The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (287 page)

 
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From the perspective of the present sovereign state of Vietnam, the Vietnam War began during the Second World War as a ‘national liberation struggle’ against Japanese occupation and only ended in 1975, after a series of victories over different adversaries, with the forcible incorporation of the state of South Vietnam into North Vietnam. The first victory came with the collapse of Japan in 1945. But a new enemy soon appeared in the form of France which sought to reimpose colonial rule on all of Indochina. By the early 1950s, however, the French were starting to wilt in the face of Vietnamese guerrilla resistance and were only with difficulty persuaded by the United States to stay in contention, even though in 1945 the Americans had vainly urged the European colonialists to grant independence to Asian territories occupied by Japan. By the early 1950s, however, the Americans had been converted to the view that the anticolonial forces in Indochina were communist-led and would, if successful, join the Soviet camp in the Cold War. Moreover the Americans came to fear that a ‘domino effect’ would ensue throughout Southeast Asia with incalculable consequences for the Western policy of attempting to ‘contain’ communism.
In 1954 the French indicated their intention to withdraw from Indochina following the symbolic fall to Vietnamese guerrillas of the fortress of Dien Bien Phu . The Americans were fatally divided about their response. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wished to intervene militarily to prevent any concession to communism, even if that meant that the United States had to act alone. President Eisenhower , on the other hand, insisted that such intervention must take a multilateral Western form. This left the British with the decisive voice, which Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden used, in association with the Soviet Union, to convene an international conference held in Geneva. Indochina was divided into four independent sovereign states: North and South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Of these, one, North Vietnam, was handed over to the communist-led insurgents who had defeated the French. Eisenhower disapproved of this arrangement but lacked the resolution to use armed force to prevent it.
In the circumstances few believed that non-communist South Vietnam would survive for long. But its regime, encouraged by Washington, reneged on a promise given at Geneva for all-Vietnam so-called free elections to be held. And gradually successive US Presidents were drawn into taking South Vietnam under their wing as an insurgency, sponsored by North Vietnam, gathered momentum. Economic aid was presently supplemented with a degree of military support. In 1964 President Johnson , apparently reacting to a naval incident between US and North Vietnamese forces, obtained overwhelming support in Congress for the so-called Tonkin Gulf Resolution. This in effect authorized the US administration to render large-scale military assistance to South Vietnam and to wage an undeclared war against North Vietnam
By 1968 it was apparent that the Americans had failed to defeat the insurgency in South Vietnam and that most other countries, even those belonging to NATO, had no enthusiasm for American policies. Facing much opposition at home and mounting evidence of low morale and indiscipline among US troops, Johnson decided not to seek re-election.
His successor, Richard Nixon , was elected in November 1968 on a platform of seeking to wind down the US presence in Vietnam but simultaneously to seek an honourable outcome in negotiations with North Vietnam. These aims proved to be incompatible but, as Nixon could not bring himself to admit this, the upshot was many more years of warfare. Only in 1973 did the North Vietnamese, under pressure from Moscow, consent to a negotiated settlement that enabled Nixon to order a withdrawal of all US forces and somewhat unconvincingly to claim that South Vietnam's independence had been saved. For the Americans, though not for the Vietnamese, the conflict was over.
Two years later South Vietnam's supposed independence disappeared as North Vietnamese forces marched into Saigon. The United States simply acquiesced in the take-over and hence in effect conceded that its longest war had ended in humiliation.
DC 

 
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The essential idea of virtual representation is that one can be represented by a decision-making process without being able to vote for those who make the decisions. That the disenfranchised were virtually represented in Parliament was an argument often put by opponents of franchise reform in England in the period before the ‘Great Reform Act’ of 1832. Twentieth-century social historians like E. P. Thompson have partly conceded this point by claiming that policy had to take some cognizance of the interests of the urban poor because of their capacity to riot, a form of anticipated reactions directly relevant to, for example, the Roman Empire, but also to the United States and United Kingdom in our own times in respect of people who do have the right to vote. Although the idea of virtual representation may seem paternalistic and undemocratic, it is perhaps the breadth of application rather than the concept itself which is offensive to modern susceptibilities: all modern societies accept it, in effect, in respect of children.
LA 

 
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A. O. Hirschman's term to categorize the expression of grievances and demands on leaders by members of a political organization. Where the option of leaving the organization is reduced or eliminated, the threat of
exit
becomes non-credible, and members will be forced to voice their discontent through internal pressure.
SW 

 
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(1694–1778)
French political writer, novelist, dramatist, poet, historian, controversialist, journalist, and popularizer of every kind of knowledge. ‘Voltaire’ is an anagram of ‘Arouet L I’ (le jeune-the pairs I and J, and U and V, each being treated as the same letter). He was immensely successful in his own time, but is now little read apart from his satirical novel
Candide
. He rejected formal religion which he saw as an insult to the supreme being in whom, as a deist, he believed. Voltaire was a relativist who believed that different political systems were appropriate to different societies. He praised the English system for its freedom, but saw a renewed and enlightened absolutism as the best form of rule for France. Unlike
Montesquieu
, he supported the French monarchy against the Church and the aristocracy. For Geneva, however, he thought the existing system of
direct democracy
was best, and tried to influence it in a more egalitarian direction. After failing to guide Frederick II of Prussia as a more enlightened despot, he concentrated on trying to achieve justice in particular cases, and produced his
Treatise on Toleration
in 1763.
CS