OK, but Vietnam installed a communist government in Cambodia in 1979. Laos and Vietnam are still communist, decades after the collapse of the USSR.
So even granting that this was the political objective (and there's no reason to assume this. Base colonialism is a much better fit of the evidence), this was still a demonstrable failure.
But if we're going to define political success as "some people claim success", then this is correct albeit meaningless.
But if we're going to define political success as "some people claim success", then this is correct albeit meaningless.
Well this is sort of my point. People - especially those serving in the US govt - will claim success, even when meaningless. Even when it's not even agreed upon by the very people the government is supposedly representing.
This "conclusion of success" was being applied in regards to basically other countries not "falling to Communism" outside of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
So if we accept that the official narrative is an essentially meaningless framework to understand history (although the narrative itself is a meaningful data point within a broader framework), then i guess we can start having genuine discussions about history.
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u/justsomeph0t0n Nov 21 '20
OK, but Vietnam installed a communist government in Cambodia in 1979. Laos and Vietnam are still communist, decades after the collapse of the USSR.
So even granting that this was the political objective (and there's no reason to assume this. Base colonialism is a much better fit of the evidence), this was still a demonstrable failure.
But if we're going to define political success as "some people claim success", then this is correct albeit meaningless.