The U.S. and the Soviet Union are global superpowers who acquired power after World War II and the Cold War. World Wars took place in the first half of the 20th century whereas the Cold War soon followed. The U.S. was promoting its capitalist agenda in which democracy was considered the best form of political leadership. As a means of globalizing its agenda, the U.S. established a focal point for global economic growth in a financial system. Most banks cannot operate without involving U.S. banks that control the global financial system. The Soviet Union suffered defeat during the Cold War after spending too many national resources on an arms race. Popular philanthropists foresaw economic progress and regress using political phrases and argumentative debates.
Modern happenings are related to politics in most countries. For instance, it is common to find incidences of insecurity whenever an electioneering period ends in a democratic country. People communicate messages of politics differently. George Orwell notes that politics occupy a special category of the English language. Most politicians engage in discussions and meetings which persuade the thinking patterns of people in the public. For instance, some politicians use humanitarian support to win the trust of the people. This is evident in the current Venezuelan crisis where an opposition leader has won public support by facilitating humanitarian aid. Aside from democratic politics in a country, it is also common to find the transformation of ideologies among stakeholders of a company. Most stakeholders of a company are involved in organizational politics which are deliberated during an Annual General Meeting. Negative organizational politics lead to industrial strikes where employees demand the resignation of an incompetent manager or supervisor.
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia (Orwell 1000).”
Vietnam is a Third World country with one of the latest military violence alongside Afghanistan and Syria. The U.S. government is tasked with ensuring global peace. Americans use foreign policies to shape their economic, political and social interests in different regions in the world. Vietnam was a great threat to democracy and the U.S. had to respond to the global issue. Americans claim that Vietnam was responsible for low poverty levels and many incidences of regime oppression. The invasion of Vietnam ensured that the U.S. restored democracy in a highly insecure region in the world. The Vietnamese people needed a starting point of developing their economy. As a means of achieving economic development, Vietnamese leaders had to shape their language when seeking help from western countries. All public speeches of Vietnamese leaders had to avoid terminologies related to communism. Ideologies framed using communist strategies would turn down requests from Vietnamese leaders.
“Since this document was intended as a declaration of Vietnamese nationalism, delivered in Vietnamese to the Vietnamese people, one is struck by the use of ideological language from both the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. What other signs do you see that Ho Chi Minh may have been interested in attracting the favor of the U.S. or French Audience? What purpose would such a strategy serve? ” (Webber 7)
Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union had different strategies of following up on capitalist and communist agendas across the globe. The Soviet Union depended on primary sources on the ground as a means of accounting for every political act in communist-governed regions. Lansdale’s quotations around the “cold war” were ironical and paradoxical in different ways. For instance, the term “cold” did not reflect the actual situation on the ground. American forces used military force which was loud and destructive. Capitalist and communist armies have imminent differences as evidenced in the case of Vietnam.
“What do you make of Lansdale’s quotation marks around “cold war”? What does the Lansdale mean by the “the Geneva Agreements… imposed restrictive rules on official Americans”? Notice how Lansdale uses terms such as Vietminh and Vietnamese, the “government,” and security forces.” How might others use these terms? What do you think of Lansdale’s praise of American reporters for giving “the U.S. objective accounts of events in Vietnam”? How does Lansdale describe the differences between the Viet Minh and the “Vietnamese national army”? What conclusions does he draw from the differences between those two armies? What different conclusions could one draw?” (Zhai 98)
The Cold War and the Third World military events had long-term impacts on modern international politics. The Cold War led to the development of nuclear weapons with different capacities of mass destruction. Testing of nuclear weapons in the ocean depicts the extent of damage when using nuclear weapons. The impacts of the Cold War are felt today in the Middle East where nuclear weapons are used to destroy premises of fighting factions. The U.S. displayed its military might in Vietnam towards the end of the Cold War. Third World citizens have suffered consequences of both World Wars and the Cold War. For instance, the U.S. has the ability to cripple a country’s financial system using strict economic sanctions.
Works Cited
Orwell, George. “Politics and the English language.” Concepts in composition: theory and practice in the teaching of writing(2015): 998-1037.
Webber, Jeffery R. “Resurrection of the Dead, Exaltation of the New Struggles: Marxism, Class Conflict, and Social Movement.” Historical Materialism 27.1 (2019): 5-54.
Zhai, Qiang. “Hanoi’s Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965, written by Pierre Asselin.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations 23.1 (2016): 92-93.