Phenomenon of escalation Essays

Phenomenon of escalation Essays Phenomenon of escalation Essay Phenomenon of escalation Essay The decision by President Johnson to go into war did not solely cause the war. There were certain events that led to this final decision. Even though sending the combat troops could have made the deepest cut, the former administrations before that of President Johnson’s has contributed cracks to the Vietnam-United States relations. Unfortunately, it was President Johnson who created the fatal blow. Logevall (1999) also claims that President Johnson’s decision was an aftermath of the decisions made by the presidents that preceded him. He found himself in a situation where there was no longer turning back. There is a floating promise to save South Vietnam, way from the Kennedy regime. It was a promise that had to be kept. Badly for President Johnson, his decision to send combat troops became the cue. Most important among these events was the repeated declination to undergo negotiations for peace. Vietnam repeatedly insisted on peaceful negotiations. The United States had other things in mind. It did not want to surrender to the Vietnamese. From the time of President Kennedy, the war is impending. It was waiting for a button to be pushed. This is exactly what President Johnson did. (Logevall 1999) It may seem that the Vietnam War was already waiting to happen even way before it actually started. The agitation given to Vietnam was too much for the Northerners to bear. They wanted to put the Southerners in the communist republic. The Southerners did not want this, and so they tried to ask assistance from the United States. That is when the Vietnam War was Americanized. Figuring this, it is not wholly America’s brainchild. Americanizing the Vietnam War is a work of many master minds. Conclusion Three years into the war in 1967, President Johnson was desperate and seeking for a way to end the war albeit in a diplomatic way. Ho Chi Minh wrote to President Johnson and claimed that they do not support the intervention that the United States has brought Vietnam. Instead of nurturing unity, Ho Chi Minh claimed that the United States brought division and aggression. (Homestead, n. d. ) In the process, President Johnson ordered many ceasefires. However, bombings continued at times when the ceasefires themselves ceased. Vietnam requested for bombings to be stopped for it to open itself in negotiations and diplomatic reconciliation, yet American did not bother. The United States continued on with its initiatives. (Homestead, n. d. ) It may seem that President Johnson was himself surprised with the extent of consequence that resulted from his political decisions towards Vietnam. It may be said that President Johnson could have found himself so suddenly in a situation where he can no longer turn back. Yet, it is also important to consider that the Phenomenon of Escalation is a fact that cannot be denied. There were many opportunities of diplomatic arrangements even before President Johnson which were put off and disregarded. As Logevall (1999) puts it, there was a choice. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had the option to go into war or not. However speculative the reason may be in engaging into war, what is now clear is that the war has happened. Thousands of lives, both of the Vietnamese and the Americans, have suffered the consequences of death, trauma, and wounds. This being, it may not be right to put the sole blame on the Vietnam War to President Johnson. However, it will be sufficient to say that President Johnson was able to Americanize the Vietnam War. He was able to inject America, through its diligent and brave troops, in a war between torn Vietnam whose north end wanted to put the south end into communism- something the latter did not want. President Johnson also had many reasons in doing so. It was a personal decision, a decision that is influenced by President Johnson’s thinking that his personal failure is also America’s failure. The people also were not able to reinforce what they want to the president. The war happened before the people were able to enforce peace. Another reason is being put in a no-win situation, with which President Johnson had to choose the longer and harder way out. Lastly, the escalation phenomenon which the Vietnam war went through, finally leading to the Great War in President Johnson’s time, can also be accountable. For all the right and wrong reasons that he and the former presidents could have had, America has absolutely imprinted history in the pages of Vietnam’s history books. References Homestead. n. d. Retrieved October 28, 2007, from homestead. com/mywar/vietnam6. html Logevall, F. 1999. Choosing War: The lost chance for peace and the escalation of war in vietnam. (A review by Kimball, J. ) Retrieved October 28, 2007, from ess. uwe. ac. uk/GENOCIDE/reviewsw32. htm

Introduction to the Concept of Welfare Analysis

Introduction to the Concept of Welfare Analysis When studying markets, economists not only want to understand how prices and quantities are determined, but they also want to be able to calculate how much value markets create for society. Economists call this topic of study welfare analysis, but, despite its name, the subject doesn’t have anything directly to do with transferring money to poor people. How Economic Value Is Created By a Market Economic value created by a market accrues to a number of different parties. It goes to: consumers when they can purchase goods and services for less than they value the use of the itemsproducers when they can sell goods and services for more than each item cost to producethe government when markets provide an opportunity to collect taxes Economic value is also either created or destroyed for society when markets cause spillover effects for parties not directly involved in a market as a producer or a consumer (known as externalities). How Economic Value Is Quantified In order to quantify this economic value, economists simply add up the value created for all of the participants in (or onlookers to) a market. By doing so, economists can calculate the economic impacts of taxes, subsidies, price controls, trade policies, and other forms of regulation (or deregulation). That said, there are a few things that must be kept in mind when looking at this type of analysis. First, because economists simply add up the values, in dollars, created for each market participant, they implicitly assume that a dollar of value for Bill Gates or Warren Buffet is equivalent to a dollar of value for the person who pumps Bill Gates’ gas or serves Warren Buffet his morning coffee. Similarly, welfare analysis often aggregates the value to consumers in a market and the value to producers in a market. By doing this, economists also assume that a dollar of value for the gas station attendant or barista counts the same as a dollar of value for a shareholder of a large corporation. (This isnt as unreasonable as it may initially seem, however, if you consider the possibility that the barista is also a shareholder of the large corporation.) Second, welfare analysis only counts the number of dollars taken in taxes rather than the value of what that tax revenue is ultimately spent on. Ideally, tax revenue would be used for projects that are worth more to society than they cost in taxes, but realistically this is not always the case. Even if it were, it would be very difficult to link up taxes on particular markets with what the tax revenue from that market ends up buying for society. Therefore, economists purposely separate out the analyses of how many tax dollars are generated and how much value spending those tax dollars creates. These two issues are important to keep in mind when looking at economic welfare analysis, but they don’t make the analysis irrelevant. Instead, it’s helpful to understand how much value in the aggregate is created by a market (or created or destroyed by regulation) in order to properly assess the tradeoff between overall value and equity or fairness. Economists often find that efficiency, or maximizing the overall size of the economic pie, is at odds with some notions of equity, or dividing that pie in a manner that is considered fair, so its crucial to be able to quantify at least one side of that tradeoff. In general, textbook economics draws positive conclusions about the overall value created by a market and leaves it to philosophers and policymakers to make normative statements about what is fair. Nonetheless, its important to understand how much the economic pie shrinks when a fair outcome is imposed in order to decide whether the tradeoff is worth it.