What Was the Vietnam War?
Peter Schultz
What was the Vietnam War? Was it a “mistake” or was it a “culmination?’ That is, was it an aberration that could be blamed on certain personalities or certain theories, such as “the domino theory?” Or was it the culmination of decades of American foreign policy that was traceable to the most basic features of the American political order? How you answer this question goes a long way to explaining how you understand politics and the political.
Many, maybe even most people like to think that the Vietnam War and America’s other wars, e.g., in Iraq or Afghanistan, were distinct or peculiar events best understood by experts who have studied them. But what if the Vietnam War – and other wars – were integral to the most basic features of the American political order, what might be called America’s “regime?” As such intrinsic events, changing personnel, either partisans or bureaucratic, would not change them, except perhaps marginally. Even those with pacifistic tendencies would, if they acquired power, find themselves driven toward war because that is what the regime needed and facilitated. There would be no “Vietnam syndrome,” that is, no syndrome peculiar to the Vietnam War. Insofar as there were syndromes, they would more appropriately be labelled “American syndromes”, and they could not be dealt with unless the basic political order was changed. And such changes would require being radical, that is, going to the roots of the established order. Changing presidents or changing policies would be of very little usefulness in rearranging the established order in the United States.
Such radicalism will rarely prevail because, well, because it is radical and, as such, would be opposed by the most prominent, most authoritative, and most powerful components of the established order. Those who are empowered and honored by the established order are unlikely to see the need or have any desire for changing it. After all, it worked for them, identifying them as being the most virtuous Americans. They were successful. As such, they would be identified as “the best and the brightest.” That is, they are the best that the established order has to offer.
But, ironically, by electing, honoring, and empowering the best and the brightest, the failures of established order would be not only maintained but fortified. And these failures would need to be covered over, hidden, disappeared. A politics of duplicity will be necessary and would become the coin of the realm, so to speak.
Regarding the Vietnam War, JFK practiced duplicity to try to end America’s war there, while LBJ practiced duplicity to make the war there an American war. And Nixon practiced duplicity for four years in order to achieve “peace with honor” and end America’s involvement there, at the cost of more than 20,000 American soldiers and over at least several hundred thousand Vietnamese. And for that deadly duplicity, Henry Kissinger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and Nixon was reelected in one of the greatest landslides in American history. Both achieved, at least temporarily, greatness and the established order was maintained and fortified. Ironically, however, that meant that more “Vietnams” were guaranteed, as indeed has proven to be the case.
And so it goes. While mistakes were made by the United States that contributed to its embrace of war in Vietnam, General Giap was more correct when he asserted it was America’s imperialism that led to its tragedy in Vietnam.
