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Despite Trillions Spent, the US Military Hasn't Won a Real War Since 1945 (www.commondreams.org)

submitted 2 years ago by ThisMachineKillsFascists@hexbear.net to c/news@hexbear.net

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[-] GucciMane@hexbear.net 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Well the PAVN did win the war, but Vietnam was forced to abandon revolutionary society and enter the capitalist dominated world economy of privatization, free trade, debt, commodity/labor export, and resource extraction, so American capitalism did win in the end even if they lost the war. Not to mention the billions made for defense contractors.

Vietnam is a part of 15 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). This is opening markets like South Korea where, more than seven years after implementing the VKFTA, Vietnam has become the third largest mango supply market for S. Korea, reaching 1.7 thousand tons. This is equal to US$7.4 million.

As a result of the EVFTA that is now in place, Vietnam has also become the largest source of cashew nuts for the EU. In the first 10 months of 2022, Vietnam exported 98.97 thousand tons of cashews to European markets, worth US$699 million. This represents an increase of 9.8 percent over the same period in 2021.

[…] There are, however, a number of government incentives supporting the agricultural sector, as well as FTAs, that, though a challenge in many ways, are also opening up foreign markets to Vietnamese agricultural products.

Src: https://www.vietnam-briefing.com/news/vietnam-agricultural-products.html/

While foreign companies are not allowed to directly own land in Vietnam (they must pay rent) it seems there’s a lot of foreign participation in the agricultural center (cited from the same article):

Three firms that have been relatively successful in the Vietnamese market are Cargill, Olam, and the Louis Dreyfus Company

Now as expected these “free trade” agreements and foreign corps contribute to the exploitation of workers, including children:

The last official survey to assess child labour in Vietnam was undertaken in 2018 with the Second National Child Labour Survey. The survey found that more than 1 million children aged between 5-17 were engaged in child labour and it is estimated that over 50 percent of those children were working in the agricultural, forestry, and fishery sectors

[…] As part of the assessment, we spoke to a range of people involved in the pepper harvest and visited the plantations first-hand. During this trip we met Y.D.A, an 11-year-old boy from an ethnic minority group who was working on the plantations with his parents and had never been to school. In many ways, Y.D.A. became a symbol of the unknown numbers of children in rural Vietnam who too were out of school due to poverty, working and making “invisible” contributions to an international company’s supply chain.

src: https://www.childrights-business.org/impact/child-labour-in-vietnam-s-agriculture-sector-the-story-of-one-boy-in-vietnam-the-fate-of-millions-of-children-worldwide.html

So yeah let’s stop pretending the world situation is still 1976, vietnam is a still imperialised country with a long way to go in the process of national soverignty, anti imperialism, workers’ rights, education, and socialism.

E; Just had a further thought that the Vietnamese victory in their wars of liberation is more comparable to the British leaving India than say, the establishment of USSR

[-] sharedburdens@hexbear.net 10 points 2 years ago

I was mostly making a reference to a fish called wanda where they get into arguing about that with the gayroller-2000 in the background

Totally agree otherwise though, and it really puts the lie to the entire domino theory in hindsight.

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023

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