Lessons from the American experience in the Vietnam War

Lessons Learned by American Experience of the Vietnam War: Diplomatic Negotiations, Presidential Leadership, and Cultural/Social Context

The objective of this study is to examine the lessons learned by the American Experience of the Vietnam War in terms of diplomatic negotiations, presidential leadership, and the cultural and social context of the war. The work of Mariney (1989) writes that the U.S. civilian and military leadership failed "to heed the lessons of the past during the Vietnam war." (p.1) Not only was the enemy underestimated but as well, America underestimated the war's nature. The historical context was not given due consideration according to Mariney (1989) and specifically in terms of how the Chinese, Japanese, and the French have "over the centuries, attempted to exert control over Indochina unsuccessfully." (p.1)

Vietnamese Strong National Identity

The result of this experience was the forging of a strong national identity in Vietnam, both North and South and it is reported that the leadership "had demonstrated a strong national resolve and resistance to foreign domination as war evidenced by the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu." (Mariney, 1989, p.1) The North Vietnamese are reported to have been ready to accept "limitless casualties in its conflict with the United States." (Mariney, 1989, p.1) Lewis (1996) writes that it is proliferated in the post-mortems on Vietnam "and with the survival of an independent South Vietnam still uncertain, intelligence officers as well as policy makers and executors of policy have a compelling need to know what lessons the record of American involvement holds.

II. Comprehension of the Strategies of War

Lewis states "Only in the past decade has an increasing minority of young Americans been educated and trained for developing personal awareness of what may be the critical factors: (1) the frequent and unconscious distortions in their -- and everyone's -- perceptions of worlds other than their own; and (2) the ways each person individually "constructs" the reality to which he is continually reacting." (1996, p.1)

In order to really comprehend Vietnam in terms of its diplomatic negotiations, presidential leadership and the cultural and social context Lewis states that it is necessary to view these things as part of the machinery which has "exhibited rigidities and shortsightedness characteristic of most modern bureaucratic establishments" and that the "perceptions, conceptions, and criteria of the bureaucrats can be explained only if we look beyond the institutions into the American political style as it has been shaped by American history -- if we move from the organization to the minds." (Lewis, 1996, p.1)

Lewis writes that the tragic trajectory of America in Vietnam is within the "refusal to come to grip with those realities in South Vietnam that happened to be decisive from the viewpoint of politics. ... We failed to distinguish a sect from a party, a clique from an organization, a group of intellectuals or politicians with tiny clienteles from a political movement, a police force, officer corps, and set of rich South Vietnamese chaos to a South Vietnamese mistakes. speak, doubly of the essence. merchants from a political class. We tended to attribute combination of Communist disruptiveness and reversible ... [without realizing] that those "mistakes" were, so to speak, doubly of the essence." (Lewis, 1996, p.1)

Lewis relates that the primary outcome of the setbacks experienced by the United States in the Far East ... has been the delusion of our policy-makers that they understood Asia. Two elements ... contributed to this delusion. The first was the conviction that there must be measurable facts in Asia because, regarding ourselves as rational, we had to operate on the basis of facts. So in Vietnam, we proceeded to "quantify" situations with statistics and graphs and charts that told everything except the only important reality -- what the people think. ... Our lack of understanding has also led us to miscalculate our enemies, with the result that we have been unable to estimate their response to force or diplomacy or a mixture of the two." (Lewis, 1996, p.1)

Winterstein (2000) writes that Lloyd Gardener, Professor at Rutgers University "discerned two different military strategies during the Johnson presidency: (1) crisis management; and (2) attrition. (p.1) Dr. Gardener holds that the strategy of the Johnson administration "derived from the requirement that Vietnam not be allowed to derail the president's ambitious domestic goals. His aim, therefore, was simply not to lose. In 1964, McGeorge Bundy and McNamara told Johnson that the United States had to demonstrate its resolve to defend South Vietnam in order to convince the North Vietnamese of the futility of their campaign. Calibrated bombing and a battalion of U.S. troops were thought to be sufficient to signal Hanoi that its aggressive policy would spark a fight with the United States. The American leaders never foresaw 500,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam, because they assumed that their opponents would never allow conflict with a global superpower to escalate so far." (Winterstein, 2000)

According to Winterstein: "the logic of graduated escalation proved fatefully restrictive. In early 1965, the United States began the air campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder, and soon afterward, the first antiwar protests began in the United States. Johnson responded to the protests by offering to include North Vietnam in a vast economic development plan for the entire region -- on the condition that North Vietnam leave the south in peace. The American public was largely mollified, but when Ho Chi Minh rebuffed the offer, the crisis management strategy forced the United States into a corner: either escalate or risk a complete loss of credibility. Within months, 100,000 troops were sent to Vietnam." (2000, p.1)