Kurt Campbell and Vikram Singh: History lessons from Eisenhower and Nixon on quitting a war
[Mr Campbell is chief executive and co-founder, and Mr Singh a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.]
After all the reports, hearings and commentary on Iraq one truth is emerging: the next US president, Democrat or Republican, will take office with about 100,000 soldiers and marines in Iraq.
A political transition during wartime is rare in US history. There are only two relevant examples of an unwelcome conflict being handed from one president to the next, notably the Korean war to Dwight Eisenhower and the Vietnam war to Richard Nixon – with 330,000 US troops in Korea and over half a million troops in Vietnam at the end of 1968. The political and global contexts of the conflicts were very different, as were their outcomes. Yet, the lessons of both have remarkable relevance for the next president.
Neither Eisenhower nor Nixon saw the wars they inherited as “winnable” in the clear-cut terms expected by the public. As candidates, both made similar pledges to war-weary Americans: a just peace while preserving US honour. As presidents, they worked to end the conflicts with less than satisfactory results. Eisenhower’s war on the Korean Peninsula remains an unresolved stand-off, made more troubling by North Korean nuclear ambitions. America’s role in Nixon’s war ended only after four more acrimonious years and 21,000 American lives lost.
With no significant allies to help (as Eisenhower had in Korea) and no clear enemy to fight and negotiate with (as Nixon had in Vietnam), our next president will face even murkier options. Like Eisenhower and Nixon, however, he or she will hear calls both for immediate withdrawal and for major offensives to “finish the job”. The next president should take heed.
According to Henry Kissinger, Nixon believed a clear-cut victory was not possible. He wrote that Nixon “understood that destiny had dealt him the thankless hand of having to arrange a retreat and some sort of exit from a demoralising conflict”. Melvin Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defence, wrote recently that despite what voters thought, Nixon had no actual plan for ending the war. Only after the election and several months of hard internal debate did his team chose “Vietnamization”, which has echoes in Iraq today.
The next president should assume office with a plan for getting out of Iraq. It cannot be precise (no plan survives first contact with reality). However, laying out at a general level to the public the options and their risks is imperative. Immediate withdrawal, a phased transition and “Iraqification” or some new effort to buy time for political progress will all have different long-term consequences and price tags. Time matters in a transition, and having a plan from day one can be the president’s foundation for working with the public, Congress and allies to capitalise on that hopeful blush of good faith that greets a new administration....
Read entire article at Financial Times
After all the reports, hearings and commentary on Iraq one truth is emerging: the next US president, Democrat or Republican, will take office with about 100,000 soldiers and marines in Iraq.
A political transition during wartime is rare in US history. There are only two relevant examples of an unwelcome conflict being handed from one president to the next, notably the Korean war to Dwight Eisenhower and the Vietnam war to Richard Nixon – with 330,000 US troops in Korea and over half a million troops in Vietnam at the end of 1968. The political and global contexts of the conflicts were very different, as were their outcomes. Yet, the lessons of both have remarkable relevance for the next president.
Neither Eisenhower nor Nixon saw the wars they inherited as “winnable” in the clear-cut terms expected by the public. As candidates, both made similar pledges to war-weary Americans: a just peace while preserving US honour. As presidents, they worked to end the conflicts with less than satisfactory results. Eisenhower’s war on the Korean Peninsula remains an unresolved stand-off, made more troubling by North Korean nuclear ambitions. America’s role in Nixon’s war ended only after four more acrimonious years and 21,000 American lives lost.
With no significant allies to help (as Eisenhower had in Korea) and no clear enemy to fight and negotiate with (as Nixon had in Vietnam), our next president will face even murkier options. Like Eisenhower and Nixon, however, he or she will hear calls both for immediate withdrawal and for major offensives to “finish the job”. The next president should take heed.
According to Henry Kissinger, Nixon believed a clear-cut victory was not possible. He wrote that Nixon “understood that destiny had dealt him the thankless hand of having to arrange a retreat and some sort of exit from a demoralising conflict”. Melvin Laird, Nixon’s secretary of defence, wrote recently that despite what voters thought, Nixon had no actual plan for ending the war. Only after the election and several months of hard internal debate did his team chose “Vietnamization”, which has echoes in Iraq today.
The next president should assume office with a plan for getting out of Iraq. It cannot be precise (no plan survives first contact with reality). However, laying out at a general level to the public the options and their risks is imperative. Immediate withdrawal, a phased transition and “Iraqification” or some new effort to buy time for political progress will all have different long-term consequences and price tags. Time matters in a transition, and having a plan from day one can be the president’s foundation for working with the public, Congress and allies to capitalise on that hopeful blush of good faith that greets a new administration....