A Three-Party Model of World Conflict

Abstract

The American involvement in Viet Nam was the product of its bilateral view of world conflict — the alliance of the nations of the capitalist, democratic West versus the monolithic, communist East. The terrible lesson of that war, the basis for the American defeat, was also the harbinger of the end to the bi-polar cold war: the force of independent nationalism could dominate every other consideration. That force, which united its opponents in Viet Nam, also divided them. The most important of those schisms was the conflict between the USSR and China. The question became: How might the three nations interact?

The original version of this chapter was published in 1973 as “A Dynamic Model of Present World Conflict,” in the Papers of the Peace Science Society based on models constructed two years earlier.