This series of blog posts is based off my reading of The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, by Barbara Tuchman.
The Vietnamese repulsed Chinese invasions for millennia, resisted the Japanese in WWII, and defeated the French after almost a century of colonization of Indochina. I recount and document this history of the Mandarin warriors’ resistance in my historical narrative, RECALL.
The previous blog posts, if you want to catch up can be found here:
The Vietnam War Revisited
The Vietnam War Revisited Part II
The Vietnam War Revisited Part III
The Vietnamese were and are a fiercely independent and resilient culture by nature. It’s in their DNA.
So, why did we think our military experience would be different than the French? Fighting guerilla warfare in hostile terrain ended in France’s defeat despite their technical weapon superiority. The Viet Minh wore them down with hit and run tactics. Their resolve outlasted the French.
Following their victory at Dien Bien Phu, Ho made overtures to the U.S. to unite North and South Vietnam, but was rebuffed because he was considered a “communist,” a pejorative term in the prevailing Cold War atmosphere. Lumping the North Vietnamese in with the same, harsh connotation associated with the Russian/ Chinese communist threat represented another folly. That perception eventually cost us a prolonged war in which we suffered over 58,000 casualties.
The North Vietnamese constituted a different breed of “communists,” not cut from the same cloth as the Chinese and Russians. Ho Chi Minh represented a far different leadership than Mao or Stalin. In an agrarian, third world society a different form of communism existed, not as brutal or harsh as the latter. Ho professed to be a Nationalist and disclaimed Communism as his goal. His goal in life was attaining independence from the French colonists. But he was no choir boy. He could be vicious. No one questioned his commitment to his cause.
Ho’s quest to unite the North and South could have been interpreted as a civil war, not some monolithic communist plan to take over Southeast Asia. It was not viewed as an expansion of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the Cold War psyche dominated the American worldview in 1961 when JFK made his decision to become involved in Southeast Asia. The universal fear of a nuclear war served as a foreboding backdrop. The imminent threat of the spread of communism preoccupied the Kennedy’s administration’s political decisions. There was a lot going on back in 1961 besides Vietnam that influenced decision making in Washington, D.C.
JFK chose to follow the Truman/ Eisenhower dictum to resist communism’s spread throughout Southeast Asia, considering the loss of Vietnam as a threat to the region. His predecessor’s perception viewed the takeover as a conspiracy. But, was it an existential threat to the U.S.? Did JFK’s policy serve our self-interest? Or, as Tuchman asks, “Did we betray ourselves?”
Some say JFK had no choice. I beg to differ. Ignorance of a country’s culture may be an excuse, but Vietnam and Southeast Asian policy was pursued through six successive presidencies over thirty years beginning with FDR followed by Truman, Eisenhower, then to JFK, LBJ, and Nixon during the war. Did ‘group think’ sway JFK? Did he ignore factual data for other reasons?
All the conditions and reasons precluding a successful outcome were recognized or foreseen over those years. The OSS, CIA’s precursor, knew the region well. Their Intel reports were generally quite accurate in forecasting trends and forewarning risks. Field reports detailed the hazards of involvement. We were not sucked into an unsuspected quagmire. We waded in well aware of the obstacles, ignoring the risk/ benefits of a land war in Southeast Asia.
Tuchman makes the case that the folly was pursuing the goal despite knowing the downside risks outweighed the benefits. Despite accumulating evidence that the goal was unattainable, JFK persisted in a flawed policy not in ignorance of the facts, but because he refused to draw conclusions from the mountain of evidence contra-indicating our commitment of American troops to what many at the time considered a civil war in Vietnam. That the Communist system threatened American security in Indochina was an extrapolation of the prevailing Cold War mindset leading to the Domino Theory, our pretext for becoming involved.
To lump the Southeast Asian countries in a single mold as if they lacked individuality, lacked personal history, or had no differences or circumstances of their own represented cognitive dissonance. Another folly resulted, giving rise to the Domino Theory that allowed it to become dogma.
How could the JFK administration expect all these Asian countries to act alike and perform with the uniformity of dominoes? One nation toppling after the other falling victim to communist aggression and takeover?
Once committed there was no turning back because the DC politicians calling the shots, not the Generals or Admirals, refused to acknowledge the discouraging CINCPAC facts from the field, the alarming CIA Intelligence Estimates, and the South Vietnamese ARVN lack of will complicated by South Vietnam’s President Diem’s corruption and lack of leadership.
Tuchman makes a strong argument against our involvement on the pretext of the Domino Theory. I presented the contrarian viewpoint in my blog, the Domino Theory. Please read the post for another convincing argument, the flip side. It contains an excerpt discussing the pro’s and con’s as seen by my characters in my historical narrative, RECALL.
The contention is that the war bought time for significant geopolitical events to occur in the region that contravened communist spread and takeover as envisioned in the Domino Theory. But we paid a huge price in retrospect. Think about it… Was it worth it?
The excerpt is an interesting short read. It is worth your time.
Comments welcomed, if civil. The subject matter is controversial like most things about the Vietnam War. I hope you learned something in this blog, whether you agree or not.
/ RLawson
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