Why? China, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan all derive their political cultures primarily from Confucianism, a strongly hierarchical system that modern commentators would probably, if it could be seen undoctored today, describe as a dictatorship. North Korea, a personality cult with similar structure, persists.
At the same time, in the 1980s, nearby Taiwan was also a dictatorship of the Nationalist Chinese army and was also supported if not set up by the US. They stopped off in Burma to grow heroin and prop up a military dictatorship there along the way. In the last few years, the US has basically let the dictators out of prosecution to counter growing regional Chinese influence which was formerly set to dominate the country. Singapore is widely accused of setting up its stock market explicitly to launder the drug revenues, and still has - and indeed probably only exists today - because of major US support.
Vietnam is the only really strong story of the lot, repulsing an attack from China after kicking out the French and Americans and re-asserting its independence, then removing another dictatorship (Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge) from Cambodia in 1978.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_military_junta_of_1967%E...
And the US military LOVED Saddam Hussein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq...
The one with most potential is probably Singapore given what they've accomplished in a short time. They just need a cultural shift to get them out of this conformist, nationalist, factory-worker mentality. They could become a hub of not only trustworthy business in Asia but innovation or quality-focused business too. The reactionaries are doing everything they can to prevent that, though, as it will threaten their power.
It may be in the realm of conspiracy theory still, but some would contend that the CIA installed the Lon Nol government and helped oust Norodom Sihanouk as king. Sihanouk himself wrote a book called "My War with the CIA" and as I understand it (haven't read it) his position is that this happened in retaliation for Cambodia remaining neutral in the Vietnam war.
I'm not sure to what extent this is true, or whether or not Sihanouk quietly supported the VC, but Cambodia was absolutely devastated by US bombing and it can only be described as evil. As a personal anecdote, I recently met some Cambodian men who subsisted as children by salvaging unexploded American bombs.
Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. dropped 2.7 million tons of explosives -- more than the Allies dropped in the entirety of World War II -- on Cambodia, whose population was then smaller than New York City's. Estimates of the number of people killed begin in the low hundreds of thousands and range up from there, but the truth is that no one has any idea.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/wha...
Note that the US didn't bomb Cambodia until quite late in the war. That probably helped the North Vietnamese more than anything.
Never heard of this but it no doubt pales in comparison to Vietnam's "remove them with a land army" commitment.
I just don't recall it going the way you described with instead them splitting up with one side backing communist imperialists and the other capitalist imperialists. They fell for the games plenty enough but resisted a lot, too.
Any way you look at it Ho Chi Minh was brilliant military tactician and strategist who drew from both ancient Chinese and modern western military philosophy to lead his people to independence. I'd argue that the use of socialism was probably not as significant (versus other options of wartime economies) as commonly thought. It was useful, however, to get diplomatic support and military hardware from allies such as Russia and China. I don't think it greatly shaped Vietnam, which is now very capitalist, just like China and Singapore, two other nominally 'communist' party-led modern Asian nations.
Not unlike WW2 for the Soviets.
>> Never heard of this
It's true right up until the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh. Then US diplomats and officials were evacuated in helicopters, while the city was left for slaughter.
You forgot Thailand. With the cult of the president and full cooperation of the army, it's pretty much a dictatorship as well.
You say that as if Vietnam did it on their own. They were as supported by China and Russia as Taiwan was by the US.
And now that China is encroaching on Vietnam's sovereignty, who do they cozy up to? The US.
It's all politics.
China allowed Soviet military aid passage through the country, but once the threat of having an American client cf. South Korea was waning (early 70s) repaired relations with the US and invaded Vietnam (1978).
Of course. Actually they have had many invasions and multiple occupations from China over the course of the last 10-20 centuries. They are, long-term historically speaking, essentially a China breakaway, but similarly southward-expansionist state.
Right now there is conflict with China over their Vietnam's territorial waters and the South China Sea. China invaded Vietnam via land as recently as 1979.
> They are, long-term historically speaking, essentially a China breakaway
Hmmm ... China hasn't controlled Vietnam in a very long time, AFAIK; maybe never. Vietnam has a different culture and language.
> similarly southward-expansionist state
South of Vietnam is ocean; what does this comment mean?
China has occupied Vietnam many times. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam
Vietnam has a different culture and language.
The language is very much a dialect of ancient southern Chinese. In fact, it is used by linguists to reconstruct (along with other languages) ancient Chinese pronunciation. Culturally, Vietnam has Chinese holidays like Chinese New Year, plus Chinese characters (though they are forgetting how to read them after the installation of Romanized script), Confucianism, Taoism, etc.
South of Vietnam is ocean; what does this comment mean?
Sinified Vietnam (ie. the first beginnings of modern Vietnam proper) expanded southward overrunning completely culturally distinct countries such as Champa, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Intelligence_Service_...
A question asked in chat just today by a German journalist friend who specialises in Asia and esp the Koreas:
"And im seriously wondering: if there were no americans holding back the sk tyrants of that time, would sk be any better than nk in terms of human rights?"
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/dod/usfk-opcon...
You can simply look around the world and see that the US has hundreds of military bases in other ostensibly sovereign countries.
You can just look at the basic facts and see that there is more than a touch of imperialism at play here.
1. The US pays for those bases to be there.
2. Host countries want those bases to be there for defensive and economic purposes.
If we look at the basic facts we see this is clearly not imperialism.
Really? Even the closest one to the US at Guantanamo Bay, where Cuba keeps demanding that the US gets off their soil?
The US's foreign base policies are a little more complex than you're suggesting.
The second half of that is pretty spot on, and if I'm not mistaken some of the overseas bases did originate from the use of force.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism
Currently, the Pax Americana is based on the military preponderance beyond challenge by any combination of powers and projection of power throughout the world's commons—neutral sea, air and space. This projection is coordinated by the Unified Command Plan which divides the world on regional branches controlled by a single command. Integrated with it are global network of military alliances (the Rio Pact, NATO, ANZUS and bilateral alliances with Japan and several other states) coordinated by Washington in a hub-and-spokes system and world-wide network of several hundreds of military bases and installations. Former Security Advisor, Zbignew Brzezinski, drew an expressive summary of the military foundation of Pax Americana shortly after the unipolar moment:
In contrast [to the earlier empires], the scope and pervasiveness of American global power today are unique. Not only does the United States control all the world's oceans, its military legions are firmly perched on the western and eastern extremities of Eurasia... American vassals and tributaries, some yearning to be embraced by even more formal ties to Washington, dot the entire Eurasian continent... American global supremacy is...buttered by an elaborate system of alliances and coalitions that literally span the globe.
Besides the military foundation, there are significant non-military international institutions backed by American financing and diplomacy (like the United Nations and WTO). The United States invested heavily in programs such as the Marshall Plan and in the reconstruction of Japan, economically cementing defense ties that owed increasingly to the establishment of the Iron Curtain/Eastern Bloc and the widening of the Cold War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana#Contemporary_pow...
Personally, I don't think the US should have intervened in Korea, for all the very good reasons that your founders cautioned against foreign intervention and entanglements.
But the intervention saved millions from enslavement. It was a net benefit to everyone in South Korea, then and now.
Also, if there was no South Korea, then who knows, maybe the "larger" North Korea would just be like China today; kind of terrible but not so terrible.
Arab states use Israel's existence as justification to military dictatorship. Saddam also used the threats from Iran (which were very real).
Meanwhile, Israel managed to develop into an industrial democracy despite being surrounded by enemies from all directions.
I don't think you can be considered a democracy if you are at war with half of the people within your borders.
Was the US a liberal democracy during WWII when it cluster bombed Germany and Japan?
Think about the context here: how South Korea in the 80s was treating its own people.
Israel is a democracy within its local population despite being surrounded by enemies.
Therefore, having an enemy at the border is not a good excuse for a military dictatorship.
Put another way, I'm sure even Pyongyang has some happy citizens. Even dictators usually let some local population live happily. The trick is being part of the right local population.