> ... while there was no national interest in attacking South Vietnam, there very much was an elite interest in suppressing the contagious example of a successful national independence movement in Southeast Asia, as the failure to do so might encourage other countries in the Pacific to “go communist” (i.e., seek independence), which could ultimately have reversed the outcome of WWII in the Pacific had Japan ended up accommodating the officially socialist world instead of Washington.
#EliteInterest #NationalInterest