Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It. George Santayana

Vietnam

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana

The 30-year US involvement in Vietnam (technically an involvement: war was never declared) is universally regarded today as a terrible mistake. It ended in defeat, after an estimated 500,000 Vietnamese killed; 58,000 US soldiers, many of them conscripts, dead and 300,000 wounded physically (many more mentally, resulting in a high post-war suicide rate); the savage blow to US prestige, just when, after the second world war, its standing was perhaps at its highest ever (along with Vietnam, the US also lost its virtue); the damage to the environment with the destruction of villages and infrastructure, the use of poisonous defoliants; the use of napalm on villages, the massive high-level bombing, the massacres of civilians carried out by US soldiers, of which My Lai is the most notorious example; all of this was watched by a horrified world. US prestige has never recovered. Nor has its economy. The £150 billion spent, when corrected for inflation, is in the same ballpark as the $3 trillion estimate for the Iraq war, and had a predictable effect on the economy with an increase in national debt and a weakened dollar.

It is therefore important to know exactly how this tragic foreign policy blunder occurred.

First and foremost, this was an executive war. The US government gradually became tied in by the decisions of successive presidents and their intimate advisers until so enmeshed that finally the Senate meekly granted more men, more money, more materiel when the executive demanded it. Opposition to the war was slow to gain any momentum. These were Cold War days, and the war was continued, even though experts advised that it was unwinnable (shades of Afghanistan!), partly because Vietnam could not be left to be taken over by Commies, partly because US prestige became heavily involved, and partly to save the face of the executive, in particular president Lyndon Johnson. When reading over the history, it is sickening to discover that the vicious war was continued for years against expert advice, for reasons that included election dates.

In the beginning, US aid was involved. Not aid to Vietnam, which had seized the opportunity after the war to declare a People’s Republic, but aid to France, which wanted to re-establish colonial rule, and continue its century-long exploitation of that rich country. When a post-war French force set sail to establish control over Vietnam, it was in American ships. The French found a nation intent on self-determination. After the initial opposition had been crushed, the Viet Minh vanished into the villages, and Ho Chi Minh fled to the north, which China administered, and set up the Provisional Government in Hanoi.

It is worth noting that if left alone, the Vietnamese would have had a government which would have included communists, but which would have been strongly nationalist, resisting takeovers from communists or anyone else. The ‘domino’ theory (if Vietnam falls to the communists, other SE Asian states will follow) on which US involvement was based was flawed from the outset. Once upon a time the US fought a war of liberation for their own independence from Britain, yet US policy over all the years of their occupation of Vietnam failed to take this obvious, powerful motivation into account, and so seriously underestimated the resistance of the Viet Cong. (Next month: The French are ejected from Vietnam, and the US takes their place.) H.D.

Vietnam

Part Two: Exit the French; enter the Americans

Roosevelt, following the best American ideal, was strongly opposed to the French recolonisation of Vietnam after the war. He wanted a transition to self-government, overseen by the United Nations. The idea that the Vietnamese might be left alone to organise their own future does not appear to have been considered, even by Roosevelt. The responsibility to set Asians on the right path was still felt to be the white man’s burden. But Roosevelt died before the war’s end, and history changed course. With American opposition withdrawn, the French forces set sail in US ships, some in uniforms of US issue and carrying US weapons, and began the process of setting up French administration in Vietnam.

They encountered fierce opposition. Before the arrival of the French, the Viet-Minh, a coalition of groups with nationalist aspirations, had already announced the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. From the beginning voices predicted that France’s war against an elusive, guerrilla foe was unwinnable. The French commander, General Leclerc, surveyed the situation, noted the power of the nationalist movement and reported back to his political masters, ‘It would take 500,000 men to do it, and even then it could not be done’. In view of what happened over the next decades, his original assessment proved remarkably accurate.

In America events in Vietnam were seen though the lens of the Cold War. This was the time of the communist victory in China, of extended Soviet control in Eastern Europe. In 1948 the USSR absorbed Czechoslovakia. In 1949 NATO was formed, and USSR exploded its first atomic bomb. In 1950 Senator Joseph McCarthy announced his list of communist infiltrators, and for the next four years provoked anti-communist hysteria in America. In May 1950 president Truman announced the first grant of $10 million of military aid to France, who were seen to be holding the line against the commies. With USSR and China recognising Ho Chi Minh’s government in the north, and the West, including US, recognising the puppet Bao Dai government as legitimate rulers of ‘independent’ Vietnam, the scene was set for the tragedy that followed.

From the outset US military chiefs warned that ‘Once United States forces and prestige have been committed, disengagement will not be possible short of victory’. This fear of loss of face was to be a powerful spur to continuing the war, against advice from experts sent to assess the situation on the ground, and even when opportunities came to disengage. The CIA warned that ‘Even if the United States defeated the Viet Minh field forces, guerrilla action could be continued indefinitely’.

French forces were having a hard time against just such an adversary, and French public opinion against the long and costly war was growing. Political pressure for a negotiated settlement mounted. US aid to the French increased. In three years, 350 shiploads of arms had been delivered, in addition to financial aid, all to no avail. Then came the terminal catastrophe of Bien Dien Phu. 12,000 French troops had been sent to fortify this northern city, situated in an area controlled by Viet-Minh, who were able to cut off French supply lines and destroy the airstrip . The action culminated in a comprehensive defeat that effectively ended their war. 50,000 French troops had been killed, 100,000 wounded. Even so, when Dien Bien Phu forced the French to admit defeat after six long, costly years, the US Executive decided to step into the breach, against advice of their own experts.

Why was this? Though the military assessment was dire, the US Executive, behind closed doors, decided that politics must overrule everything else. US ground forces were stealthily committed, and the war in Vietnam, costly to even the huge US treasury, and morally even more so to US standing in the world, which was to end twenty years later in ignominious defeat, commenced.

Vietnam

Part three: The United States gets its hands dirty

The subtitle is unfair. The Senate, let alone the American people, were not involved in the decision to commit US armed forces in Vietnam. It was only after the military were deep in the morass, and needed Senate authorisation for increased funding, that the US government had to make a decision – and by then extrication without loss of face was almost impossible. Yet the watching world, seeing pictures of children burned by napalm, villages exploding in flames from US bombs, witnessing the massive bombing of the North, the use of poisonous defoliants, reading the accounts of the trial of William Calley, and of the massacre of hundreds of helpless villagers at My Lai, were aghast at the brutality the great superpower was capable of. The reputation of the US, self-styled leader of the free world, and with some justification for the title, was severely damaged, and has perhaps still not recovered to this day. Yet the American people had no hand in any of these atrocities, and in the end – it took a very long time – it was the American people, through massive protests against the war, who were instrumental in stopping it.

This was a war started behind the closed doors of successive Administrations, and continued through five US presidencies. What was the perspective of those few, on whom the hard decisions fell? What influenced their decision to keep the US involved, even when each was presented with opportunities for withdrawal?

Truman’s administration set the whole process in motion after the world war, by countermanding Roosevelt’s oft-stated adamant opposition to the French recolonisation of Vietnam. Not only did the US withdraw its opposition – with huge amounts of military aid it actively supported the French war to regain its former colony. Though such support ran counter to expressed US ideals, a stronger motive overruled the distaste. The French were seen as a bastion against the creeping tide of communism. The Viet Minh included communists, but their aim was a Vietnam free of occupation. The US vision of Vietnam was as a ‘domino’ that might fall and cause the fall of others, extending in the most extreme scenarios to the fall of the whole of Asia, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand! As the example of Laos was later to show, this was a mistake, and bitterly did both Vietnam and the US pay for it.

This ‘domino’ theory pervaded thinking in all successive administrations, but in addition there were two other major motives in the continued commitment in Vietnam. One was a loss of US face on the world stage – a consideration hardly worthy, or even true (a UN-mediated withdrawal would have improved US standing), but one which, being human, successive administrations thought cogent. The other was the personal thought, expressed in clear words by two of the presidents and no doubt entertained by the others, that ‘America is not going to lose its first war under my presidency!’ Such is the degree that human failings enter into the large decisions that determine human history.

Democracy was meant to spread decision-making to involve our representatives, but in practice, when it comes to decisions of war and peace, democracy has proved little different from dictatorship. Today there is much talk of improving our democracy by reducing executive power, and perhaps some improvements will actually result. The history of Vietnam demonstrates the need.

Subsequent history of the tragedy of Vietnam is interesting (if you have a strong stomach!), and next I would like to briefly summarise the main incidents and decisions made by the remaining four presidents involved, as the war extended towards its 30th year.

Vietnam

Part 4: Vietnam under Eisenhower

The story of how each of the four succeeding presidents handled the situation that Truman bequeathed, the problem of US involvement in Vietnam, is of compelling interest. There were differences in style: each president failed in a different way.

‘I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.’ Thus ex-General of the US Army, and newly elected President, Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower famously coined the phrase military-industrial complex to describe the military beast he saw growing in his country after the war, though he would be surprised at its gigantic size and power in America today.

In another famous quote, he said, ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed . .’ Given his understanding and his loathing of war it is strange, then, that President Eisenhower did not take the opportunity to take America out of the developing mess of Vietnam. This was a time before US troops had been officially committed, and when advice from experts, including CIA assessment, warned that a military victory in a land aspiring to become a free nation would be difficult to achieve, and, if achieved, of little value when imposed upon a hostile people.

Nevertheless, Eisenhower was uncharacteristically hawkish about Vietnam. It was he who first used the phrase ‘falling dominoes’ to describe the notion that if Vietnam should fall to the communists, other neighbouring nations would soon also collapse. Though he did not commit US forces, he did sanction considerable US military aid to the occupying French forces, and to the southern Vietnamese army after the French had been defeated.

On one point Eisenhower was firm – he was unequivocally opposed to committing US forces in Vietnam without Congressional approval: a scruple that did not deter his successors. Under Eisenhower, the fanatically anti-communist John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State. Dulles was famous for his outspoken ‘brinkmanship’, warning that if China interfered in Vietnam ‘massive retaliation’, generally understood to be a nuclear strike, would follow. Half the world thought Dulles was bluffing, and the other half feared he was not. This was also the time of the rise of Senator McCarthy, of reds under the bed, anti-communist hysteria.

The perception of the red bogey constrained Eisenhower. He felt he could not ‘lose’ Vietnam: too much US prestige had become involved. Yet he did have an opportunity to get out, which he did not take. After the French forces had withdrawn, a Geneva accord was signed and the country divided along the 19th parallel pending general elections. As the north outnumbered the south and could be relied upon to vote almost as a single block, Diem, knowing he would certainly lose, refused participation when the time came. As US aid was contingent on Diem holding to his part of the bargain, and as Diem had been shown to be weak, corrupt and inefficient, with a strong opposition from within his own government, Eisenhower, whose personal popularity was very high, could have withdrawn US forces at that point, and so prevented the tragedy that was to unfold over the next two decades.

In his memoirs Eisenhower was to write of his doubts on Vietnam: ‘The mass of the population supported the enemy’, and that ‘American aid could not cure the defect’.

Correction to casualty figures. Our member Roshan Pedder has pointed out that the casualty figures given in Part One of 45,000 US soldiers was probably too low. US National Archives and Records Administration () gives 58,193, from ’56 to ’98 (presumably including post-war deaths of the wounded, and suicides). Vietnamese deaths, stated as 500,000, probably exceeded 2 million (see

Vietnam

Part 5: Vietnam under Kennedy

The Vietnam inherited by the new administration was messy, but not as dire as it was later to become. US military was not yet directly involved, and aid had been limited to money and military equipment sent first to the French, and then after their war had been lost, to the southern government presided over by the US-installed Diem. Though Kennedy had picked a talented, bright team, there was no questioning that Vietnam must be held as a ‘bulwark’ against the red hordes, even though Kennedy himself, when a senator, had visited Vietnam and had said that to act ‘in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure’. Nevertheless, when in office, this is what he did.

A diversion into neighbouring Laos, which lay alongside Vietnam, is now necessary. This small, elongated country, in shape ominously like a domino, was at this point in turmoil. In charge was Prince Souvanna Phouma, a neutralist in cold war politics. His half-brother rival was leader of the Pathet Lao, the Laotian equivalent of the Viet Minh. The brothers were negotiating a coalition that would have neutralised their country, but the West was disturbed by the communist nature of Pathet Lao. Once in charge, would they let in the red hordes? Eisenhower thought so, and so briefed his successor. Laos was a prime domino that must at all costs be prevented from falling.

Kennedy asked for military advice from General Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and was shocked by his assertion that if China or North Vietnam interfered in a US action in Laos, they could be contained by the use of nuclear weapons. Still recovering from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the failed US-supported invasion of Cuba, Kennedy decided to accept neutralisation of Laos without US intervention. His decision proved justified. No communist invasion of Laos followed.