions.

In my opinion, the rest of Indochina defeated communism because of losses the United States and its allies inflicted on North Vietnam, and because support from China and the Soviets ended. Looked at in this way, the Vietnam War probably prevented the subjugation of the rest of Indochina. Note that the economy of Vietnam is the worst in the region by far even thirty plus years after the end of the war.

Books and Resources:

This is a difficult subject to recommend books on because it is hard to get non-biased views of the war. Until everyone who fought and reported on the war is dead, emotions run too high for an unbiased view to emerge. I personally like books just recounting battles and their outcomes, while briefly listing political events in Washington DC. I recommend avoiding books listing only US casualties in the war, and any book by a journalist covering the war for major US news media outlets. Nothing they say can be trusted. The Vietnam War for Dummies is one of these books looking at the war from an antiwar perspective and is therefore useless for studying the events objectively. The vast majority of books on the war have an anti-war bias—especially books authored by journalists of the era.

Vietnam: the Necessary War: a Reinterpretation of America’s Most Disastrous Military Conflict by Michael Lind, Free Press, 2002.

Unheralded Victory: the Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973, by Mark Woodruff, Presidio Press, 2005.

Street Without Joy by Bernard B. Fall, 2005, Stackpole Books. Probably the best background book on the Vietnam War.

The Fifty Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World, by Derek Leebaert, Back Bay Books, 2003.

American Strategy in Vietnam, A Critical Analysis, by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr., Dover Publications, 2007. At 121 pages and a price of $8.95 this is probably the best book on the War in Vietnam that a student of history can acquire.

The Vietnam War, Bernard C. Natty, Barnes and Noble, 1998. A very factual record of the main events of the war and its aftermath. Very little bias displayed by this author.

Chapter 19

The Postmodern World . . . or Not?

What is a “postmodern” world? What is modern today will not be tomorrow. Many historians call the world we are in “postmodern,” implying the modern world was yesterday. By definition that is unsound and confusing. Modern is now. The Random House Dictionary defines modern as “of or relating to the present . . . characterized by or using the most up-to-date techniques . . . from the Latin modo meaning just now.” Thus, we should reject the term “postmodern” because it implies we have gone beyond now . . . which is impossible. However, the term “postmodern” has been widely applied to our time as describing a world of relativity. In the so-called postmodern world all is relative and nothing has a permanent foundation because there is no clear central hierarchy or organizing mega-narratives; thus, it embodies extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, and diversity. This definition sets the world adrift with no moral, spiritual, or even realistic