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As the Vietnam War recedes into history, debate over its causes and
conduct continues. In this massive, authoritative study of the war's
origins, David Kaiser asserts that Dwight Eisenhower initiated policies
calling for military responses to Communist aggression in Southeast
Asia, and John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, although they may have
questioned these policies, never changed them. Kennedy was reluctant to
commit American ground forces in Vietnam. In contrast, Johnson was
determined to confront North Vietnam, and the war began in earnest
early in 1965, when the bombing campaign commenced and ground forces
were introduced.
Kaiser offers the provocative thesis that the war was the work of
the "GI generation," a term he borrows from William Strauss and Neil
Howe's 1991 book Generations: The History of America's Future, 1584 to
2069, for men born between 1901 and 1924 who lived through the Great
Depression and then did most of the fighting during World War II.
According to Kaiser, the "strengths" of the GI generation included a
"willingness to tackle tough and costly tasks, a faith in the
institutions of the government of the United States, a great capacity
for teamwork and consensus, and a relentless optimism," and its
weaknesses included "an unwillingness to question basic assumptions, or
even to admit the possibility of failure, or to understand that the
rest of the American population was less inclined to favor struggle and
sacrifice for their own stake."
Kennedy and Johnson, most of their
senior civilian advisers, and all of the Joint Chiefs, belonged to the
GI generation, and they "almost unquestionably accepted the need to
resist Communist expansion wherever it took place." Nevertheless, the
Kennedy administration never agreed about policy in Vietnam. According
to Kaiser, throughout most of 1961, Kennedy "resisted the bureaucracy's
repeated calls for full-scale American military intervention in
Southeast Asia." Events in1962 made intervention more certain, and the
Pentagon began planning "to defeat the Viet Cong...with conventional
military operations." But, by that time, President Kennedy was
increasingly reliant on State Department official Roger Hillsman, who
believed that "[c]onventional military tactics were ineffective against
guerrillas."
Ngo Dinh Diem's government in South Vietnam also posed
serious problems. The regime received significant American aid, and its
army was wholly financed by the United States, but "Diem never showed
the slightest tendency to follow American advice." To the contrary,
Diem relied upon his widely-hated brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. In late 1961,
when the U.S. proposed "fundamental changes in the operation of Diem's
government and army in order to win the struggle against the
Communists," Diem resisted. Coup rumors circulated for the next two
years. Kaiser provides a lengthy, detailed narrative of the
administration's relationship to Diem's demise.
In June 1963,
longstanding Buddhist opposition to the regime erupted into a
full-scale crisis, and this "ultimately led to the overthrow and
assassination of Diem." Until then, according to Kaiser, "President
Kennedy generally stayed out of the details of Vietnam policy," but,
the situation in South Vietnam began "to require attention at the
highest levels." By August, The New York Times reported that "the
United States has almost openly been advocating a military coup," but
what Kennedy "feared more than anything, from August through October,
was an American-sponsored coup that failed."
American ambivalence,
sometimes encouraging the plotters, sometimes showing disdain, was
inexcusable. Nowhere in this country's history is there a more shameful
record of the U.S. maneuvering to undermine an ostensibly friendly
government. According to Kaiser, "the four key men who led the United
States into the Vietnam War" were Johnson, Secretary of State Dean
Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security
Adviser McGeorge Bundy. Kaiser writes that "Johnson, McNamara, and Rusk
- with Bundy's general support - had forged a personal bond around the
cause of the war in South Vietnam." Kaiser's indictments are hard, if
not harsh. Johnson never evinced "interest in any long-term alternative
to escalation." The President later told Bundy, "I don't think [Vietnam
is] worth fighting for," but Johnson seemed to believe that the United
States could not get out without a substantial loss of face.
Rusk
"clung to his version of the lesson of the 1930s: that firmness alone
could deter Communist aggression anywhere around the world." According
to Kaiser, "[t]he mystique that built up around McNamara should not
obscure the essence of his role: implementing other men's plans, in
pursuit of other men's objectives," and "McNamara lacked the ability,
or perhaps even the intention, to change the manner in which the U.S.
Army planned to fight this war." And, in May 1964, Bundy told Johnson
that "the US cannot tolerate the loss of Southeast Asia to Communism."
Kaiser makes clear that Kennedy and Johnson missed several
opportunities to disengage from Vietnam. In November 1961, John Kenneth
Galbraith, Kennedy's ambassador to India, visited Saigon, and, after
reporting that "Diem's political intransigence was probably the biggest
source" of South Vietnam's problems, Galbraith suggested that "the
United States would eventually have to dump" Diem. In August 1963, Mike
Mansfield, the Senate Majority Leader and an expert on Asia,
confidentially advised Kennedy that "the United States should reserve
the right to withdraw its assistance should the Saigon government prove
incapable of making use of it." In March 1965, Walter Lippmann wrote
that South Vietnam was not a vital American interest. And, during a
1965 meeting with President Johnson, Clark Clifford argued, according
to Kaiser, that, if the U.S. did not get out of Vietnam, "the
alternative was a five-year, 50,000-casualty war that China and the
Soviet Union would never allow the United States to win."
According to Kaiser, "[o]ne great irony of the Vietnam war...is its
essential lack of effect upon the Cold War." That is a startling
conclusion, but it is essentially correct. Kaiser's position is
supported by the fact that the Cold War continued for nearly 15 years
after the fall of Saigon and then ended in favor of the United States.
The war in Vietnam was, in every sense, an American tragedy.
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