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VIETNAM: EXPLAINING AMERICA'S LONGEST WAR

By T.S.Tsonchev

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The Montreal Review, January 2010

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If we ask the question, was the American military involvement in Vietnam doomed to failure because the United States was fighting a "limited war," the answer is no. It is "no" not because the war was not "limited" (at least at first), or because it was poorly managed on the ground, or because the leadership lacked a clear strategy, all of which are true; the war was doomed first and foremost because it was an unnecessary, blindly conceived conflict. It turned out to be a useless war. It was launched on the basis of dubious arguments 1 and, as Lyndon Johnson admitted, "without any plan for military or diplomatic victory." 2 The lack of strategy was complemented by something even more alarming - the lack of a clear goal. The lack of a clear purpose behind big decisions always leads to failure. Using 10 million tons of bombs, sacrificing nearly 58,000 American lives 3 and causing more than a million Vietnamese deaths 4 simply because the Johnson administration did not want to "lose face" is something bordering on insanity. 5

It is easy to criticize past politicians and past decisions. Every generation judges its predecessors from the hilltop of its position, but every generation repeats one or another old mistake. The Vietnam War began without a clear answer to the question "Why was it necessary?" but ended with a clear answer to the question "How did America lose its prestige as an invincible military power? "

In this short essay, I will try to reconstruct the Vietnam War on the poor basis of a few historical interpretations and a small number of primary sources. There are two questions I will try to answer: What caused the Vietnam War, and why did it turn out to be a failure for the United States?

The Vietnam War was clearly a result of the Cold War. At the time the war began, what America was doing really mattered, and the stakes of how the United States was perceived in the eyes of the world seemed much higher than they do today. The fundamental reason for American involvement in Indochina was to demonstrate commitment.6 The United States felt obligated to act in any part of the world where a country or nation was still hesitating on which of the two camps (capitalist or communist) to align itself. The U.S. government's fear of a "domino effect" in which the emerging post-colonial nations gravitated toward the Soviet Union was incorporated into the American policy of "containment." Thus, Indochina had the unfortunate fate of being chosen as a battlefield where Moscow and Washington could pit their wits against each other. In this war, as in Korea ten years before, the Kremlin acted indirectly, supplying the Communist guerrillas and the North Vietnamese army with money and weapons, while Washington acted openly, launching a real intervention.

The real value of Vietnam as a territory, economy, or political presence on the world stage was insignificant. This was proven after the war and was not properly appreciated by the American government at the time. When Vietnam finally became a communist state, the world system did not move one bit. In fact, the event that shook the world was the war itself, and this "cold-blooded" conflict, far from the American shores, had an unexpectedly strong resonance in the United States and throughout the Western camp. Or, to return to the question that preoccupied Lyndon Johnson - how America would be perceived - the fundamental goal of the Vietnam War was not achieved. The policy of "containment" in the form of a limited, dispassionate war proved not to be applicable to Indochina.

The misunderstanding of "limited war theory" 7 by American leaders explains the character of the Vietnam conflict and the reasons for its outbreak. The nature of the Cold War required behaviors appropriate to a world under the shadow of nuclear threat. In the bipolar world of the twentieth century, the balance of power was important. The existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) made adversaries cautious in their actions. On the one hand, WMD kept the existing status quo in check; on the other hand, the U.S. and the Soviet Union used every opportunity to change the balance of power in a favorable direction (or rather, as J.L. Gaddis explains in his "Long Peace" - the Russians wanted to change the status quo, while the Americans were trying to save it). "Limited war" was seen as an instrument to achieve such a goal. Both powers saw the option of limited war as a conflict conducted on the world's periphery,8 where the powers could test their resolve without entering into a full-scale conventional war, and where the high morale of their armies could be maintained. In fact, the limited wars turned out to be more risky and bloody than expected. And the problem was their nature: in any unconventional war, the enemy is a ghost, often regular troops have to fight guerrillas - a fight that drains the resources, morale, and power of the armies; the expected support of the local population is never certain, and the limited war has complex goals, questionable justification, and often turns into a quagmire from which the "invader" has little chance of easy and safe escape.9 Thus, the outcome of the Vietnam War cannot be considered a surprise, any more than the outcome of the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan was a surprise.

George Herring in his book "LBJ and Vietnam: A Different Kind of War," gives a good, pragmatic explanation for the failure of the American intervention. According to Herring, the main cause of the American problems was the character of the war. He says it was a "guerrilla type of war." America was not prepared to fight a conflict "without clear battle lines or fixed objectives."10 The limited war, he argues, has "complexity in establishing ends and formulating means." 11 Herring says that the American government viewed the Vietnam initiative as an "exercise" rather than a real war. These factors were compounded by other reasons that led to failure: lack of a clear strategy from the top; lack of discussions to change the existing strategy; lack of synchronization among bureaucratic units; lack of imagination in conducting the war, even though it was not a conventional conflict. The strategy did not change, even after reports such as the CIA's 1967 conclusion that the Rolling Thunder campaign "had not significantly degraded North Vietnam's material capability to continue the war."12 All of these shortcomings were unfortunately mixed with the dominant character of President Johnson. Johnson, says Herring, had a mistaken sense that he could control everything-from his ranch to his domestic and international policies. The president's political style was a major factor in the outcomes of his policy decisions. "Johnson's middle-of-the-road approach," Herring writes, "gave everybody something and nobody what they wanted."13

Herring's theory of the failure of American action in Vietnam is highly pragmatic, in the style of "realpolitik,"14 but not inconsistent with the "socio-cultural" approach of Loren Baritz in his "Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did." In fact, both theories provide a more complete picture of the American fiasco.

As has been said, Vietnam had the unfortunate fate of becoming a battleground in the struggle between the world powers. It was not a strategically important place where the outcome of the conflict could really change the world balance of power. This fact means a lot, although it was never admitted by the Johnson administration. The insignificance of Vietnam defined the American attitude toward the Vietnamese people. The Vietnamese were not Germans, Russians, or Italians. They were Asians with a different culture and history, alien to American society and culture. In addition to this lack of emotional and cultural connection, Americans still treated Asians from the position of the "white man's burden."15 Moreover, the Cold War was not only a conflict between two great powers; it was also a great ideological struggle. Soviet Russia's imperial interest was hidden behind the ideology of communism, while America's national interest was traditionally hidden behind the idea of freedom. The Russians fought for "justice and equality," while the Americans defended "democracy and freedom. This ideological struggle was hardly suited to the realities of the Cold War, and people on the front lines quickly became disillusioned with the mass propaganda. The disillusionment and emotional detachment of American soldiers (and leaders) from the real fate of the Vietnamese people was, according to Loren Baritz, the main reason for the American failure in Indochina.

The United States justified its intervention as a liberating action. But neither the soldiers (at least after their contact with reality) nor the Vietnamese believed this justification. In his book, Baritz quotes Vice President Humphrey as saying that it was repeated perhaps a thousand times that the Americans were in Indochina because they wanted freedom for other people, not land or resources. 16 But one American soldier recalled: "The Vietnamese did not like us, and I remember being shocked. I still naively thought I was a hero, a liberator. Every, every, every firefight we got into, the ARVN (South Vietnamese Army) broke, the ARVN fucking ran". 17

Baritz says that the North Vietnamese ultimately won this war because they were able to accept "more death than we [the Americans] considered rational." 18 In the context of this conclusion, McNamara's view is interesting. It shows how American leaders built a form of "strategy" based on false predictions of Vietnamese behavior, misjudging important factors such as culture, political will, and stakes (for the Vietnamese, the fight was more than a "limited war"). In his book "In retrospect: the tragedy and lesson of Vietnam" McNamara writes: "The body count was a measurement of adversary's manpower losses; we undertook it because one of Westy's objectives was to reach a so-called crossover point, at which the Vietcong and North Vietnamese casualties would be greater than they could sustain. "This guy McNamara," they [critics] said, "he tries to quantify everything." Of course, there are things you cannot quantify, like honor and beauty. But things that can be counted, you can count. Loss of life is one of them when you are fighting a war of attrition." 19 The "war of attrition" and the "body count" were measures of critical importance, but as history has shown, mostly for the Americans, not for their enemies. In fact, these were the factors that ensured Communist victory.

In this war, it was not superior American technology, resources, and power that failed. It was American "cultural perceptions" that failed, argues Baritz. Reality ultimately proved that American notions of playing "cold-blooded" games on the periphery of the world, without regard for or support from the local population, cost more than the U.S. could afford.

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RELATED:

The Courage to Confess: Why Was The Vietnam War Doomed To Fail?

In his last speech in Austin (December, 1972) Johnson said, "If our efforts continue, and if our will is strong, and if our hearts are right , and if courage remains our constant companion, then, my fellow Americans, I am confident we shall overcome..." | read |

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1 President Lyndon B. Johnson reports to the Congress that North Vietnamese patrol boats attacked U.S. naval vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin on Aug. 2 and Aug. 4, 1964 . The resulted Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was used by Johnson as declaration of war. There are serious doubts about what happened on these dates. See "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." ( New York : Viking Penguin, 2002) by Daniel Ellsberg.

2 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , (Random House, 1995), pp. 190-191.

3 John Hollitz, Thinking through the Past ( Houghton Mifflin, 2004 ) p.275

4 According to Twentieth Century Atlas (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Sources) the total death toll of Vietnam War (1965-73) is 1 700 000.

5 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam , (Random House, 1995), pp. 190-191. (John Hollitz, Thinking through the Past ( Houghton Mifflin, 2004 ) p.275)

6 Before the U.S. got heavily involved the French were in Indochina . In fact the Americans supported financially French fight with the North Vietnamese communists in 50s.

7 It is a theory of Clausewitz.

8 Limited war was unthinkable in Europe and this explains the vain hopes of Hungarians, Czechs and Polish for receiving military support from the West for their uprisings against the Soviet Union .

9 We have numerous examples of the dangers of invasions failed because of guerilla activity - from Napoleon campaigns in Russia and Spain to the recent examples of Iraq and Afghanistan ; although both wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan , are not classical case for guerilla resistance they have its characteristics, complexity and dangers for the occupying forces.

10 George Herring, "LBJ and Vietnam : A different kind of war," (University of Texas Press, 1994.) (John Hollitz, Thinking Through the Past , p. 281)

11 George Herring, "LBJ and Vietnam : A different kind of war," (University of Texas Press, 1994.) (John Hollitz, Thinking Through the Past , p. 287)

12 CIA Intelligence Memo, May 12, 1967 , reprinted in Vietnam: the Definitive Documentation of Human Decisions . (Stanfordville, Earle M. Coleman), II: pp. 470-472. (Holittz, 291)

13 George Herring, "LBJ and Vietnam : A different kind of war," (University of Texas Press, 1994.) (John Hollitz, Thinking Through the Past , p. 280)

14 Hans Morgenthau highest principle for conducting a real politics is existence of "prudence." In short - the lack of prudence in American leadership leads to unwanted results.

15 Rudyard Kipling , "The White Man's Burden," 1899. Loren Baritz quotes a young solder: "We were there to help but Vietnamese are so stupid, they can't understand that a great people want to help weak people." (Loren Baritz, " Backfire: A history of how American culture led us into Vietnam and made us fight the way we did." 1985)

16 Loren Baritz, " Backfire: A history of how American culture led us into Vietnam and made us fight the way we did." (Holitz, p.286)

17"American Views of the Vietnamese," from The Bad War edited by Kim Willenson, 1987 by Newsweek Inc.

18 Loren Baritz, " Backfire: A history of how American culture led us into Vietnam and made us fight the way we did." (Hollitz, p.288)

19 Robert S. McNamara "In retrospect: the tragedy and lesson of Vietnam " (Random House, 1995). (Hollitz 292)

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