More than 30 years have passed since North Vietnam, in gross violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, conquered South Vietnam. That outcome was partly the result of greatly increased logistical support to the North from its communist backers. It was also the result of America's failure to keep its commitments to the South. Those commitments included promises to maintain a robust level of financial support, to replace combat materiel, and even the use of air power to support the South in case of aggression by the North. That failure was the doing of a US Congress that had tired of the country's long involvement in a war in Southeast Asia and cared nothing for the sacrifices of its own armed forces or those of the South Vietnamese people.
Since then, whenever America has entered into other military actions abroad or contemplated such commitments, the specter of Vietnam has been raised. It is entirely appropriate that earlier military experiences be examined for such "lessons learned" as they may yield. But it is equally essential that those prior campaigns be accurately understood before any valid comparisons are made. When it comes to the Vietnam War, much skewed or inaccurate commentary has impeded our understanding of that conflict and its outcome. All the better-known early works on the Vietnam War - by Stanley Karnow, Neil Sheehan, George Herring - concentrated disproportionately on the early period of American involvement when Gen. William C. Westmoreland commanded US forces. As a consequence, many came to view the entirety of the war as more or less a homogeneous whole, and to apply to the whole endeavor valid criticisms of the early years, ignoring what happened after Gen. Creighton Abrams took command soon after the 1968 Tet Offensive...
More at The Wall Street Journal.
Comments
Jim Guirard: Concur your bottom line, I think, but a large part of the problem was there was no bedraggled exodus of PAVN after the cease fire. Rather, under the cease fire in-place, they were permitted to keep their forces within the RVN (oft-cited numbers are 130 to 150k). The in-country base areas were not erradicated and certainly by mid 1971 in MR-III had undergone substantial resuscitation as US focus shifted from aggressive incursions into the base areas to withdrawal. ARVN, having been trained to focus on holding VC at bay to ensure territorial security behind a US shield that would stave off PAVN, did not have the capacity to fill the vacuum we were leaving even in 1971. I would take issue with Sorely on Phoenix, which we in MR-III did not coonsider as a success--although given substantially more time the op may have borne fruit. The paradigm 1971-5 was a reduced (more by attrition in combat than targetted ops) VCI--often VC combatant family members--drawing sustenance and enforcement capacity from PAVN in an adjacent base area, just as the PAVN unit would rely on the VCI for local logistic and other support. Also, often compulsory PSDF membership could not possibly, IMO, amount to the incipient mass political movement (a la Sons of Iraq)that Colby thought it did. Far more significant was the post-Tet'68 induction of virtually all military age males into RF/PF including in former revolutionary strongholds where the regruits were bound to have included substantial nubers of former VC. Apparently indoctrination was not strong enough to have prevented their changing sides--they went with the apparent winner.
Which brings me to the question of legitimacy (Robert Jones and others)...A question with which I and many others were tasked to wrestle was the extent to which GVN was perceived as legitimate. At the time, I failed to obtain a clear answer yea or nay. But given how events played out --territorials and ARVN dying in droves (certainly not for Thieu), valiant 18th ARVN defense of Xuan Loc, etc, etc.--I have to conclude that more than some macabre inertia, such events reflected a massive popular rejection of DRVN/PAVN as the legitimate leadership--likely the result of experience--the people had seen and did not like what they saw...I find myself in agreement with Race (War Comes to Long An)whose former-VC respondents pointed out that in the Deltaic South even in French days, the Party was forced to use reaction to landlord/village elder abuse as a recruitment tool and only subsequently to inculcate in their recruits a sense of nationalism strong enough to generate sustainable militancy. I also think that before treating as axiomatic the existence of a Vietnamese nationalist juggernaut we consider that several hundred thousand Vietnamese under arms participated in the struggle against the Viet Minh.
<em>Please explain to me how the Pak Army/ISI "maintaining control over an instable Afghanistan" helps deter nuclear war with India?</em>
Yes. I can't figure that one out either. Nuclear weapons and a robust conventional army - conveniently trained by the American military along with a de facto American security guarantee - aren't enough to deter the big neighbor next door? The nuclear weapons are enough to keep the West in knee-knocking fear of the joint. The Pakistani Army/ISI shake-down artists (the elite, I have no animus toward regular Pakistanis) will continue to get their direct wire transfers of cash. Banks in Switzerland heave <em>sighs</em> of relief. Contracters inside the Beltway heave <em>sighs</em> of relief.
Strategic depth in Afghanistan is about OFFENSE not DEFENSE. It's also about money, that curious thing known as national pride (which is needed when a country is based on an idea) and, oh, yeah, money. Plus, it's about money. Did I say it's about money?
You know what I don't get? We are supposed to be mindful of Pakistani concerns about India, but at the same time, ignore Afghan fears about Pakistan. Why one and not the other? Isn't ignoring Afghan fears about Pakistan looking at things from a Western point of view? I thought that was a no-no?
Well, at any rate, this is all just on-line blather. Billions will be thrown at the country, India's arms will be twisted about Kashmir and when the government in Afghanistan falls, we will find we are funding all sides of the civil war through Pakistan and Afghanistan both.
Or, we could do things a different way. It's possible to win. Well, why not? We hold so many cards that we seem unwilling to play that it must be theoretically possible.
(I'm sorry if it seems like I am picking on some of you. I'm stubborn and dislike money being wasted. In short, I am turning into something of an online crank. Yikes.)
Robert C. Jones:
I am not all that familiar with the history of the partition of Vietnam in the 50s. However, just judging from my small knowledge of human nature, I rather doubt Vietnamese Catholics were sitting contentedly in the north blissfully contemplating the glories of life under Uncle Ho until the crafty Americans frightened them south with tall tales. I would guess they mostly figured things for themselves since they had lived there all their lives.
That being said, my comment had to do with the situation as it existed when we got into SVN in a big way, the early 60s; and the situation as it exists in Afghanistan today. It is wonderfully satisfying to sagely discuss what should have been done years prior; but it isn't very useful since we have to deal the what has been handed to us. What we had to do then to preserve the South was cut them off from the North. What we have to do now to preserve Afghanistan is end the interference of the Pak Army/ISI.
I would point out that the Durand line has been around a very long time and causes a lot of diplomatic fussing but not a lot of real trouble, unless, one of the governments (I would have underlined that word but I don't know how) decides to use it to make mischief. Even now, I haven't seen much in the way of Taliban talking points concerning the Durand line.
I am not going to debate the legitimacy of the current Afghan gov vs. the Taliban. It is important to note though that not many people in Afghanistan really like the Taliban, and that goes for the Pathans too. It is also important to note the Taliban sheltered AQ and has never renounced AQ. Also life in Afghanistan for the Afghans was really stinko, really stinko, under the Taliban.
I still think the points of my comment stand, the problems were and are ones of external support. That support must be ended or we can't win.
I have a question. Please explain to me how the Pak Army/ISI "maintaining control over an instable Afghanistan" helps deter nuclear war with India? I can't figure that out.
I agree with Robert Jones on the history lesson and as an American liberal, I have trouble seeing why the US should even be in Afghanistan. But operating on the assumption that my personal opinion is not going to change that policy, I do want that policy to deliver as good an outcome as possible...good for the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, not for the security establishment and its "rent-an-army" economics or its Jihadi ambitions in the region. But, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.....
Carl,
I would characterize your concerns from a different perspective. There are similarities, but I think some you didn't mention are more important.
The Durand Line was created by the Brits, and means a lot more to the people of the West who drew it than it does to the people who live there. For the Pashtun populace the fact that they are Pashtun is far more significant than some line on a map drawn through their heartland.
The line dividing Viet Nam into north and south at the armistice in 1954 is same same. The Viet Minh in good faith pulled their forces out of the Southern part of their homeland that they had just liberated from the French. to wait for the nationwide elections scheduled for 1956 that were certain to put Ho in charge of the entire nation. We then let Lansdale go to work, enticing hundreds of thousands of Catholic Vietnamese to move to the southern part of the country, and calling off the nation-wide election and allowing Diem to pull his own sham election where he got some 130% of the vote in Saigon, and high 90s across the south. In other words the entire construct of "North" and "South" Vietnam were a western sham and a pawn in our Cold War jockeying with the Soviets and China.
We supported an illegitimate leader in a sham country in an effort to suppress a nationalist movement seeking unification, liberty from Western influence, and legitimate leadership in Vietnam. That didn't work; all of our great efforts could not overcome that failed framework. We put Ho in bed with China, then didn't like who he was sleeping with...
In Afghanistan the problem in not Pakistan (though certainly they are working to support their national interest of maintaining control over an instable Afghanistan as a key aspect of their deterrence of nuclear war with India); the problem is that once again we are throwing our lot in with an illegitimate government of our choosing and ignoring the local realities in favor of Western perspectives.
Ike and the Dulles brothers were some cagey Cold Warriors, but those tactics have paid back harsh dividends and have little place in modern foreign policy.
There is another way the conflicts in Vietnam and Afghanistan can be compared. North Vietnam sponsored an insurgency in order to take over the south. Pakistan is sponsoring an insurgency to install a cat's paw government in Afghanistan. Both use or used the insurgency to achieve their ends in a neighboring country. North Vietnam eventually had to give up on the insurgency and conquer the south the old fashioned way. The game is still afoot for Pakistan.
Both countries used or are using a millenniumist ideology to motivate the insurgents. North Vietnam was able control the use of that ideology. It kept tight control on the insurgents. Pakistan seems to be having trouble controlling their true believers but again, things are still playing out.
In my opinion, the assaults upon the sovereignty of both South Vietnam and Afghanistan depended and depends on the support given by North Vietnam and Pakistan respectively. If that support wasn't there, the problem in both countries would have been or would be, for all practical purposes, gone.
In Vietnam we never did what it would have taken to truly end that support, cut the Trail. If we had done that, the South would, my opinion again, have been able to survive. But we didn't. There was no way the South could live with the Trail extant.
In Afghanistan, I don't think there is any way the Taliban can be fended off, in the long run, if the support from Pakistan is not ended; no matter how successful our small war efforts are. There is no trail to cut of course in Afghanistan. The border is a bit bigger. But, as frustrating and duplicitous as they are, the Pak Army/ISI will be easier, relatively speaking, to influence that the North Vietnamese Communist party was. We can't cut the trail so we should bend all our efforts to changing the behavior of the Pak Army/ISI. That is what everything else depends upon. If it isn't done, everything else is for naught.
That is the real lesson of the Vietnam War as it applies to the conflict in Afghanistan. In Vietnam, we were unwilling to do what it took to keep the North out of the South. The South fell. Will we do what is needed to end the Pak Army/ISI's support of the all the groups assaulting Afghanistan so it won't fall?
This by Robert C. Jones is correct -- and is not good:<blockquote>"One of the West's problems is that Corporations love the stability that comes from effective dictators."</blockquote>
This by MAJ Kotkin is equally true -- and just as bad:<blockquote>"Our good intentions of constitutional democracy, women's rights, visions of moderate Islam, etc. can;t do it for them."</blockquote>
Greedy, grubby capitalists are really not one bit more problematic than are wonderfully intentioned progressive politicians who cannot resist the temptation to meddle in everyone's business.
Both need to be shut down and forced to apply some common sense and long term realism to their goals. We cannot remake the world in our image -- either image -- and we really need to stop trying. Our record of success in those attempts is absolutely abysmal, from Nicaragua in 1894 through today, we have done more harm than good. We've done some good but have done ourselves a great deal of harm. Not irreparable, not yet -- but that point is approaching...
There are far better methods than interventions to achieve our goals.
+1 Dayuhan, ftw
"<i>As for Vietnam, I've long believed that we set our destiny when we made the decision to support the French regime. Swimming against the tide is a good way to tire yourself out...</i>"
That's where it started in Vietnam, almost mirror-like to the Afghan corollary 30 yrs later. In support of fighting back communism, we supported a French cause we knew to be wrong and later we supported a religious cause we knew to be wildly anti-western (the muj and the ISI).
We have a tendency to stick our noses in other people's affairs which to not directly....or even indirectly concern us. Using the spread of communism (French Indochina in 1945 or Kabul in 1979) was a poor casus beli. We should have either negotiated a settlement btw Ho/Giap and the French (because we knew Imperialism was wrong and still had time before we forced them to look to Russia and China for military support) or stayed the heck out. Likewise, Our adopted cause in Astan was misdirected policy which falsely coupled interests of another country with that of our own. Not our concern.
The real lesson which went unlearned, and is still going unlearned today, is that the population of whatever place we're talking about has the primary responsibility to define their own future. And they should be granted that right no matter how messy it takes to naturally evolve to its political end. Our good intentions of constitutional democracy, women's rights, visions of moderate Islam, etc. can;t do it for them.
Adding my concurrence to Bills.
Sometimes governments just need to change or be replaced. In America we are lucky, the populace has the hope borne of their confidence that our (intentionally) flawed system will take out the trash on a regular basis; either because they voted and it counted, or because imposed time limits will be respected and leaders step down. Other countries do not have the "insurgency off ramp" that such hope bestows, so they take up arms. It's natural.
One of the West's problems is that Corporations love the stability that comes from effective dictators. We don't fight for oil in the Middle East; we fight for distribution of oil profits. A subtle, but critical, nuance that seems to be lost on most. Oil producing countries must sell oil and oil consuming countries must buy oil. This is a constant. It is a global market, so if one producer or seller get into a tiff, it just changes the routing, but not the amount sold or bought. So why fight over oil??? Because if a government that may be more democratic but less stable comes into power, that is bad for business. Or if a government comes into power that is willing to void a long outdated contract that may have been good for a few in senior positions, but that is bad for the country as a whole (think when Mossadegh threw the Brits out of Iran post WWII - prompting his removal by the US in '53). Such interference upsets the natural balance, and shifts the focus of the oppressed populace to those who help sustain the oppressors in power.
When we go in and sustain an effective, but despotic leader; or an ineffective and corrupt leader; we disrupt the will of the people and create legitimacy issues we do not fully appreciate the importance of. This is becoming more important as globalization brings us all closer together. The tool of "Friendly Dictators" is, IMO, obsolete and needs to go into the dustbin along with other tools of sustaining interests that have waned over time.
Powerful lobbies shape policy. Using plastic bags, fuel for your car, and unhealthy sweetener for your food? Blame the Corn lobby. Think everything Israel does is great and everything Arab nations do that is counter to that is evil? Blame the Jewish and Christian lobbies. Think we're supporting a bunch of tinpot dictators in oil producing countries or those that control the critical sea lanes oil moves through? Blame the oil lobbies.
Instead we blame those populaces living in those regions whose sovereignty has been corrupted, whose writ of legitimacy has been co-opted by outsiders.
We can do better than this. We are applying outdated perspectives and policies from a world that no longer exists to one that is emerging around us. Rising powers are embracing change and leveraging it to fuel their rise. Fading powers will cling to the status quo, and ride it to their demise. The irony for the US is that we actually rode the front end of this current trend to rise to our current position. We have a choice: remain flexible, open minded, seeking and embracing new technologies and industries and continue to rise; or instead focus on clinging to what we have and trying to preserve it through military might.
Pouring billions into old industries, like GM and Chrysler is a pretty good metric we are still very much committed to clinging to the fading past. Imagine what that money applied to emerging technologies and industries, and an education system designed to exploit the same, could produce?
To state the obvious, the future is before us. We should head in that direction. If we are headed in the right direction, the new governments that emerge to lead old allies will follow us as well.
Dayuhan,
I think you superbly captured what I have been trying unsuccessfully to communicate. Well done! Bill
"Viable governments that are functioning and need help to overcome challenges deserve help, but piling on dollars and resources to try to reanimate a corpse is pointless. Aid is a two-edged sword: it can help a good government past difficulties, or it can create a government that's totally and eternally dependent on us. There are times when we just have to let go and let change happen, if a nominal ally simply lacks the capacity to govern or survive."
I'd actually be hesitant to criticize the American public for their fickleness, or to criticize politicians for pandering to public opinion. I think the American public is quite capable of staying the course, if they see clear, achievable goals, if they believe that the value of those goals is proportional to the cost of achieving them, and if they see progress toward those goals. If we see the public turning fickle, we might want to look first to the way we are choosing, pursuing, and articulating our goals... maybe they have a good reason to be fickle.
It's easy to say that we could achieve or could have achieved a given objective if only we had applied commitment and resources without limit, but in reality there are limits to our resources and to our capacity to commit, and not all objectives are valuable enough to justify the resources required to achieve them.
As far as pandering to public opinion at the expense of good governance... isn't that the nature of democracy? Certainly it can be frustrating at times, but do we really want to allow a small elite to define "good governance" without accountability to the populace?
I'd also have to say that prioritizing the domestic economy over foreign policy or military action makes good sense in anything but a truly existential challenge. Our foreign policy position and military position ultimately depend on our economic position. One of the real challenges facing military and foreign policy makers today is facing up to the reality that since we are no longer the dominant global economic power, we can no longer realistically strive to maintain global military dominance. If we try, we will bankrupt ourselves. That realization may hurt, and the adjustment may hurt more, but facing up to reality is something better done sooner than later.
Supporting international allies is sometimes desirable, but again there have to be limits. Viable governments that are functioning and need help to overcome challenges deserve help, but piling on dollars and resources to try to reanimate a corpse is pointless. Aid is a two-edged sword: it can help a good government past difficulties, or it can create a government that's totally and eternally dependent on us. There are times when we just have to let go and let change happen, if a nominal ally simply lacks the capacity to govern or survive.
As for Vietnam, I've long believed that we set our destiny when we made the decision to support the French regime. Swimming against the tide is a good way to tire yourself out... but that's probably best argued elsewhere!
<b>Brendan Hobbs:</b>
Excellent post and an accurate assessment in my view. This:<blockquote>"Congressional leaders favor of programs which boosted the domestic economy or pandered to their party base's platforms illustrate the true American Failure to learn lessons from previous American War Expericnces in the last fifty years."</blockquote>Is very true and is unlikely to change. That's why it is incumbent on the Executive to get considerably smarter about commitments that the Congress, not the wider populace, will not sustain.
Add to your stated concern the cost factors and today's financial situation and this penchant for rebuilding States needs to go. There are better ways to get there...
The failure of the United States to maintain it's commitment to South Vietnam as a lesson of failed nation building or partnering is eaily justified as a flaw in our political system not a failure of international policy. When juxtaposed with our removal of support from the Afghan Insurgency in the 1980's and the subsequent and often linked rise of the Taliban in the 1990s we can draw some specific conclusins. The removal of support from struggling governments is closely linked to the fickle American public and the congressional leaders who pander to that public to ensure reelection over good governance. The economic demands of the American public towards the end of the Vietnam War and the Post Cold War era following the fall of the Soviet Union combined with the public's war weainess which was fueled by the media resulted in a domestic political environment where congressional leaders chose to cut programs that supported international allies. Congressional leaders favor of programs which boosted the domestic economy or pandered to their party base's platforms illustrate the true American Failure to learn lessons from previous American War Expericnces in the last fifty years.
What? Only four comments on the failure of the United States to heed the lessons learned from the Vietnam Debacle? I have had the dubious and sad honor of watching much of the history of the United States in the 20th Century repeat itself. Oh. Well. I won't be around much longer to have to deal with this. In the meantime, I think I'll take up finger-painting.
Lewis Sorley's excellent truth-in-history commentary (WSJ op-ed, Oct. 10) on the Vietnam experience three decades ago would have been even more persuasive -- and all the more relevant to the current Iraq and Afghanistan situations -- if he had spoken of "the TWO Vietnam Wars."
The first of these, the one in which hundreds of thousands of US and Allied forces fought for over a decade during the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon years, ended in January 1973.
It did so with the Paris Peace Accords, the exchange of POWs, the complete departure of American forces and the bedraggled exodus of Soviet-supported North Vietnamese forces under circumstances highly reminiscent of what happened in Korea two decades earlier.
That was the war we essentially (albeit only temporarily) WON, and then quickly forfeited to the North Vietnamese and their Soviet sponsors.
The Second Vietnam War did not begin until two years later, in January 1975 -- after all US combat forces were gone, after President Nixon had resigned from office, while an unelected and ham-strung President Gerald Ford was in the White House and after a rabidly anti-war Congress had cut military and economic aid to South Vietnam by more than 60-percent.
And thus it was -- in late April 1975 -- that a US-abandoned South Vietnam fell to a Soviet-backed North Vietnam. This came in a post-game rematch in which the earlier Korea-style victory of US and Allied forces was deliberately forfeited by a Blame America First, Abandon At Any Price US Congress.
The question now is whether America will preserve and protect our in-process victory in Iraq (and perhaps in due course a similar success in Afghanistan??) via the Korea Model of safe-guarding that early-Cold War victory, even after 50-plus years.
Or will an Obama-Pelosi-Reid leadership more "peacefully" and "Progressively" retreat from these hard-fought "Cold War II" successes and qualified victories via the patently inglorious Second Vietnam War Model, instead?
JIM GUIRARD -- TrueSpeak.org
703-768-0957 Justcauses@aol.com
"Time to accept our sunk costs and get out"
Is it time also to condemn hundreds of thousands (or more) to death and decades of suffering...again? We have bugged out on people who have counted on us several times in my lifetime. I think maybe we should not do it anymore. We should remember who really pays the price when we do that; innocents who were born in the wrong place at the wrong time or those who believed when we said "trust us."
It's never been clear to me that Dr. Kissinger and ex-president Nixon ever whole heartedly intended Vietnamization to work? Even before our Congress welched on our promise, it was my observation war material replacement was barely keeping-up with the necessary demand to compete with an increasingly aggressive PAVN.
I can't qualify my assertion, but I believe Nixon and Kissinger cared only to publicly convey leaving the Republic of S. Vietnam militarily in an honorable fashion and could have cared less about any political settlement between Saigon and Hanoi, or whether S. Vietnam fell, being able to blame the Vietnamese for that failure.
And that's a shame, as I also observed Vietnamization was working - we just ran out of time (and money).
One parallel I see between Afghanistan and Vietnam at this moment is: just as Adm. McCain and Gen. Abrams were against the clock with Vietnamization, we now under Gen. McChrystal will be against the clock - either starting from scratch with COIN or turning it over to CT (I see middle ground as sure failure).
Americans have a mindset of finding the problem, a solution, fixing it, and moving on.
Unfortunately, as Sun Tzu spoke of, "sometimes the military solution is known but impossible to implement."
Sorley is still playing a one-note symphony. Both the US and North VN violated the Geneva accords. The US backed first one and then another truly lousy government, put "nation-building" behind military power, and so on. These were not merely "the early years," as Sorley calls them. They set a pattern and created expectations in both Vietnam and the US. Yes, some changes were made after Tet, but the milk was spilt, the horse was gone. Afghanistan is the same. Time to accept our sunk costs and get out, latest in a line of empires that is slowly learning you can do anything with bayonets but sit on them (Napoleon, I believe).