KOSOVO AND VIETNAM

In the first week of April 1999, there were discussions on the possibility of ground forces from the NATO countries to be sent to deal with the Kosovo crisis. Those who oppose the use of ground forces in Serbia warn the United States and its NATO allies that a Yugoslavia re-enactment of the Vietnam War is lying ahead, with American and Allied troops bogged down in a protracted conflict for years.

Such argument is correct in several ways.

Firstly, to fight a war, a nation must be determined in ultimate victory, and economy of forces by the strategy of escalation is not effective. The strategy only help the enemy buy time to prepare for stronger resistance Without that determination, the Allied should not start the offensive as the United Stated shouldn't have involved in Vietnam.

Secondly, to rely solely on fire power even with hi-tech weapons could not win a war against rulers like Ho Chi Minh and his successors, or Milosevic and his generals, who are ready to lose everything, to force their people to suffer every hardship of war, just for the survival of their regime and themselves. Bombs only resolve a little.

Furthermore, the United States could not use unlimited number of cruise missiles, each cost a million dollars. If Milosevic could withstand NATO bombardments for six months, how much the impatient Americans would support the missile attacks that rise the total cost of multi-billion dollars to win the Balkan War?

There are similarities between the Vietnam War and the Kosovo War. Both were fought to stop the brazen aggressors to preserve international order, and to prevent war from spreading over the region. Both looked like civilian wars, but they have actually been aggressive wars that threatened peace in the regions.

Many writers and scholars reject the domino theory after the Vietnam War. But if they had been in Vietnam after April 30, 1975, they would have heard hundreds of high ranking Vietnamese Communist officers telling them how the North Vietnamese Army had been prepared to invade Thailand and farther if they had conquered South Vietnam in 1965.

Situation in Kosovo is somewhat alike. Though the consequences of the Kosovo War could be less important but it still in the interests of the Americans to intervene in the crisis in Kosovo as in Vietnam 34 years ago.

The argument, however is not correct in some other aspects.

Though Milosevic is somehow a dictator, his regime is not so oppressive and brutal as the North Vietnamese Communism. Yugoslavians still enjoy some freedom, much more than under the Vietnamese Communist regime. Hanoi propaganda efforts were extremely much stronger than that of the today's Belgrade.

The most important is that Milosevic gets supports from very limited sources, especially military supplies. North Vietnamese Communist regime was receiving staggering aids of all kinds from its comrades, China, the Soviet Union, all Communist nations and Communist parties all round the world. It has been estimated that the world Communists were giving Hanoi their greatest help from propaganda materials (publications including short stories of war in small booklets) to all kinds of weapons.

If there were studies on the aids of the Soviet bloc and Red China to North Vietnam from 1961 to 1975 based on the losses of military equipment on the Communist side, it would be undeniable that the total value of material assistance from the world Communists could amount to at least many tens of billion dollars, probably a little less than what Washington spent in Vietnam, including military aid to the South Vietnam armed forces. Milosevic does not have such supports.

In the Vietnam War, Hanoi gained considerable support from Western media. Insufficient and one-sided reports on TV, radios, news publications were dealing deadly blows to the morale of American and South Vietnamese troops. Now that Western media has learned expensive and bloody experiences from Vietnam and thanks to modern communications technique, Milosevic fails to gain advantages that Hanoi enjoyed in the 1960s.

Moreover, Yugoslavia has lesser human resources than North Vietnam, and Milosevic certainly dares not waste his million citizens' lives for victories as did Ho Chi Minh and his subordinates.

In another aspect, Milosevic regime is not supported by a Communist party that used terrorism as a major war instrument and brutal control measures to conduct guerrilla warfare.

Milosevic might be defeated but the United States and its allies would have to pay a very high prices and much time.

At last, the shameful defeat in Vietnam will be forever a subject for friends or foes to humiliate the United States. And the foes would be poking at that incurable smarting blister until Washington could prove that although it made great mistakes in conducting the Vietnam War, the American soldiers were fighting for a right cause in Vietnam. The best way to wash out the insult is supporting the Vietnamese in Vietnam and abroad to peacefully dissolve the Communist regime and restore democracy and freedom for Vietnam.

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