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Articles like these are well-intentioned, but it's part of a quite ignorant and manipulative trend. It makes one believe Capitalism means Coca-Cola, Microsoft and other corporations taking over the world, corrupting local governments and destroying local businesses. At its best, this is a form of 'Crony Capitalism', but far from what Capitalism genuinely is.
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I think what he meant was, had South Vietnam won, it would have become a second South Korea.
What are you talking about? There was no "South Vietnam"... There was Vietnam and there were places the invading forces were occupying.
Framing the Vietnam war as a communist struggle against Western invaders is naive and incorrect. South Vietnam was governed by a nationalist but anti-communist government that sought aid from the US and others, while North Vietnam was a communist government that was aided by the USSR and China.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Vietnam First google hit.
It existed in the sense that the Confederate States of America existed. A bunch of politicians unhappy about the countries government went into rebellion, coincidentally in the south, and then the fireworks began. But as a cultural concept, neither the CSA nor South Vietnam existed before their respective political rebellions aka they weren't "real countries". And after the rebellion was crushed they don't exist anym…
As you can see, most of these divisions were short-lived and that idea that Vietnam was one unified country for a long period of time before being arbitrarily split by warring politicians is not correct.
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Agreed, the piece has a very distinct bias, and it's sad to see what Vietnam has become, especially considering what it could have been had history gone a little differently (South Korea is a reasonably analogous case).
It is? When was South Korea under commercial embargo? I agree that the piece is extremely biased, but it's pretty clear that the US were about as keen on helping post-war Vietnam developing its economy as they have been with Cuba.
It's well on it's way to becoming South Korea.
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Crony capitalism? How many "genuinely capitalistic" corporations show moral qualms when it comes to exploiting (or even engineering) weak regulatory frameworks in under-developed areas and engaging in the time-honored tradition of buying local officials?
I'm not sure there'd have many corporations and, if so, buying local officials would be useless, as they'd have limited power in the first place.