10 YEARS LATER, LESSONS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP91-00587R000100470015-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 18, 2011
• Sequence Number: 15
• Publication Date: March 24, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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NEW YORK TIMES
24 March, 1985
10 Years Later, Lessons of the
Vietnam War
By Allan E. Goodman
and Seth P. Tillman
WASHINGTON - Ten years after
the fall of Saigon, the debate over
American involvement in Vietnam
remains unresolved. Was it a "noble
cause," as. President Reagan has
said, or an immoral adventure in im-
perialism, as some of the antiwar ac-
tivists contended at the time? Was it
an honorably intended but strategi-
cally misconceived stand against the
forces of aggression, or was it a mis-
begotten manifestation of the arro-
gance of American power?
The verdict of history thus far has
been ambiguous. In the past several
years, for example, there have been
three major looks backward: one by
public television, one by-the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for
of Southeast Asia did not fall under
Communist rule, but all three of the
countries of Indochina did. (As the
leaders of several Southeast Asian
countries see it, Vietnam bought time
for the region as a whole to develop an
immunity against Communist-in-
spired wars of national liberation.)
The "doves" were also mistaken in
their widely shared expectation that
Hanoi's rule would be relatively be-
nign, and in their dismissal of Presi-
dent Nixon's warnings that there
would be a "bloodbath" when the
United states withdrew. Ho Chi
Mink's war-embittered successors in
Hanoi have imposed a grim Stalinist
dictatorship on their now unified
country, while the genocide con-
History's
verdict is
ambiguous
Scholars at the Smithsonian Institu-
tions and one by the Army's Center
for Military History. The striking
thing about these efforts is that none
uncovered anything new or decisive
to explain what went wrong with the
military and diplomatic strategies of
Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and
Richard M. Nixon, anything to ex-
plain why the South Vietnamese Gov-
ernment collapsed in April 1975.
It is far from certain that additional
historical research will render a
clearer verdict. All that is clear is
that neither proponents nor critics of
the war have been wholly discredited
or fully vindicated.
The "domino theory," decried by
antiwar critics at the time, proved to
be largely but not entirely false. Most
Allan E. Goodman is associate dean
in the School of Foreign Service at
Georgetown University. Seth P. Till-
man is research professor of diplo-
macy in that program.
the minds of many of our allies. A few
countries, such as Israel, expressed
apprehension about America after
the fall of Saigon, and others, such as
the Arab states on the Persian Gulf,
may have been influenced by the
Vietnam experience in their decisions
not to allow American military bases
on their territory.
Elsewhere, the effects of the end of
American involvement in Vietnam
were either neutral or constructive.
The Soviet Union has profited only
marginally and China not at all from
the spread of Communism in Indochi-
na. The United States has suffered no
setbacks in the third world directly
attributable to Vietnam. Our Euro-
pean allies and Japan were relieved
by what they considered America's
"liberation" from Vietnam. The
opening to China and the normaliza-
tion of relations became possible only
when it was clear that the United
States would soon be out of Indochina-.
and the most significant period of,
detente with the Soviet Union began
as the war came to a close.
Only when we look at the fallout of
the war on our domestic life do its ef-
fects seem clear. As then-Senator
J. W. Fullbright wrote in 1966, the
war in Vietnam "divided and trou-
bled the American people as has no
other war in the twentieth century."
It destroyed the Johnson Presidency
and, with it, the promise of the Great
Society, and if it did not exactly de-
stroy Richard Nixon, it certainly con-
tributed to the conditions in which his
Administration self-destructed. The
war also divided and demoralized the
Democratic Party, with effects that
are still being felt today.
It undermined trust between Con-
gress and the executive and set in mo-
tion a Congressional rebellion against
executive prerogative that has gone
far beyond the aspirations of its ini-
tiators. For reasons largely attributa-
ble to Vietnam, Congress has become
a suspicious, meddlesome and fre-
quently disruptive partner in Amer-
ican foreign policy.
Continued
ducted by the Khmer Rouge in Cam-
bodia was far worse than the "blood-
bath" envisioned by Mr. Nixon.
Whether and to what degree the
loss of the war in Vietnam injured
America's standing in the world also
remains ambiguous.
Henry A. Kissinger warned in Feb-
ruary 1975 that if Vietnam fell asa re-
sult of the cutoff of American aid, the
"gravest doubts" about America
would arise over a period of years in
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Many of these changes might have
come about anyway, even without
Vietnam, but it seems doubtful .that
they would have gone as far as they
did. The long, inconclusive and seem-
ingly pointless war generated a fire
storm of protest against Presidents
Johnson and Nixon. The youthful pro-
testers chanting "Hey, hey, L.B.J.,
how many kids did you kill today?,"
the marches, the teach-ins, the draft
resisters, the "Mayday Tribe" and
others who made Richard Nixon a
virtual prisoner in the White House
were bound to provoke a deep na-
tional reaction. The epithets of Vice
President Spiro Agnew - "traitors
and thieves and perverts ... in our_,
midst,,' 1,misfits and garbage" -
Fundamental
issues aren't
resolved
were only the tip of that iceberg.
In the longer term, decent, pa-
triotic Americans demanded - and
in the person of Ronald Reagan have
apparently achieved - a return to
pride and patriotism, a reaffirmation
of the values and virtues that had'
been trampled upon by the Vietnam-
spawned counterculture. That natu-
ral and perhaps inevitable reaction
has extended far beyond the point at
which equilibrium would have been
re-established. We are experiencing a
"conservative restoration" marked
by militancy in foreign policy and a
decline of social concern at home.
In any case, the fundamental issues
of Vietnam remain unresolved: when
to intervene and when not to, when to
stay the course and when to call it
quits. The Vietnam experience of and
by itself cannot answer these ques.
tions for us. On the contrary, it is.
more likely to mislead and deceive..
Whatever. else history teaches us, it
shows us the pitfalls of policy made
by analogy. Vietnam was not, as
many of our policy makers thought at
the time, a reprise of what happened
in Czechoslovakia and Poland in the
1930's. As applied to El Salvador or
Nicaragua, the lesson of Vietnam is
to forget about Vietnam and to study
the local conflict and its roots, domes-
tic as well as external.. ?
The only clear verdict that history
seems to have rendered 10 years after
the fall of Saigon is that no foreign
venture can succeed without solid do-_
mestic foundations - moral and cul-
tural no less than political and eco--:
nomic foundations. Despite recent
misadventures in Central America
and the Middle East - and notwith- ,
standing failure in Vietnam - Amer-
ica stands reasonably well respected
and admired in the world today, espe-
cially by contrast with the Soviet
Union. It is unlikely that this is a con=
sequence of our late action in Gre-
nada, or in any significant degree the
result of our latest advances in mis-
sile technology. It is far more likely
that it has to do with the freedom and
abundance and general attractive-
ness of our society.
The idea of America as an exam-
plary "city upon a hill" is not in itself,
a prescription for effective foreigii?
policy. It is, however, a starting point
toward' the goal -of "no more Viet{,
nams." If Vietnam teaches us noth-,
ing else, it is that policies that lack
roots and credibility at home are. a ,
sure course to disaster.
a
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