I’m a huge nerd when it come to the First and Second Indochina wars. It’s a super interesting mixture of Western colonialism (France), Eastern colonialism (Japan), Cold War (China, USSR, USA, South Korea, AUSNZ), civil war (all the competing factions in Vietnam), guerilla and conventional warfare, geopolitical propaganda, etc
It has something for every history buff.
But I think this article does a nice job of scratching the surface of the mythology that surrounds the American War. If the communists get credit for anything, it’s communication both locally and globally, and their ability to use those stories to unite half of a country to fight and sacrifice for over 30 years to fight opponents (both foreigner and Vietnamese).
I lived in Vietnam for about 5 years and that same mythology is still use by the government to unite people (not a knock as every country does this).
But if you scratch below the surface (as this article does) you pretty quickly find out the national mythology isn’t true at all
But the current government still knows how to leverage the story - a great example is this year’s 50th anniversary of the end of the American War.
Being able to celebrate defeating the US at the same time you’re attempting to strength your relationship with the US is tricky. How did they do it? The 50th celebration is also the 30th celebration of normalization of the Vietnam-US relationship. So they can tell one story locally, and another internationally and win both sides.
The celebration now mainly focuses on “unification”, with some slight flavor of “independence/ liberation of the South”. The US is not even mentioned. So the idea is that we celebrate the finality of having a unified and independent country after a very long period of not being so.
The message is very deliberate and has been gradually more focused on the “unification” aspect since at least 2014-2015.
I’m a huge nerd when it come to the First and Second Indochina wars. It’s a super interesting mixture of Western colonialism (France), Eastern colonialism (Japan), Cold War (China, USSR, USA, South Korea, AUSNZ), civil war (all the competing factions in Vietnam), guerilla and conventional warfare, geopolitical propaganda, etc
It has something for every history buff.
But I think this article does a nice job of scratching the surface of the mythology that surrounds the American War. If the communists get credit for anything, it’s communication both locally and globally, and their ability to use those stories to unite half of a country to fight and sacrifice for over 30 years to fight opponents (both foreigner and Vietnamese).
I lived in Vietnam for about 5 years and that same mythology is still use by the government to unite people (not a knock as every country does this).
But if you scratch below the surface (as this article does) you pretty quickly find out the national mythology isn’t true at all
But the current government still knows how to leverage the story - a great example is this year’s 50th anniversary of the end of the American War.
Being able to celebrate defeating the US at the same time you’re attempting to strength your relationship with the US is tricky. How did they do it? The 50th celebration is also the 30th celebration of normalization of the Vietnam-US relationship. So they can tell one story locally, and another internationally and win both sides.