The Blue Voice

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Wars in Iraq and Vietnam: A liberal Establishment view

The Winter 2008 issue of Democracy Journal just out has several articles that address issues around the direction of foreign policy and aspects of "culture war" symbolism.

(Wonk alert! This post is kind of on the long side.)

One that combines both is Viet Not by Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson. It's an attempt to look realistically at the lessons of Vietnam War and what they might tell us about how to get out of the Iraq War. At the same time, there is also an element to the article of framing an exit strategy from Iraq in terms of Vietnam War symbolism that departs from the standard Republican framing.

Both are undoubtedly necessary. But no two situation are exact parallels. And it's awfully tempting to fix the facts of history around a real-time policy prescription. Here, I'm going to concentrate on Simon's and Stevenson's version of the lessons of the Vietnam War.

I was very pleased to see that they address the issue of public support for war in a more realistic framework than John Mueller's, whose flawed interpretation of the experience of the Korean and Vietnam War periods has unfortunately achieved widespread acceptance. For the gory details, see my post on his book about the topic. Mueller attempts to salvage his theory in the context of the Iraq War in The Iraq Syndrome Foreign Affairs Nov/Dec 2005.

Simon and Stevenson write:

As Eric Larson and Bogdan Savych’s RAND Corporation study has shown, the American public will tolerate a high number of casualties if it is convinced they are serving vital American interests in a cause that can be won in the foreseeable future and if it sees wall-to-wall agreement among Congress, the administration, and the punditocracy. When the stars align in this way, as they did during World War II–and, indeed, for much of the Vietnam era–Americans will accept large losses. But when the public regards the spilling of American blood as strategically unnecessary or even pointless, as it did in Somalia in 1993, it is understandably loath to accept casualties in abundance.

To be sure, U.S. fatalities in Vietnam dwarfed the fewer than 4,000 Americans killed so far in Iraq, and the rate of military losses in Vietnam was far higher than that in Iraq. But public intolerance is not attributable to any inherent, quantifiable squeamishness on the electorate’s part. As with Vietnam, the factors most responsible for undermining the national will are the imperturbable and almost surreal incompetence and duplicity of the United States’ war leaders. On account of these transgressions - in particular, the grudgingly conceded fact that the casus belli were at best contrived and at worst simply manufactured, and the extravagantly stupid failure to anticipate a robust insurgency - an open-ended commitment is politically out of the question. Indeed, support for the war was thoroughly gutted by 2006, when Democrats, propelled by intensifying opposition to the war, seized control of Congress. (my emphasis)

Since I'm concentrating on the Vietnam War part, I'll just mention in passing that until a majority clearly turned against the Iraq War in 2005, the public pretty much did see "wall-to-wall agreement among [the Republican-controller] Congress, the administration, and the punditocracy". Somehow, people managed to see through that "wall-to-wall agreement". (And, yes, Virginia, there was and is an antiwar movement.) It's true that public support for the Iraq War was "thoroughly gutted by 2006", even by 2005. Mueller in the article linked above cities a Washington Post poll in August 2005 showing that 61% selected the pro-withdrawal response to the polling question, "Do you favor keeping a large number of U.S. troops in Iraq until there is a stable government there or bringing most of our troops home in the next year?" Yet more than two years later with the Democrats having taken back control of both Houses of Congress, the coalition of the Unilateral Executive, the authoritarian Republican Party and the broken-down mainstream press have so far blocked any measure at all to restrict the number of troops or impose a withdrawal deadline of any kind. On the contrary, The Surge was an escalation of the war.

It's a sign of the times, I suppose, that in their litany of "wall-to-wall" war advocacy, they neglected to include our infallible generals who go in front of the cameras and lie their faces off about how wonderfully the war is going and how we're winning, winning and winning some more. Those also played their role in both the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

This comparison in their article also suggests that Simon and Stevenson are, at the least, hedging their bets carefully even on condemning the Vietnam War as unnecessary as they focus on the public perception:

The Vietnam intervention could be sold (for a while) as an integral part of the Cold War. Arguably it made sense as a means of reinforcing the trust of collective security partners, setting limits for the Soviets and the Chinese, and strengthening containment, given that the nuclear risks of fighting a proxy war in Eastern Europe were too great. But the Iraq War - despite the Bush Administration’s best efforts - has not scanned as an essential element of the war on terror, at least since it became clear Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and no meaningful links to al Qaeda. (my emphasis)

Their historical picture is true in so far as the public and Congress understood the Vietnam War to be an important front in the Cold War. But "setting limits for the Soviets and the Chinese"? Let's put it mildly and say that's arguable. That clause, "given that the nuclear risks of fighting a proxy war in Eastern Europe were too great", really leaves me scratching my head, though. As it's presented, that statement only makes sense if they are saying that in 1961 or 1965, the US had to find a "proxy war" to fight somewhere, and better in Vietnam than in Europe.

That mentality is why the so-called "Vietnam syndrome" was a basically healthy one. And why we really need an "Iraq syndrome" to restrain our Grand Foreign Policy Thinkers from dreaming up useless and avoidable wars for Americans and whichever enemy we pick to die in.

Toward the beginning of the article, Simon and Stevenson do a brief survey of some of the lessons that some students of counterinsurgency (COIN) are drawing from various conflicts, like the British experience in Malaya, which is still often seen as a classic successful COIN effort. But the British eventually left, too. And Simon and Stevenson write:

The Vietnam War has a different and more insidious relationship to the American psyche, one all the more seductive and resonant today because it does in fact bear objective similarities to the Iraq War. Both were major, large-scale American engagements against unexpectedly tough adversaries. Over time, both were met by dwindling public support. But there are also obvious differences. The Vietnam War evolved from a guerrilla insurgency into a major conventional conflict, while the Iraq War has taken just the opposite course. And Vietnam’s crowning characteristic is that the good guys lost. Indeed, the Vietnam War is often cast as the first American defeat. As such, it cries out for redemption of a cause betrayed. It is this last, highly emotive and nationalistic impulse, rather than the war's pedagogical utility, that the Bush Administration seeks most acutely to exploit in implicitly vowing "never again."

A fortuitous cakewalk in the first Gulf War and an unexpectedly precipitous victory in the Cold War shortly thereafter gave us the luxury of shaking off a national leeriness of military intervention – the "Vietnam syndrome" – without coming to terms with how the war was lost or understanding its strategic consequences. (my emphasis)

It's hard to miss in that last sentence what seems to be an implicit assumption that "a national leeriness of military intervention" is inherently a bad thing. Unfortunately, that is an underlying assumption of much Establishment foreign policy thinking, whether of the liberal internationalist, realist, or nationalist/neoconservative varieties, though the latter often seem to view war as a positive, purging force of progress.

It's perfectly legitimate and necessary to talk about the types of leadership and "market positioning" strategies (if that's not too crass a term) that are effective in war leadership. But that doesn't mean we have to assume that a skepticism about war is inherently a bad thing. On the contrary, the best thing about democracy may be that, despite triumphalism and jingoistic media and various other less-than-admirable factors, ordinary voters just don't like wars very much. That's the most fundamental reason why 61% of the public had turned against the Iraq War by August 2005, despite the "wall-to-wall agreement among [the Republican-controlled] Congress, the administration, and the punditocracy" (and lying generals) on many of the basic assumptions of the war. It was only a couple of months before that when Sen. Dick Durbin, who seems to be a decent guy, felt he had to abjectly apologize for suggesting that torture in the Bush Gulag bore any resemblance to German crimes during the Second World War. While even members of Congress who should have known better were still trembling in fear of being branded Patriotically Incorrect if they frontally challenged Bush's "war on terror" policies, a big majority of the public had figured out that the Iraq War was a crock.

That last quote from Simon and Stevenson show how decent observations can come bundled with some very questionable ones. It's true that the Cheney-Bush administration is appealing to a sense that the defeat in the Vietnam War needs to be redeemed. But it's worth breaking that down a bit.

First of all, there is no such thing as "the American psyche". For historians, concepts like a national "character" or a national "mind" are, like, so 1950s. Journalists and pundits still use the notions, which in some instances might make sense when clearly understood as a metaphor.

I try to avoid it myself, though, because more often than not it's a cover for fuzzy thinking of some kind. There are 330 million or so American psyches, but not an "American psyche". (Actually, in California we typically have two or three psyches per person. But that's another story.)

The revanchist, stab-in-the-back theory of the loss of the Vietnam War to which they refer is a well-known one. But I really question how much of the public buys into it. Conservative Republicans have actively promoted it. And the military officer corps by all reports widely accepted it, though fortunately such notions are discussed more thoroughly in the military than typically in civilian publications. So there's hardly a unified military "psyche" on the matter.

Cheney and Bush are appealing to their hardcore base with pitches like that, to keep Congressional Republicans enough in line so that they can continue their extremely unpopular war in Iraq through Bush's last term and pass the disaster on to the next President. But the very fact that a large majority of the public came to reject the Iraq War despite the "wall-to-wall" solidarity of the Congress/President/Punitocracy/Lying Generals bloc is in itself a strong argument against the idea that such a view of the Vietnam War and its applicability to present situations is any kind of majority view, much less part of an imaginary "American psyche".

One of the strange things about Simon's and Stevenson's discussion of the Vietnam War is that their view seems self contradictory in an important way. For instance, in the previous quote, they write almost as a throwaway line that the Vietnam War's "crowning characteristic is that the good guys lost." Okay, if we automatically assume that Americans are the Good Guys, yeah. But you don't have to be any fan of the Vietnamese Communists to recognize that "our side" in the real world was a corrupt, very unpopular, brutal government in South Vietnam that was widely viewed by the Vietnamese as illegitimate. And they themselves explain that at some length. For example:

In taking up a stiff counterinsurgency challenge in Vietnam, the United States made itself hostage to the effectiveness and commitment of the South Vietnamese government. Furthermore, it became obvious that in Vietnam–as in virtually all counterinsurgency situations - an agreement changing the political conditions that spawned the insurgency was indispensable to a sustainable peace on terms acceptable to Washington and Saigon. Unless that happened, military gains, no matter how audacious, could not be sustained. Yet throughout the U.S. involvement, the South Vietnamese government remained decadent, stagnant, and incorrigible. As historian George Herring has noted, "The United States found to its chagrin that as its commitment increased, its leverage diminished." While there were undeniable counterinsurgency successes in the early 1970s, Saigon was not up to consolidating them by winning the confidence of its citizenry. (my emphasis)

This is true. Aside from the Grand Questions of the Cold War context, US military support for the South Vietnamese government only made sense if the government itself was viable and could carry the the military and COIN fight to success mostly on its own. It never could.

When the US combat troops withdrew in 1973, the South Vietnamese government had a huge army and air force, trained largely by the Americans, and still enjoyed major US military assistance right up until the fall of Saigon in May, 1975.

In that kind of effort, the US can't blindly commit to an open-ended military role. Steven Metz in his 2007 paper "Rethinking Insurgency" (see my post of 06/29/07) suggests a differentiated definition of COIN efforts depending on the situation in the country involved.

His reality-based approach to military intervention includes a far more pragmatic concept of success that the one that currently prevails in our political culture and military assumptions. He summarizes the categories of situations and the broad approach this way (directly quoted here):

A functioning government with at least some degree of legitimacy is suffering from an erosion of effectiveness but can be “redeemed” through assistance provided according to the Foreign Internal Defense doctrine.
There is no functioning and legitimate government, but a broad international and regional consensus supports the creation of a neo-trusteeship. In such instances, the United States should provide military, economic, and political support as part of a multinational consensus operating under the authority of the United Nations.
There is no functioning and legitimate government and no international or regional consensus for the formation of a neo-trusteeship. In these cases, the United States should pursue containment of the conflict by support to regional states and, in conjunction with partners, help create humanitarian "safe zones" within the conflictive state.

Conflicts like these, even the first category, are unlikely to end with the enemy laying down their arms and surrendering to be shipped off to Guantánamo for the rest of their lives. As Metz puts it:

[T]he U.S. goal should not automatically be the defeat of the insurgents by the regime (which may be impossible and which the regime may not even want), but the most rapid conflict resolution possible. In other words, a quick and sustainable resolution which integrates insurgents into the national power structure is less damaging to U.S. national interests than a protracted conflict which leads to the complete destruction of the insurgents. Protracted conflict, not insurgent victory, is the threat. (my emphasis)

Simon and Stevenson don't seem to see the Vietnam War in any of those ways. In fact, despite their accurate descriptions of the South Vietnamese government's inability to survive on its own, they still seem to think that the policy of the Ford administration in the war's final months (Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State, Rummy was Ford's chief of staff, and Dick Cheney was Rummy's chief assistant) was actually a correct one. They write:

The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam over the course of 1973 to 1975 proved so divisive precisely because a fictional "who lost the war" story line was pushed by conservatives in an effort to mask the inept conduct of a war they had backed. This stratagem recalled that of German nationalists during the Weimar era, who cultivated the myth that the Ludendorff Offensive of spring 1918 had effectively won World War I, but that democratic German politicians–the so-called "November criminals," some of Hitler’s favorite scapegoats–had discarded victory through craven capitulation. Such tendentious posturing should not cloud the fact that U.S. involvement in Vietnam ultimately exceeded what the public would tolerate. The decline of public support, coupled with U.S. indecision, led to a frenzied withdrawal behind a political fig leaf and a dearth of post-withdrawal support for any legitimate South Vietnamese government. (my emphasis)

That's self-contradictory enough to make me dizzy. Their description of the stab-in-the-back story line pushed by conservatives is accurate so far as it goes.

But then in the latter part of that paragraph, they proceed to elaborate what looks an awful lot like the stab-in-the-back fiction. The problem, as they put it there, was that "U.S. involvement in Vietnam ultimately exceeded what the public would tolerate". Uh, yeah, that's true. But the public wouldn't tolerate it because a majority figured out that the costs of the war far exceeded anything that the US might conceivably gain from it.

And in what parallel universe did the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam resemble "a frenzied withdrawal"? Probably in the parallel reality where Norman Podhoretz and some of the other neocons live, but not in this one. The withdrawal took place from 1969-1973, pretty protracted period for a frenzy. By the time the Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973, most American combat troops had already been withdrawn. Nixon and Kissinger could almost certainly have negotiated a very similar arrangement in 1969 and withdrawn American troops much faster, minimizing American and Vietnamese deaths and even leaving the Saigon government in a better position militarily and politically than they did in 1973.

And "a dearth of post-withdrawal support for any legitimate South Vietnamese government"? The only "dearth" was that Congress banned any further bombing in support of the failing South Vietnamese government. Again, in the parallel neocon universe, that might have saved the South Vietnamese regime indefinitely. But not in this one.

It's hard to read the bottom line of Simon's and Stevenson's argument as anything other than a "soft" version of the argument that the real problem in the Iraq War is not that its an irredeemable disaster but that the wimpy public may lose our Will and develop an "Iraq syndrome":

If we do not exercise strategic discretion and design a near-term military disengagement that incorporates residual U.S. support for Iraq, we are likely to be forced - by domestic opinion at least as much as facts on the ground in Iraq - into a Vietnam-esque withdrawal that leaves no room for such support for Iraq and diminished American standing throughout the world. That fate is the one we tempt by keeping troops in Iraq when their presence there cannot secure America's interests and only weakens the United States’ strategic position. At the end of the day, America's allies value, and its adversaries fear, not its persistence in a dubious policy that is unlikely to serve its own interests, but its preservation of viable strategic options. (my emphasis)

Even that paragraph is self-contradictory. They argue that the US military presence in Iraq "cannot secure America's interests and only weakens the United States’ strategic position". Yet they complain that "domestic opinion at least as much as facts on the ground in Iraq" could compel withdrawal, and that somehow that would be a bad thing.

Say what? How is it a bad thing if public opinion opposes continuing a policy that "cannot secure America's interests and only weakens the United States’ strategic position". Not what I would call a Jacksonian democratic perspective.

This article is an illustration of how strong a hold the stab-in-the-back theory has, not so much on the general public, but on military and political thinkers and strategists who feel the need to adhere to the conventional wisdom shared among themselves. It also shows how the lessons of the Vietnam War can be shaped, or mangled, to fit current ideologies or policy presriptions. That's not at all to say there's nothing to be learned from past wars. It's just that we need to look critically at lessons being fixed around a current policy, to borrow a famous concept from the Downing Street Memo.

Tags: iraq war, jonathan stevenson, stab-in-the-back, steve simon, steven metz, vietnam war

posted at 4:35:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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