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The middle of the 20th century, after World War II, saw many regional conflicts resulting from the Cold War between freedom in the United States and communism and the Soviet Union. Eventually freedom prevailed, but there is much history to be learned about how it prevailed. Also, there were many independence movements in the 20th century, some of which had nothing to do with the global struggle between freedom and communism.
But the news is not all good. America triumphed in many ways in the world, but she has many enemies outside of her borders, and quite a few within. In this second-to-last lecture, ask yourself in which direction you think the world is headed: towards a better place, or towards a worse one?
== II. Regional Conflicts during the Cold War ==
=== A. Vietnam ===
Americans feared a “domino effect” of communism, for good reason. Imagine a row of dominoes, and what happens when one falls into another, and then into another, and so oneon. Each falling domino can knock over the one next to it. Americans starting with President Dwight Eisenhower feared that effect when communism took over a nation: all nearby nations could next fall to the same communism.
Southeast Asia has a large population, and after World War II the region was vulnerable to a spread of communism from the Soviet Union and China. An independence movement beginning in the 1930s caused the French to leave, and Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist who received aid from the communists. The French imposed a death sentence on Ho Chi Minh, but he fled to avoid it. When he returned in 1941, he founded “Vietminh”, with the name reflecting that he intended to rule as a dictator. Japan interrupted his plan by taking control of the region during World War II, but in 1945 the Vietminh defeated the Japanese. That demonstrated how tough the Vietnamese fighters were, as not even China could beat the Japanese. Ho Chi Minh then declared the independence of a new Democratic Republic of Vietnam, a huge communist country that has 84 million people today.
