To take on the Vietnam points: I recommend you read the Pentagon papers (hardly a lefty account) - the distinct sensation you get was that the war was unwinnable, for the simple reason that they did not have the people on their side.
The South was not a cute democracy, it was a brutal, corrupt dictatorship (with whom the US themselves had huge issues). Remember those monks setting themselves on fire? They were protesting the Southern dictatorship - not Ho Chi Minh.
It seems to me the "it would have been better if ..." is a bit moot as it was probably never going to happen. It is also based on an analogy which strikes me as a little simplistic (outcomes for Western backed 3rd World countries have been highly variable, especially in the absence of a communist threat).
One thing that is for sure: Given the outcome, it would have been much better for everyone had the country to have been left to it's own devices from the outset, not starting their post-colonial era with the bitterness and destruction of decades of war.
Finally, Vietnam was aligned with the USSR, not China, with whom they were at war in the late 70's.
The South was not a cute democracy, it was a brutal, corrupt dictatorship (with whom the US themselves had huge issues). Remember those monks setting themselves on fire? They were protesting the Southern dictatorship - not Ho Chi Minh.
It seems to me the "it would have been better if ..." is a bit moot as it was probably never going to happen. It is also based on an analogy which strikes me as a little simplistic (outcomes for Western backed 3rd World countries have been highly variable, especially in the absence of a communist threat).
One thing that is for sure: Given the outcome, it would have been much better for everyone had the country to have been left to it's own devices from the outset, not starting their post-colonial era with the bitterness and destruction of decades of war.
Finally, Vietnam was aligned with the USSR, not China, with whom they were at war in the late 70's.