Hanoi's Diplomatic Front in Sweden: Communist Propaganda Strategies in the Vietnam War

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Perry Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Leadership ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Propaganda ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Political Freedoms ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Global Cold War

This article offers a new perspective on the Swedish protests against the Vietnam War by placing it in its broader global Cold War context. As a case study on ‘people's diplomacy’ and ‘united front strategy’, it acknowledges the importance of Chinese and Vietnamese influences on the peace campaigns in Sweden and aims, as far as possible, to reconstruct Hanoi's motives, strategies and actions to create and direct Sweden's policy and opinion on the war. With the extremely generous political freedoms granted it by official Sweden, Hanoi was able to find new international allies as well as organise political propaganda manifestations from their Stockholm base. In the end, North Vietnam's version of the war as being about national liberation fought by a people united in their resistance to a foreign, genocidal, aggressor won a large enough share of the opinion in the West to force the American political leadership to give up the fight. Hanoi's Diplomatic Front in Sweden was one of the important battlefields behind that victory

The Anticommunist Việt-Cộng

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phuong Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Resistance Movement

This chapter resurrects the infamous history of shadowy US-based anti-communist insurgent forces modelled on Ronald Reagan’s “freedom fighters.” Often disparaged as the quintessential “bad refugee” that brought the Vietnam War to America, as evidenced by the unsolved murders of several Vietnamese journalists suspected of communist ties, the members of the “resistance movement” were actually being “good refugees” as defined by the secret Cold War policies of the Reagan Administration.

SEIZURE OF KEY OBJECTIVES IN URBAN FIGHTING. AN NASIRIYAH 2003 – TACTICAL CASE STUDY

2011 ◽  
Vol 161 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-18
Author(s):  
Paweł MAKOWIEC
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Initial Phase ◽  
Task Force ◽  
Operation Iraqi Freedom ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
Iraqi Freedom

This paper presents the seizure of two bridges in An Nasiriyah by the troops of Task Force Tarawa (USMC) during the initial phase of Operation “Iraqi Freedom”. This combat is considered to be one of the major urban fights since the fighting in Hue during the Vietnam War (1968). The first part of the article discusses the task and organization of TF Tarawa. The second part presents the struggle of 1st Marine Battalion, which is a classic example of the seizure of key objectives in urban combat.

The Sociology of New Thinking: Elites, Identity Change, and the End of the Cold War

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert English
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Identity Change ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
New Thinking ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Gorbachev Era ◽  
General Secretary

This article recounts the origins of Soviet “new thinking” as a case study of how Soviet intellectuals sought to redefine national identity in response to the West. It demonstrates that new thinking was fundamentally normative, not instrumental, insofar as it was developed in a period (1950s–1960s) when “socialism” was thought to be materially outperforming capitalism. It also demonstrates that new thinking decisively affected Soviet policy in the second half of the 1980s. Putting forth a socialization argument to show how newthinking ideas originated in the post-Stalin period within a community of intellectuals, the article charts the growing influence of these intellectuals through the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, when Gorbachev became general secretary of the Communist Party and empowered many of the new thinkers as advisers, their liberal, Westernizing ideas played an indispensable role in shaping his reforms. The analysis focuses on mechanisms of identity change at two levels: that of the community of reformist intellectuals, and that of the Soviet Union itself. The analysis challenges realist and rationalist views that new thinking was largely instrumental. Until the Gorbachev era, Soviet reformers advocated new-thinking ideas often at the risk of their personal, professional, and institutional interests.

China and the Escalation of the Vietnam War: The First Years of the Johnson Administration

2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mao Lin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Johnson Administration ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
The West ◽  
South Vietnam ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Vietnam War

This article reexamines how concerns about China contributed to the escalation of the Vietnam War during the first years of Lyndon Johnson's administration. Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam to protect America's global credibility as the leader and defender of the non-Communist world in the face of the threat posed by China's “wars of national liberation” strategy in Vietnam. U.S. officials evaluated this threat in the context of the broadening Sino-Soviet split. The concern in Washington was that if Hanoi, a regime openly supported by Beijing as a star in the “wars of national liberation,” were to take over South Vietnam, the Soviet Union might then be forced to discard the “peaceful coexistence” principle and the incipient détente with the West. The escalation in Vietnam was spurred largely by apprehension that a failure to contain China in Vietnam might prompt the Soviet Union to shift back to a hard line toward the West.

Over the Hills and Far Away: Romania's Attempts to Mediate the Start of U.S.-North Vietnamese Negotiations, 1967–1968

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 64-96
Author(s):  
Mircea Munteanu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
San Antonio ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Tet Offensive

Building on earlier articles published in the Journal of Cold War Studies by James G. Hershberg and Zoltán Szoke, this article discusses Romania's involvement in the attempts to negotiate a peaceful conclusion to the Vietnam War before and after the Tet Offensive. The literature concerning the Romanian channel (codenamed Packers) is negligible thus far. Part of the reason is that even though official U.S. documentation on Packers has been available for two decades, relevant Romanian documents were only recently declassified by the archive of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The new evidence from the Romanian archives completes the picture of what was, in effect, the last U.S. chance to begin negotiations over Vietnam without compromising the initial U.S. position. The conversations between Romanian Deputy Foreign Minister George Macovescu and Vietnamese Communist leaders on the eve of the Tet Offensive offer a much more detailed inside look at Hanoi's negotiating position in December 1967–January 1968. The Romanian documents also show the crystallization of the Vietnamese position of March 1968 with regard to opening talks and the San Antonio formula.

Postwar Transformation and New Geopolitics

2019 ◽  
pp. 154-177
Author(s):  
Xiaobing Li
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Military Training ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
Air Defense ◽  
Chinese Military ◽  
The Vietnam War ◽  
North Vietnam

Chapter 7 explains Mao’s Cold War theory, in which a clash between China and the United States would inevitably occur sooner or later. The Chinese military should thus have its priorities and preparations established prior to this inevitable conflict. After the Indochina Settlement was signed at Geneva in July 1954, China continued to provide weaponry, equipment, and military training to North Vietnam. This chapter points out that, in June 1965, China began to send its troops to the Vietnam War. Between 1965 and 1968, China sent twenty-three divisions to Vietnam, including ninety-five regiments, totaling some 320,000 troops. Beginning in 1968, China also sent 110,000 troops to Laos to provide air defense, construct and repair highways, and maintain transportation and communication along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Nevertheless, the Vietnam War seriously tested the limits of the Communist alliance. Rather than improving Sino-Soviet relations, aid to North Vietnam created a new competition as each superpower attempted to control Southeast Asian Communist movements.

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