All Hail ... Oh Conquering Russian Hero!
<<"But those changes [in Vietnam] were not inevitable and would not necessarily have occurred had Mikhail Gorbachev not ascended to power in Moscow, and had the Soviet Union and its empire not collapsed.">>
This fact amazes me to this day. I was convinced after the fall of Saigon, and Indochina in general, and even more convinced after the communist conquests of former Portuguese Africa and the Iran hostage crisis that the United States was finished as the leading world power. We--and the West in general, had become morally dissolute, torn by dissent, economically in turmoil, short on natural resoures like petroleum, and suffering a myriad of social ills (rampant drug abuse, family breakdown and sexual promiscuity, racial tension etc.). Meanwhile the Soviet Union and its allies were going from strength to strength, triumph to triumph, and the West was impotent to stop this--even, it seemed, when Ronald Reagan, Thatcher and other center-right governments came to power in the West after 1979. I used to check the Encyclopedia Brittanica yearbook every year in the late 70s and 80s, and the section entitled "Defense" was scary. You'd see figures like 21 active army/marine divisions for the USA, 190 (yes!) active divisions for the USSR, 10,000-15,000 tanks for the USA, 55,000 for the USSR, etc. And yet the amoral, dissolute, seemingly weak and ineffectual West won the Cold War. I suspect historians will be scratching their heads over this for centuries. As Mr. Spock might say: "It is not logical."