Will Morton wrote...
In addition, the whole of Indochina was (and is) a clusterfuck of rivalries and feuds going back centuries. The (relatively) sudden appearance of a bunch of new regimes, all with revolutionary mindsets through which to apply their old vendettas, probably made the bloodshed inevitable - although US intervention undoubtedly made it worse.
Basically the way I see it. I've felt for a long time that the US (even while pursuing it's questionable goals) should have jumped all over the chance to buddy-up with China after the Sino-Soviet split, and knowing Mao's practicality I'd bet he could have been pursuaded (hell, not long after it was Mao and Zhou who initated contact with the US). Relations with Vietnam and Cambodia could have proceeded very differently in that environment. Would the cultural revolution still have happened? Probably. Would the Khmers have gotten into power...possibly but I actually doubt it.
But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too ideologically blind to see the obvious. As a result we continued to mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in Asia). And we're doing it again...(eg, we had some chances with Iran recently that we passed up...that was really stupid, and the Iranians seem to know it).
-TD
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