Lecture 11 - The Cold War Goes Global: The New Frontier, Modernization, and the Vietnam Quagmire

Question 1

How did the Cold War antagonism begin to evolve/change in the late 1950s?

Answer 1

♣ Stabilization of bipolar partition of Europe
♣ Decolonization and Nation Building
♣ Soviet activism (Khrushchev and post-Stalinist leadership) and Chinese challenge
♣ Emergence of alternative “Third-worldisms” (spirit of Bandung) - window of opportunity on both sides of the iron curtain in order to expand influence and power.
♣ Revolutionary/Nationalist challenges. E.g.: Cuba and Vietnam

Question 2

Vienna Summit

Answer 2

06/1961 - Change in the European theater. Kennedy and Khrushchev reach détente. The Berlin question, the Laos question, bay of pigs invasion

Question 3

Hotel Theresa, Harlem

Answer 3

09/1960 Cuba emancipating itself form American influence. Castro goes to New York for a UN GA and sets up the delegation HQ in Harlem, not in Manhattan – symbolic meeting with Malcolm X. Cuba not only as a challenge to the capitalist system but also to racial discrimination.

Question 4

The Bandung Conference

Answer 4

04/1955—a meeting of Asian and African states, most of which were newly independent. A consensus was reached in which “colonialism in all of its manifestations” was condemned, implicitly censuring the Soviet Union, as well as the West.

Question 5

Kennedy Administration

Answer 5

♠ Liberalism v. Eisenhower/Dulles Conservatism
♠ Technocracy v. Ideology
♠ Generational Shift

Question 6

Kennedy’s foreign policy

Answer 6

♠ Flexible Response
♠ Against nuclearized/autonomous West europe
♠ Projected Idealism, eg. Peace Corps
♠ Modernization Third World (Vs. neutralism)

Question 7

New Look (policy)

Answer 7

It reflected Eisenhower’s concern for balancing the Cold War military commitments of the United States with the nation’s financial resources. The policy emphasized reliance on strategic nuclear weapons to deter potential threats, both conventional and nuclear, from the Eastern Bloc of nations headed by the Soviet Union.

Question 8

Flexible response (policy)

Answer 8

♠ Vs. rigidity New Look/Massive retaliation
♠ Global/Symmetrical strategy
♠ Third World and guerrilla (heyday of counterinsurgency)
♠ Military Keynesianism and growth of defense expenditures

Question 9

JFK’s Idealism: Peace Corps speech

Answer 9

03/1961 - “This Corps will be a pool of trained American men and women sent overseas by the U.S. Government or through private institutions and organizations to help foreign countries meet their urgent needs for skilled manpower.”

Question 10

Success of (and fascination with) modernization theories

Answer 10

♠ Product of Zeitgeist (Modern Industrial Age)
♠ Cold War: competition between alternative models paths to modernity/teleologies
♠ US and Soviet experience: 1930s, New Deal and 5-year plans

Question 11

Assumptions Modernization

Answer 11

♠ Political radicalism = Poverty & Social Injustice
♠ Universal and linear path to Modernity:
progressive determinism/gradualistic evolutionism v. class conflict
♠ Analytical and Policy Power of Social Sciences (scientism)
♠ Multidimensional integrated approach:
political/social/economic/cultural level (+ security)
♠ Government activism: public investments → social reform (keynesianism, liberalism)
♠ US as “universally reproducible” model alternative to Marxism/revolutionary nationalism (excpetionalism)

Question 12

The Stages of Economic Growth (Rostow from MIT, published in 1960) as crucial book: ‘A non-Communist Manifesto’

Answer 12

[Communism as] Disease of the transition to modernization.
[Marxists as] the scavengers of the modernization process. They prey on every division, weakness, and uncertainty that is likely to beset a society in the process of its transition to a modern world.

Question 13

What reforms should be achieved through the application of modernization recipes to less developed countries? (Rostow)

Answer 13

♠  Investments in Technology: Productivity
♠  Consumption & High Salaries
♠  Land Reform
♠  Education & Literacy
♠  Demographic control

Question 14

Political outcome of Modernization: formula

Answer 14

• Socio-economic development leading to industrialization, urbanization, wealth and education
• Leading to an open class system and a large middle class: demographic transition and stability

Question 15

What were the basic (and inner) contradictions of Kennedy’s modernization strategies?

Answer 15

♠ Neglect of local/regional peculiarities. Cultural imperialism?
♠ Lack or weakness of local partners/interlocutors
♠ Faith in technocracy/knowledge and its applicability to the ‘political’ and the ‘social’
♠ Time constraints
♠ «Security» as a precondition for reform: military modernization?

Question 16

Failures of Modernization Theory application

Answer 16

♠ Latin America: Alliance for Progress
♠ “Decade of Democracy” = decade of military coup d’états and war
♠ Vietnam

Question 17

Vietnam Background

Answer 17

• Part of French Indochina until early 50s with strong Communist and nationalist movement developing in North Vietnam under leadership of Ho Chi Minh
• Promise of Independence (US as model)
o Ho Chi Minh inspired by ideas of social economic transformation but also inspired by self-determination (distinctive liberal principle)
o President speech (1945): explicit reference to Jefferson, ‘all men are created equal’
• Nationalism translated as Communism (Viet Minh)
• Dichotomist view (Western vs. Communist)

Question 18

Geneva Agreements

Answer 18

1954 - 1956 - temporary partition of Vietnam

Question 19

Vietnam as vital for US security

Answer 19

♠ Geopolitical relevance (Indochina & its resouces)
♠ Zero-sum game
♠ Credibility (“a defeat anywhere is a defeat everywhere”): domino theory

Question 20

Domino theory

Answer 20

a theory prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s, that speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect. The domino theory was used by successive United States administrations during the Cold War to justify the need for American intervention around the world.

Question 21

US analytical mistakes in Vietnam: domestic and international factors

Answer 21

♠ Overestimation influence exercised by USSR and RPC on Vietnamese communists
♠ Overestimation US capacity to interfere in Vietnam and transform it: liberal hubris
♠ Overstimation support for war effort in US public opinion
♠ Overestimation possibility to use military tools

Question 22

Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

Answer 22

08/1964 It is of historical significance because it gave U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson authorization, without a formal declaration of war by Congress, for the use of conventional military force in Southeast Asia. Specifically, the resolution authorized the President to do whatever necessary in order to assist “any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty”. This included involving armed forces.

Question 23

Treaty of Paris on Vietnam ceasefire (Paris Peace Accords )

Answer 23

01/1973 - removal of US from the conflict

Question 24

Modernization in South Vietnam

the “strategic hamlets”, 1962-63

Answer 24

♠ Creation of villages to relocate rural population (1000/2000)
♠ Self-government and authonomy: elected local leaders
♠ Economic and technical aid, land re-distribution: creation of rural middle class
♠ Modern standards of living: schools, hospitals, radios, electricity
♠ Fortifications, weapons, military training v. Vietcong

Question 25

Failure of “modernization” in South Vietnam

Answer 25

♠ Forced relocation v. reluctance/resistance of local population
♠ Security/Surveillance: hamlets as «concentration camps» (D. Halberstam)
♠ Corruption and mismanagement among South Viet. officials.

Question 26

U.S. Mistakes in Vietnam

Answer 26

♠ Non negotiable goal for most Vietnamese: Independence
International Communism as monolith
♠ Obsession with credibility
♠ Domestic consensus taken for granted (peace, CR movement)

Question 27

Michael Hunt, Lyndon Johnson’s War (1996)

Answer 27

Ho Chi Minh was pragmatic and first of all nationalist. He tried to gain support from the US and only after having been “let down” by them did he turn against the West. However, he always embraced communism.

Question 28

Michael Latham, Modernization as Ideology American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era, 2010, Ch.1

Answer 28

According to Latham, there was just a demand for a policy that will guarantee that the newly independent countries would stay friendly to the US. The Modernization Theorists persuaded Washington that they had the right answer.

Question 29

The Berlin Question

Answer 29

—whether or not the U.S. would allow the USSR to sign a separate peace treaty with Berlin—dominated Khrushchev and Kennedy’s debates at the Vienna Summit. The signing of a separate peace treaty with Berlin did not appeal to American policy makers. America felt comfortable with the division of Germany and Berlin itself. A peace treaty threatened the established balance of power and could potentially lead to the United States losing all its influence in East Berlin.

Question 30

Alliance for Progress

Answer 30

initiated by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1961 aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Peter Smith wrote, “The most striking failure of the Alliance of Progress occurred within the political realm. Instead of promoting and consolidating reformist civilian rule, the 1960s witnessed a rash of military coups throughout the region…By the end of 1968 dictators were holding sway in several countries.”