I think most of the world views american foreign policy as
well-meaning but naive. They tend to see things in black or white,
ie Israel is right while the Palestineans are wrong. The actual
fact is that everything and everyone is a shade of grey, nothing is
absolute right or wrong. How they act in different situations also
depends very much on who's in office, using the current war on
terror as an example, I just can't help feeling that had Gore won
the election, US reaction will be very different(not that its a
good thing)
Ducati1996: I do agree that the US is a busybody at times, but I
think your analysis of US involvement in Vietnam was flawed. I
think had the US not got involved, the fall of Vietnam, and all of
SE Asia to communism would be very real. It is now agreed for a
fact that the National Liberation Front(more pupularly known as the
Viet Cong) of Vietnam was just short of initiating Phase 3 of a
"peoples revolution"(ie. the start of subversion in urban centres
after completing Phase 2 - comunization in the rural areas) by the
time the US sent troops to South Vietnam in 1965. It would then be
a matter of time before Cambodia and Laos fell, and thereafter
Thailand Malaysia and Singapore, which already had active communist
movements. Of course, Indonesia under Sukarno was already overtly
communist. The Domino Theory may be easy to be scoffed by the Left
in the West, but in 1965 in SE Asia, it was very real. US
involvement might not have stopped the communists in IndoChina, but
it was vital to stopping communism in SE Asia because
1) It slowed the revolution in IndoChina by 10 years, and
significantly weakened Vietnam's(and to a certain extent: PRC and
USSR's) ability to sponsor similar movements throughout SEA, by
forcing them to focus efforts in Vietnam in the case of the latter
2 countries.
2) It actively awoke the US to the threat of communism in SE Asia,
and committed the US to fighting it in countries like Malaysia and
Thailand
3) It made regional governments wake up to the seriousness of the
threat
Their tactics, policies may have not been exactly totally
successful or morally aboveboard, but the underlying intentions,
were no doubt good.
I do agree however that the US does piss me off with their "holier
than thou" attitude, and pokes their noses where it don't
belong.
As to China today, I feel that letting Taiwan go would be in the
best interests of both countries, but I just feel that after 50+
years of claiming Taiwan is a part of China and accepting the
status quo, both sides(minus the Taiwanese independence advocates)
would be unable to accept a climbdown without seeing it as a
defeat. Which brings me to one more question: What gives Taiwan the
right to claim to be the legit China(incl. the mainland) when it
feels like it, and declare independence when it feels like
it?
China is here to stay, politically, economically and militarily.
We'll have to live with it and work with it. There are some who
can't accept it, in the West and in Asia. But they'll wake up to
that eventually.
