Vietnam: history, culture, and contemporary issues

Vietnam Lessons

Lessons Gained from the American Misadventure in Vietnam

The Vietnam War may only be called a success by the most optimistic and selective of American memories. The goals of reunification of North and South, of preventing the permanence of Communist rule and of impeding on the proliferation of socialist values throughout Southeast Asia would all go unmet. And in reflection, we are inclined to view Vietnam as being valuable only for the lessons which can be used to prevent us from making the same mistakes again. It is thus that we consider the diplomatic, presidential and cultural dimensions of a war that should perhaps never have been broached.

Diplomatic Negotiations:

It is difficult to suggest that any lessons have been learned from Vietnam which can be used today. America's misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan seem verily to reflect the same diplomatic bumbling that made Vietnam appear to be a necessary war. For the United States, diplomacy at the onset of the war would center primarily on the heaving of accusations, which were especially central to the Gulf of Tonkin incident where America claimed that it had been given a military ultimatum making diplomatic efforts impossible. Certainly, this is a primary characteristic of the conflict that would unfold thereafter, with the United States desiring conflict and occupation above all else. The compromise of diplomacy would not have served this purpose well. If it may be said that a lesson war assimilated into permanent military strategy here, it is that the U.S. perfected the type of 'false flag' march to war that is now a template for justifying needless invasion of foreign lands.

Presidential Leadership:

Perhaps one of the great and stunning disgraces for the American effort was the pressure imposed upon different presidential administrations by the priorities of the Cold War. First as Kennedy attempted to navigate a mounting crisis in Vietnam, subsequently as Johnson took the opening rounds of the war to new heights of violence and finally as Nixon attempted to end the conflict using irresistible force, there seemed a fundamental misunderstanding of Vietnam. This proceeded from the Cold War view which help the United States as a 'good' counterpoint to the 'bad' implications of the Soviet sphere of influence. It was this view that caused such fundamental miscalculation by America's executive leadership, which fully and catastrophically underestimated the tenacity of the Vietnamese people. Accordingly, Moss (2005) tells that "Vietnamese peasants made formidable warriors, as the hard life of rice farming prepared them for the physical rigors of military combat and the group discipline of communal rice farming prepared them for the discipline and espirit de corps of battle." (p. 7) Certainly, if this had not been apparent to Kennedy as he moved the U.S. closer to battle, it would become more fully evident to Johnson, who opted not to seek reelection under conditions which he viewed as impossible to overcome.

Cultural Social Contexts:

Something that would become all to apparent as the War in Vietnam wore on, and that should perhaps be more immediately evident to us in reflection, would be the pointed cultural pride and identity that distinguished the people of Vietnam. In all aspects of the Cold War, there was a clearly stated imperative on the part of both the United States and the Soviet Union to impose certain cultural norms upon those nations over which they fought. For each, the channel of popular governance would be seen as a way to infuse such developing nations as Vietnam with inherently American or Soviet features. But a reflect on the history of Vietnam and its people would demonstrate this to be a culture poorly suited to this imposition.

So denotes the text by Moss, which reports on its history of violent opposition to foreign occupation. This would be true even where the occupying force seemed to offer more culture common ground than would a nation such as the U.S. According to Moss, "although the Vietnamese admired many features of Chinese culture and benefited in many ways from their long, close association with the magnificent Chinese civilization, they fiercely resented Chinese political domination and economic exploitation. They also resented Chinese effort so Sinicize them and steadfastly refused to embrace Chinese identity." (p. 5)