The Impact of the Vietnam Conflict - Essay Example

The Vietnam War – “Did War prove to be a Successful Means of Achieving Political Objectives? Examine this from both US and North Viet se perspectives.” I. Introduction The Vietnam War was one of the costliest wars in the twentieth century, particularly for all of its participants. Vietnam, as a country was devastated, losing millions of its people while the United States lost thousands and spent more than a hundred billion dollars.1 Scores of literature on the subject have gauged the impact of the Vietnam conflict not only on casualty statistics and geographic coverage but also on its length, intensity and global repercussions. The Vietnam conflict with its scope is the embodiment of the Clausewitzian approach that characterizes war in instrumental terms as a rational, if not desirable, means of achieving or defending known purposes. It is “an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will… War is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means.2 This paper will examine how the Vietnam War became a means to achieve the political objectives of its main players. II. Main Actors and Causes The Vietnam War was initially a conflict between two new countries that came out of the French colonization of Indochina. But, the US intervention led to a change in the circumstances. In the end, the essential reality of the struggle, wrote Hendrik Hertzberg in his book, Politics (2005), “was that the Communists, imbued with an almost fanatical sense of dedication to a reunified Vietnam under their control, saw the war against the United States and its South Vietnamese ally as the continuation of two thousand years of resistance to Chinese and later French rule.” (p. 37) Although there are three main players in the Vietnam War: North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the United States, there is the important addition of the Soviet Union as an actor and to a certain degree, China, that the Vietnam War came to be characterized by the conflict of two factions, the Communist and the US-South Vietnam alliance. On the Communist side, there is North Vietnam, Soviet Union and China. Here, the Vietnamese communist is holding the center stage. The Vietnam War was said to be an undeclared war between the Soviet Union and the United States or an extension of the Cold War, with Vietnam as the battleground of the West and the Communists war for global influence. The strategy in this regard is that these major powers were involved in their war against each other using the weaker countries as a battleground. In this approach, their troops are kept at a minimum and that they – the US and Soviet Union - are protected, themselves, from risk of direct attack. The Vietnam, was primarily a conflict between the North and the South for control over much of Indochina after the French left. But the competition for spheres of influence between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually led the United States to directly engage in the war and the Soviet Union, including China, to join in the fray. Thus, according to James Gaston and Janis Bren Hietala: With the US rhetoric unhinged from the realities of the war… Vietnam in part became a U.S. war fought for U.S. concerns, rather than a Vietnamese war fought with US assistance for South Vietnamese goals. (p. 194) The United States became very interested in arming guerillas, revolutionaries and countries be they democrats, Islamists or something else. Similar strategies were employed by the Chinese and the Soviet support for the North side of the Vietnam War. This was an integrated component of the so-called US political operations – a broad and inclusive strategy or general framework for interaction in the international arena. William Robinson (1996) explained that it involves a “marshalling of human beings to support or oppose causes... Such as marshalling must be the objective of all international action, from the delivery of public speeches to the dropping of bombs.” (p. 79) Raimo Väyrynen wrote that, “it was expected that it would weaken the international standing of the USA and change the correlation of forces.” (p. 86) III. Political Objectives Making sense of the Vietnam War is difficult since the war was basically a three-actor event at a minimum. However, the purposes of these three main players are clear from the outset. The Vietnam War for the North Vietnamese was one of total political purpose that commanded the complete resources of the people, and that the purpose was hardly less desperate for the leadership of South Vietnam. The main political objective of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV), through the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, was the complete unification of North and South Vietnam under its regime. As it is, it is comparable to the total and invisible objective that fuelled the American cause in their war for independence against the British colonizers in the eighteenth century. Such purpose in the part of the North Vietnam and its leadership was steadily maintained from 1945 until its final achievement in 1975. In this respect, the central strategy of North Vietnam was to deepen their political influence over the South Vietnamese population and to build a political-military infrastructure capable of waging simultaneous political and military struggle.3 On the one hand, South Vietnam’s objective was to avoid being annexed by the North Vietnamese government. There were various governments involved in South Vietnam but the goal was the same. According to Donald Snow and Dennis Drew (2000), the overarching Vietnamese nationalism was identified with Ho Chi Minh, the leaders in the South could not embrace the idea of unification under their own control; the support base was simply not there.4 And so, the objective became defense-oriented. American forces were first deployed in Vietnam in order to help South Vietnam from losing the war and to insure that the north would not succeed. Having deployed enough troops to insure that North Vietnam would not succeed, Marvin Gettleman et al. (1995), wrote, it had been almost a reflex action to start planning on how much it would take to ‘win’ the war and that lip service was paid to the need for developing South Vietnamese political institutions, but no one at high levels seemed to question the assumption that US political objectives in South Vietnam could be attained through military victory. 5 The Truman Doctrine of 1947 has provided the outline of the US objective in the Vietnam War. This doctrine was formulated after World War II was concluded, the fightings had stopped and international agreements were in disarray. As it is, it became clear that the Soviet Union was going to assert itself further by claiming to grab as much territories in its sphere as possible. In response, the Truman doctrine stressed: We will not allow a little country to be pushed around and be taken over by the communists. Somebody has to come to their rescue and we will do that. (cited in McGovern & Hearden 1990, p. 40) The Truman doctrine was to be reinforced by the Eisenhower strategy of containment, and, after that, President Kennedys stance on the United States relations with the Soviet Union. In 1956, he mentioned that the cornerstone of the free world is Southeast Asia and that after he was elected, he took interest in the size and readiness of the US Army and thereby increasing it in anticipation of the military and nuclear showdown with its rival. In a report by the New York Times, Kennedy was quoted to have said: “We have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam looks like the place.” (p. 41) Now these accounts underscore the various factors and forces underlying the eventual involvement of the United States in Southeast Asian affairs, particularly Vietnam. Such involvement was inevitable. President Kennedy made it clear how his administration would deal with its role as the leader of the free world. He pledged that America will “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” 6 The US objectives in Vietnam, hence, had been spelled out many months earlier and was never changed: to extend government domination, direction and control over South Vietnam; to defeat the Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops inside South Vietnam; to force North Vietnam to withdraw its troops and cease its direction of the war; to deter the Chinese Communists from intervening in the western Pacific and to be prepared to defeat them if they should intervene.7 IV. Were the Political Objectives Achieved? Victory In 1975, North Vietnamese forces marched victoriously into Saigon, allowing about 200,000 US and South Vietnamese soldiers to evacuate hurriedly by helicopter and ship.8 The communist regime’s main political objective was realized and, in this regard, it had won the Vietnam War. Under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh’s, North Vietnam has responded in the conflict with guerilla tactics at first, and then as the US will weakened, escalated their attacks to a conventional invasion. With their patience and superior strategy, they won the war and unified Vietnam, but at the cost of devastating their country. But if the North Vietnamese were wiling to accept limitless casualties, if they were willing to pay any price, then the war could not have been won except by the physical destruction of North Vietnam and the killing of a large proportion of its people.9 Defeat The Vietnam War was not overly popular in South Vietnam and that it was not compelling enough as opposed to the strength of nationalism and desire to win in the North. Snow and Drew cited that this was partly because the war was more than a simple invasion for the South Vietnamese because it was also seen as an internal insurgency – that part of the war, especially in its early going, conducted by the Vietcong.10 There were four other fundamental reasons why the South Vietnamese goal failed as history would tell us. The first of the reasons is that the commitment by the South Vietnamese to the idea of maintaining freedom was actually an artificial effort at defense. Looking at the circumstances that led to the division of the country at the 17th parallel, one would see an attempt at establishing it as some random action of convenience. Yes, there was rivalry between the two Vietnams – the primarily rural, agricultural southerners and the more urbanized and industrialized northerners, but nationalism, wrote Snow and Drew, was not a North or South Vietnamese issue; it was Vietnamese.11 South Vietnam, a US client regime, when unable to muster popular support for its cause resorted to large-scale terror to control the population, finally eliciting resistance, which it could not control.12 Secondly, Ho Chi Minh enjoyed a wide national support, not just in North Vietnam. He claims respect even among the southerners because he was a national when he drove the French colonialist out of the country. In many respects, he is the George Washington equivalent of Vietnam. From the perspective of the Vietnamese, whether they are Southerners or Vietcong, Ho Chi Minh was a leader and that there’s the fact that the South do not have any one to match his stature. To make matters worse, the government of the South were less than inspiring. There is corruption and repression in the Diem regime, which, for its part, have resisted American attempts to institute reforms. The string of incompetent generals that followed the Diem regime were even less spectacular. Finally, the alliance between the US and South Vietnam was viewed by most Vietnamese as a problem. To the average Vietnamese, northerner or southerner, the Americans were not particularly welcome sight, especially when they began arriving in large numbers.13 As mentioned elsewhere in this paper, rather they were viewed as another group of foreign invaders taking the place of the French and, thus, to be resisted in the same manner. The US Failure In looking at the war objectively, one cannot categorically say that the United States lost in the Vietnam War militarily. As it was, the military situation was technically a stalemate. But, the fact that the US withdrew and the Communist Vietnam eventually wrestled control over South Vietnam, the political objective that was set in the outbreak of the war was defeated. The US objectives in Vietnam have failed due to numerous reasons. Foremost of this is the fact that the US engaged in a limited war. The idea behind this principle is that wars would still be sometimes fought, but they would have to be controlled in such a manner that they would not escalate to nuclear war.14 The significance of this is that such limitation also imposes restrictions on the objectives and following them is the limitation of means. For instance, the US air campaign was constrained by three considerations: first, a fear of bringing the Chinese to the battlefield; second, a fear of escalating and geographically expanding the war, thereby involving other countries; and, finally, there was a fear of arousing further the well-organized antiwar elements at home and abroad.15 For many analysts, the US military strategy of war based on attrition directed against insurgent main force units was also a mistake. Bradley et al., for instance, argued that the strategy should have been aimed toward population security and denying the insurgent’s access to population and emphasized pacification programs, citing the success of isolated but successful pacification efforts.16 During the initial stages of the Vietnam War in the 1960s – the US policymakers were unable to connect the means to be employed in outlining what would constitute the desired outcomes of their decisions. However, Johnson and his advisors had correctly identified a vital condition for success: blunting the will of the communist leaders in the North. However, this strategy, as the ensuing events tell us, would fail. An account by Walter Hixson underscores this point: Rolling Thunder, a limited application of air power, attacked symbolically the perceived strategic center of gravity – North Vietnams determination to achieve unification – but the campaign neither defeated nor significantly damaged the enemys will to fight for total victory. Despite the history of French involvement in the region, or perhaps in ignorance of it, key US policymakers consistently underestimated their opponents. When North Vietnam failed to act in predictable ways, the United States became frustrated and applied increasing pressure. (p. 233) The Vietnam War as shown by in its aftermath demonstrated how the United States could not have won the war even if the conflict was prolonged for a week or a month or two. The US have shown the world that saving South Vietnam from communism was not only beyond its reasonable military, political, and intellectual capabilities but that it was ultimately beyond its moral capabilities as well. V. What success means? Conservatives have argued that the Vietnam War could have been won had there been resoluteness and that flexible military strategies were involved.17 This conservative talk has been the prevailing discourse in the aftermath of the US success in the Persian Gulf, using the recommended military strategies. Nonetheless, for the war to have been won, it seems like monumental expenditure of national resources in terms of human power, industrial output, and civilian effort was required. There are several scenarios that outline what could have happened had the US deterred North Vietnam from uniting Vietnam under a communist regime. Nonetheless, subsequent history has demonstrated that Vietnam is not an important cog in the political influence of the US globally and in the defense of American national interest. After the war, the US has demonstrated an increase in political power despite its failings in Vietnam. So in a way, it would have defeated the idea of success if massive effort was necessary in order to achieve it. In Vietnam, the question was that, was it likely that the US strategic position would be weakened if Vietnam would succumb to the communist web? According to the domino theory, the answer was yes. And so the US went to war. Apparently, the argument was invalid. William Bundy, the then assistant secretary of state, outline the political consequences of the US failure in Vietnam: Faced with a reaction, we must still conclude that Thailand simply could not be held in these circumstances, and that the rest of Southeast Asia would probably follow in due course. In other words, the strategic stakes in Southeast Asia are fundamentally unchanged by the possible political failure in Vietnam. The same is almost certainly true of the shockwaves that could arise against other free nations – Korea, Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines – in the wider area of East Asia. Perhaps these shockwaves can be countered, but they would not be mitigated by the fact that the failure arose from internal political causes rather than any US major error or omission. (cited in Gibson 2000, p. 344) Bundy was referring to the domino theory as he talked about “shockwaves” instead of the popping corks, felled dominoes and chain reactions. The domino theory has been sought by Communist China. The communization of Vietnam would have been a step towards a Chinese domination of Asia temporarily.18 Had the communist expansion not been opposed, US political power would have been lessened. So at least, in this area success was achieved although not in the desired degree. Again, the communization of Vietnam did not in any significant manner affect or downgrade the US political and military standing globally. However, the communist victory claimed a significant ideological triumph for the Communist Party in Hanoi and the more general cause of world socialism. Indeed, it is difficult not to admire the determination and faith of Ho Chi Minh to achieve his goal of unifying Vietnam and eventually forcing the withdrawal of the US from Vietnamese soil. Shortly before his death in 1969, he proclaimed: “We, a small nation will have earned the signal honor of defeating, through heroic struggle, two big imperialisms – the French and the American – and of making a worthy contribution to the world liberation movement.”19 As it is, the global significance to this communist victory cannot be denied, this grandiose pronouncement by who about the communist victory might be too far of a stretch. He conveniently neglected to enlighten us as to what basis was for expecting such universal success to national liberation revolutions. The inherent justice of a liberation struggle, a heroic history of resistance, and fine martial traditions all tend to depend on individual national circumstances. But perhaps, it was to the military strategy that Ho was referring to about his universality. General Giap and Party Secretary Le Duan have not been bashful about making such claims of strategic brilliance in behalf of the communist party: Another outstanding success of our party consisted in creating and developing to a very high level the combined strength of people’s war, of revolutionary war, using military attacks by noble strategic army columns as main striking forces, combining military attacks with political struggle and agitation among enemy troops… and winning total victory by means of a general offensive and uprising right in the capital city.20 Indeed, who are we to grudge these communist claims. They were the victors in the protracted struggle and their regime is what is in power in Vietnam. VI. Conclusion If we are to make a matrix in regard to how the war progressed, we would find that the nature of the American political objective was considerable more complex than the objectives of the indigenous combatants. As previously mentioned, the common thread that links the United States’ purpose over time was the extension of the containment idea to Vietnam and, by further extension, to the rest of Southeast Asia. In this aspect, the war from the perspective of the US failed and the North was victorious. One of the major differences in the achievement of success between the United States and Vietnam is the terms of their commitment to the war. It was clear from the outset that the relative commitments of the US and North Vietnam were heavily influenced by the differences in the conflicts significance to the population of the two countries. All in all, true to the Clausewitzian principle, we have seen that the more powerful and inspiring motives for war are, the more they affect those that are involved and the fiercer that the tensions become. We have seen this from the Vietnamese end. On the one hand, the less intense the motive and commitment, as with the case of the United States’ stake on the conflict, the less will the military element’s natural tendency to violence coincide with political directives. Here, as the subsequent events in the Vietnam War have proved, the war being waged is driven further from its natural course and that the political object will be more and more deviating to its ideal purposes. In this regard, one can see that the Vietnam War was a potent tool in achieving political objectives that inspired it in the first place when they were waged. We can see this in the victory of North Vietnam and to some extent in the US experience as well. As outlined by this paper, the main political objective of North Vietnam was to unify the country under the Communist regime. Without the strategies employed in the war, they could not have forced the US to withdraw and eventually annex South Vietnam. A specific example is how the war was exploited by Ho Chi Minh to stoke nationalism among the Vietnamese people and forget their differences as they battle the invasion of another invader. The pressure that the war inflicted on the United States’ side was more on the political side than military as the resilience of the Vietnamese resistance allowed for the protracted conflict. The war became costly for America not just in its coffers but in its will power as the battle spilled over the US shores when the American public demanded an end to it. In Vietnam, it was proven that given the right motive, commitment and faith, war can achieve its desired end. In the case of the United States, the Vietnam War has achieved certain political purposes as well. While it failed to prevent the communization of Vietnam – its primary goal – the US was able to check the possibility of a Chinese dominance and, in effect, a weakening of its power and influence in the region. In addition, the escalating degree of pain and damage in Vietnam, which subjected both the Vietnamese people and the country’s infrastructure to punishment, was pivotal in the cautious policy of the Soviet Union and China in the conflict and its aftermath. As the war was technically a stalemate for all players involved, the feared Communist domino effect throughout Southeast Asia did not materialize. It is important to remember that this was one of the original objectives why the US entered into the war in the first place. Bibliography Bradley, Mark, Clarke, Jeffrey, Duiker, William, et al., The Vietnam War. (M.E. Sharpe, 1993). Chomsky, Noah. Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Culture. (South End Press, 1993) Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Michael Howard, Peter Paret (trans.) (Oxford University Press, 2007). Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of Americas Empire. (Penguin, 2004). Gaston, James and Hietala, Janis. Ethics and National Defense. (DIANE Publishing, 1993). 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