Looking around, standing in the blood. I noticed, I’m in Korea, where heated up the Cold War. The Korea war also called the Forgotten war from 1950 1953. As what I remember, the Korean war was the first shooting war that American involved in after WWII, and it is the time that American troops directly engaged with Communist. The civil war between the two Koreas (north Korea and south Korea) turned into a international conflict.
As a flash lighting shuttered down on me, I found that I’m in the middle of forest and going through the book of history, I knew I am in Vietnam war. When we talk about Vietnam War, we would think about Ho Chi Minh, who is a communist. In understanding of the domino theory, U.S.
saw Vietnam as the other domino that had to be stand up or else fall to communist. U.S. supported the Ngo Dinh Diem as bulwark against communism. As I saw communists lower the body and shuttle in the forest, which is called jungle fight or ground fight, there were so many bombs were dropped by U.
S. with the use of chemical defoliant to get ride of the pesky jungle and also use of napalm, which burn trees, homes, and people. The bright fire caused me uncomfortable. I rubbed my eye, and notice I was with a crowd of people standing under a stage of a presidential campaign. I notice that Nixon promised that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. The “Vietnamization” was the first part of plan, which means that troops will be gradually withdrawn and leave the fights to Vietnamese.
Second part is bombing section and in the process of second part, it destabilized Cambodia and helped the Khmer Rouge to gain power. The war between North and South Vietnam ended in 1975, the year that North finally conquer the South and created a single communist Vietnam. I closed the book and time brought me back.
Walking through the World History of South and East Asia, there’s colonialism and numerous wars occurred. Although the history of colonialism was a disaster for the people of Southeast Asia, colonial history actually gave rise to the birth of many Southeast Asian nation-states. For example, before Westerners arrived, countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Laos, and Singapore did not actually form. In the end, the formation of these national polities and determination of their borders are closely related to the previous colonies’ history. For South East Asia as a whole, the outbreak of World War II had unavoidable impact. Colonialist such as Britain, France, and Holland were defeated by the Japanese army in a short period of time. This destroyed the myth of the colonialists and enabled colonial peoples to realize the spirit of national and national independence.
In fact, after WWII, the British colonists were active in existing Southeast Asia. However, this is not the case in France and Netherlands. Both Vietnam and Indonesia have achieved national independence through the war for years. As earlier I went to the Cold War period, experienced Korean war and Vietnam war, I know the cold war is very important and very bloody time for Vietnam.
But at the end, Vietnam made it to its victory as a communist country. The history of Southeast Asia countries are focused on awareness of national unification and independence, economic growth, issues between race and politics, change in government, and emergence of new leaders with emergence of rebellion and revolution.
