Vietnam war and its impact on the US foreign policy

The Vietnam War and its impact on the U.S foreign policy

Xhensila Gaba

Course: intro to international relations Instructor: Dr. Nancy Kwang Johnson Time: Tuesdays 9.00-12.00 Page 1 of 14

Date: January 31, 2010

“Whoever does not know the history, is condemned to repeat it�

The Vietnam War lasted for almost thirty years, beginning from the early 1950s until 1973 with the withdrawal of the U.S. forces. This was the longest war in the American history and probably one of the fewest that did not ended in a success for the United States. The Vietnam War started as a conflict between South Vietnam and North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam), which were divided by the 17th parallel established in the Geneva Conference in 1954 (Garofano, 2002). But soon the Vietnam War deviated from a civil war into a limited international conflict, where the U.S became involved more and more. However, it is difficult to establish how the American war in Vietnam started and how did it become so hard to step back. The American war in Vietnam has been considered as a failure in both military and diplomatic strategies. The American strategy, as it is called, was orchestrated by five different American presidents, starting from president Harry Truman in 1950 when decided to help France in Vietnam (which primarily was a French colony) with military and economic aid and ending up Page 2 of 14

with president Nixon who undertook the strategy of Vietnamization of the war, meaning withdraw of American troops and training for the South Vietnamese to put up with the ground fighting (Stoessinger, 2007). In the late January 1973, United States signs the peace agreement, and the U.S leaves Vietnam without achieving its goals. The fact if America lost the war is out of debate in every scholar sense of the word “loss�, considering the fact that America lost 50,000 men just during the direct involvement period and the economy was ruined by spending more than 150 billion dollars in this war (Garofano, 2002). It is not the time for engaging in debates whether America lost the war or not, but time is ripe for re-considering what brought the failure.

How did the U.S get so deep involved in a war in a small Third-world nation? What was at stake for the Americans when decided to go to war in Vietnam? Probably no one would have thought that the war in Vietnam which started with the overconfidence of the U.S in defeating in short time the communist regime in North Vietnam, would had turned out to be the war that separated the American public opinion into two groups (the ones pro escalation and the ones pro withdrawal) and making the Americans distrust about the credibility and morality of their government. Thus the Vietnam War showed for a failure of U.S not only in the international arena, but also it indicated for a loss of war even at home. Now, having passed more than 35 years from the end of the Vietnam War, still the consequences of this war seem to have left tracks in the U.S foreign policy making. The American belief systems have been re-considered and the performance of U.S foreign policy performance has experienced significant changes.

Probably the U.S failure in Vietnam served as a lesson to be learnt, as a past experience not to be neglected and as a mistake not to be repeated again.

The scope of this paper is to analyze the Vietnam War in the foreign policy perspective.

How has the U.S foreign policy been altered by this long and unwinnable war? What are the Page 3 of 14

lessons to be learnt from this military and diplomatic failure in Vietnam with respect to U.S foreign policy? These are the questions I pose in this essay, and after making an analysis of what happened in Vietnam and how did war escalated, I would end up with what can be learnt by the ordeal of U.S in Vietnam. First, I would introduce a contextual background about the origins of the war and what made U.S get involved. Second, I would analyze the Americanization of the Vietnam War, focusing mostly on the President Johnson’s decisions to escalate the war. Then the third part will focus on the sources of failure for the America dividing them into two groups: (1) misperceptions of U.S administration both in diplomatic and military strategies, (2) lack of popular support. The last part will focus on the lessons to be learnt from the Vietnam war with respect of U.S foreign policy, including the main actors that undermined U.S foreign policy and its legitimacy and what should be changed in the international system.

Let’s start by having a view on the origins and causes of the Vietnam War. How did all this started? Before WWII, Vietnam had been a colony of French Empire. During the war, Japanese invaded Vietnam, so France lost control on the province in Indochina. After the capitulation of Japan and the end of WWII, the people in Vietnam found some space for establishing their own government and gaining independence. At this period, the nationalist campaigns took place and spread all over Vietnam and the leader of this movement was Ho Chin Mihn. France wanted to return back to Vietnam in order to gain territories and fulfill the ambition of colonization. U.S. and President Truman supported France in the south both military and economically, but the north was left in the hands of the non-communist Chinese. Meanwhile, Ho Chin Mihn was supported by more and more people and in 1946 his party was established— the Viet Mihn. At this time, France claimed the north and therefore the French entered in a conflict with Viet Mihn. Despite the help of the U.S., France was not able to cope with the Page 4 of 14

guerrillas’ tactics of Viet Mihn. In 1954, the French regiment was attacked by the Vietnamese and France was forced to withdraw from Vietnam (Malkasian, 2004). At the same year, the world powers met in Geneva for discussing the future of Vietnam. They decided to split the country in two parts by the 17th parallel and also established that in 1956, there would be elections for deciding who was going to rule the entire country. Actually, the elections never took part and the division of 1956 seemed to be permanent. Viet Mihn became more active military because he wanted to unite the two parts of Vietnam under the communist rule. Here is when America starts to get involved in the Vietnam and this reaction has its roots in the classic scenario of the Cold War. The main goal of U.S. was to contain the spread of communism. U.S. thought that if the South Vietnam would fall under the communist rule, then the domino theory would make possible the spread of the communist regime in all the southern Asia, and then it would be more difficult for U.S to fight it. The Viet Mihn was backed from the communist China (Mao Zedong). The creation of these bipolar forces was expected in the period of the Cold War. Americans compared communism with a virus that contaminate whoever is near. Translated in the language of the domino theory, the U.S was decided not to let the South Vietnam fall under a communist regime, because the emergence of a strong communist country would influence and infect even the other nation in South Asia. Then, the U.S was determined not to let this happen.

This was the reason why President Truman decided to help France primarily. But as the war was escalating and its end seemed far, most of these reasons were altered and forgotten. President Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy promised not to permit a victory of communism, so if they decided to get out from South Vietnam, then the U.S credibility and the presidents’ reputation was at stake (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). Despite the ideological factors that made America enter the Vietnam War, still it is necessary to emphasize that the personality of each president

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influenced the tide of many events in Vietnam. Especially President Johnson sent more and more troops in Vietnam by undertaking the operation “Rolling Thunder” and contributing to the escalation of the war. After Johnson, the decision of President Nixon was for leading to the Vietnamization of the war. The involvement of the U.S in Vietnam actually had little to do with the fate of the South Vietnam, but it is more adequate to call the U.S intervention as a clash between superpowers, an indirect World War III, shaped by many ideologies of the Cold War and necessary for establishing the future of each power in the international arena. This was at stake for the U.S. since the direct confrontation of the two powers was avoided by both sides (because of its being too risky using nuclear weapons), then the war was transferred in places like Korea and Vietnam. America worried about the Soviet Union taking advantage in many events such as the building of the Berlin Wall, or the so called “iron curtain”, the Bay of Pigs event and the Cuban Missile Crises. So it was time for America to show off and challenge the other side, and therefore the U.S. decided to send troops in a place so far from America’s “defensible border” as Acheson states.

Now, I would like to focus on how did the war escalated. Why was it so hard to get out from Vietnam? The Americanization of the Vietnam War occurred during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. He stated that there were only two options: to withdraw or to escalate. First, President Johnson campaigned in 1964 election with the promise not to escalate war, but after the offense of Viet Cong over South Vietnam, Johnson was convinced that the communists were escalating, thus he decides to start the bombing campaign against North Vietnam (Stoessinger, 2007). He ordered 210,000 American ground troops to Vietnam. He justified the use of ground forces by saying that the war would not last more than six months. But since the war did not end, Johnson strategy proved to be unsuccessful. President Johnson’s dream was the building of a Page 6 of 14

Great Society, but if U.S decided to back down on the communist challenge in Asia, then his dream would be destroyed. Thus, each step further in involving in Vietnam, made it more difficult to get out and admit failure. Thus, escalation occurred. The misperception and ego of President Johnson made America experience a catastrophe and lead to the loss of his own reputation by separating the public opinion within a civil war. The bombing campaign, or the socalled “Rolling Thunder�, was ineffective, and the main reasons are because it was applied only partially in some areas and because the North Vietnamese were prepared for enduring each kind of catastrophe, no matter how many people would die. General Westmoreland, the commander of the United States in Vietnam, demanded more and more troops, by making the President Johnson feel caught in a trap, as far as Vietnam was becoming the land for a big American war.

And still the enemy could not be defeated. The Tet offensive was the event that highlighted the disaster. Americans at home realized now that three years of bombing and an assurance of half a million men was in vain and the enemy seemed stronger than ever (Mueller, 1980). Lyndon Johnson gave the Vietnam War another dimension. His misperception and his stubbornly of not paying attention to the advices that addressed the war of North Vietnamese as different from those of the rigid dogma of the Cold War, made America experience a tragedy.

Now, after giving the big picture about how all this tragedy started and how did U.S involved more and more in the Vietnam conflict, it is time for identifying and analyzing what were the sources that made America fail in Vietnam. First, U.S. lost the war because of its misperceptions and misunderstandings. So it is necessary to say that the failure did not occur as a result of not conceptualizing the war, but mainly because of a bad and flawed conceptualization.

The U.S overconfidence in its potentials for winning and the underestimation of the enemy undermined her success. After the ending of the WWII, the U.S. victory made them feel Page 7 of 14

confident and think that if they were capable to defeat the Nazi army, then they could win against anyone, anywhere. The U.S. never made an analysis about the opportunities it had for winning the war, but the only questions it posed were how long it would take and what it would cost. So, the U.S. applied the formula for success discovered during WWII even in the Vietnam War, assuming that this would bring America victory. But their assumptions were wrong, because they had underestimated the enemy and had misunderstood the nature of conflict. U.S. had not properly understood against who were fighting and for what reason. U.S. saw itself caught in the trap of a rigid Cold War dogma, which made America involve more and more in this war, leading at the Americanization of the war. George Ball, a foreign policy expert, maintains that the Cold War concern of the U.S was mainly protecting Europe against the Soviet Union. U. S. has tried to avoid and stop every revolutionary movement in the Third World in the name of anticommunism, but this sounds impossible and in the end, U.S failed to be the “world’s sole police officer” (“Vietnam War”, 2007). The debate in America wrongly focused on how to fight the war, rather than on whether the U.S should be there in the first place. The failure was amplified because they underestimated the enemy and did not analyze correctly the nature of the conflict.

In fact, it seems like in Vietnam the movement tendency was a nationalist revolution aspiring to establish the independence of Vietnam and give an end to the colonization period. But America’s Cold War fixation made that the misperceptions and miscalculations lead to failure. President Johnson believed that if the U.S caused destruction, pain, and death to North Vietnam, then they would give up (Mueller, 1980). But this did not happen. The North Vietnamese resisted the bombing assault and they were willing to struggle, suffer and die on a scale that seemed beyond reason. Another mistake that the U.S. did is about not taking into consideration that the support of South Vietnamese would not last forever, especially when the South Vietnamese recognized

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that the U.S. was engaged in the war only for its self national interests and did not care much for the future of South Vietnam. That was the reason why the North Vietnamese endured more violence compared to the South Vietnamese; because men in the north were willing to fight and die until their goal was achieved and that was missing in the other part.

Another flawed conceptualization of U.S was about its military strategy. The U.S. failed in identifying the “breaking point” in Vietnam. Many casualties were inflicted, still the Viet Cong was ready to endure as long as possible, no matter how long it would take or how many people should die. It was a war of will and patience. The U.S. pursued the strategy of attrition, but it resulted useless because the North Vietnamese had accepted conducting a long and costly war (Malkasian, 2004). Ho Chin Mihn says in 1966, in response to the escalation of war by U.S., “We will fight to find victory. Everything depends on the Americans. If they want to make war for 20 years, then we shall make war for 20 years” (“Vietnam War”, 2007). The strategy of attrition seemed to be the most adequate strategy with respect to military operations (Malkasian, 2004). This strategy consisted in achieving three goals: (1) protecting and establishing the military position of South Vietnam, and stopping North Vietnamese attacks; (2) initiating first the offensive and not just counter-attacking; (3) destroying Viet Cong forces in the territories of South Vietnam (not getting through the 17th parallel). But the attrition strategy failed because U.S. was fighting against a well-discipline and stubbornly resistant to all the attacks. Here is what Kellen says about the resistance of the North Vietnamese, “So well-grounded seems their morale and so self-resurrecting, that it is not really possible to see how it can be broken” (“Vietnam War”, 2007). But why did America not pursued another strategy such as those suggested by some military advisers? Some military advisers were pro the use of nuclear weapons, or removing all the refugees and bombing the restrictions. The operational strategy of Page 9 of 14

U.S. was constrained by many factors, some of which are: (1) they did not want to escalate the war in a wider conflict including Soviet Union and china; (2) U.S was not trained for fighting a guerrilla war, which was the tactic of Viet Cong; (3) the South Vietnamese military was weak (Malkasian). Therefore, for the reasons listed above, U.S pursued the attrition strategy, but it showed that the assumption of U.S. that at some point of punishment, the Viet Cong would be defeated was wrong. The U.S could not imagine that a small Asian country would not have a breaking point when fighting against the United States.

The other source of failure was the lack of public support at home. American public opinion, or the so-called the “war at home”, strongly influenced the tide of the war. Americans watched from the television how the war was killing their familiars and the end seemed so far even though there was enough escalation. After the Tet offensive, the majority of Americans thought that it was not worth fighting in Vietnam (Lunch & Sperlich, 1979). The enemy took advantage of the fact that the war was becoming so unpopular at home, because this would stimulate the activation of the peace agreement. The withdrawal of America was required. The policy-makers were rational when thinking that the support at home would not last forever.

Indeed, the relation between escalation and domestic support was negative, meaning that as the number of dead increased, the support decreased. The U.S. found itself involved in a war that damaged its power and prestige and undermined its credibility. The U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara apologized in 1995 by saying “We were wrong, terribly wrong” (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). This demonstrated that neither a central architect could give a certain prediction whether the war was inevitable or winnable. The war in Vietnam seems to have altered the previous relationship between elites and the public in the area of foreign policy. Vietnam was such a tragedy that made the mass foreign policy to change its attitudes. At the beginning of the Page 10 of 14

war, in 1955, few Americans were aware to what was happening, and paid little attention to South Vietnam. As long as the administration seems to have foreign affairs in hand, then the majority of citizens are comfortable to go after the president’s guidance. The first indication showing that part of the American public opinion was beginning to deviate from the previous patterns of opinions about Vietnam began to appear within about a year of the 1965 escalation.

Now, let’s analyze what are the lessons to be learnt from the Vietnam War. First, the failure of the war made American leaders to re-consider the foreign policy process and put constraints in future U.S. policy. “No more Vietnams” is the slogan of many Americans frustrated by the damage of the war (Lunch & Sperlich, 1979). Many Americans that were pro the involvement of U.S in Vietnam at the beginning understood that it was a mistake. The Nixon doctrine declared officially that the U.S would be very careful in the future in selecting in which conflict to get involved. In the future, the United States would be probable to perform its foreign relations within a narrower idea of the national interest. The experience in Vietnam would make U.S think twice before engaging in a military conflict. For example, in the case of Angola, the U.S intervention was limited, even though the Soviet Union and Cuba had posed themselves in the civil war in Angola (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). The foreign aid would be switched off from military aid to humanitarian programs. Another lesson to be learnt is whether the U.S should engage in unilateral conflicts. The conflict in Vietnam exceeded the civil war nature and turned to be an international conflict, because it aimed to contain communism to be spread in Europe or other parts. But how comes that the U.S was there in the first place and no other European country engaged in the war? Also the Vietnam War taught Americans that the belief systems should be revised and that the domestic constraints on foreign policy were necessary. In a survey when Americans were asked about the performance of leaders during the war, 60 % of them Page 11 of 14

answered that they had given the presidents excess trust on conducting foreign policy (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). The loss of 50,000 people and 150 billion dollars spend made Americans think more critically about how much confidence should be giving to the presidents in making decisions in the international arena. The Vietnam War put a big question mark on the responsibilities and morality of the American leaders and the belief system was weakened. The leaders sometimes did not take decisions according to the public opinion, but they acted stubbornly in fulfilling their goals without analyzing carefully the consequences. For example, during the presidency of Johnson, the debate whether the escalation should have taken place or not was discouraged. His dream about Great Society was more important that any disapproval or advice from the CIA for withdrawing (Stoessinger, 2007).

To sum up, the Vietnam War is a critical event in the American history, because it was the cause for many changes to take place in the international arena and in the foreign policy of U.S. The war in Vietnam, except from being the longest war ending in failure in American history, is was the war that caused more divergences among the public opinion. The Vietnam war made Americans be conscious that their political system had many flaws, which made America vulnerable even in the international system. Thus, the foreign policy of America was reconsidered and it was altered in many aspects. U.S. decided to select the international conflicts where it would get involved. Also it decided that it would avoid unilateral conflicts, meaning that U.S. does not want to lose her people for protecting the world. Last, the belief system in America was weakened and the public opinion constraint leaders to not take decisions in foreign policy without advise. But despite the fact that Vietnam War was a failure with high costs, still it is worth the experience, meaning that the Vietnam War is considered as a template for reminding

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America and its leaders to be more carefully when taking decisions in the international area, because a second Vietnam will definitely underscore the credibility of United States.

References

Crowell, L. (1996). Review: Thinking about the Vietnam War. The Journal of Military History, 60(2), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2944411

Garofano, J. (2002). Tragedy or choice in Vietnam? Learning to think outside the archival box: A review essay. International security, 26 (4), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092105

Holsti, O., & Rosenau, J. (1979). Vietnam, consensus, and the belief systems of American leaders. Cambridge university press, 32 (1), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2010081

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Lunch, W., & Sperlich, P. (1979). American public opinion and the war in Vietnam. University of Utah; Western political science association, 32 (1), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/447561

Malkasian, C. (2004). Towards a better understanding of attrition: The Korean and Vietnam wars. The journal of military history, 68 (3), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3396732

Mueller, J. (1980). The search for the “breaking point� in Vietnam: The statistics of a deadly quarrel. International studies quarterly, 24 (4), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600287

Stoessinger, J. (2007). Why Nations go to war. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

Vietnam War: End of the war. (2000-2007). The Columbia electronic encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2010, January 30 from http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0861797.html>

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