The United States in Radical Vietnamese Anti-Colonial Discourse - Case Study Example

Introduction The Viet se-American conflict lasted from 1945-1975 with the last fourteen years culminating in a war that resulted in just under 60,000 US lives. (Shafer, 31-57) The tragic consequences of the war have left a stain on American pride and despite all the justifications offered by politicians at the time, Americans continue to struggle with reconciling the unpleasant experience of the Vietnam conflict with the reasons for it.(Shafer, vi-ix) The discussion that follows examines the background to the Vietnam war and explains what went wrong for America. Justifying the Vietnam War Historians maintain that the US commitment to its occupation of Vietnam and the conflict that ensued was driven by the cold-war agenda. (Bradley, 299-329) During the Cold War era which followed the Second World War and endured to the 1990s, the US and its allies were committed to containing the spread of socialism which invariably meant decolonizing those states occupied and controlled by countries such as China and the Soviet Union. (Bradley, 299-329) At the very least the West was committed to stifling the spread of communism. Vietnam would become a focal point when the country was left divided following the collapse of France’s long colonization of the region. Having fought for independence, the Vietnamese defeated the French despite US military aid to the latter. Following the French withdrawal from Vietnam in 1954 the nation was divided into North and South Vietnam. What followed was a struggle between South Vietnamese rebels who were backed by communist China and the Soviet Union. The North was supported by U.S. military aid although the U.S. troops did not enter Vietnam until 1965. (Duam and Gardner, 124-150) At the Geneva Accords held in 1954 the ceasefire agreement ended with the division of Vietnam at the 17th Parallel, a temporary measure intended to come to an end in 1956 when national elections would unify the nation. (Moyar, 32-59) In North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh established a socialist government called the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. (Moyar, 32-59) A non-communist governance was set up in the South under former Emperor Boa Dai, a man considered to be largely under the control of the French and the Japanese. Dai took office as a Prime Minister. (Moyar, 32-59) The US appointed Ngo Diem as South Vietnam’s president who refused to call elections at the slated time in 1956. The US justified this refusal by referencing the domino theory which was the hallmark of US foreign policy. (Herring, 46-79) Dwight Eisenhower’s Administration coined the term domino effect to reflect a fear that if communism was not contained it could spread with the result that it would end up infiltrating America. (McNamara, 19) It was this kind of fear that characterized much of the Cold War era and fuelled political sentiments that led to the US-Vietnamese war. The following sentiments expressed by Dwight Eisenhower reflect the impact of the Domino theory and the political thought leading to the Vietnam war: “Eighty per cent of the population would have voted for the Communist Ho Dhi Minh...” (Eisenhower, 372) The US involvement in South Vietnam was largely characterized by a containment policy which was fuelled by Eisenhower’s domino theory. Pursuant to the containment policy Washington set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization which largely mirrored the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (Herring, 46-79) It was ultimately this policy that gave way to the US appointment of Ngo Dinh Diem, a self-proclaimed anti-communist. (McNamara, 200-201) Moreover, as tensions escalated between North and South Vietnam, so did tensions between the US and the Soviet Union as the Cold War gained momentum. (Mann, 225-233) By the time John F. Kennedy took office as US President in 1960 difficulties with the containment policy piled up. In 1961 Kennedy feared that the Soviet Union would test the US containment policy in the Asian region. (Mann, 225-233) Several problems forced Kennedy’s hand. For instance the Bay of Pigs failure, the erection of the Berlin Wall and agreement concluded between a largely pro-Western Laos Administration and the Communist Pathet Lao all weakened American credibility and power in the Cold War era. (Mann, 225-233) Kennedy then turned his attention toward Vietnam, essentially maintaining that the US could not withstand another failure. The goal was to prevent another communist victory by expansion and Kennedy saw Vietnam as a means of saving face and the US reputation in general. (Mann, 225-233) With the focus on Vietnam, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson assured Diem of US support in warding off communist penetration from the North. Military advisors began to arrive in increasing numbers in South Vietnam and conflicts with the North continued to escalate. As Washington began to lose confidence in Diem, political unrest among the masses in the South began to increase with the result that a military coup encouraged by Washington that took Diem’s life resulted in one coup after another. (McNamara, 329) By 1965 America found itself fully engaged in warfare in Vietnam against guerrillas. What Went Wrong In trying to discern the factors that contributed to what historians concede was an American defeat in Vietnam, many agree that it was largely a result of poor management. Many attribute the defeat to the divided passions at home to the extent that the US troops in Vietnam themselves were divided. Others assign blame to the unfamiliar guerrilla nature of the war which was further complicated by the unfamiliar culture and terrain in which the war was ultimately fought. (Holmes, 349-350) It was however, the cumulative impact of each of these factors that gave way to US failure in Vietnam. Married to these failures were the containment policies that ultimately lead to the management of the war and must be viewed as a catalyst for the individual factors that contributed to US failure. Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War and confluct with the US, writes in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam: “I want to look at Vietnam in hindsight, not in anyway to obscure my own and other’s errors in judgment and their egregious costs but to show the full range of pressures and the lack of knowledge that existed at the time. I want to put Vietnam in context. We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of America. We made out decisions in lights of those values. Yet were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why.” (McNamara, 1996, 2) McNamara unabashedly admits that the US Administration faced a myriad of complicated difficulties in Southeast Asia in general and was disadvantaged by “sparse knowledge, scant experience, and simplistic assumptions.” (McNamara, 1996, 29) The US Administration was by and large influenced by two essentially flawed perceptions. (McNamara, 1996, 29) On the one hand the US government believed and falsely so that the South region of Vietnam and its instability was in danger of converting to communism and as a result posed a threat to US security. (McNamara, 1996) The second flawed perception was that the South was capable of defending itself against the North. (McNamara, 1996) Operating under both misconceptions was a belief that the US could limit its role to the mere provision of military advice and training. (McNamara, 1996) The end result was that the US found itself engaged in a war which it was ill-prepared to fight. Married to these flawed perceptions was the failure of US Administrators to address what McNamara terms “five basic questions.” (McNamara, 1996, 39) The first basic question America could have asked was whether or not it was accurate to believe that the “fall of South Vietnam” inevitably meant that all of Southeast Asia would collapse. (McNamara, 1996, 101) Was that “a grave threat to the West’s security? (McNamara, 1996, 101) Another question the US failed to determine was what kind of war they would be fighting, guerrilla or conventional. (McNamara, 1996, 101) Moreover, the US never considered the question of whether or not it could win the war “with US troops fighting alongside the South Vietnamese.” (McNamara, 1996, 101) Having failed to consider these questions America was at war in a country with which it had no cultural connection and little if any understanding of the Vietnamese politics. McNamara freely admits: “we were moving in an alien environment, alongside a people whose language and culture we do not understand and whose history, values, and political traditions differed profoundly from our own?" (McNamara, 1996, 43) What complicated the political and culture gap was a lack of productive debate in Washington. (McNamara, 1996) Washington went in blindly, failing to debate what U.S. military personnel would be appropriate, what the chances of success or failure would be, nor did Washington debate or consider the financial, military, political or human costs to the United States would likely be. (McNamara, 1996) The Joint Chiefs of Staff were single minded of purpose. The ultimate goal was to triumph against the communist army. (McNamara, 1996) A failure of communication between the military and Washington only served to complicate matters even further. McNamara writes: “...not once during the war did the Joint Chiefs of Staff advise the Commander-in-Chief or the Secretary of Defense that the strategy being pursued most probably would fail and the United States would be unable to achieve its objectives.” (McNamara, 1996, 108) Civilian leadership (Washington) was also at odds with military leadership in Vietnam. (McNamara, 1996) The military was largely left to take instructions from a civilian leadership that was confused about their goal in Vietnam. Dr. Gerard J. DeGroot argues that Washington directed a “limited war” in the sense that it required that the nature of the combat did not arouse the “ire” of the public. (Degroot) The result was a “half-hearted” attempt to win the war and to achieve objectives. (Degroot) As time passed Vietnamese and American civilians alike grew increasingly disenchanted with the war and was less and less inclined to recognize its objectives. This result is a direct result of the limited war approach and its daunting impact on cultivating a “war psychology” in America. This weak war psychology would also impact the soldiers on the battlefield. (Degroot) The military planners also went terribly wrong in assuming that their superior fire-power and sophisticated arsenal of weapons basically secured victory for them. As a result of this line of thinking military planners were not prepared for the guerrilla warfare waged by the Vietnamese. (Degroot) Despite the edge the Americans anticipated that they would have with respect to modern weaponry, ambushes from stealth Vietnamese fighters who were hidden both below and above ground offset that edge. (Degroot) The fact remains the Americans were prepared for and fought a conventional war, while the Vietnamese waged guerrilla warfare. In other words the Americans were ill-prepared for the actual war in Vietnam. Rather than adjust their conventional method of fighting the US engaged in what amounted to “counterinsurgency” methods which amounted to no more than “a bad imitation of its enemy’s tactics.” (Degroot) Perhaps the greatest error on the part of the Americans was failure to “isolate the battlefield.”(Degroot) The North Vietnamese were permitted to enter South Vietnam and wage battles at their leisure. Had the Americans positioned their troops at the 17th Parallel, also known as the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where they could have held the North Vietnamese off while they worked at restoring political stability to the South. (Degroot) Not only would this have weakened the North Vietnamese offensive, it would have also given the US an edge as they could have controlled the nature of the war. It would have been fought by conventional means, a method by which the US sophisticated weapons gave them an advantage. Another difficulty with US strategy arose out of the manner in which the US responded to guerrilla tactics in South Vietnamese villages. These tactics were known as the “other war” or the “village war.” (Degroot) The American’s did not respond with the stealth and subtlety employed by the North Vietnamese. That is not to say that they did not have some success. Whatever success the US enjoyed was hollow. As Dr. Degroot explains: “...it was success similar to that of a man who burns down his house in order to rid it of termites.” (Degroot) The US responded to the village war by destroying hamlets but leaving the enemy largely untouched. (Degroot) These tactics only served to widen the gap between the Americans and the South Vietnamese they claimed to have intended to liberate. The gap between the US and Vietnamese although manifested in the vastly different techniques used in battle was only a symptom of the absolute disconnect between the two nations. If there was one thing the Vietnamese shared in common it was a desire to be free from foreigners. The Americans went into Vietnam largely ignoring the fact that the country had just fought for its independence against France. One had only to look at the names of most of the streets in Saigon to realize that national pride was dear to the Vietnamese. These streets were named after heroes who had fought to free Vietnam from the Chinese, French and the Japanese. In blatant disregard for Vietnamese nationalism, the Americans approached the war for the sole purpose of advancing American nationalism. (Dalpino) Conclusion By and large the Americans were only half-heartedly committed to the war in Vietnam. While the politicians might have been motivated to triumph, the military itself had difficulties believing in the cause. The fact that they were directed by civilian leaders who dictated a limited engagement only served to complicate matters on the battlefield. Trained to fight modern warfare and taken completely off guard by insurgents only served to complicate an already complicated war. It inevitably dawned on the military personnel that they were fighting a senseless war and this could have only made the effort that much more difficult for the soldiers. While the American public began to lose faith in the containment policy, their collective support for the Vietnam effort fell by the wayside. On the other hand the Vietnamese desire for liberation was diametrically opposed to the US desire to Westernize most of the world in its bid to contain the spread of communism. All of these difficulties, together with the political and cultural account for what went wrong in the US-Vietnamese war. Bibliography Bradley, Mark. “Imagining Vietnam: The United States in Radical Vietnamese Anti-Colonial Discourse.” Journal of American-East Asian Relations. Vol. 4 No. 2 (1995); 299-329 Dalpino, Catharin. “The Other Vietnam Syndrome: What Went Wrong in Saigon and How it Could Happen Again in Iraq.” Slate, April 23, 2003. http://www.slate.com/id/2081899 Retrieved February 20 2008 Daum, Andreas and Gardner, Lloyd. America, the Vietnam War, and the World: Comparative and International Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. DeGroot, Gerard, Dr. Vietnam: What Went Wrong. http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=identifying+what+went+wrong+in+the+US+vietnamese+war&fr=yfp-t-501&u=chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/Vietnam/degrootvnamwrong01.pdf&w=identifying+identification+identify+went+wrong+us+vietnamese+war+wars&d=VrF163DuQQx_&icp=1&.intl=us Retrieved February 20, 2008 Eisenhower, Dwight. Mandate for Change. NJ: Doubleday and Company, 1963. Herring, George. America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1986. Holmes, John. “America in Vietnam by Guenter Lewy”. Political Science Quarterly. Vo. 94 No. 2. , 1979, pp 349-350 Mann, Robert. A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam. Basic Books, 2001. McNamara, Robert. Argument Without End: In Search of Answers to the Vietnam Tragedy. Westview Press, 2000. McNamara, Robert. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam. Vintage, 1996 Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Shafer, Michael. The Legacy: The Vietnam War in the American Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001. Read More