By John Ross
In 1975 the U.S. was defeated in the Vietnam war, but only 16 years later the U.S. achieved its greatest victory since World War II in the destruction of the USSR in 1991. Trump is attempting to rerun this playbook which took the U.S. from defeat to victory. While details inevitably differ, the script is the same.
In Vietnam, after the 1968 Tet offensive, it was clear, and the U.S. knew, it was going to lose the war. So the U.S. set about trying first to limit the scale of the defeat and then to reverse it. To do this Nixon/Kissinger accurately understood that the combination of the Vietnamese people, the USSR, and China in Vietnam have proved stronger than the U.S. – although at that time the Sino-Soviet split existed both the USSR and China militarily aided North Vietnam. Therefore, it was imperative for the U.S. to attempt split further this combination. This was the purpose of Nixon’s famous 1972 trip to China.
The first stage of limiting the U.S. defeat in Vietnam was the period of “détente”, that is of relaxation of geopolitical tension, to enable the U.S. to regroup its forces. The second stage, at the beginning of the 1980s when the U.S. concluded it had achieved this regroupment, was to launch under Reagan a policy of direct confrontation with and pressure on the USSR – accompanying this by counter-revolutionary wars in the Global South such as the support of jihadist forces in Afghanistan, the Contra-war in Nicaragua, support for puppet forces of South Africa in the civil war in Mozambique, support for the South African invasion of Angola, and support for the ultra-reactionary government of El Salvador during its civil war.
The USSR’s leadership, instead of replying as it should have done by seeking to remake relations with China, under Gorbachev responded to this U.S. offensive by grovelling to the U.S.. Only in 1989, much too late, did Gorbachev visit China – to the potential threat posed by which the U.S. responded by attempting to carry out a “colour revolution” in China (in what is referred to in the West as the Tiananmen Square events). Deng Xiaoping, however, acted to prevent the overthrow of the Chinese state and the installation of a pro-U.S. regime. China then underwent 35 years of the fastest economic growth, and most rapid rising in living standards and elimination of poverty, of any country in world history. But by 1989 Gorbachev had produced chaos in the USSR culminating its final disintegration in 1991.
The U.S. in only 16 years, by working to divide the USSR and China, therefore completely reversed its defeat in Vietnam and emerged triumphant from the Cold War.
This is what Trump also aims to achieve. In the short term the most urgent thing for the U.S. is to make concessions to Russia to try to limit the scale of the aftermath of U.S./NATO defeat in Ukraine, and to try to attract Russia away from its good relations with China. This can then be followed by counter-revolutionary offensives against countries in the Global South – reinforcing Israel, aggression against Iran, potential action against Panama, aggression against Cuba and Venezuela, attempting to bring an end to reformist but independent governments such as Brazil’s and others.
Then, if some distance can be created between Russia and China, and defeats can be imposed on independent and progressive forces in the Global South, the U.S. can turn to a full-scale attack on China.
What Trump intends is totally clear. It is to have illusions in the U.S. to believe that it will settle for being one country among others in its own reactionary version of a multipolar world – which would be a division into geographical blocs between the U.S., China and Russia.
U.S. imperialism, which seeks to create global hegemony, has suffered a defeat in Ukraine. But just as it did after its defeat in Vietnam the U.S. will simply seek to recover its strength and restore its hegemony. It did it in only 16 years after is defeat in Vietnam. Trump and the U.S. are now trying to do the same, using the same playbook, around Ukraine as the U.S. did after Vietnam.
Formidable obstacles confront an attempt to try to repeat U.S. success after its defeat in Vietnam. But there should be complete clarity on what the U.S. is attempting to do.
N.B. Kissinger himself, who was a reactionary but an intelligent one, foresaw the present situation This is from Kissinger’s discussion with Nixon on 4 February 1972, 7 days before Nixon’s first visit to China. “I think, in a historical period, they [China] are more formidable than the Russians. And I think in 20 years your [Nixon’s] successor, if he’s as wise as you, will wind up leaning towards the Russians against the Chinese. For the next 15 years we have to lean towards the Chinese against the Russians.”
This is – precisely what Trump is attempting to do now.