Media In The Vietnam War

Media In The Vietnam War Throughout Americas history, the United States has won the majority of all of its major conflicts. Up until the Vietnam War, America was seen as invincible and unbeatable. At the time, television and personal audio recorders were becoming more mainstream. News by television was growing for the first time, people were turning to TV rather than the newspaper or radio to learn about current events.  [1]  The news was uncensored, and citizens, for the first time, were able to view the reality of war. Although the Vietnam War initially had the publics full support, uncensored anti-war news coverage on the newly developed commercial television influenced popular sources of entertainment, like music artists, which in turn led people to protest the war; the protests, combined with the major losses and defeats in the conflict, prompted the government to withdraw from Vietnam. The Vietnam War was a Cold War conflict that officially started on the first of November, 1955. President Lyndon B. Johnson took full advantage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which occurred in 1964; the resolution allowed the President to use conventional military power in south Asia without the approval of Congress. President Johnson used this incident as a reason to escalate troop levels in Vietnam, thus escalating the conflict.  [2]  The escalated conflict, which turned into a full-scale war, was fought between North Vietnam and its Communist allies and South Vietnam supported by anti-communist nations. The larger strategy at hand was the containment of communism. Started as a Russian revolution, the Soviets had started spreading Communism throughout the world. Although the war technically started in 1955, it wasnt until the early 1960s that US troop levels began to grow rapidly.  [3]  In 1968, the US launched the infamous Tet Offensive, an operation in which there were many casualties on both sides.  [4]  The Tet Offensive marked the period in which approval for the war started to rapidly decline which would later cause the U.S, five years later to start a peace process in which the US would eventually withdraw from Vietnam.  [5]  This peace processes ended two years later in 1975 with the capture of Saigon by North Vietnamese forces.  [6]   Although veterans sharing their experiences of war happened in any previous war, the Vietnam War was exposed much more through new technology such as television, and personal audio recorders. At the same time the Vietnam War was starting, citizens started switching where they would get their news information. A series of surveys conducted by the Roper Organization for the Television Information Office from 1964 until 1972 demonstrates the growing power of television; multiple answers allowed, respondents were asked from which medium they got most of their news, 58 percent said television; 56 percent, newspapers; 26 percent, radio; and 8 percent, magazines.  [7]  By 1972, 64 percent said television while the number of respondents who primarily relied on newspapers dropped to 50 percent.  [8]  TV was more attention-grabbing than newspapers and radio the visual element allowed user to feel as if they were in the middle of the intense battles and death. Additionally, intense vis uals helped explain the complex nature of war to Americans who might not understand the militarys technical language. Furthermore, anchors, who hosted the news programs quickly became famous in fact, Walter Croncrite, a major anchor at the time was often cited as the most trusted man in America.  [9]  This trust in the media led people to quickly believe their word as fact, clearly spreading the medias bias throughout Americas culture. When footage of the Tet Offensive started coming out in early 1968, the dominant view that the war was just was quickly flip-flopped. The media started showing more anti-war footage, with a focus on critics of the Johnson administration.  [10]  Most importantly, the footage of the My Lai massacre, where hundreds of Vietnamese were killed in cold blood by Americans, acted as a main example of why peace needed to be established.  [11]  Later on, the media focused on domestic anti-war movements, which further exemplified how the Vietnam War was unjust. Not only were Americans seeing the war in a new way, they were also seeing more casualties coming back from the front. All the way from the beginning of the war to the end, the casualty rates were rising at a constant rate. By 1968, there was an average of 1200 men who died per month in Vietnam.  [12]  Correlating with the increase in deaths at the front, more and more American soldiers were sent to Vietnam, and by 1968 over half a million troops were stationed there.  [13]  At the same time, naturally, the approval rating for then-President Lyndon B. Johnson plummeted to an all time low even as low as 35% during the Tet Offensive.  [14]  Because American approval for Johnson went steadily lower over time, it can be inferred that it was because of his actions during his time as president. Since there were so many casualties and little progress was being made in Vietnam, most people thought the war was unwinnable, which was later confirmed in 1968 by the top news anchor o f the time, Walter Cronkite.  [15]  This notion that the war was unwinnable furthered the American publics cause to end the war and bring the remaining soldiers home. This general feeling of an American demise in Vietnam eventually spread to popular entertainment and popular culture. Although the media generally spread the anti-war message, music artists picked up its caused and spread the message of peace to the younger generation. Artists such as Edwin Starr, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were incredibly popular in the 1960s and early 1970s. Much of their work consisted of anti-Saigon lyrics which displayed the harsh realities of war, and explaining why our soldiers should come home. These songs and artists sparked the counter culture of the time generally knows as hippies. These peace loving people carried out the messages of these artists peace, love and respect; their main goal was the end the Vietnam War and to create peace.  [16]  This counter-culture spread rapidly, especially among young people. Because of its amazing popularity, the media covered most of youth rallies and protests, such as draft card burnings and Human-Be-Ins.  [17]  This excessive media attention spread the counter-culture even further, spreading its ideas across the Unite d States. Because more people were being aware of these acts of civil disobedience, more people were tempted to follow the crowd. As more people got caught up in the movement the number of people at the protests rose, from as little as 700 participants in 1964 to 500,000 total in 1967.  [18]  This primarily shows how an anti-war bias spread by the media found its way into popular culture, which then caused many citizens to protest the war. Even those who did not go out and protest, which was the majority of the country, regarded the Vietnam War as a mistake.  [19]   Throughout the 60s and early 70s time, American citizens were constantly fighting against American involvement in Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated every year to bring American troops back home. The number of people demonstrating kept rising as the approval rating for the war lowered exponentially every year.  [20]  As more people started demonstrating, pop-culture heavyweights, such as boxer Muhammad Ali and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. publicly endorsed peace. Not only did this lead to an increase in media coverage of the issue, but it also lead those who were fans of those public figures to become active in the fight for peace in Vietnam. Civil disobedience was on the rise more than 16 million American citizens dodged the draft by the end of the Vietnam War.  [21]  Also, in 1967, a group of flower power hippies marched on the Pentagon where they were blocked by National Guard troops, and subsequently they put flowers in their gun barrels (Appendix A).  [22]  A photographer, Bernard Norman Boston took a photo of the incident, and it became the runner up for the Pulitzer Prize that year, further broadcasting the strength of the counter-culture movement in the United States. The more media converge there was, the more people decided to join the movement for peace. The media even had a profound effect on the soldiers stationed in Vietnam; some GIs decided to resist the commands of the US army. The army in Vietnam, according to Marine Colonel Robert D. Heinl Jr., a veteran combat commander with over 27 years experience in the Marines, and the author of Soldiers Of The Sea, was on the verge of collapse: By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ Sedition, coupled with disaffection from within the ranks, and externally fomented with an audacity and intensity previously inconceivable, infest the Armed Services  [23]   Not only was the army mutinous, but there were also many fragging incidents that occurred on bases. Fragging, is where there is a bounty placed upon a commanding officer, and that man is to be murdered, and whoever does it gets a monetary reward. These bounties were placed in underground army newspapers which majority of the army read.  [24]  In the year of 1970 alone, there were 209 reported fraggings.  [25]  The people responsible for the fraggings mostly got away with it too, as the armys justice system was quite corrupt: The Armys Judge Advocate Generals Corps estimated that only 10% of fragging attempts resulted in anyone going to trial..  [26]  Although there were those who took action against their superiors, there were also those who ran away. By 1970, the U.S. Army had 65,643 deserters almost four infantry divisions worth of troops.  [27]  In 1966 the desertion rate was 14.7 per thousand, in 1968 it was 26.2 per thousand, and by 1970 it had risen to 52.3 per thousand; absence without leave was so common that by the height of the war one GI went AWOL every three minutes.  [28]  From January of 67 to January of 72 a total of 354,112 GIs left their posts without permission, and at the time of the signing of the peace accords 98,324 were still missing.  [29]  The army also resisted politically, releasing underground news papers to solders. By 1972 around 300 anti-war and anti-military newspapers, with titles like Harass the Brass, All Hands Abandon Ship and Star Spangled Bummer had been published by enlisted men.  [30]  Hundreds of GIs created these papers, but their influence was far wider with thousands more who helped distribute them, and tens of thousands of readers.  [31]  They were also those determined to stop the war based on the act of sabotage; in June of 1972 the USS Ranger was apparently disabled by sabotage, and it had to return to its home base for repairs.  [32]  A movement that embodied this ideology wa s SOS Stop Our Ship. They used petitions to try and get their superiors to ground naval operations.  [33]  Even the troops, who may have had a lack of media knowledge, knew the war was wrong, and they decided to do something about it. They did all of this not only because they were saving themselves from being killed unnecessarily, but also because they knew the war which they were fighting was either not worth the fight or it was unjust. The media was the most decisive factor that drove the United States to end the war. Indirectly, they caused the public to accept that the war was unwinnable and that it would keep taking up the time and resources of the U.S. By conveying their message to popular culture artists, the media was able to target a larger audience, which was also coincidentally more active group socially. These people led protests which were both seen and heard by the national government. The media instigated these protests, displaying primarily anti-war protests on the daily news. Not only was the war being lost overseas, a battle against the government was being fought at home to end the war. Because of the constant pressure from Americas citizens and the North Vietnamese Army, the U.S decided to withdraw from Vietnam, letting Saigon fall into enemy hands, but at the same time, sparing many American lives. Although the media may have ended up tarnishing the honor of the United States with its first major loss since its creation, it stopped a cycle that would have ended up killing more American soldiers. Without the media causing an end to the war in Vietnam, the US would have been in a much worse place than it is today. Word Count: 2101

Old and Young Frankenstein Essay -- Frankenstein essays

Old and Young Frankenstein      Ã‚   Something that interested me greatly about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the treatment that the creature received from Frankenstein and the other people around him. I often wonder how things would have turned out had he been treated with a little bit of humanism and compassion, especially by his creator. What if Frankenstein had taken the responsibility as the creature's parent and created him with a little humanism and kindness? Would the creature have vowed such revenge and killed everyone Victor cared about? I'm going to use the film Young Frankenstein from 1974 to show what happened when the creature, created this time by Victor's grandson, Frederick, received better treatment. Although the film is meant as a parody of all the films based on the novel, underlying this humor are more serious points, one of which is the concern with the way the creature is considered.    The first step is to make a comparison between the film and the novel, and to look at the 1931 film version, since the humor in Young Frankenstein seems to be greatly parodying that film. The Frankenstein in this film version is Frederick, the grandson of Victor, who is a lecturer on neurosurgeons in New York. He receives news of his grandfather's will, and he goes off to Transylvania to claim his ancestral estate, there finding the plans of his grandfather's for the construction of a creature. The plot is very loosely based on Shelley's Frankenstein as a model, but it's continued into the twentieth century with a different generation. Of course, when looking at the novel, it seems quite impossible that Victor could possibly have had a ... ...ral times, at the risk of his own life, as most parent would do for their children. Victor from Shelley's novel never even considered the creature a fellow being and showed no responsibility whatsoever to the creature. This creature felt unloved by his father, and plotted revenge on Victor, taking his family away, a family the creature could never experience. This comparison shows how if Victor had once considered the feelings of the creature, everything could have turned out so much differently.    Works Cited Alpert, Hollis. "Comedy: The New King." Saturday Review World 2 Nov. 1974: 52- 3. "Blazing Brooks." Show Business and TV. Time 13 Jan. 1975: 56. Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. New York: Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press, 1992. Young Frankenstein. Dir. Mel Brooks. 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, 1974      

Criticisms of IMF

â€Å"The fund believes it is fulfilling the tasks assigned to it: promoting global stability, helping developing countries in transition achieve not only stability but also growth. † â€Å"I believe, however, that it has failed in its mission, that the failures are not just accidental but the consequences of how it has understood its mission. † This is what Stiglitz states in his book, and is also his platform on how he feels about the International Monetary Fund. He believes that the IMF has a narrow view stating that â€Å"what the financial community views as good for the global economy is good for the global economy and should be done†.Stiglitz criticizes that the IMF has done great damage to the countries wherein they prescribe economic policies that must be followed in order to qualify for an IMF loan, or for loans from banks and other private-sector lenders that look to the IMF to indicate whether a borrower is creditworthy. Stiglitz argues that the Inter national Monetary Fund and its officials have ignored the ramifications of having incomplete information, inadequate markets, and unworkable situations, all of which are particularly present characteristics of newly developing countries.Stiglitz states that the International Monetary Fund called for policies that conform to logical textbook economics, however, they do not make sense to the country that the policies are going towards to provide relief. â€Å"Stiglitz seeks to show that the consequences of these misguided policies have been disastrous, not just according to abstract statistical measures but in real human suffering, in the countries that have followed the. † (Stiglitz, 2003).The most traditional and perhaps best-known IMF policy recommendation is for a country to cut government spending or raise taxes. Either one of these actions, or both would be used to balance a country’s budget and eliminate the need for government borrowing. Most people believe that a lot of government spending is wasteful anyway. Stiglitz accuses the IMF for reverting to Herbert Hoover's economics in imposing these policies on countries during deep recessions.The deficit, at this time, is mostly the result of a stimulated decline in revenues. Stiglitz argues that cuts in spending or tax hikes only make the downturn worse. He also emphasizes the social cost of cutting back on various kinds of government programs, such as eliminating food subsidies for the poor, which Indonesia did at the IMF's request in 1998, only to be engulfed by food riots. Another standard IMF recommendation is high interest rates, which make deposits and other assets denominated in the currency more attractive to hold.Most countries go to the IMF because they find themselves having trouble maintaining the exchange value of their currencies. Stiglitz argues that the high interest rates imposed on many countries by the IMF have made their economic downward spirals even worse. Countries are intended to battle inflation that was not a serious problem to begin with. â€Å"Stiglitz repeatedly claims that the IMF's policies stem not from economic analysis and observation but from ideology—specifically, an ideological commitment to free markets and a concomitant antipathy to government.† In part, Stiglitz complaint is that the International Monetary Fund did not understand or even try to understand, his and other economists' theoretical work depicting that markets that are pretty much unregulated do not necessarily deliver positive results when information or market structures are incomplete (Stiglitz, 2003). A country that currently has loans from the International Monetary Fund is the country of Venezuela. Venezuela first negotiated an economic program with the International Monetary Fund in the year of 1989. In the mid 1970s, oil prices soared and seemed unstoppable.Venezuela is a country very rich in oil, so at this time, they accumulated a lot of money fr om oil revenues, but also from loans from international banks. The government then used this money to expand state-owned industries, however, the government ended up supporting the least efficient enterprises, which came to rely on government credits and direct subsidies. Government investments were fruitless from 1974 – 1989. As government expenses continued to increase, the gross domestic product grew very little as a ratio of the government expenditures.The excess amount of money supply, created by government spending, raised the price index by a factor of 15, interest rates 3. 7 times and the devaluation of the national currency by a factor of 10, all happening during the same period. In addition to all of this, Venezuela’s foreign debt increased to a record level of $33 billion and their payments could not be honored. Venezuela undertook negotiations with the IMF when they were under all of this pressure from the decreasing oil prices and the rapidly rising intere st rates on their immense foreign debt.They had tried to borrow money to finance some of their debt; however, the international markets had been apprehensive for Venezuela had refused to work with the IMF. Venezuela had first turned to American banks for proposed financing because it did not want to agree with an economic program with the International Monetary Fund. The International Monetary Fund cleared a loan of about $453 million to the country of Venezuela. Officials declared the loan as a first installment of what is expected to be a credit package that may total as much as $4.6 billion from the international agency to support Venezuela’s economic reform program over the next three years. They believe that Venezuela’s economic adjustment program should â€Å"encourage a substantial reflow of private capital† to the South American country. The planned economic reforms were aimed at freeing and unifying Venezuela’s foreign exchange rates, deregulatin g interest rates and opening the country’s economy to foreign trade by removing quotas and tariffs. The austerity program is the price that Venezuela had to pay for the aid in financing from the IMF.Domestic interest rates were allowed to rise substantially and the government had cut several important subsidies as part of a proposed economic program with the IMF. Since Venezuela agreed on an economic program with the IMF, commercial bankers seem a lot more ready to compromise with them. The IMF reform program included many policies. As a result â€Å"The per capita gross domestic product fell almost 8% from 1989 to 1993; the inflation index rose almost 10 fold; the outstanding foreign debt increased by $5 billion and the banking crisis that burst out in 1994 erased 10% of the GNP and $6 billion of the country’s international reserves.† What the Venezuelan government basically did was sign an agreement that led to a transfer of money from private sectors to the à ¢â‚¬Å"pockets of the wasteful government†. The government attempted to balance its accounts through its citizens, by increasing the taxes and increasing the interest rates. Little attention was given to increasing the productive capacity of the nation, but was all focused on the fiscal demands of the state. In recent years, Venezuela's economy has gone from bad to worse. Its deterioration corresponded with the implementation of policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund.Venezuela has gone through two IMF aid packages beginning in 1989. Since the implementation of the most recent package in 1996, Venezuela’s interest rates have more than doubled to 68 percent annually. The national currency, the Bolivar, has been devalued by 94 percent, accumulated inflation has reached 218 percent and production output has stalled. Capital flight has exhausted more than $2 billion from Venezuela’s international reserves, which are much lower now, than they were befor e the International Monetary Fund package was signed.The fiscal deficit has been declared unmanageable and Venezuela’s stock market is down more than 50 percent. This downward spiral was the result of the tax increases, devaluation, few privatizations and public service rate hikes in the 1996 IMF package. The repeated devaluations have increased costs to the private sector and ignited inflation. The IMF also allowed the government to delay reforms of ineffectual state hospitals and public schools. In the case of the country of Venezuela, Stiglitz’s criticisms of the IMF do apply.The IMF’s policies do not take into account the economic and social circumstances that currently exist in the country where it is applied to. As per usual, the International Monetary Fund used its traditional methods on Venezuela. Increase taxes, and have higher interest rates. The positive effects of any loan obtained from the IMF or other financial institutes are useless because of the collection of interest and the rising interest rates. For developing countries such as Venezuela, the benefits from an agreement with the IMF cannot be seen for the large burden of clearing away their large foreign debt blocks their view.The IMF did not take into consideration the social implications that would be caused when such harsh adjustment measures are put into operation. The poor are always the most affected. Their frustration was seen in Venezuela, as outbreaks of violence. The Venezuelan currency kept being devalued constantly therefore workers had to pay more for their essential needs, as their wages began to decline. The unemployment rate would then rise and that is why it is no surprise to why the people of Venezuela turned to violence. When bitterness and despair take hold, sometimes violence may be the only way to be heard.It becomes imperative in times like this to have concrete negotiations on a debt plan to achieve a substantial reduction in debt and in interest payments. While losing many of its systemic functions, the Fund’s operations during the 1980s became dominated by dealing with the debt difficulties faced by a relatively small group of highly indebted developing countries. All the Fund’s lending was to developing countries, and the majority of it was to the highly indebted countries, even though the majority of programmes remained with low-income countries.The Fund frequently became depicted as a development agency offering concessional assistance to developing countries. Even some of its staff bemoaned what they saw as the loss of its monetary characteristics and consequently much of its financial reputation (Finch, 1988). The least subtle criticisms of this type tended to use the phrase ‘development agency’ almost as a term of abuse. What the Fund was doing was perceived as being bad in and of itself. The more subtle criticism was that the Fund had largely been pushed by political pressure into lowering its own financial standards.The criticism here was not so much that development assistance is inappropriate, but rather that the IMF is an inappropriate institution through which to give it. This argument sees it as important to retain the revolving character of Fund resources, as well as the Fund’s short-term monetary perspective—features, so it is claimed, that will be lost if the Fund is forced to lend over the long term on the basis of unviable programmes and unachievable targets. The plea has been strongly articulated to ‘let the IMF be the IMF’ (Finch, 1988).An extension of this argument is that unsuccessful programmes will damage the reputation and credibility of the Fund and adversely affect its catalytic role. The claim that financial standards have been sacrificed is intimately related to the debt crisis. In essence, it is that the governments of countries where the private banks are located, and in particular the United States, encouraged the F und to lend to the highly indebted countries in order to reduce the probability of default. In the early years of the debt crisis, the argument could be made that such action was sustaining the stability of the international banking system.But as the banks themselves adjusted to the crisis by reducing their exposure, strengthening their capital adequacy, provisioning, and expanding other lines of business, this systemic argument for lending by the IMF disappeared. Even critics who approach the issue from a rather different angle, having more in common with the ‘traditional’ criticisms of Fund conditionality, have concluded that the main beneficiaries of Fund lending to highly indebted developing countries during the 1980s were the international banks.Simply put, the claim is that it was positive net transfers from the Fund that financed negative net transfers with the banks. This is a claim that is at least superficially consistent with the evidence at aggregate level, but it is not an interpretation that finds ready acceptance—publicly at least—inside the Fund, where the accusation that it had bailed out the banks has been, often staunchly, rejected. Yet the criticism that the Fund failed in its dealings with the highly indebted countries during the 1980s has more dimensions to it than this.First, there is the argument that, along with others, the Fund misinterpreted the very nature of the debt crisis by treating it either as a liquidity crisis or as one of short-term internal adjustment rather than as a more deep-seated problem of structural adjustment which required important supply-side responses as well as the appropriate management of demand. This meant that the Fund opted to support new financing which assisted countries in meeting their outstanding debt-servicing obligations but which did little to restore medium-term viability to their balance of payments.The nature of the programmes supported by the Fund has, in relation to this, been criticized for an overemphasis on devaluation resulting from a desire to strengthen the tradable sector of the economy and thereby to facilitate debt servicing, and an over-ambitious attempt to achieve stabilization and liberalization simultaneously. A long-standing worry associated with the use of devaluation is that a shift in the nominal exchange rate will fail to alter the real exchange rate because of the inflation it generates.Devaluation is seen as destroying the ‘nominal anchor’, or to use the older jargon ‘reserve discipline’, that a fixed exchange rate provides. Is this not a particular worry in highly indebted countries where the inflation record is frequently very poor and where the reputation of governments as inflation fighters is often weak? Just as the counter-inflationary merits of fixed exchange rates were being acknowledged and accentuated in the context of the European Monetary System, were they not being neglected by the IMF ?Critics of the Fund’s approach to conditionality within the highly indebted countries have argued that, whereas devaluation may certainly be appropriate in some circumstances it may be inappropriate where the fiscal deficit is under control and where the income redistributive effects, particularly in terms of lowering the urban real wage, spark off political unrest and measures to restore real wages. In these circumstances, the price of non-tradeables may also rise, with the result that the relative price effect of devaluation on the internal terms of trade is lost.The dangers of a vicious circle, whereby inflation leads to devaluation which then leads to further inflation, have long been acknowledged in Latin American economies where there is a legacy of rapid inflation and a low degree of money illusion. Indeed, in the context of forward-looking models of economic policy which emphasise the importance of the government’s reputation, the vicious circle can take on an additional twist.Here the use of devaluation damages a government’s anti-inflation credentials; private agents anticipate devaluation and mark up prices ahead of it; the inflation thereby caused itself forces the government to devalue. Expectations become self-fulfilling and generate their own internal dynamics. The Fund has also been seen as being over-ambitious. Its stabilisation and liberalisation objectives have been interpreted as paying inadequate regard to the potential inconsistencies that may exist between them.Within developing countries, in particular, revenue from tariffs may be an important element in total government income. Tariff reduction can therefore exert a significant adverse impact on the fiscal balance unless this source of revenue is replenished by other tax changes. Evidence suggesting a falling rate of success in achieving programme targets is cited as supporting the claim that Fund-supported programmes in highly indebted countries have been unreali stic.In the case of intermediate targets, relating, for example, to aspects of credit creation, such a record reflects an increasing problem of non-compliance. Countries have often simply not complied with strategic elements in Fund-supported programmes. Some authors have again sought to explain this phenomenon in terms of the specifics of the debt problems with which highly indebted countries have been faced, the argument being that Fund-supported programmes have offered little domestic rate of return. The principal beneficiaries have instead been private foreign creditors.The distribution of the costs and benefits of the programmes has established a set of incentives that is antagonistic towards a high degree of compliance. The debt overhang has had the effect of weakening Fund conditionality through acting as a tax on necessary reforms, with one implication being that it has become increasingly difficult to muster the necessary domestic political support for such reforms (Sachs, 1989; Krugman, 1988). In this context it is claimed that debt relief is needed to create the necessary incentive structure to adjust.The Fund has been criticised for failing to recognise this. Indeed, its policy of ‘assured financing’, whereby IMF support was predicated on countries continuing to meet their outstanding obligations to the banks, has been interpreted as systemically discouraging the provision of debt relief by the banks and thereby impeding the resolution of the debt crisis. At the beginning of the crisis the Fund had some success in encouraging new commercial money inflows by making these a precondition of its support, but this insistence faltered as the banks’ reluctance to lend became more pronounced.Moreover, it is argued that the Fund’s inappropriate approach to the debt problem was reflected by its apparent neglect of the distinction between new financing and debt reduction—a distinction which was being accentuated in the academ ic literature as the 1980s progressed (Krugman, 1988). Critics suggested that this neglect again showed the Fund as being primarily concerned with cash flow rather than medium and longer-term problems.Yet, even in a short-run context, the different expectational responses to new money and debt reduction can cause different effects, with new money leading to further indebtedness and therefore the prospects of additional domestic fiscal and monetary problems. Statements emanating from the Fund about its own perception of its role in the debt crisis tended to side-step these analytical issues and stick with broader organizational ones, which emphasized its strategic importance as an ‘honest broker’ or catalyst (Nowzad, 1999).The Fund described its objective as that of normalising creditor-debtor relations and restoring country access to sustainable flows and spontaneous lending. The means to this end were to be vigorous and sustained adjustment efforts by the debtors, and a co-operative concerted approach involving creditors, the Paris Club, commercial banks and the export credit agencies. While recognising that progress had been uneven and vulnerable, by the mid-1980s the Fund was interpreting its overall record on the debt problem as ‘encouraging’ (Nowzad, 1999).At the same time, however, critics were assessing that, ‘the IMF’s recent record in the debtor countries is one of failure’ (Sachs, 1989a). Such disagreement persists because there is no universally accepted set of criteria by which the Fund may be judged. Apart from anything else, there is always the basic problem of the counterfactual: what would have happened if the Fund had done things differently?Accepting this difficulty, a superficial review of the empirical evidence suggests that the Fund’s record in terms of dealing with the debt problem of the 1980s was, at best, mixed. Certainly it managed to help avoid a major systemic international financ ial failure and this was no small achievement. But, by other criteria, no substantial or sustained degree of success can be claimed. By the end of the decade, creditor-debtor relations had not been normalised, and access to spontaneous lending had not been restored.Indeed, the creditworthiness of the highly indebted countries, as represented by the secondary market price of their debt, had continued to fall; net transfers to highly indebted countries were still significantly negative; a concerted and co-operative approach to the debt problem had not emerged; most debt indicators failed to show any notable or sustained improvement; and macroeconomic performance in the highly indebted countries was poor and often deteriorating, with forward-looking indicators such as the investment ratio and import volume suggesting bleak prospects for the 1990s.Even IMF-specific indicators were discouraging, with declining programme compliance, rising arrears and the increasing use of waivers. Episod ic successes existed but the overall picture was not reassuring. During a decade in which open economy macroeconomics became more sophisticated, the accusation was increasingly made that the model underpinning the Fund’s operations had failed to be modified and that it was out of date and inappropriate. Research of an excellent academic standard conducted within the Fund’s own Research Department was, according to this view, no longer having a significant operational impact.Indeed, and again at a superficial level, the empirical evidence seemed to suggest that the conventional caricature of a Fund-supported programme involving a combination of exchange rate devaluation and the deflation of aggregate demand through credit control was more accurate during the 1980s than it had been before (Edwards, 1989). At the same time as Fund-supported programmes were being criticised for lacking intellectual sophistication, evidence as to their adverse social and human implications was also being more systematically collected and coherently presented (Cornia et al., 1997; Demery and Addison, 1997).Increasing infant mortality and morbidity, malnutrition and falling life expectancy were now being attributed, at least in part, to IMF-backed programmes. And the design of programmes which emphasised reduced government expenditure rather than increased tax revenue was being seen not only as endangering important welfare schemes in developing countries, but also as reflecting the dominant current politico-economic paradigm within the developed countries, where the role of the state was under stark review.This in turn highlighted another area—the sequencing of reform—in which the Fund came in for criticism. Merely designing an appropriate programme of policies was now seen as inadequate; more consideration needed to be given to the order and inter-temporal distribution of elements of an adjustment programme, particularly as even research conducted within the Fund itself was beginning to suggest that Fund-supported programmes could have a negative effect on output, at least in the short run (Khan et al., 1996; Vines, 1990).Earlier models, which formed the basis for financial programming within the Fund, most notoriously the Polak model, had basically assumed away such an effect by making output exogenous. Yet even the more outspoken critics of the Fund’s handling of the debt crisis suggest that its approach changed towards the end of the 1980s, particularly after Michel Camdessus took over as Managing Director in 1987.This change of approach found expression in terms of a softening attitude towards debt relief, a change in the treatment of arrears, with the Fund becoming prepared to make loans while countries were in arrears with the banks, and an increasing concern for the effects of Fund-supported programmes on income distribution and the related recognition that income distributive effects might be important in determining the political, and therefore practical, feasibility of programmes.Although criticisms still remained, for example that the Fund placed too much reliance on voluntary forms of debt reduction which, given the associated free rider problems, should instead be treated as a public good, they became slightly more muted. If the Fund was still not coming up with right answers, at least, according to some critics, it seemed to be asking more relevant questions. Moreover, some of the broader criticisms relating to the input of the Research Department were suspended awaiting the impact of the appointment of a new Managing Director.On top of this there appeared to be a growing acceptance that macroeconomic stability was a necessary precondition for sustained economic development, and this took some of the sting out of the old debate about IMF conditionality. At the beginning of the 1990s private capital began to return to some of the lightly indebted countries, to the extent that some commenta tors claimed that the Latin American debt crisis was over. This was not the case in Africa, and it is unclear as to how significant the Fund’s input was in generating capital inflows. References Cornia, G. A. , Jolly, R. and Stewart, F. (eds) (1997)Adjustment with a Human Face: Protecting the Vulnerable and Promoting Growth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Demery, Lionel and Addison, Tony. 1997. The Alleviation of Poverty Under Structural Adjustment, Washington, DC: World Bank. Edwards, S. 1989. ‘The International Monetary Fund and the Developing Countries: A Critical Evaluation’, Carnegie Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy 31. Finch, David C. 1988. ‘Let the IMF be the IMF’, International Economy, January/February. Krugman, Paul. 1988. ‘Financing versus Forgiving a Debt Overhang’. Journal of Development Economics 29.Khan, Mohsin, Montiel, Peter and Ul Haque, Nadeem (1996) ‘Adjustment with Growth: Relating the Analytical Approaches of the World Bank and the IMF’, World Bank Discussion Paper, Washington, DC: World Bank. Nowzad, B. (1999) ‘The Debt Problem and the IMF’s Perspective’, in Graham Bird (ed. ), Third World Debt: The Search for a Solution, London: Edward Elgar. Sachs, Jeffrey D. 1989a. ‘Strengthening IMF Programmes in Highly Indebted Countries’, in C. Gwin and R. Feinberg (eds).The International Monetary Fund in a Multipolar World: Pulling Together, US-Third World Policy Perspectives No. 13, Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council. Sachs, Jeffrey D. 1989b. ‘Conditionality, Debt Relief, and the Developing Country Debt Crisis’, in Jeffrey D. Sachs (ed. ), Developing Country Debt and Economic Performance, Vol. 1. International Financial System, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2003. Globalization and its Discontents. New York: Norton. Vines, David. 1990. ‘Growth Oriented Adjustment Programmes; A Recons ideration’, London: Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper No. 406, March.

The War Of The Vietnam War - 1772 Words

The wars in Indochina and Vietnam ravaged the landscape for decades. The strive for Vietnamese independence was fought for years by men and women across the country. Who were these people and why did they fight? Two of the more interesting men who fought for Vietnamese independence were Truong Nhu Tang, and Lam Quang Thi. Truong was a member of the southern Vietnamese intelligentsia who would later become a key member of the National Liberation Front(NLF), that would be instrumental in fighting against the Saigon government and American presence in Vietnam. Lam on the other hand couldn’t have had a much different goal in fighting for a sovereign Vietnam. Lam decided that his best course of action was to enlist into what would eventually be the Army of the Republic of Vietnam(ARVN), the army of southern Vietnam, eventually rising to the rank of general. I’ve had the pleasure of reading their memoirs (along with several others), and an interesting question came i nto my mind. Why would these two men, who had comparable backgrounds, choose such strikingly different ways of attempting to foster Vietnamese independence. I’ll attempt to answer this question by examining in more detail their comparable backgrounds, educations, early lives, families, etc, and striving to find an answer. As a further comparison Le Ly Hayslip, a woman from central Vietnam who also got involved in the fighting, will also be examined, but in much less detail, and more as a comparison to theShow MoreRelatedThe War Of Vietnam And The Vietnam War1525 Words   |  7 PagesThe war in Vietnam is The United States and other capitalist bloc countries supported South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) against the support by the Soviet Union and other socialist bloc countries of North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and the Vietcong of war. Which occurred during the Cold War of Vietnam (main battlefield), Laos, and Cambodia. This is the biggest and longtime war in American history during the 1960s (Best 2008). It is also the most significant war after World War IIRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1475 Words   |  6 Pageson one such event, the Vietnam War, came from entertainment-based programs and the play Miss Saigon. Despite heavy coverage in such well-known comedic films as Forrest Gump and Good Morning Vietnam, the true events were anything but a laugh for those involved. In spite of the relative recentness of the events in Vietnam, many of today’s youths know little about the topic. The events in Vietnam raise the ever-present question on the ethics of third party involvement in a war otherwise unrelated toRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1729 Words   |  7 Pagesspread of communism all around the world. This is what lead to the gruesome war that lasted over a decade in Vietnam. A great deal of social changed happened all over the world, but particularly in America as the Vietnam War dragged on. As people became more a ware of the atrocities going on in Southeast Asia, the endless domestic support turned into widespread explosive protest. During the first few years of the Vietnam conflict, Americans full heartedly supported the United States and its governmentRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1379 Words   |  6 Pagestensions over the Vietnam war caused many americans to become divided on the actions taken by the government across seas. Americans questioned whether the government could be trusted. The feeling of betrayal and government secrecy created the â€Å"Credibility Gap,† in which many americans believed that the government no longer was for the people, but for anything else that would benefit the government. The Vietnam War exacerbated the gap between the pro-war traditionalists and anti-war liberals along withRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1430 Words   |  6 Pagesended in 1989, the Vietnam war is still being fought, but on a different battlefield, one of public opinion. Some call this war an atrocity, a war the United States should never have joined. Others call it a crime, committed by the power hungry politicians of the U.S. Now that new information from both sides of the war has surfaced and the wounds of battle have had more time to heal there is yet another opinion emerging. The Vietnam War was in fact only one of many proxy wars fought under the umbrellaRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1155 Words   |  5 PagesThe Vietnam War cost many Americans their lives in the 60s and 70s. Many were drafted into the war by choice and others selectively chosen to join to help America. The contributions made had a major impact on the American side of the Vietnam War. Though many contributions were made none stand out any more than others. It is sometimes said there is always a hero in the war who helped the victory. Wars, however, do not have war heroes because a hero is making an undeniable contribution to the war andRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1592 Words   |  7 PagesThe Vietnam War was said to be one of the most significant wars in the twentieth century. This w ar took place from November 1, 1955 to April 30, 1975. It was at the time, the longest war in American history. Much of the conflict was centered in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. During that time, approximately 58,219 US troops were killed in action. The reason America got involved in the Vietnam War was to stop the spread of communism in South East Asia and beyond. â€Å"America’s involvement in Vietnam derivedRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1204 Words   |  5 Pagesus†¦ When that is the way you are, how do you conduct your life?† The Vietnam War killed over fifty eight thousand Americans and over 61% of the men killed were 21 years or younger. Most Americans are conflicted with the fact whether the Anti War Movement played a factor in prolonging the Vietnamese War. â€Å"In every story there are two sides and in between lies the truth.† Anonymous The United States become involved in Vietnam after the French withdrew when the Republican President Dwight EisenhowerRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War877 Words   |  4 PagesAnother big difference in this war was that the Vietnam War was had more disapproval and was more expressive within the American public, unlike the Korean War. The ANITWAR MOVEMENT started in the 1960s this group was never enacted until this era. There was not a group like this in Vietnam, but there were many groups that opposed the war. The main object of these revolts was the American military presence in Indochina. The ANITWAR MOVEMENT caused an influence not only socially, but also in the realmRead MoreThe War Of The Vietnam War1421 Words   |  6 PagesIn July and August of 1972, Jane Fonda made radio broadcasts from Hanoi that changed the way Americans thought of the Vietnam war and of her. To this day, many people view her as a traitor and criticise her actions in Vietnam; however, some people we re truly inspired by her words and what she had to say. Despite people s personal opinions, Fonda was a powerful speaker and knew how to convey her message to her audience. She tried to convince people that the American government and military were the