The end of the second world war marked the beginning of a new war for the United States of American and the Soviet Union. This war, was fought in two major battlegrounds, Europe and Asia. This essay will be evaluating whether containment, the policy adopted by the US government in Asia, was a success or failure.
The Vietnam War is the most controversial war of the 20th century. For the second time in a decade, the United States government sent troops into an Asian country to prevent the spread of communism. Their policy of containment, the prevention of the spread of communism, in this case, was a spectacular disaster. Not only did they lose the war, they lost all public support and gained negative global attention. The American withdrawal from Vietnam led to the formation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. A communist government had control. When the American troops had arrived in Vietnam in 1963, their sole purpose was to prevent that happening. However, when competing against a fanatical, ruthless, and dangerous opposition, their theory of ‘clearing out communism’ came crashing down. Containment failed in its practical sense. But that wasn’t the only issue. The loss of life, and embarrassing defeat, led the American public to question whether it was any of their business to be involved in political manouvres in Asia. Futhermore, by trying to destroy communism in Vietnam, they had inadvertently lost themselves support within the country itself. Vietnamese people, who had spent the last century under French rule, weren’t exactly supportive of another foreign army arriving to tell them which political structure they should have whilst simultaneously using napalm on their citizens. This case study, really was the lowest of the low for the American foreign policy of containment. That’s not to say that the policy didn’t work in some countries. In Japan for example, they managed to not only prevent the spread of communism, but turn the country into a powerful ally against communism. Originally, after world war two Japan would be demilitarized, weakened and rebuilt as a pacifist, democratic country. However, with such a huge communist threat within Asia, they adapted policy and thought that it would be more beneficial for Japan to be re-strengthened as soon as possible. By reducing the power of the trade unions, and increasing the power of the Zaibatsu (Japan’s elite businessmen and companies), Japan rapidly rose from the ashes to become a power again. This encouraged democracy within Japan, success always breeds content, and allowed the US to have another military force to back them up within Asia. A defense force of around 75,000 Japanese was formed and the US were allowed to have military bases within Japan. Most historians argue that this is the perfect case of contianment being succesful, communism was prevented from spreading, and the US had a new military platform. By definition, they are right. However, on a moral basis, is it truly correct for the (self-appointed) leader of the ‘free’ world to be forcing countries down a political route, and using force to remove opposition? Some historians, including this historian, would argue that the US policy of containment was a permanent failure because it went against their morale values, intial ideas and was actually never used. The policy of containment was actually just the policy of shoving democracy down the throats of countries, no matter what their electorate thought. Containment wasn’t the prevention of the spread of communism, it was the process of spreading democracy. Whether this was what they planned all along, or simply the way it turned out, the United States government never truly stuck to their policy of containment because what they were doing wasn’t containment, it was the exact opposite. Containment was a failure in every case study and every example because it was never actaully containment. Take the Japan case study. The whole basis of it being a ‘success’ can be undermined by the fact that in the early 1950’s, the US launched a ‘red purge’ in Japan removing all communists from government and trade union positions. That isn’t containing the political threat, that is removing the political threat. A containment policy incinuates a certain stillness and prevention rather than pro-active removal. Korea is another perfect example. No historian would argue that the US wasn’t right to defend one of it’s allies under attack. However, once they had returned South Korea to its original states, if they were following their policy, they would have stopped there. But they decided to invade North Korea and drive communism out of the country. Once again, this highlights the fact that the policy wasn’t a success because it was never enforced. It was ignored. The only country which actually employed a containment tactic was China. They re-invaded North Korea, returned the country back to its original border, and stopped there. This historian would argue that the Chinese use of a containment tactic was a success (even if they never called the policy that), and that no other country used containment within Asia. To conclude this historian would argue that the policy of containment was flawed from the start. To actively go to a foreign continent and try to enforce a way of rule is disgraceful. If the US stuck to its true moral guidline and values of the free world, they would never force democracy upon another nation. They would encourage an initial election of some sort to determine which ruling system worked best and allow that decision to stand. They wouldn’t remove a certain party from power (like they did in Japan, Korea and tried to do in Vietnam), and they wouldn’t go to war due to one way of ruling being more popular than theirs. Furthermore, this historian would argue that containment can never work in principle in any situation, however that is a separate topic all together. Containment was doomed from the start because in principle it was an immoral and impractical idea. In every case across Asia it was a failure because it was never containment, and even when it wasn’t containment (in its true form), it still didn’t work. Comments are closed.
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January 2016
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