Activity 1

During the Cold War, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China, waged an ideological struggle through a series of regional conflicts. The conflict that had the deepest affect on the American national psyche was the Vietnam War. With intermittent support from the U. S. S. R. and China, Vietnamese Communists fought, at first, French colonial troops and later U. S. forces supporting the government of South Vietnam. One of principal figures in this struggle was Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese Communist party (the Laodong) who articulated the aims of the movement. Read Program for Communists of Indochina (1930), Vietnamese Declaration of Independence (1945), Manifesto of the Laodong Party (1951), all composed by Ho Chi Minh. According to these documents, what were the aims of the Vietnamese Communists? What did they hope to achieve by fighting Western powers such as France and the U. S.? How did they conceive of their relationship to the major Communist powers of Russia and China? Now consider some U. S. views of the Vietnamese Communists and the war in Vietnam. Read Dwight Eisenhower's Presidential Press Conference from 1954, a television interview given by John F. Kennedy in 1963, and a State Department document North Vietnamese aggression released in 1965. What did American officials believe were the aims of the Vietnamese Communists? What role did they see the Vietnam struggle playing in larger world events? How did that conception differ from the Vietnamese Communists' own view of their role in the world?

Activity 2

As you have read, decolonization was one of the most important events to unfold after World War II. One of the most important figures of this movement was Jawaharlal Nehru, an associate of Mohandes Gandhi who also served as the first prime minister of decolonized India. Read this excerpt from Nehru's essay, Marxism, Capitalism, and Non-Alignment (1941). Next, consider the Speech at the Opening of the Bandung Conference (1955) by President Sukarno of Indonesia, and some remarks on Afro-Asian Solidarity (1957) by Anwar el Sadat, former president of Egypt. How did these leaders envision the future of their nations after colonial rule? What role did they see their countries playing in the world? Why do you think so many postcolonial nations adopted, explicitly or implicitly, a policy of non-alignment?