Fiasco II

I disagree that all aspects of war amount to fiascos. However, there are those who believe the opposite. I guess it depends on what you mean by fiasco. One thing is clear, war is horrible.

The dictionary describes fiasco as a "complete failure". But what is complete failure in war? A war wouldn't be a complete failure if one side defeats an enemy. For instance, Vietnam was a complete failure for the United States but not for the North Vietnamese who were successful in defeating the United States in South Vietnam, reuniting the country. However, in the long run, was the war in Vietnam really a complete failure for the United States? Today America and Vietnam are at peace with each other. Today Vietnam is one of America's trading partners. Where once North Vietnam remained isolated from the rest of the world, the war made it an engaging and active member of the world community. American corporations are now investing heavily in Vietnam, especially in the high-tech industry. American's are traveling to Vietnam. Though Vietnam won the war, it now resembles America more than America resembles it. Vietnam is developing a capitalist economy. Of course, there is a real fiasco involved, that this war took so many American and Vietnamese lives to end and finally bring peace between them, and make them partners in globalization.

War is diplomacy by other means. Could diplomacy have prevented North Vietnam from invading South Vietnam? Probably not. The North was determined to take the South by force and the South was determined to remain free. Antiwar people think America should have stayed out of the conflict and let the warring parties settle their own dispute. However, America was fearful of the South's defeat because of the 'domino effect' that would cause, the theory being that the invasion of South, a non communist country, by the North, a communist country, would lead to other Asian countries falling to communism. America felt democracy was threatened by such a situation, hence it getting involved, to stop the spread of communism. America's involvement in Vietnam was really a fiasco because America kept compounding its failures there, through incompetence, lack of transparency, corruption and its deceit about the war's siccess. If it acted as a peace keeper between the two instead, America's role may not have been such a fiasco.

Somebody said that WW2 was a fiasco because of the Versailles Treaty. The Versailles Treaty was suppose to have ended WW1. Instead, the Treaty really didn't resolve much but made things worse, which in turn led to WW2. The perceived wisdom is that WW2 was an extension of WW1 because WW1 never really ended. However, it is hard for me to understand how or why that made WW2 a fiasco. Agreed, WW2 was a byproduct of the unfinished fiasco of WW1. However, the real fiasco lies in a fact, that the warring parties of WW1 didn't sign an unconditional surrender treaty, only an armistice. One was signed after WW2, clearly ending hostilities. Also, the victors of WW1 did not attempt to rehabilitate the losers like they did after WW2. Since unconditional surrender treaties were signed ending WW2 and rehabilitation was implemented, I believe that WW2 was chiefly a success, not a fiasco as some believe. The world has not had a world war since.

However, just to puncture my argument a bit, WW2 led to another war, the Cold War. Because of that some think that makes WW2 a fiasco because it also left many conflicts unresolved, such as Korea, Vietnam and the growing conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, it was a cold war that followed, not a hot one, like the other two wars. It was a cold war because during its duration the majority of the world lived in relative peace, in comparison to the experiences of WW1 and WW2. The Cold War managed to contained the outbreak of a third world war, which was real possibly due to the looming conflict between East and West. The lessons learned in WW2 made the Cold War 'cold', not 'hot'. The devastation and destruction caused in WW2 with conventional weapons and the dropping of the atomic bombs in Japan brought a realization to the world, that such wars should never happen again. Hence the Cold War. A 'hot' third world war would probably have meant total annihilation. I consider that a partial success, not a fiasco, because lessons were learned from the past, that engaging in total war was no longer an option.

The main reason why one would consider war a fiasco is because of the lives lost and the destruction caused. I understand that. It is such a waste. However, humankind has always been determined to fight. We have had to learn otherwise. Past wars have shown us the futility of war in resolving our differences. We've had to learn the hard way, that wars are futile. I think slowly we have gottten the point; the majority have. We created the United Nations after WW2 in order to prevent future wars, an institution that was tried after WW1 as the League of Nations but failed. Some consider the U.N. a fiasco and a complete failure. I disagree. Yes, the U.N. is dysfunctional. But it reflects the dysfunctionality of its members. At least it has managed to contain this dysfunctionality so that it hasn't manifested itself into a real fiasco, like a WW3, which would truly be a fiasco and a total failure.