Gideon Rose: How Vietnam Really Ended
[Gideon Rose is managing editor of Foreign Affairs; he is writing a book about the ends of American wars.]
With the Iraq war going badly and a hostile Congress looking for the exit, comparisons to Vietnam are all the rage. Accounts of that war's endgame have generally been spun politically or distorted by hindsight, however.
Congressional anti-war activism, for example, was neither a heroic reining in of a runaway government (as the left claims) nor a perfidious stab in the back (as the right charges). It was simply the predictable epilogue to a drama that had largely played itself out years before. And while domestic politics established the broad guidelines within which different administrations operated, White House officials had substantial leeway to set policy as they wished. The real constraints, then as now, lay not in what was saleable at home but in what was achievable abroad.
From the start, the United States was fighting not to lose in Vietnam, rather than to win. In the 1960s, U.S. leaders believed that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would have terrible consequences, so they decided to prevent such an outcome by whatever means necessary. At first, this meant providing U.S. aid and advisers; then it meant facilitating the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem; then, bombing North Vietnam; and, finally, sending U.S. ground troops to fight Communist forces directly. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the toughest question—whether to accept the true costs of victory or defeat—was avoided. By gradually increasing the scale of the American effort, it was hoped, the Communists could be persuaded to cease and desist.
Once the patience of the American public wore thin, such an approach was no longer feasible. The Tet Offensive soured much of the establishment on the war and inclined them toward disengagement. Johnson himself, unwilling either to withdraw or to escalate, chose instead to renounce his re-election attempt, cap the war effort, and hunker down. He never accepted defeat, but the limits he set on American operations became political facts that restricted the choices available to his successor.
Coming into office in January 1969, Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, understood that part of their mandate was to end the war in some way, and they wanted to do so for their own geopolitical reasons, as well. Still, they had no intention of "losing" the war outright or of abandoning South Vietnam under pressure from the enemy. So, they tried at first to achieve an old goal—an agreement formalizing simultaneous American and North Vietnamese military disengagement—with various new means, buying breathing space at home with token troop withdrawals. But the effort failed, and the war dragged on.
By late 1969, the Nixon team settled on a new approach combining gradual withdrawal, temporary protection of the regime of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, and intense diplomacy to enshrine these elements in a negotiated settlement. In the spring of 1969, there were almost 550,000 American troops in Vietnam. By the spring of 1970, there were over 400,000; by the fall of 1971, 180,000; by the spring of 1972, 65,000. The troop withdrawals undermined the Thieu regime's long-term security, but Washington took other measures (such as the Phoenix Program and assaults against Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos) to help protect it over the short term....
Read entire article at Slate
With the Iraq war going badly and a hostile Congress looking for the exit, comparisons to Vietnam are all the rage. Accounts of that war's endgame have generally been spun politically or distorted by hindsight, however.
Congressional anti-war activism, for example, was neither a heroic reining in of a runaway government (as the left claims) nor a perfidious stab in the back (as the right charges). It was simply the predictable epilogue to a drama that had largely played itself out years before. And while domestic politics established the broad guidelines within which different administrations operated, White House officials had substantial leeway to set policy as they wished. The real constraints, then as now, lay not in what was saleable at home but in what was achievable abroad.
From the start, the United States was fighting not to lose in Vietnam, rather than to win. In the 1960s, U.S. leaders believed that the fall of South Vietnam to communism would have terrible consequences, so they decided to prevent such an outcome by whatever means necessary. At first, this meant providing U.S. aid and advisers; then it meant facilitating the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem; then, bombing North Vietnam; and, finally, sending U.S. ground troops to fight Communist forces directly. During the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, the toughest question—whether to accept the true costs of victory or defeat—was avoided. By gradually increasing the scale of the American effort, it was hoped, the Communists could be persuaded to cease and desist.
Once the patience of the American public wore thin, such an approach was no longer feasible. The Tet Offensive soured much of the establishment on the war and inclined them toward disengagement. Johnson himself, unwilling either to withdraw or to escalate, chose instead to renounce his re-election attempt, cap the war effort, and hunker down. He never accepted defeat, but the limits he set on American operations became political facts that restricted the choices available to his successor.
Coming into office in January 1969, Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, understood that part of their mandate was to end the war in some way, and they wanted to do so for their own geopolitical reasons, as well. Still, they had no intention of "losing" the war outright or of abandoning South Vietnam under pressure from the enemy. So, they tried at first to achieve an old goal—an agreement formalizing simultaneous American and North Vietnamese military disengagement—with various new means, buying breathing space at home with token troop withdrawals. But the effort failed, and the war dragged on.
By late 1969, the Nixon team settled on a new approach combining gradual withdrawal, temporary protection of the regime of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, and intense diplomacy to enshrine these elements in a negotiated settlement. In the spring of 1969, there were almost 550,000 American troops in Vietnam. By the spring of 1970, there were over 400,000; by the fall of 1971, 180,000; by the spring of 1972, 65,000. The troop withdrawals undermined the Thieu regime's long-term security, but Washington took other measures (such as the Phoenix Program and assaults against Communist sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos) to help protect it over the short term....