From hdiplo@YorkU.CA Thu Jan 2 19:06:06 1997 Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2000 21:08:40 -0500 From: "H-DIPLO [Marcsisin]"Reply-To: H-NET List for Diplomatic History To: H-DIPLO@H-NET.MSU.EDU Subject: Vietnam and the Cold War [Serewicz] From: L.W.Serewicz A key point to remember, although I think Prof. Kaiser understands this, is that the United States *could* have "won" in Vietnam. The key question is "At what price?" I am reminded of Douglas Cater's memos in July 1965 suggesting that the United States must be prepared for a long, ambiguous war lasting 20 to 30 years. (See Gardner, Pay Any Price, p.253-255.) Instead the United States fought at a high level for less than *two* years!. (Full deployment was reached in late 1967 and continued only through early 1969 when Nixon began to withdraw troops.) Even in that limited time, the United States and South Vietnam *almost* succeeded. By March 1968, the strategic situation in South Vietnam was as good as it could become given the circumstances. Had the United States persevered at that level for five more years, one can only think of what might have occurred. While the United States continued to support a large war effort even after March 1968, it no longer had the military capability to carry out the necessary actions. My analysis intentionally ignores the domestic political problems to concentrate on it from a strategic or military perspective. Ignoring the domestic political problems and looking at it from a military perspective, can anyone argue the NVA could have used military force to dislodge the United States from South Vietnam? I am aware that one cannot ignore the domestic political consequences of having nearly 600,000 troops in South Vietnam. However, I am only suggesting from an abstract point that the NVA, through force of arms, could *not* dislodge the United States from South Vietnam in the way that North Korea, with the aid of the Soviet Union and China, almost dislodged it from South Korea. This is even more true if the United States had taken steps in 1961 to integrate South Vietnamese troops into its structure in the way that it did so in Korea. This would have increased the capacity of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves even as the United States helped to suppress the attacks instigated, directed, and supplied by North Vietnam. The key question to ask, is victory at what price? De Gaulle suggested as much to Rusk in a December 1964 meeting, which I would suggest captures the philosophical alternatives open to the United States. See Gardner, _Pay Any Price_, p. 155. De Gaulle was suggesting, rightly I would argue, that if the United States wanted to "win" in Vietnam it would have to undertake unlimited action, that is wage a war for control all of Eurasia. In part, I think De Gaulle understood that the forces arrayed against the United States were unlimited in a way that the United States could not match. Rusk argued to the contrary that the United States could succeed with limited means because its goals were limited. Rusk saw the goal as limited and the means needed to achieve it as limited. In the UN world order that he was trying to maintain, Rusk understood that unlimited war by the United States was not feasible. Instead the United States would be called upon "to do in cold blood what they would normally only do in hot blood". Rusk understood that to create an unlimited goal would create the danger of exciting demands for an unlimited war. In this Rusk worried the price might be creating World War Three if sufficient war fever was created. I would argue that the price was the identity of the United States as a Republic, a government of separate and limited powers. For the United States to "win" in Vietnam, it would have had to undergo a massive transformation of the American regime, (regime understood here in the classical political philosophical sense), which the American people were not willing to accept. As Lloyd Gardner suggests in Pay Any Price the United States, Johnson, was caught between his domestic dreams and his foreign policy necessities. In the end, Johnson was forced to choose his domestic reforms. In the same spirit Robert Collins "The Economic Crisis of 1968 and the Waning of the "American Century"" (AHR April 1996) makes the argument that because of Vietnam the cost in terms of balance of payments, the domestic economy, and public opinion, Johnson was forced to move from expanding the Great Society to maintaining it. As Collins suggests, that is when the war effort turned. Thus it is *not* that the United States could not achieve victory, but that the price was too high. Would anyone suggest that the United States defend South Vietnam at the cost of the principles it was seeking to uphold in South Vietnam? One could argue that because of the Vietnam war and the question that it raised, the United States has undertaken a series of reforms within its military and political system to answer the politico-military questions that it raised. I would suggest that the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), the CONUS strategy, the Weinberger Doctrine, the War Powers legislation, and even the development of NATO's strategic doctrine are developments that, in part, reflect the United States desire to keep its commitment and future wars limited in time and space by applying maximum power to achieve the political result. These developments do not reflect the military lessons, but the political lessons. Neither the United States, nor any democracy, can fight a slow, politically ambiguous war that inflicts a constant rate of casualties. If its opponents seek to bog it down in this asymmetrical combat, then it will respond asymmetrically as well. By asymmetrical, I suggest that the opponent will attempt to lure the United States into a situation where it takes a constant if low stream of casualties, where the political situation is ambiguous enough to create abnormal domestic protests and where success can only be defined as a denial strategy. The RMA in particular would counter all of these characteristics by reducing the casualties, increasing the strategic and tactical tempo of the warfare, and reducing the reliance on a denial strategy. I would even suggest that the real test of the United States will be in Colombia, where there appear to be more military (i.e. security) advisers than political advisers, a curious imbalance that ignores the root political problem and ignores Machiavelli's warnings in the _Prince_ and _The Discourses_ about the danger to a state's political legitimacy from outside forces. Lawrence Serewicz