Could US Senator John McCain find North Vietnam on a map before or during the period he spent 5 years as a POW in Hanoi? Could you? The answer is no.
North Vietnam only existed in Public Law 86-90. Some of the other countries we also recognize that are enshrined in the law did not exist concretely until 1991.[tag]
The Vietnam War and Ukrainian war are intrinsically and inseparably tied together by Public Law 86-90. Like Cossackia (the generic western geo-political term recognizing Donbas' legitimacy), the problem with North Vietnam is it never existed! Even Wikipedia shallowly recognizes this. " The Democratic Republic of Vietnam ( DRV ; Vietnamese : Via' »"¡t Nam D- n cha' » § Ca' » „ ng hà ²a ), [a] generally known as North Vietnam..."
When we recognize North Vietnam as a country or North Vietnamese as the army we fought in Vietnam, we have no choice but to recognize "Cossackia" and the republics in Donbass. By extension, we must also recognize the right of the other regions (republics) inside Ukraine to break away as they were promised by the Ukrainian Nationalists.
Following up on the Public Law 86-90 story at www.globalresearch.ca entitled "US Congress and President Obama Officially Recognize Donbas' Freedom!" Sputnik International interviewed Frank Costigliola, University of Connecticut Professor of History and editor of the Kennan Diaries.
The point of the interview was to ascertain the validity of the US recognizing Donbass on the basis of "Cossackia" according to the Captive Nations Proclamation of 1959.
During the interview professor Costigliola stated
"The 1959 US Captive Nations Resolution was meant to antagonize the Soviet Union and has no bearing on United States policy", editor of the diaries of the leading Cold War US diplomat George Kennan, Frank Costigliola, told Sputnik...He noted that the resolution does not reach the significance of a formal recognition of the listed countries by the State Department. A decision to recognize the People's Republics of Donetsk and Lughansk "is a huge, huge step beyond the passage of this Captive Nations Resolution," Costigliola argued. Moreover, the State Department could not have acted on the Captive Nations Resolution..."
Professor Costigliola has gone even further in a NY Times editorial giving president Obama sound foreign policy advice from the perspective of George Kennan. It's worth the read. But is he correct to say that the Captive Nations Act has no impact on foreign policy?
If Public Law 86-90 has never had an effect on foreign policy, I am in respectful agreement with the professor. If Public Law 86-90 has been acted on, I am in respectful agreement with the professor that it should never have been able to happen. The law as Stepan Bandera had it written should not have been enacted.
But if it did happen, the genie is out of the bottle and I'm sure any court will agree that once the precedent has been set, the law is applicable on all counts.
The problem with the Sputnik interview is it started with the presumption that the law was never acted upon and Donbass would be setting a precedent. I respectfully request that professor Costigliola review the abridged history found in this article that he could not have known and comment based on what would have been the correct question:
If precedent had been set as early as the Vietnam War and can be shown in State Department policy affirmations, wouldn't the same law apply to Donbass?
In his New York Times editorial, Costigliola notes " In 1946-47, Mr. Kennan laid out his containment policy, intending to limit its application to the major power centers of the world, particularly Western Europe and Japan. He grew horrified as containment exploded into a global venture miring the United States in areas of marginal strategic importance, such as Vietnam."
Vietnam the pre-History of the war
In this short case study of the Vietnam War, the professor's assumptions are proven wrong. Dead wrong, to the tune of 58,220 dead American soldiers. It shows that Law 86-90 has unquestionable authority, or at least enough for Americans to die for.
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