I did this threat before and I got a lot of nice posters, so I figure I'd do this again.
I'm a graduate history student and my particular field is, broadly speaking, American intervention in Southeast Asia between 1945 and 1975. I can try to answer any questions you have about American involvement in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Just keep in mind that I don't know as much about Southeast Asian communist movements as I would like, but I do know a little.
I can also suggest books and authors if you want a summer reading list.
Is anything America did back then related to the Southeast Asia pivot that Obama's Administration has been on about lately?
>Laos
What are they? Have they participated or accomplished anything of note outside of being a marching path for NVA?
>>992459
why did you study boring history instead of interesting history?
>>992496
Yeah, if there's anything the world needs more of, it's WWII historians!
>>992505
nah, that's boring history too. ancient worlds where it's at. I'm pretty sure there's no one studying the roman empire right now, try that.
>>992480
I'm actually not sure, but from what I know about international relations is Obama wants to warm relations in Southeast Asia in order to contain Chinese expansion. The Chinese are a bigger threat right now than Russia or ISIS.
>>992484
Laos is a country of many, many, MANY different ethnic groups. The Laotian communists were quite successful in their military campaign against the non-communist government and worked with, rather than for, the Vietnamese communists. I don't know anything about present-day Laos, but I do know that the Laotian communists were very successful in the 1960s and 1970s.
>>992496
Because I'm Sofa King We Todd Did.
>>992531
>Because I'm Sofa King We Todd Did.
If you could do it all again, which STEM career path would you be on?
>>992459
Why intervene in cambodia and laos?
>>992541
If I could do it all again, I'd choose International Relations and work for the government.
>>992542
We didn't really intervene in Cambodia. We used bombs and defoliants to deter movement along the Ho Chi Minh trail, as well as clandestine paramilitary groups (mostly made up of local fighters) to do the same. We dumped a lot of money in to Laos in order to prevent the Pathet Lao (military wing of Laotian communists) and Neo Lao Hak Xat (political wing of Laotian communists) from gaining control of the country and using it as a base of operations.
The important thing to keep in mind here is American policymakers were utterly convinced that communist victory in Southeast Asia would pose an existential threat to the United States of America. American policymakers did not distinguish between Soviet communists, Chinese communists, Laotian communists, or Vietnamese communists. American officials assumed that all communist groups were linked due to the communist ideology that nationalism was cancer.
It turned out that nationalism still played a part.
Should we make this a broader "ask a historian thread"?
Grad student reporting in
(oh god don't ask me my field)
>>992575
What's your field?
>>992575
whats your field?
>>992575
there's nothing wrong with studying the history of basket weaving
>>992622
You majored in /pol/ studies
>>992685
Literally dude
there's no literature on it so I'm breaking new ground
>>992530
As one of very few historical archaeologists in a department full of prehistorians, I have to deal with this kind of stuff a lot. My friends in the department, as well as a couple of professors, always give me shit and act like what I do is either unimportant or uninteresting. It leads to good banter, though. They might not think what I do is important, but at least I'm not one of the thousands of people talking about the same things in the prehistoric Southwest.
The problem is a lot worse in classical archaeology, though. For some reason, those guys have avoided most of the theoretical advancements archaeology has had over the past 50 or 60 years. I considered going into program focusing on the Near East (which actually isn't that different from my current focus, classical archaeology is historical archaeology, whether those guys want to admit it or not), but decided against it because of how backwards and repetitive the field is.
>>992702
Well, what have you figured out so far?
>>992720
where do you want me to start?
>>992729
where else? the jews.
>>992749
>Start with the Jews
This is going to be an adage in the study of right-wing internet populism.
>>992749
yeah I mean the way /pol/ deals with the Jews is very similar to how white supremacist movements dealt with them/blacks at turn of the century - namely that they are both hypo- and hyper-sexualised, as in, they are simultaneously lazy and never work but at the same time rape women and rule the world. Interesting tracking the continuity of that and how online transforms it
>>992622
That's actually respectable. There's a lot of contemporary interest in the history of American conservatism.
>>992778
no it totally is right, it's just speaking to people and saying "yeah my thesis is on 4chan"
>>992756
>start with the greeks
>commence with the romans
>peruse with the persians
>...
>analyze with the anglos
>comment on the chinese
>research with der juden
>>992771
>same time rape women and rule the world
I don't think I've come across this. The /pol/ thing to do is to place them behind minority involvement with wh*te women, not themselves.
>>992800
yeah, it is as much with them cast as "degenerates" and undermining white western civilisation etc
>>992771
When did anyone write that blacks rule the world? When did anyone sexualize Jews? Not being facetious here.
>>993031
>When did anyone write that blacks rule the world?
i've seen this said on /pol/ in terms of media exposure, but thats it
>>992459
Do you have any material on the building of Ho Chi Minh's army? My main area of interest is actually a bit before the period you're specialized in, but I mean, when it came time to fight the French, the Vietnamese were eventually able to fight set piece battles instead of a more classic insurgency, and win.
That is extremely odd when looking at how general colonial struggles go, and I was wondering how it happened. I know though, that the resistance was gathering strength before/during WW2 though, so I apologize for asking outside of your specialist zone.
>>992622
Is Cultural Marxism just a /pol/ meme?
>>993062
Basically, you have to remember that the Viet Minh were trained and armed by Americans during WWII. Prior to that, all the leaders received a Western education in France. The cherry on top is all the military materiel and training the Viet Minh received from the Russians and Chinese.
The main reason for the defeat at Dien Bien Phu was a lack of French imagination. They didn't think the Viet Minh would climb the mountains with artillery pieces, but that's exactly what the Viet Minh did.
>>993037
/pol/lacks getting upset by blacks in media doesn't really mean they think blacks have any structural power. I believe that /pol/ pushes the Jewish inferior but powerful dichotomy, but in the case of blacks I feel it's more sexual than anything else. The african american media exposure as machismo entertainers and athletes may be bothering them.
>>993068
Not from /pol/, but isn't there at least some kind of threat posed toward current western civilization by leftist theories in the Frankfurt school and other marxist derived ideologies.
>>993084
Short answer: no.
Long answer: why do you think that
>>993071
More detail please. I mean, esp. during WW2, the U.S. had enough trouble getting munitions to China over the Burma road, and for years were reduced to airlifting trickles of supplies over the hump.
How did the arms get from the U.S. to the Viet Minh in WW2? Was it all after The Phillipine Sea and the effective dissolution of the IJN? And how did materiel get from China and the USSR to Vietnam? I mean, this is right during the Chinese civil war, when a lot of areas weren't even fully secure from the CCP perspective.
>The main reason for the defeat at Dien Bien Phu was a lack of French imagination. They didn't think the Viet Minh would climb the mountains with artillery pieces, but that's exactly what the Viet Minh did.
Oh, sure, but I mean, at least by my wiki-tier level of knowledge, they still had a roughly 4:1 gun advantage (if generally worse caliber) over the French at DBP. That doesn't come from nowhere, and neither does an artillery doctrine.
And DBP wasn't the only battle Ho Chi Minh went at it with regular French forces, you had battles like Brochet and Lorraine where the Viet Minh at least held their own if not won in stand-up fights, which is extremely rare for an insurgency/colonial army.
>>993090
I didn't mean that in a bad way. But the Frankfurt school does set out to critique and dismantle power structures within western civilization that have existed for a long time. By "threat" I mean threat to the socio-economic status quo. Many academics who campaign against racial, gender, and economic inequality derive their works from the Frankfurt school(critical theory for example) and are generally enemies of reactionaries who want to keep things as it is.
>>993106
The most I know about WWII-era Vietnamese-American cooperation is the OSS sent a couple of teams in via parachute to meet up with the Viet Minh, solidify an alliance, provide them with guns and ammo, and help them fight the Japanese. The way that American arms got into Vietnam was through early WWII operations with OSS literally arming the Vietnamese, as well as recovered American weapons from Chiang Kai-Shek's army which filtered from the Chinese to the Vietnamese via material support.
The big reason for France's failure at DBP is they got surrounded. Plain and simple. The Viet Minh outmaneuvered the French, who did not have the manpower, guns, or air support to take out Viet Minh positions.
Another big reason for the VM success against the French in conventional battles is because the French often traveled along roads which the insurgents knew they could spring ambushes from. French convoys were sitting ducks and the VM could first block the road in front with trees, then behind, and finish off the French convoy caught in between.
>>993132
>Another big reason for the VM success against the French in conventional battles is because the French often traveled along roads which the insurgents knew they could spring ambushes from. French convoys were sitting ducks and the VM could first block the road in front with trees, then behind, and finish off the French convoy caught in between.
Granted, I don't know much about SEA, but I think you're really selling the Viet Minh short. Using ambush tactics against overly motorized forces isn't something unique to the VM, and you saw similar tactics from Indonesia to Zaire to Syria, adapted to the local conditions. As far as I'm aware though, the VM were the only ones who could actually win pitched battles in a post WW2 framework consistently enough to have a successful strategy around it. Everyone else is playing the coercive insurgent game, of just trying to make things hot and bloody and expensive enough that the colonizer just gives up, even if they still hold the cities and the countryside.
For whatever reason, they were far stronger relative to their adversaries at conventional conflicts than a lot of their peers in other nationalist colonial movements.
>The most I know about WWII-era Vietnamese-American cooperation is the OSS sent a couple of teams in via parachute to meet up with the Viet Minh, solidify an alliance, provide them with guns and ammo, and help them fight the Japanese. The way that American arms got into Vietnam was through early WWII operations with OSS literally arming the Vietnamese, as well as recovered American weapons from Chiang Kai-Shek's army which filtered from the Chinese to the Vietnamese via material support.
Very interesting. Did not know Chiang was instrumental in filtering arms to the VC. Didn't even suspect it, in fact, given how much of a compulsive hoarder he was.
>>993160
The only "pitched battle" the VM won in the First Indochina War was DBP. They overwhelming relied upon guerrilla tactics.
>Chiang
Well, what do you think happened to all the shit his army left behind?
>>992459
Was grad school actually hard or just expensive? Or both?
>>993077
So is your entire job translating what /pol/ and possibly other Trump voters say into western academia friendly terms (ie historical racism) or is there more to it?
>>993425
As an MA student, it's both. As a PhD student, you get a tuition waiver and stipend. Then it's just a lot of hard work.
>>993425
Not, OP, but it really varies by school, department/field, and your own academic record. It's kind of impossible for someone to give a universal answer to that question.
Personally, it's been neither for me so far. I go to a state school and get a fair amount of department funding, which makes it pretty cheap, and the work isn't much harder than later undergrad stuff. There's just lots more of it, and some of the demands are different.
>>992459
What do you think of Chomsky? Specifically, his views on modern American involvement on Asia.
>>992459
how many litres of coffee did you drink daily?
>>993568
Chomsky is a fucking hack and I hope he drops dead. He literally denied the Cambodian Genocide (and continues to white wash it) because he has a hard-on for the Khmer Rouge.
>>993622
Whats your favorite protest song?
>>992459
How do you think American intervention in Southeast Asia between 1945 and 1975 changed the course of the United States, i.e., where was the US headed before the intervention and where was the US unintentionally headed afterwards?
