Is history repeating itself with Trump WHO move?

Last week I watched the 2017 ten-part series, “The Vietnam War”, by Ken Burns, an epic documentary on the murky US embroilment in South East Asia in the 1960s.

The narrative starts with Ho Chi Minh, a man whose single-minded obsession with an independent Vietnam was deemed too nationalistic by his fellow Marxist exiles.

Ho, formerly a pastry chef in a Boston hotel, was neither remotely anti-American in the early days. During World War II, his fighters, the Viet Minh, were allied with the United States (US) against the Japanese invaders and the collaborationist French running the colonial government in Vietnam.

After the war, the colonial administration was ended and French Indochina was divided into three countries; Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Vietnam was further divided into North and South administrative regions at the Demilitarised Zone, roughly along the 17th parallel north pending elections in 1956. A 300-day period of free movement was permitted during which, almost a million northerners, mostly Catholics, moved south, fearing persecution by the communists. This migration was largely aided by the US military through Operation Passage to Freedom.

The partition of Vietnam by the Geneva Accords was not intended to be permanent and stipulated that Vietnam would be reunited after elections. However, in 1955, the prime minister of southern Vietnam, Ngon Dinh Diem, toppled Bao Dai, in a fraudulent referendum and declared himself the president of the Republic of Vietnam. From that point the internationally recognised State of Vietnam ceased to exist and was replaced by the Republic of Vietnam in the south supported by the US, France, Laos, Taiwan and Thailand; and Ho Chi Minh’s Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the north supported by the Soviet Union, Sweden, Khmer Rouge and China.

By this time, the US was obsessed with the idea that one south east Asian country after another might fall to communism; the so-called domino effect, unless a line was drawn in the sand.

According to one former Pentagon official, the US regarded Vietnam as “a piece on a chessboard, not a place with a cultural history that we would have an impossible task of changing”.

Particular attention is given to the Vietnamese perspective, with a vivid portrayal of the rogues who clung onto power with the support of the US after the Viet Cong retreated above the 17th parallel, transforming a struggle for independence into a civil war.

The series goes on to portray in great detail the way in which the war was mishandled by the Americans, supported by testimonials of servicemen, journalists and intelligence personnel. On many occasions President Lyndon Johnson was advised that despite America’s military might, this was a war they could not win against the guerilla tactics and the cultural history of the enemy. But Johnson was largely following the path of his predecessors Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy.

At the peak of the war in 1968, Johnson had committed 548,000 troops in Vietnam and had already lost 30,000 there. Despite his approval ratings going down from 70 percent in 1965 to 40percent in 1967 and growing anti-war sentiment at home and abroad, Johnson continued to deploy more resources in Vietnam. It is estimated that as many as 2 million Vietnamese civilians on both sides died in the course of the war and 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. Johnson and his predecessors could not stand to see South Vietnam conquered by communist forces, whatever the cost. Of course, the war kept the American war industry well oiled. In the end, the US left South Vietnam in disgrace in 1975 following the fall of Saigon.

In the book, “The Ugly American”, Burdick and Lederer describe the rampant arrogance and ineptitude of the American diplomatic corps. They criticized American envoys for their arrogance, unwillingness to learn their new environs, their insistence on knowing what was best for locals without ever speaking a word to them and busying themselves with galas or entertaining American and other officials on visits.In more recent times, last October, a group of Southern Korean students climbed over a wall into the grounds of the American ambassador’s residence in Seoul to protest against United States troops’ presence in the country. Later in December, protesters destroyed portraits of the ambassador during a demonstration outside the US Embassy as they chanted, “Harris out! We are not a US colony! We are not an ATM machine!”

This week, President Donald Trump, in a fit of rage, declared that he was going to withdraw American funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) confirming that he is need of scapegoats for his administration’s much delayed and fumbled response to the coronavirus pandemic in America. He went on a tirade against WHO and its chief executive, Ethiopian, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accusing him of communist leanings.

While admitting that WHO has not been perfect in its response to the pandemic, for Trump to withdraw funding to WHO at any time, let alone during a pandemic is morally thoughtless and in itself a human rights abuse.

Over time, the US has arrogated itself the role of “world policeman” because of its military and economic powers but the privilege also comes with the responsibility of being “world nurse”. It is not lost on us that 2021 is an election year in America, but on the world stage Trump’s scapegoating will only be seen as yet another step in accelerating the US abdication of global leadership.