In Retrospect: Lessons of WWII and Vietnam

AHRS

 

  

   The decisions made during the Vietnam War, with particular attention being granted to the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, ultimately culminated in the “slippery slope” described by Mr. McNamara in his memoir In Retrospect.[1] Evidence suggests that the decisions made during these two administrations were not deliberate attempts to deepen the American commitment. I also don’t believe the evidence shows us that the government officials involved in these respective administrations saw what was coming as a result of their decisions, as explained by Mr. McNamara. I do believe the Johnson administration came to realize that its decisions were leading it deeper into the abyss and the officials of that administration should’ve realized that worldwide Communism had lost its appeal by that time period.

 

   The Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations each inherited serious predicaments, which no single decision could stave off, let alone solve. All of this being taken into account, the decisions that were made, which deepened American involvement and ultimately led to a humiliating American withdrawal, are both understandable and forgivable. I will analyze the key decisions made by these two administrations, which led to Americanization, and subsequently escalation, of the war effort, to try to explain why these decisions were made. I will also acknowledge previous U.S. foreign policy measures that undoubtedly played a huge part in the decision-making process during the Vietnam War. I will begin with my analysis of the Eisenhower administration and the decisions it made which ultimately Americanized the Vietnam War. I will then analyze the Kennedy administration and the key decisions it made leading to escalation and an even greater American commitment.

 

   Upon the fall of National Socialist Germany, which America perceived as a dangerous aggressor, along with the Communist Soviet Union, it is certainly understandable why Eisenhower felt the way he did about appeasing aggressors and containing Communism.[2] He accepted France’s inevitable defeat in Indochina and he said, “You certainly cannot hope at the present state of our relations in the world for a completely satisfactory answer with the Communists. The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.”[3] It’s clear that Eisenhower didn’t understand that Vietnam was more nationalist than Communist, but with the recent World War it becomes very clear as to the motivation behind the decisions he made.[4] In other words, I understand why Eisenhower feared the worldwide spread of Communism.

 

   John Dulles viewed Vietnam as another Korean conflict in which hordes of Communists would come pouring southward with the backing of a Communist superpower, in both cases China.[5] Naturally, Eisenhower believed his advisor and made the choice to thwart Vietnamese Communism, even though the officials of South Vietnam were less than easy to work with, to secure America’s power, prestige, and security in the world. Eisenhower had to try and work with the South Vietnamese so he told Diem that the level of American aid depended upon his “standards of performance.”[6] The reality of the situation was very similar to what became reality for the Kennedy administration, and that reality was that the government in the South was a real challenge to work with and America would help regardless of the South’s “effort.” America had a vested interest in Vietnam, to contain Communism, and a testy Vietnamese government was not going to thwart America’s decision-making process.

 

Eisenhower was determined to make Vietnam the place. This “will to do good” by thwarting tyranny has been an American tradition since the American Revolution. America had done its good deed in Europe and it was determined to carry on its war on tyranny, in this case Communist tyranny, because this dogma had become such an integral part of America’s ethos.[7] I think it’s important to bring up the fact that American war conduct:

 

manifested a broad commitment to principles of nonaggression and universal self-determination, rather than a pure concern with American self-interest.[8]

 

   After World War II, the U.S. set about securing its prominent future role as a world hegemon.[9] This ethos can be seen in the decision-making process of the Eisenhower administration, and later the Kennedy administration, but began to wane by the time Johnson took office, because by that time the war had really taken its toll on the American people and even the soldiers fighting in Vietnam.[10] American soldiers, the very people upon which ultimate victory lay, made statements like these:

 

I do not accept any guilt about an ‘immoral’ war in Vietnam. I do not believe it was an immoral war at all, rather a decent cause gone terribly wrong. I have few regrets about our collective, or my personal, experience in Vietnam. I do regret the misinformation and misguidance that were so often the hallmarks of the American and Vietnamese authorities. That disingenuousness, no matter its intent, was evil in its result. It dulled the ability of elected officials to deal effectively with a culturally foreign and physically remote situation…[11]

 

By autumn, what had begun as an adventurous expedition had turned into an exhausting, indecisive war of attrition in which we fought for no cause other than our own survival…But there were no Normandies or Gettysburgs for us, no epic clashes that decided the fates of armies or nations.[12]

 

Though these kinds of statements were made long after Eisenhower and Kennedy waged their own wars against ‘Bolshevik Russia’ and ‘Communist China,’ the reality is that our soldiers did not understand what it was they were fighting for. This is a very important feature of the Vietnam War when one looks at it in retrospect. America’s ethos suddenly changed upon war’s end, and its foreign policy reflected this new ethos, which viewed the Soviet Union as more of a friend than foe.[13]

 

   The Kennedy administration inherited the “anti-appeasement toward aggression” policy of World War II.[14] Eisenhower had claimed that failure to stop Hitler “by not acting in unit and in time” caused World War II.[15] America perceived that any appeasement of an aggressive act of any nation toward another might pave the way for another catastrophic war. Such was the case with Vietnam when the North attempted to declare Vietnamese independence and reunite the nation under a Communist regime.

 

   Kennedy ultimately inherited Truman’s 1950 decision to assist the French with their reacquisition of Indochina.[16] This goes against America’s commitment to thwart tyranny and promote democracy, but the case of Vietnam involved Communism, and we must remember that the Korean War had occurred not too long before and seemed to provide concrete evidence that Communism was on the rise.[17] Truman’s secretary of state, Dean Acheson, asserted that France was crucial to U.S. policy in Europe, not entirely different from what Bush has told Americans regarding democracy in the Middle East.[18]

 

Bush has informed Americans that democracy in Iraq is crucial for a peaceful world and a safer America. He did not however base his war on making a more peaceful world, but on the basis of defense, that Iraq had WMD and was an imminent threat to the U.S. In retrospect, Bush waged his war based on misperceptions, three of which I have become familiar with through one of my professors in college. Similarly, Acheson had perpetuated the “domino theory,” the notion that France’s role in Indochina was crucial to worldwide Communist containment, even though the Communist threat was a gross misperception on the part of America:

 

His idea stemmed from the naïve belief that Ho Chi Minh was a pawn of Russia and China—without examining the possibility that Ho was, like Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia, a nationalist committed more to Vietnam’s independence than to global Communism. So dubious assumptions propelled America into an area marginal to its real strategic interests.[19]

 

This is certainly nothing new in the history of U.S. foreign policy, even prior to World War II. America’s misperceptions regarding Hitler’s “aggression” against Poland[20] helps us determine the roots of America’s post-war foreign policy and why America reacted, and continues to react, against perceived aggression. The Kennedy administration had to accept this war on Communist aggression, even if it meant escalating the war effort in Indochina.

 

   Kennedy made the deliberate decision to violate the Geneva Accords with the intention of committing American military advisors to the South Vietnamese resistance against the Vietminh. He committed an additional -- to the some 16,000 advisors already committed by the Eisenhower administration -- 100 advisors and 400 Special Forces troops to train South Vietnamese troops.[21] But the Kennedy administration failed to ask the essential questions, mainly whether or not the Communist regime of North Vietnam was going to trigger a worldwide Communist takeover directly threatening American soil.[22]

 

   McNamara confronted this issue after the fact, but the truth is nobody wanted to think about the consequences of the decisions they were making at the time. The only issue directing their decision-making process was the perceived threat of global Communism. The Kennedy administration failed to weigh other factors, which I believe the Roosevelt and Bush administrations were also guilty of, when it made the deliberate decision to escalate the number of Americans and encourage the coup against Diem. I find the evidence to be incriminating against the administration with regard to Diem, and I believe the administration wanted Diem out of the picture in a last-ditch effort to make a desperate situation become anything but desperate.[23]

 

   The decision to violate the Geneva Accords and escalate the war, and the decision to encourage a coup against the South Vietnamese leader certainly magnified Kennedy’s commitment in Vietnam. The administration knew that there weren’t any leaders who were as trustworthy and cooperative as Diem was, and the subsequent leadership crisis that ensued could not have possibly been unforeseen.[24] Lodge knew that the generals were not cooperative or cohesive, yet he actively participated in their effort to overthrow Diem.[25] These decisions, and the way they were made, suggest to me that American foreign policy, especially at that time, was horribly inadequate. I get the impression from McNamara that the majority of questions surrounding the decisions made during the Kennedy administration were the result of intellects trying to run a system they didn’t fully understand, with no knowledge of war and limited or no knowledge of the Vietnamese.[26]

 

   In conclusion, I must reiterate the points I made in the beginning of this piece. When one takes into account the context of the times, namely the effect of the Korean War, the anti-aggressive American ethos, especially after World War II, and the perception of a worldwide Communist threat, only then can one truly comprehend American foreign policy. I will use the Iraq War as an example. America has only recently, I believe since the Gulf War, regained its military might. The reacquisition of America’s prominence has allowed the American people to once again fall prey to a gross misperception of a misinformed administration. Our foreign policy hasn’t changed and the recent debacle with North Korea and Iran certainly seems to confirm my belief. 

 

   In my view Vietnam was a just cause until the reality of the misperceptions it was based upon were revealed to the Johnson and Nixon administrations.[27] America cannot be the policeman of the world without overextending itself, which it did in Vietnam, and I believe our ethos will once again be forced to make an enormous change if the situation in Iraq extends to Korea, Iran, or even China with regard to Taiwan. As Jones put it so brilliantly, “The debate over the proper content of pax Americana became the driving force of United States foreign policy and of the American world view for forty-five years.”[28]

 

 

Bibliography

 

[1] Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam, (New York: Times Books, 1995), 125.

 

[2] Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, (New York, NY: Penguin, 1997), 214.

 

[3] Ibid.

 

[4] Ibid., 218.

 

[5] Ibid., 234.

 

[6] Ibid., 235.

 

[7] Walter Jones, The Logic of International Relations, (New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers, Inc., 1997), 62.

 

[8] Ibid., 54-55.

 

[9] Ibid., 55.

 

[10] McNamara, In Retrospect, 254-56.

 

[11] David Donovan, Once a Warrior King: Memoirs of an Officer in Vietnam, (New York: Ballantine Books Edition, 1986), 324.

 

[12] Philip Caputo, A Rumour of War, (New York: First Owl Books Edition, 1996), Prologue, xiv-xv.

[13] Jones, Logic, 63.

 

[14] Karnow, Vietnam, 30.

 

[15] Ibid., 214.

 

[16] Ibid., 58.

 

[17] Ibid., 234.

 

[18] Fox News, 2005.

 

[19] Ibid., 31.

 

[20] David Irving, Hitler’s War, (London: Focal Point Publications, 2002), 164-65.

 

[21] McNamara, In Retrospect, 37.

 

[22] Ibid., 39.

 

[23] Ibid., 77-83.

 

[24] Ibid., 59.

 

[25] Ibid., 81-83.

 

[26] Ibid., 321-23.

 

[27] Ibid., 329, 333.

 

[28] Jones, Logic, 55.       

 

Written for Political Science course, 2005.

 

 

 

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