Joshua Kurlantzick: Afghanistan could turn into Vietnam. Let's hope so.
[Joshua Kurlantzick is a fellow for southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming the World." ]
In a ceremony last week honoring a unit of Vietnam veterans for their heroism in a long-forgotten battle, President Obama offered a glimpse of how heavily the lessons of Vietnam weigh on him as he considers the way forward in Afghanistan.
"If that day in the jungle, if that war long ago, teaches us anything," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden, "then surely it is this: If we send our men and women in uniform into harm's way, then it must be only when it is absolutely necessary. And when we do, we must back them up with the strategy and the resources and the support they need to get the job done."
Vietnam is the nuclear option of historical analogies. Yet, rather than fear that Afghanistan will become another Vietnam, we should embrace the prospect. If the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed. Little more than a generation after a bloody, frustrating war, Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides.
The lessons of the Vietnam War are clear and sobering, but history does not end in 1975, when the last American diplomats fled Saigon. Once large-scale fighting ends in Afghanistan, Washington should strive for the kind of reconciliation it has achieved with Vietnam. America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. As unlikely as it seems today, the same outcome is possible in Afghanistan.
Thirty-plus years ago, few would have predicted that Vietnam and the United States would someday come together. The long war of attrition left government ties strained, to put it mildly, and forever scarred both populations. In the United States, the war damaged the reputation of the military, severely dented America's own image of its power and undermined U.S. standing in the world. And for the loved ones of the 58,000 American servicemen and women killed, the war was a tragedy from which they may never recover.
Much like the airstrikes in Afghanistan, U.S. tactics in Vietnam -- such as the spraying of Agent Orange and bombings that caused widespread civilian deaths -- alienated the civilian population there. And even after the war officially ended, Washington continued to punish Hanoi, refusing to recognize the Vietnamese-installed government in Cambodia that had ousted the genocidal Khmer Rouge and slapping a trade embargo on Vietnam.
Today, however, 76 percent of Vietnamese say U.S. influence in Asia is positive, according to a 2008 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs -- a greater percentage than in Japan, China, South Korea or Indonesia. When President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam in 2000, citizens greeted him like a rock star, mobbing him whenever he stepped out in public. Two-way trade now surpasses $15 billion annually, compared with virtually nothing in 1995, the year the two countries normalized diplomatic ties. American companies have descended upon Vietnam, and last year foreign direct investment in the country tripled compared with 2007...
Read entire article at The Washington Post
In a ceremony last week honoring a unit of Vietnam veterans for their heroism in a long-forgotten battle, President Obama offered a glimpse of how heavily the lessons of Vietnam weigh on him as he considers the way forward in Afghanistan.
"If that day in the jungle, if that war long ago, teaches us anything," Obama said in the White House Rose Garden, "then surely it is this: If we send our men and women in uniform into harm's way, then it must be only when it is absolutely necessary. And when we do, we must back them up with the strategy and the resources and the support they need to get the job done."
Vietnam is the nuclear option of historical analogies. Yet, rather than fear that Afghanistan will become another Vietnam, we should embrace the prospect. If the U.S. relationship with Afghanistan eventually resembles the one we now have with Vietnam, we should be overjoyed. Little more than a generation after a bloody, frustrating war, Vietnam and the United States have become close partners in Southeast Asia, exchanging official visits, building an important trading and strategic relationship and fostering goodwill between governments, businesses and people on both sides.
The lessons of the Vietnam War are clear and sobering, but history does not end in 1975, when the last American diplomats fled Saigon. Once large-scale fighting ends in Afghanistan, Washington should strive for the kind of reconciliation it has achieved with Vietnam. America did not win the war there, but over time it has won the peace. As unlikely as it seems today, the same outcome is possible in Afghanistan.
Thirty-plus years ago, few would have predicted that Vietnam and the United States would someday come together. The long war of attrition left government ties strained, to put it mildly, and forever scarred both populations. In the United States, the war damaged the reputation of the military, severely dented America's own image of its power and undermined U.S. standing in the world. And for the loved ones of the 58,000 American servicemen and women killed, the war was a tragedy from which they may never recover.
Much like the airstrikes in Afghanistan, U.S. tactics in Vietnam -- such as the spraying of Agent Orange and bombings that caused widespread civilian deaths -- alienated the civilian population there. And even after the war officially ended, Washington continued to punish Hanoi, refusing to recognize the Vietnamese-installed government in Cambodia that had ousted the genocidal Khmer Rouge and slapping a trade embargo on Vietnam.
Today, however, 76 percent of Vietnamese say U.S. influence in Asia is positive, according to a 2008 study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs -- a greater percentage than in Japan, China, South Korea or Indonesia. When President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam in 2000, citizens greeted him like a rock star, mobbing him whenever he stepped out in public. Two-way trade now surpasses $15 billion annually, compared with virtually nothing in 1995, the year the two countries normalized diplomatic ties. American companies have descended upon Vietnam, and last year foreign direct investment in the country tripled compared with 2007...