this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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The historical experience of the USSR was a brainrot on communists. Having a bias for Soviet nationalism is already bad enough, but imagine letting that evolve into Russian nationalism. Defend the same right of self-determination for Ukraine you would have defended for Vietnam 60 years ago.
I was under the impression that Vietnam didn’t want to join the capitalist west. Is that what Ukraine wants?
Vietnam mostly didn't want to be occupied by a foreign army. They resisted the occupation by Japan after WWII and when that war ended and the Japanese left they liked not being ruled over by foreigners.
But then when France got a military together they returned to Vietnam to resume where they left off with the colonialism thing they did before the war.
The Vietnamese didn't like that. They asked for US support in resisting French colonialism, because the US resisted British colonialism in the past. US wasn't going to go against France, interests in Europe took priority over interests in Asia.
So Vietnam needed an outside backer. So who do they go to.
Remember that the last foreign power Vietnam has fought against was not the US. They had a war in Cambodia and a war with China after the US left. I'm not an expert on Vietnam, but there's a whole lot more going on there than the US-Vietnam war and the propaganda around communist domino theory would have you to believe. Yeah they invaded Cambodia, but that was because Pol Pot was an insane psychopath. After the Khmer Rouge was defeated they left. Turns out Vietnam wasn't really all about spreading their version of their communist ideal, they kinda just did't want people from elsewhere telling them how to run things. Not Japan, not France, not the US, and no not even China.
The analogy between Vietnam and Ukraine is an apt one. A lot of people going around talking about domino theories and spheres of influence and talking like you're stupid if you don't understand the things coming from the brilliant mind of Henry Kissinger. Trying to make it fit into an ideological framework. It seems the people of Vietnam were too "stupid" to understand the brilliant analysis coming from people elsewhere. Ukrainians seem like they may be the same kind of "stupid" as the Vietnamese were. While everyone else is talking ideology and spheres of influence, they just go on shooting at foreign invaders. But in the end, who are the ones being stupid? The Vietnamese didn't seem very stupid from my perspective and the Ukrainians don't seem stupid either. Simple non-ideological motives are way more powerful than ideological motives.
So, we want we want Ukraine to be independent and free from American and Russian interference, like we would have wanted Vietnam free from American and USSR involvement?
There's a romantic ideal of a resistance movement that needs no outside support. But the reality is the US needed support from France to gain independence from Britain, Vietnam needed support from Russia and China to get independence from France and the US, Afghanistan needed support from the US and Saudi Arabia to get independence from the Soviet Union. And on and on the list goes. So yes Ukraine needs support from other countries to maintain their independence from an invader.
In geopolitics the rules are fairly consistent but the players may take on different roles in different scenarios. Sometimes the US is invading a country (bad) sometimes the US is supporting a country defending themselves from an invasion (good). Of course even that's an oversimplification, but try to break free of the nationalist idea that certain countries are always the good guys while other countries are always the bad guys. Think more on what a country is doing rather than feelings about whether a country is good or bad and you'll have a better understanding of geopolitics.
The Soviet Union died long before the people fighting in this conflict were even born. It's an odd form of colonialism to for someone from the outside to think that imposing a solution to a conflict that involves two countries going back to a life that neither country wants all because it fits with their ideal on what these countries should be.