Lessons from America's Misadventure in Vietnam

Introduction

The Vietnam War can be called a success only by the most optimistic and selective of American memories. The goals of reunifying North and South Vietnam, preventing the permanence of Communist rule, and impeding the proliferation of socialist values throughout Southeast Asia all went unmet. In reflection, we are inclined to view Vietnam as valuable only for the lessons it offers — lessons that might prevent us from repeating the same mistakes. It is with this in mind that we consider the diplomatic, presidential, and cultural dimensions of a war that should perhaps never have been fought.

Diplomatic Negotiations

It is difficult to suggest that any lessons learned from Vietnam have been meaningfully applied since. America's misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to reflect the same diplomatic stumbling that made Vietnam appear to be a necessary war. For the United States, diplomacy at the onset of the conflict centered primarily on the leveling of accusations — most notably in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where America claimed it had been given a military ultimatum that made diplomatic efforts impossible. This is a primary characteristic of the conflict that would unfold thereafter: the United States desired conflict and occupation above all else, and the compromises inherent to diplomacy would not have served that purpose.

If any lesson was assimilated into permanent military strategy from this episode, it is that the United States perfected a kind of "false flag" march to war — one that has since become a template for justifying the needless invasion of foreign lands.

Presidential Leadership

Perhaps one of the great and stunning disgraces of the American effort was the pressure imposed upon successive presidential administrations by the priorities of the Cold War. First, Kennedy attempted to navigate a mounting crisis in Vietnam; then Johnson escalated the opening rounds of the war to new heights of violence; and finally Nixon attempted to end the conflict through overwhelming force. Throughout, there was a fundamental misunderstanding of Vietnam — one that proceeded from the Cold War worldview casting the United States as the "good" counterpoint to the "bad" implications of the Soviet sphere of influence.

It was this ideological lens that caused such catastrophic miscalculation by America's executive leadership, which fully underestimated the tenacity of the Vietnamese people. As Moss (2005) observes, "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 esprit de corps of battle" (p. 7). If this had not been apparent to Kennedy as he moved the United States closer to battle, it became painfully evident to Johnson, who ultimately chose not to seek reelection under conditions he viewed as impossible to overcome.

Conclusion

In large part, this is a fitting way to resolve our discussion, particularly insofar as it seems to predicate the inevitable failure of the United States in its ambitions with Vietnam. Though it is useful and telling to reflect on the long array of military errors and strategic missteps that helped prefigure America's lost cause, it is perhaps more accurate to consider the cultural implications outlined above as the root cause of an inexorable outcome in an unwinnable war.

Works Cited

Moss, G. D. (2005). Vietnam: An American Ordeal. Prentice Hall.