Why didn't USA move into Laos to block Ho Chi Minh trail?

[Graf Zeppelin]

The reason Spanish colonies sought and won independence was that Spain was unable to resist their efforts at that time. There was no domino effect, as the prime reason for them seeking independence was Spain and not something happening in the respective neighbor colonies.

The reason the soviet satellites all broke free and shook off communism was that Gorbachev had vouched to not intervene in the satellites' internal reform processes. Here, again, no domino effect - east Germany didn't have its peaceful revolution because of anything that happened in Poland. The causes were domestic and would have played out much the same way had poland remained communist. Same in the other countries. They all had their reasons to protest against the local regimes, and the reason they did go ahead with it was Gorbachev's policy not stuff happening in the neighbor countries.

You confuse domino with a chain reaction.

The idea was that every fallen stone (whatever one that is) increases the pressure on the next one. So if two fall the preasure doubled on another one etc etc.
The process isnt linear as in a domino game but it could look like on as a result.

The word domino is a bad choice here for that meme.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Or, as someone said: "Correlation means no causation".

Not sure who said that but it is wrong.

Correlation does not rule out causation ya know. Correlation just does not imply causation.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

My issue with the U.S. actions in the Vietnam war are not related to the goal (Vietnam going communist was always going to put pressure on its neighbours) but rather to the method that was chosen - military intervention to support an unpopular and incompetent regime. Even if you subscribe wholeheartedly to domino theory there remains a range of methods that can be used to contain communist revolutions that do not depend on massive commitment of military forces.

I could not agree more. 'Containment Policy' as defined by Keenan intentionally eschewed military engagements and a focus on diplomatic and economic isolation. One can speculate why the doctrine was intentionally misapplied.

 

[Andre Bolkonsky]

You confuse domino with a chain reaction.

The idea was that every fallen stone (whatever one that is) increases the pressure on the next one. So if two fall the preasure doubled on another one etc etc.
The process isnt linear as in a domino game but it could look like on as a result.

The word domino is a bad choice here for that meme.

You hit the nail on the head. The Domino Effect is the proper term to describe the doctrine, but there is too much emphasis on hypothetical situations in the clouds and not enough focus on the reality on the ground.

 

[LordTempest]

If you want to call it "Bolivar effect" instead of domino, I'd accept it. And then it's not a domino, but a person after it.
It's difficult to explain Spanish America independence movements in a few lines. But let me just tell that the pre/crypto independentists "Preservers of Ferdinand VII's rights" Juntas were born simultaneously in the different parts of the continent. (Mexico, Argentina/La Plata, Caracas…) They didn't have ONE spark that Spain could've put down. In fact, sometimes, Spanish forces did end the rebellion in some places (Perú, High Peru -Bolivia-, Paraguay). Even they ended the war at Colombia, Venezuela, Chile and Mexico for once (in Venezuelan and Mexican cases, more than once).

Or, as someone said: "Correlation means no causation".

So basically your argument here is that you accept that the domino effect is a genuine phenomenon, you just don't like the fact that it is called the domino effect, because that implies something other than what it means because reasons.

I'm happy to call it the "Tempest Effect" from now on, if you find that name more palatable.

 

[JodelDiplom]

So basically your argument here is that you accept that the domino effect is a genuine phenomenon, you just don't like the fact that it is called the domino effect, because that implies something other than what it means because reasons.

I'm happy to call it the "Tempest Effect" from now on, if you find that name more palatable.

The name domino effect and what was said to be the content of it were both wrong. The pitch was: "We have to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam because if we don't, it will spread to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and we will have to stop it there which will be successively more difficult." That pitch was used to defend an otherwise indefensible strategy, namely to deploy a huge part of the US military into a faraway country on the other side of the world to fight a jungle guerilla and defend a corrupt puppet dictatorship in which monks burned themselves alive in the streets because they thought the dictatorship was that terrible.

The domino theory that you explained, fits neither the name "domino theory" nor does it match what was pitched to the public at the time. Most significantly (to me) what you describe as domino theory, can't even be properly used to defend the US strategy in southeast Asia in the 1960s. If the victory of communism in Vietnam didn't actually put such enormous pressure on neighboring countries that they would become indefensible, then the US could simply have chosen not to invest into the defense of South Vietnam as heavily as they did, and instead chosen to defend, say, Thailand, or Cambodia, where it might have been a lot easier to stop communism as their non communist governments were less terrible and more popular that the south Vietnamese regime. The USA could then focus the fight in Vietnam and the other countries on covert /diplomatic /economic areas. Which might have been a much better strategy overall for the USA. That would be how YOUR variant of the "domino" theory would have to be interpreted.

 

[Calad]

Non alignment was only an option for nations that were strong enough to resist the attempts by the two superpowers to use them in their conflict, and/or too irrelevent for one of the two superpowers to want to 'put in play'. The best example IMHO isn't Yugoslavia, although it's not a terrible one. It was pretty solidly in the communist camp. It wasn't directly beholden to the USSR for it's existence, and had some independence from the USSR, but was more or less voluntarily on the soviet side in most things. It was definitively NOT in the camp of the USA. The very best example from the whole cold war era was probably India. Both the US and the USSR made very considerable attempts to get India on to it's side in the conflict. However India was successfully able to avoid even the appearance of favoring one of the sides. It was aided by a rapid strengthening and organization of political institutions after it gained it's independence, and by the chaotic situation with the de-evolution of Pakistan and East Pakistan (Bangladesh) The rapid consolidation of domestic political institutions meant that the cost to the USA or USSR to destabilize the nation of India, and then push it into their camp rapidly became quite high only a short time after India became independent. Both countries preferred 'quick and easy' wins, because although they had vast resources, they were finite, and they preferred to get hte most bang for their political buck. The uncertainty with respect to Pakistan and East Pakistan prevented either side from jumping in 'full strength' right after independence because neither side wanted to be caught up in the midst of a civil war where neither side was one of their partisan supporters.

This is purely your own opinion. It is true that non-alignment movement had rather stable countries, like most of them were some short of monarchies. But then were nation like Cyprus which were small but important. Nation had to decide their camp when there were no other options (Angola), when they were invaded (Afghanistan) or when other nation wanted to balance region (Pakistan).

Of course - Just like the USA, the USSR preferred easy targets, either because they were already militarily occupied for unrelated reasons, or because they were already 'leaning' towards their side. The arguement that having a 'solid dictatorship' is a reason why a nation went to the Soviet side is clearly incoherent. Both the USA and the USSR were perfectly happy to back dictators provided that those dictators were willing to 'pledge allegiance' to their side. The USA was not interested in backing Democracies - it was interested in backing places that would resist the USSR.

This would be true if both parties had equal starting position. US in 1945 controlled entire globe expect USSR and Commies in China. US was a hyper power. Pretty much every nation that joined Soviet camp were either directly occupied, were "new" or had strong internal instability. US did not have to pick any nations, but to make sure any of them would not turn around.

You mean just like the ones that the USA backed right? Again, neither the USA or the USSR expended their international military, political, and economic resources in a stupid way. They expended them in ways where the local conditions would magnify their effects most effectively. The USSR would have been stupid to put a vast effort into flipping a state like Italy towards it. In the immediate aftermath of WWII, they did make a concerted attempt, but by the mid 1960's it became very obvious that it wasn't going to succeed, so they moved on towards places where their efforts would be more likely to succeed at less effort. Exploiting local grievances, easy to manipulate dictators, and weak poorly organized states is what the cold war was all about.

Vietnam is exactly case US extended resources in stupid way. There was no victory plan, there was no idea how long conflict would take and cost were running out of hand. Also it tarnished US reputation and ended in humiliation retreat. Afghanistan was Soviet example.

600 years except for the ones immediately prior to the Vietnam war: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–Vietnam_relations#Cold_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–Vietnam_relations#Cold_War

If you want to find out expectations to disagree you will. I see little point of this.

History is instructive, not deterministic. The UK and France had fought against each other for 900 years before they fought together in WWI, and as late as 1900 they still thought of one another as rivals. World War II was a major turning point in international relationships across the entire world. Places that had fought one another 'forever' were now strong allies. Places which had 'always' been friendly with one another were now declared enemies. In 1961 when US involvement in Vietnam began to escalate in a major way it was blindingly obvious that China had allied itself with the Communist government of Northern Vietnam. Indeed, HO Chi Minh personally owed his position as a leader in the government of North Vietnam to China.

Both of them were great powers. This analogue is awful. Vietnam has population of few million, China a billion.

I didn't say how or why any of the particular countries flipped. Merely that they did. The exact reasons why Syria, or Egypt or Yemen joined the communist camp are irrelevant. Of course they had their own individual motivations. Iraq had all the same motivations, and yet it picked to side with the capitalist powers, for different reasons. What's important in the context of the cold war is that they picked a side, and the side they picked encouraged and aided them in picking it.

Chile under Allende, was perceived by the US as becoming to close to siding with the Communist camp, so they backed a coup and installed Pinochet. That's the coup I am talking about. The US and UK couped Iran in 1953, because they were about to nationalize the assets of the Anglo-Iranian oil company (aka BP). This kept Iran in the capitalist camp until the Iranian revolution of 1979. This was a spontaneous local reaction to the US backed government, and once there was an instability to exploit, the USSR was quick to fill the void. Iran did in deed 'flip to the soviet side' afterwards. They were and still are declared enemies of the United States. When Iran invaded Iraq shortly afterwards, the US backed Iraq, and the regime of Saddam Hussein, to ensure that the Iranians couldn't win with massive under market cost loans, and military intelligence. The Soviets backed the Iranians, with large sales of munitions at discount prices,diplomatic cover in the UN, and various intelligence information. Neither the leadership of Iraq or Iran was 'committed' to the capitalist or communist way of life. Both the USA and the USSR were completely aware of this. None of them cared, because they were all able to advance their own objectives through their actions.

You are making less sense. Now reasons are irrelevant, so then why to mention them at all?

 

[LordTempest]

The name domino effect and what was said to be the content of it were both wrong. The pitch was: "We have to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam because if we don't, it will spread to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and we will have to stop it there which will be successively more difficult." That pitch was used to defend an otherwise indefensible strategy, namely to deploy a huge part of the US military into a faraway country on the other side of the world to fight a jungle guerilla and defend a corrupt puppet dictatorship in which monks burned themselves alive in the streets because they thought the dictatorship was that terrible.

I don't really care what it was used in defence of. The fact that an argument was used to justify a war you personally don't happen to agree with doesn't mean that the argument used was automatically false. This has been my position throughout this thread and I really would appreciate it if people would read my arguments before replying to them with idiotic nonsense like "HOW DARE YOU JUSTIFY AN INDEFENSIBLE WAR WITH SUCH A STUPID THEORY!!!1111!!!!11!" or "OF COURSE THAT THEORY IS STUPID BECAUSE IT JUSTIFIED THIS STUPID UNJUSTIFIABLE WAR !!1!11!!!111!11!!!" or some other variant thereof.

One's personal distaste for the Vietnam War doesn't invalidate the fact that the domino theory is a thing.

The domino theory that you explained, fits neither the name "domino theory" nor does it match what was pitched to the public at the time. Most significantly (to me) what you describe as domino theory, can't even be properly used to defend the US strategy in southeast Asia in the 1960s. If the victory of communism in Vietnam didn't actually put such enormous pressure on neighboring countries that they would become indefensible, then the US could simply have chosen not to invest into the defense of South Vietnam as heavily as they did, and instead chosen to defend, say, Thailand, or Cambodia, where it might have been a lot easier to stop communism as their non communist governments were less terrible and more popular that the south Vietnamese regime. The USA could then focus the fight in Vietnam and the other countries on covert /diplomatic /economic areas. Which might have been a much better strategy overall for the USA. That would be how YOUR variant of the "domino" theory would have to be interpreted.

Look, if you are incapable of separating your own strong personal opinions about Vietnam from my politically neutral arguments about what the domino theory actually is and whether it existed then there's really no point in continuing.

I consider you to be a considerably more intelligent individual than Calad, so I'll say this one final time: I don't particularly care about Vietnam as a conflict, and I'm not here as a Kennedy-era American shrill trying to defend the way American conducted the war. Literally nothing I have actually said gives the impression that I am, unless one is stupid enough to automatically associate the defence of a general principle of IR theory with blindly supporting US foreign policy without reservation. My objection originated with the fact that two posters in this thread were attacking the OP by saying that the domino theory was "ridiculous" and "has never worked" -- feel free to check my original post if you don't believe me. This is not only categorically false, the domino theory is a thing, but they weren't even attacking his arguments: rather, they were dismissing them simply because he dared to suggest that the domino theory was correct. I don't appreciate that sort of idiotic bullying.

The OP is fundamentally right. You wouldn't have had a CCP victory in the CCW without Stalin occupying Manchuria and ceding it to the Communists. It wasn't necessarily Stalin's intention to have Mao win, but it was the ceding of Manchuria which tipped the balance of the war in Mao's favour and allowed him to finish the job in 1949. Without the PRC, you wouldn't have had the PRC funding all these commie guerilla movements in South-East Asia -- in other words, the chances of a communist movement successfully gaining power in South-East Asia increased exponentially with the CCP winning power in China. The PRC gave significant aid to the DPRK after Inchon, turning the tide of the Korean War and saving Kim's bacon. No PRC, no North Korea. Both the PRC and North Korea funded the Vietminh, increasing the chances that Vietnam would flip communist. The PRC, DPRK and Vietnam funded a plethora of other parties in the region, and had anti-communist forces in the region rolled over and done nothing, these movements would have likely succeeded. Domino effect.

Everything the OP has said on this point is correct. The only question -- which incidentally, is the one he actually asks -- is whether the US would have been better served by taking a stand in say, Thailand or Burma rather than Vietnam? So you saying that this would be how MY variant (ie. the only variant) would have to be interpreted if correct is the moot point to end all moot points. In criticising what I didn't write, you have in effect made an angry defence of what I did, namely, that the domino theory is a thing and that interpreting it incorrectly because of one's personal prejudices on Vietnam shouldn't lead you to criticise it unfairly nor distract you from the question at hand.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Lets assume you have country A B C D and E

Each of them has a healthy communist movement.
All countries are equal in size and power for arguments sake.

Country A elects a communist government.

This helps the communist movements in B C D and E
Now D cant hold the preassure due to the increased communist effort and flips.

Now you have even more preassure on the rest since you have two communist countries now

B is rock solid and laughs at the increased preassure but C and and E flip now.

Now you have 4 communist countries vs one and despite B being a capitalist heaven the other countries can overwhelm the last bastion by several means.



The idea behind is that it works somewhat like an infection and the concept itself isnt exactly new.

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

The name domino effect and what was said to be the content of it were both wrong. The pitch was: "We have to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam because if we don't, it will spread to Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia and we will have to stop it there which will be successively more difficult." That pitch was used to defend an otherwise indefensible strategy, namely to deploy a huge part of the US military into a faraway country on the other side of the world to fight a jungle guerilla and defend a corrupt puppet dictatorship in which monks burned themselves alive in the streets because they thought the dictatorship was that terrible.

Hindsight is a bliss. A few decades before the US defeated a much more dangerous enemy in jungle warfare which even crashed their planes into their ships.
The US military planers had all reasons to think they can military handle the vietnamnese.The whole world was baffled back then how the French could have failed puting down a simple insurgency. Hell half of their counry was on the US side.

Times have changed and communism was a different beast of course. It didnt help that it was indeed a shitty government and despite wining most tactical engagements the US couldnt show strategic progress while the bodybags piled up and public opinion was against the war.

The damage for the US out of this disaster was immense.Especially in soft power.

 

[gagenater]

This is purely your own opinion. It is true that non-alignment movement had rather stable countries, like most of them were some short of monarchies. But then were nation like Cyprus which were small but important. Nation had to decide their camp when there were no other options (Angola), when they were invaded (Afghanistan) or when other nation wanted to balance region (Pakistan).

Yes, all cases proving my point, although I don't quite know what the concept of Monarchy might havae to do with it.. Cyprus is a very poor one though. For most of the cold war era, Cyprus was dominated by the British naval base there. Afterwards it was split between Greek and Turkish nationalists, who still control the island. Cyprus did not, and does not even today have it's own 'foreign policy. One part of it has a Turkish foreign policy, and the other part a Greek one. It's a frozen conflict, not an example of a neutral nation. All your other examples - Angola, Afghanistan, and Pakistan or examples of my point - in the vast vast majority of cases, if the USA or USSR decided your country was going to get involved in the cold war, it was going to happen. In order to qualify as a non aligned nation, it's not enough that you aren't playing the cold war game and don't want to. You have to be able to successfully resist playing it when one of the two superpowers decides to screw with your country. Otherwise you aren't non aligned - you are simply not yet involved.

This would be true if both parties had equal starting position. US in 1945 controlled entire globe expect USSR and Commies in China. US was a hyper power. Pretty much every nation that joined Soviet camp were either directly occupied, were "new" or had strong internal instability. US did not have to pick any nations, but to make sure any of them would not turn around.

Er yes, mostly the US was trying to prevent communist expansion - that doesn't detract in any way from anything I said. I never claimed both sides in the cold war had equal strength. I claimed that they both had much greater strength than anyone else. You are once again, repeating my points - the USSR selected nations that would be 'easy' to flip either because they were occupied directly, had weak institutions, or were new countries. In the cases when the US chose to intervene, it did the same thing. The mere fact that the USSR was more expansionist, and the USA more defensive does not change the nature of their tactics in general

Vietnam is exactly case US extended resources in stupid way. There was no victory plan, there was no idea how long conflict would take and cost were running out of hand. Also it tarnished US reputation and ended in humiliation retreat. Afghanistan was Soviet example.

Sure, they screwed up. And as it, and Afghanistan show, the cold war was a high stakes game. Failures had real consequences. Both the superpowers had occasional failures to select the right targets for their cold war proxy games. Cuba, Korea, the various Arab/Israeli wars, the Iran/Iraq wars, the civil war in Ethiopia, and several other 'hot flareups' of the cold war held similar capacity to become disasters for one or both of the superpowers, but didn't turn out that way for various reasons.

If you want to find out expectations to disagree you will. I see little point of this.

Both of them were great powers. This analogue is awful. Vietnam has population of few million, China a billion.

You are making less sense. Now reasons are irrelevant, so then why to mention them at all?

Picking a couple of words out of each of my rather detailed responses to you, and choosing them to argue about, rather misses the point. there is little point if you refuse to discuss my primary statements, and choose words out of context.

 

[Kovax]

Actually, I find the term "Domino Effect" fairly accurate except for one point: the dominos in this particular game are not all the same size, weight, or stability. We assume and count on the fact in the tabletop game that one domino can knock down the next in the chain (when all the dominos are equal, and properly aligned), but that's not necessarily the case. The fall of one domino in a political contest will (generally) put pressure on the next one, but may or may not be sufficient to topple it. Some dominos may topple from pressure applied by the primary source (the US or SU), but others will fall if enough pressure is applied by neighboring states, which conserves effort by the primary players.

Like so many other things in real life, it's rarely "absolute". One can say "It worked in 7 out of 8 cases, but failed in the 8th case, so it's factually incorrect", while another may say "It worked almost every time, except in extenuating circumstances, so it's factually correct". I would prefer to consider it as a factor which skew the odds, where the actual result depends on other factors as well.

If one domino falls in a political chain, it increases the odds of other related movements gaining traction through mutual support, and means one less conflict that the primary players need to apply direct pressure on, so they can concentrate on other targets. One cannot say that it WILL topple the next domino, only that it increases the likelihood.

In the same vein: "Smoking causes lung cancer". No, smoking can greatly increase the odds of lung cancer. That doesn't mean that it's safe to smoke, but doesn't mean that you will automatically get lung cancer if you do smoke. It also means that non-smokers are not immune to lung cancer.

 

[benice1234]

I don't even see the point of talking about the merits of domino theory. It's a new term for something not new at all. Like minded people help each other out. You can't really deny this. Rather you should argue about whether that justifies imposing extremely violent military governments run by Japanese collaborators and colonial governors

 

[LordTempest]

I don't even see the point of talking about the merits of domino theory. It's a new term for something not new at all. Like minded people help each other out. You can't really deny this. Rather you should argue about whether that justifies imposing extremely violent military governments run by Japanese collaborators and colonial governors

Not the best of Tankie arguments when the alternative is literally Pol Pot.

 

[benice1234]

Not the best of Tankie arguments when the alternative is literally Pol Pot.

Pol Pot was bankrolled by the CIA tho obviously the best method would have been to have unified democratic elections, but for some reason they never happened

 

[Kgw]

So basically your argument here is that you accept that the domino effect is a genuine phenomenon, you just don't like the fact that it is called the domino effect, because that implies something other than what it means because reasons.

I'm happy to call it the "Tempest Effect" from now on, if you find that name more palatable.

Quick, can you tell me what was THE starting piece of the Spanish American independence domino movement? Argentine? Venezuela? Mexico? Colombia? Did Thailand fall into Communist hands? Philippines? Taiwan?

If you want to change the idea of "one people CAN move others" (Bolívar) to "something something domino", it's up to you. But I can name "Tempest effect" the "This happened because... domino reasons!" theory. If you want

 

[Graf Zeppelin]

Quick, can you tell me what was THE starting piece of the Spanish American independence domino movement?

Spain geting occupied by France.

 

[LordTempest]

Quick, can you tell me what was THE starting piece of the Spanish American independence domino movement? Argentine? Venezuela? Mexico? Colombia?

Ya know I could be really flippant here and say the US.

Did Thailand fall into Communist hands? Philippines? Taiwan?

I've already freaking covered this. Repeatedly.

 

[Kgw]

Spain geting occupied by France.

"We shouldn't be invaded by France, or we'll lose our colonies!" it requires a lot, lot of hindsight. You can't prevent that, which defeats the domino theory.

Ya know I could be really flippant here and say the US.
I've already freaking covered this. Repeatedly.

1. French revolution has a bigger hand in it. Specially since the US, for a while, was an ally of Spain.
2. Not my problem if the theory "cannot into reality".

 

[LordTempest]

Not my problem if the theory "cannot into reality".

It's almost as if me catching a pen before it falls to the ground can invalidate the theory of gravity.