Wars of Detainder, Part 5

Vietnam

As I noted earlier, one of the unfortunate outcomes of World War II, viewed as a war of detainder, was that many important parts of the world were divided into Communist and non-Communist spheres of influence. Vietnam was one of these nations, with the north assigned to the Soviet Union and the south to the allies, specifically France. The Viet Minh – short for the “League for the Independence of Vietnam” – had fought the Japanese occupiers with assistance from the US and China, and after the war the same Viet Minh fought to drive out the French. The First Indochina War began in 1945 with modest guerrilla actions against French occupation troops and concluded in 1954 with the disastrous French defeat at Dienbienphu. read more »

The 2016 Stock Market Rout

I’m in the middle of a long piece on wars of detainder, but since there is no special time pressure associated with those ideas (although longer term they will merely save Western Civilization), I’m going to interrupt the series to address the 2016 collapse in the equity markets. read more »

Wars of Detainder, Part 4

Korea (continued)

Korea quickly became the so-called “forgotten war.” Even during active combat American public opinion shifted dramatically, from 78% approval of the war in its early days to 50% of the public viewing the war as a “mistake” by early 1952 (versus 37% who thought it wasn’t a mistake).(1) Most Americans believed that Korea was the first war American didn’t win outright,(2) and people couldn’t understand how we could defeat Germany and Japan but be stalemated by a bunch of Third World conscripts. It was true that if our objective was to protect South Korea from Communist domination, we had succeeded. But the cost had been very high and the spectacle of America’s 8th Army in panicky retreat from the Chinese had been appalling. The quicker the war was forgotten, the better. read more »

Wars of Detainder, Part 3

Korea

World War II was a great victory for America and its allies, although of course it came at a huge cost in terms of the lives of combatants and non-combatants alike. Viewed as a war of detainder, the victory came at another cost: much of the world was divided into Communist and non-Communist spheres of influence. Korea, Vietnam and Germany were divided in half, as was all of Europe. This would result in an anxiety-producing Cold War that would last seven times as long was World War II and that would seriously retard the economic development and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. read more »

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