Ah, the PENTAGON PAPERS back in a time brave journalist would expose the evil government (as long as it hurt the war effort and the President is a Republican).
They showed how corrupt the government was, including the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, but the media focused on “Nixon’s War.”
It was generally America’s first glimpse into what FReepers like to call the Deep State but is really just the government.
Ah, the PENTAGON PAPERS back in a time brave journalist would expose the evil government (as long as it hurt the war effort and the President is a Republican).
One aspect that made a lot of sense to me? The sotto voce objective:
Although President Johnson stated that the aim of the Vietnam War was to secure an "independent, non-Communist South Vietnam", a January 1965 memorandum by Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton stated that an underlying justification was "not to help friend, but to contain China"
China funneled huge amounts of money into North Vietnam, through food aid, cash and equipment:
Military aid given to North Vietnam by China[3]: 379
Year Guns Artillery pieces Bullets Artillery shells Radio transmitters Telephones Tanks Planes Automobiles 1964 80,500 1,205 25,240,000 335,000 426 2,941 16 18 25 1965 220,767 4,439 114,010,000 1,800,000 2,779 9,502 ? 2 114 1966 141,531 3,362 178,120,000 1,066,000 1,568 2,235 ? ? 96 1967 146,600 3,984 147,000,000 1,363,000 2,464 2,289 26 70 435 1968 219,899 7,087 247,920,000 2,082,000 1,854 3,313 18 ? 454 1969 139,900 3,906 119,117,000 1,357,000 2,210 3,453 ? ? 162 1970 101,800 2,212 29,010,000 397,000 950 1,600 ? ? ? 1971 143,100 7,898 57,190,000 1,899,000 2,464 4,424 80 4 4,011 1972 189,000 9,238 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,370 5,905 220 14 8,758 1973 233,500 9,912 40,000,000 2,210,000 4,335 6,447 120 36 1,210 1974 164,500 6,406 30,000,000 1,390,000 5,148 4,663 80 ? 506 1975 141,800 4,880 20,600,000 965,000 2,240 2,150 ? 20 ? Total 1,922,897 64,529 1,048,207,000 17,074,000 30,808 48,922 560 164 15,771
It also funneled large amounts of the same to guerrilla movements in the rest of Southeast Asia outside of the Indochinese triangle of Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. I read a figure of $10b - back when this was a huge sum of money - info collated by an Oxford-trained Chinese scholar* from Party archives.
At the time, many of the governments in the region had just gained their independence from the major Western powers. They were just getting their act together, security-wise. As a result, they were vulnerable to well-organized and cohesive Marxist-Leninist paramilitary movements, where automatic obedience to authority was enshrined under the principal of democratic centralism, the left's version of fuhrerprinzip, both of which are descended from the emperor principle, the idea that the ruler is (1) the source of all laws and (2) above the law.
If Vietnam hadn't been fought, Indochina would have fallen to Communism in the early 60's, and taken with it the rest of Southeast Asia, as Chinese aid previously allocated to Vietnam was funneled elsewhere. Because of Vietnam, guerrilla movements in the region outside of Indochina were starved of equipment, food and other supplies. By the time Saigon collapsed in 1975, the formerly nascent governments outside of Indochina had gelled into regimes at least capable of staving off internal threats. In 1980, Deng Xiaoping finally acknowledged the futility of Chinese efforts to fund revolution outside of Indochina by ending its subsidies to Communist guerrillas there. An account of Chinese aid to the Malaysian Communist insurgency:
In 1961, members of the CPM central committee such as Chin Peng, Chen Tien, and Lee An Tung moved to Beijing to seek political advice and guidance from the more experienced Chinese Communist Party.[51] Chin would, however, remain in Beijing for the next 29 years and the party would not lay down its arms until 1989. The reasons for this reversal of the party's decision to disband, according to Chin, was the advice given to him by the Vietnamese communist leaders in Hanoi, the opening of the second ‘Vietnam War’, which was followed by China's Cultural Revolution, all of which stressed a strong militant line to be taken by Asian communist parties.[55]
While in Beijing, Chin Peng was also advised by Deng Xiaoping, to continue the armed struggle in Malaya as Deng felt the time was ripe for revolutions to take place in Southeast Asia.[56] Deng insisted that the military struggle should not only be maintained but stepped up.[57] Deng even promised financial support to the CPM if they should take up arms once again.[56] Deng offered for this to remain a secret as the CCP did not wish to let it be known that they had been actively supporting Southeast Asia's communist movements. Chin reluctantly decided to acquiesce to Deng's suggestion. This was also the first time that the CPM had accepted foreign assistance in its struggle and it was with this financial backing that the second armed struggle in Malaya would be launched in 1968.[56]
Meanwhile, back in Malaya, the Malayan government had declared the Emergency over on 31 July 1960 once they became confident the MNLA had ceased to be a credible threat, with the surviving guerrillas retreating to their sanctuary in southern Thailand.[56] However, the insurgency continued with the insurgents increasing their attacks, ambushing military convoys, bombing national monuments, and assassinations of marked police officers and political ‘enemy targets’. The insurgency, which began as a war against the British colonialists, was now transformed into a war against ‘federalists, compressors capitalists and lackeys of British imperialism’.[55] The Malayan government maintained a high-security alert by devoting one-third of its national budget to defence and internal security needs and requested British, Australian and New Zealand troops to remain in the country until its internal security and national armed forces could be built up and the foreign troops gradually phased out.[55]
In 1970, the CPM's guerrilla bases in Thailand were hard hit by the trials and executions of supposed spies. Two breakaway factions were formed which condemned the purge. Chin, who was then based in China, denied involvement and later rehabilitated his accused comrades.[58] During the 1970s and 1980s, the CPM intensified its activities and clashes with the security forces. These activities were due to a rivalry among three factions in the CPM over party purges and strategies, with each faction trying to outdo the other in militancy and violence.[59]
However, in 1980, Deng Xiaoping refocused his priorities back on the Chinese bureaucracy after his return to power in 1978. He welcomed Lee Kuan Yew, the then-Prime Minister of Singapore and its leading political figure since independence from Malaysia, in a visit to Beijing.[57] Chin recalled that Deng had not bothered to meet him since then. Finally, in December 1980, Deng summoned Chin. In the meeting, Deng demanded Chin to immediately close down all the CPM's radio stations which were broadcasting from China to Malaysia. When Chin asked Deng when he would like him to cease the broadcasting, Deng replied, "The sooner the better ... Lee (Lee Kuan Yew) asked me to stop the broadcasts immediately."[57] Moreover, during his official visit to China, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia Tun Abdul Razak held talks with Chinese communist leader Chairman Mao Zedong and urged him to stop giving aid to the CPM. The fourth Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad further succeeded in persuading China to downgrade its ties with the CPM. This was an important factor that contributed to the CPM's decision to end its armed struggle.[59][60]
The Wikipedia article suggests that regional diplomacy played a part in the cessation in Chinese aid to regional Communist guerrilla movements. I suspect it was more the fact that the governments in the region had finally shaken off the instability from domestic infighting that always follows any kind of regime change - which independence from European rule represented. Deng decided to cut his proxy armies off simply because they weren't giving him the results he demanded of them, and he lacked the confidence that this state of affairs would ever change. His window of opportunity, the late 40's through the early 70's, had closed, thanks to French and US efforts in Vietnam diverting vast sums of Chinese Communist funding from the rest of the region's insurgencies.
* After the research paper came out, with key details highlighted in the English language South China Morning Post, the man was imprisoned.