Vietnam war and its impact on the US foreign policy

The Vietnam War and its impact on the U.S foreign policy

Xhensila Gaba

Course: intro to international relations

Instructor: Dr. Nancy Kwang Johnson

Time: Tuesdays 9.00-12.00

Date: January 31, 2010

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“Whoever does not know the history, is condemned to repeat it”

The Vietnam War lasted for almost thirty years, beginning from the early 1950s until

1973 with the withdrawal of the U.S. forces. This was the longest war in the American history

and probably one of the fewest that did not ended in a success for the United States. The

Vietnam War started as a conflict between South Vietnam and North Vietnam (Democratic

Republic of Vietnam), which were divided by the 17th parallel established in the Geneva

Conference in 1954 (Garofano, 2002). But soon the Vietnam War deviated from a civil war into

a limited international conflict, where the U.S became involved more and more. However, it is

difficult to establish how the American war in Vietnam started and how did it become so hard to

step back. The American war in Vietnam has been considered as a failure in both military and

diplomatic strategies. The American strategy, as it is called, was orchestrated by five different

American presidents, starting from president Harry Truman in 1950 when decided to help France

in Vietnam (which primarily was a French colony) with military and economic aid and ending up

with president Nixon who undertook the strategy of Vietnamization of the war, meaning

withdraw of American troops and training for the South Vietnamese to put up with the ground

fighting (Stoessinger, 2007). In the late January 1973, United States signs the peace agreement,

and the U.S leaves Vietnam without achieving its goals. The fact if America lost the war is out of

debate in every scholar sense of the word “loss”, considering the fact that America lost 50,000

men just during the direct involvement period and the economy was ruined by spending more

than 150 billion dollars in this war (Garofano, 2002). It is not the time for engaging in debates

whether America lost the war or not, but time is ripe for re-considering what brought the failure.

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How did the U.S get so deep involved in a war in a small Third-world nation? What was at stake

for the Americans when decided to go to war in Vietnam? Probably no one would have thought

that the war in Vietnam which started with the overconfidence of the U.S in defeating in short

time the communist regime in North Vietnam, would had turned out to be the war that separated

the American public opinion into two groups (the ones pro escalation and the ones pro

withdrawal) and making the Americans distrust about the credibility and morality of their

government. Thus the Vietnam War showed for a failure of U.S not only in the international

arena, but also it indicated for a loss of war even at home. Now, having passed more than 35

years from the end of the Vietnam War, still the consequences of this war seem to have left

tracks in the U.S foreign policy making. The American belief systems have been re-considered

and the performance of U.S foreign policy performance has experienced significant changes.

Probably the U.S failure in Vietnam served as a lesson to be learnt, as a past experience not to be

neglected and as a mistake not to be repeated again.

The scope of this paper is to analyze the Vietnam War in the foreign policy perspective.

How has the U.S foreign policy been altered by this long and unwinnable war? What are the

lessons to be learnt from this military and diplomatic failure in Vietnam with respect to U.S

foreign policy? These are the questions I pose in this essay, and after making an analysis of what

happened in Vietnam and how did war escalated, I would end up with what can be learnt by the

ordeal of U.S in Vietnam. First, I would introduce a contextual background about the origins of

the war and what made U.S get involved. Second, I would analyze the Americanization of the

Vietnam War, focusing mostly on the President Johnson’s decisions to escalate the war. Then the

third part will focus on the sources of failure for the America dividing them into two groups: (1)

misperceptions of U.S administration both in diplomatic and military strategies, (2) lack of

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popular support. The last part will focus on the lessons to be learnt from the Vietnam war with

respect of U.S foreign policy, including the main actors that undermined U.S foreign policy and

its legitimacy and what should be changed in the international system.

Let’s start by having a view on the origins and causes of the Vietnam War. How did all

this started? Before WWII, Vietnam had been a colony of French Empire. During the war,

Japanese invaded Vietnam, so France lost control on the province in Indochina. After the

capitulation of Japan and the end of WWII, the people in Vietnam found some space for

establishing their own government and gaining independence. At this period, the nationalist

campaigns took place and spread all over Vietnam and the leader of this movement was Ho Chin

Mihn. France wanted to return back to Vietnam in order to gain territories and fulfill the

ambition of colonization. U.S. and President Truman supported France in the south both military

and economically, but the north was left in the hands of the non-communist Chinese. Meanwhile,

Ho Chin Mihn was supported by more and more people and in 1946 his party was established—

the Viet Mihn. At this time, France claimed the north and therefore the French entered in a

conflict with Viet Mihn. Despite the help of the U.S., France was not able to cope with the

guerrillas’ tactics of Viet Mihn. In 1954, the French regiment was attacked by the Vietnamese

and France was forced to withdraw from Vietnam (Malkasian, 2004). At the same year, the

world powers met in Geneva for discussing the future of Vietnam. They decided to split the

country in two parts by the 17th parallel and also established that in 1956, there would be

elections for deciding who was going to rule the entire country. Actually, the elections never

took part and the division of 1956 seemed to be permanent. Viet Mihn became more active

military because he wanted to unite the two parts of Vietnam under the communist rule. Here is

when America starts to get involved in the Vietnam and this reaction has its roots in the classic

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scenario of the Cold War. The main goal of U.S. was to contain the spread of communism. U.S.

thought that if the South Vietnam would fall under the communist rule, then the domino theory

would make possible the spread of the communist regime in all the southern Asia, and then it

would be more difficult for U.S to fight it. The Viet Mihn was backed from the communist China

(Mao Zedong). The creation of these bipolar forces was expected in the period of the Cold War.

Americans compared communism with a virus that contaminate whoever is near. Translated in

the language of the domino theory, the U.S was decided not to let the South Vietnam fall under a

communist regime, because the emergence of a strong communist country would influence and

infect even the other nation in South Asia. Then, the U.S was determined not to let this happen.

This was the reason why President Truman decided to help France primarily. But as the war was

escalating and its end seemed far, most of these reasons were altered and forgotten. President

Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy promised not to permit a victory of communism, so if they

decided to get out from South Vietnam, then the U.S credibility and the presidents’ reputation

was at stake (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). Despite the ideological factors that made America enter

the Vietnam War, still it is necessary to emphasize that the personality of each president

influenced the tide of many events in Vietnam. Especially President Johnson sent more and more

troops in Vietnam by undertaking the operation “Rolling Thunder” and contributing to the

escalation of the war. After Johnson, the decision of President Nixon was for leading to the

Vietnamization of the war. The involvement of the U.S in Vietnam actually had little to do with

the fate of the South Vietnam, but it is more adequate to call the U.S intervention as a clash

between superpowers, an indirect World War III, shaped by many ideologies of the Cold War

and necessary for establishing the future of each power in the international arena. This was at

stake for the U.S. since the direct confrontation of the two powers was avoided by both sides

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(because of its being too risky using nuclear weapons), then the war was transferred in places

like Korea and Vietnam. America worried about the Soviet Union taking advantage in many

events such as the building of the Berlin Wall, or the so called “iron curtain”, the Bay of Pigs

event and the Cuban Missile Crises. So it was time for America to show off and challenge the

other side, and therefore the U.S. decided to send troops in a place so far from America’s

“defensible border” as Acheson states.

Now, I would like to focus on how did the war escalated. Why was it so hard to get out

from Vietnam? The Americanization of the Vietnam War occurred during the presidency of

Lyndon Johnson. He stated that there were only two options: to withdraw or to escalate. First,

President Johnson campaigned in 1964 election with the promise not to escalate war, but after

the offense of Viet Cong over South Vietnam, Johnson was convinced that the communists were

escalating, thus he decides to start the bombing campaign against North Vietnam (Stoessinger,

2007). He ordered 210,000 American ground troops to Vietnam. He justified the use of ground

forces by saying that the war would not last more than six months. But since the war did not end,

Johnson strategy proved to be unsuccessful. President Johnson’s dream was the building of a

Great Society, but if U.S decided to back down on the communist challenge in Asia, then his

dream would be destroyed. Thus, each step further in involving in Vietnam, made it more

difficult to get out and admit failure. Thus, escalation occurred. The misperception and ego of

President Johnson made America experience a catastrophe and lead to the loss of his own

reputation by separating the public opinion within a civil war. The bombing campaign, or the so-

called “Rolling Thunder”, was ineffective, and the main reasons are because it was applied only

partially in some areas and because the North Vietnamese were prepared for enduring each kind

of catastrophe, no matter how many people would die. General Westmoreland, the commander

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of the United States in Vietnam, demanded more and more troops, by making the President

Johnson feel caught in a trap, as far as Vietnam was becoming the land for a big American war.

And still the enemy could not be defeated. The Tet offensive was the event that highlighted the

disaster. Americans at home realized now that three years of bombing and an assurance of half a

million men was in vain and the enemy seemed stronger than ever (Mueller, 1980). Lyndon

Johnson gave the Vietnam War another dimension. His misperception and his stubbornly of not

paying attention to the advices that addressed the war of North Vietnamese as different from

those of the rigid dogma of the Cold War, made America experience a tragedy.

Now, after giving the big picture about how all this tragedy started and how did U.S

involved more and more in the Vietnam conflict, it is time for identifying and analyzing what

were the sources that made America fail in Vietnam. First, U.S. lost the war because of its

misperceptions and misunderstandings. So it is necessary to say that the failure did not occur as a

result of not conceptualizing the war, but mainly because of a bad and flawed conceptualization.

The U.S overconfidence in its potentials for winning and the underestimation of the enemy

undermined her success. After the ending of the WWII, the U.S. victory made them feel

confident and think that if they were capable to defeat the Nazi army, then they could win against

anyone, anywhere. The U.S. never made an analysis about the opportunities it had for winning

the war, but the only questions it posed were how long it would take and what it would cost. So,

the U.S. applied the formula for success discovered during WWII even in the Vietnam War,

assuming that this would bring America victory. But their assumptions were wrong, because they

had underestimated the enemy and had misunderstood the nature of conflict. U.S. had not

properly understood against who were fighting and for what reason. U.S. saw itself caught in the

trap of a rigid Cold War dogma, which made America involve more and more in this war,

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leading at the Americanization of the war. George Ball, a foreign policy expert, maintains that

the Cold War concern of the U.S was mainly protecting Europe against the Soviet Union. U. S.

has tried to avoid and stop every revolutionary movement in the Third World in the name of anti-

communism, but this sounds impossible and in the end, U.S failed to be the “world’s sole police

officer” (“Vietnam War”, 2007). The debate in America wrongly focused on how to fight the

war, rather than on whether the U.S should be there in the first place. The failure was amplified

because they underestimated the enemy and did not analyze correctly the nature of the conflict.

In fact, it seems like in Vietnam the movement tendency was a nationalist revolution aspiring to

establish the independence of Vietnam and give an end to the colonization period. But America’s

Cold War fixation made that the misperceptions and miscalculations lead to failure. President

Johnson believed that if the U.S caused destruction, pain, and death to North Vietnam, then they

would give up (Mueller, 1980). But this did not happen. The North Vietnamese resisted the

bombing assault and they were willing to struggle, suffer and die on a scale that seemed beyond

reason. Another mistake that the U.S. did is about not taking into consideration that the support

of South Vietnamese would not last forever, especially when the South Vietnamese recognized

that the U.S. was engaged in the war only for its self national interests and did not care much for

the future of South Vietnam. That was the reason why the North Vietnamese endured more

violence compared to the South Vietnamese; because men in the north were willing to fight and

die until their goal was achieved and that was missing in the other part.

Another flawed conceptualization of U.S was about its military strategy. The U.S. failed

in identifying the “breaking point” in Vietnam. Many casualties were inflicted, still the Viet

Cong was ready to endure as long as possible, no matter how long it would take or how many

people should die. It was a war of will and patience. The U.S. pursued the strategy of attrition,

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but it resulted useless because the North Vietnamese had accepted conducting a long and costly

war (Malkasian, 2004). Ho Chin Mihn says in 1966, in response to the escalation of war by U.S.,

“We will fight to find victory. Everything depends on the Americans. If they want to make war

for 20 years, then we shall make war for 20 years” (“Vietnam War”, 2007). The strategy of

attrition seemed to be the most adequate strategy with respect to military operations (Malkasian,

2004). This strategy consisted in achieving three goals: (1) protecting and establishing the

military position of South Vietnam, and stopping North Vietnamese attacks; (2) initiating first

the offensive and not just counter-attacking; (3) destroying Viet Cong forces in the territories of

South Vietnam (not getting through the 17th parallel). But the attrition strategy failed because

U.S. was fighting against a well-discipline and stubbornly resistant to all the attacks. Here is

what Kellen says about the resistance of the North Vietnamese, “So well-grounded seems their

morale and so self-resurrecting, that it is not really possible to see how it can be broken”

(“Vietnam War”, 2007). But why did America not pursued another strategy such as those

suggested by some military advisers? Some military advisers were pro the use of nuclear

weapons, or removing all the refugees and bombing the restrictions. The operational strategy of

U.S. was constrained by many factors, some of which are: (1) they did not want to escalate the

war in a wider conflict including Soviet Union and china; (2) U.S was not trained for fighting a

guerrilla war, which was the tactic of Viet Cong; (3) the South Vietnamese military was weak

(Malkasian). Therefore, for the reasons listed above, U.S pursued the attrition strategy, but it

showed that the assumption of U.S. that at some point of punishment, the Viet Cong would be

defeated was wrong. The U.S could not imagine that a small Asian country would not have a

breaking point when fighting against the United States.

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The other source of failure was the lack of public support at home. American public

opinion, or the so-called the “war at home”, strongly influenced the tide of the war. Americans

watched from the television how the war was killing their familiars and the end seemed so far

even though there was enough escalation. After the Tet offensive, the majority of Americans

thought that it was not worth fighting in Vietnam (Lunch & Sperlich, 1979). The enemy took

advantage of the fact that the war was becoming so unpopular at home, because this would

stimulate the activation of the peace agreement. The withdrawal of America was required. The

policy-makers were rational when thinking that the support at home would not last forever.

Indeed, the relation between escalation and domestic support was negative, meaning that as the

number of dead increased, the support decreased. The U.S. found itself involved in a war that

damaged its power and prestige and undermined its credibility. The U.S. Secretary of Defense,

Robert McNamara apologized in 1995 by saying “We were wrong, terribly wrong” (Holsti &

Rosenau, 1979). This demonstrated that neither a central architect could give a certain prediction

whether the war was inevitable or winnable. The war in Vietnam seems to have altered the

previous relationship between elites and the public in the area of foreign policy. Vietnam was

such a tragedy that made the mass foreign policy to change its attitudes. At the beginning of the

war, in 1955, few Americans were aware to what was happening, and paid little attention to

South Vietnam. As long as the administration seems to have foreign affairs in hand, then the

majority of citizens are comfortable to go after the president’s guidance. The first indication

showing that part of the American public opinion was beginning to deviate from the previous

patterns of opinions about Vietnam began to appear within about a year of the 1965 escalation.

Now, let’s analyze what are the lessons to be learnt from the Vietnam War. First, the

failure of the war made American leaders to re-consider the foreign policy process and put

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constraints in future U.S. policy. “No more Vietnams” is the slogan of many Americans

frustrated by the damage of the war (Lunch & Sperlich, 1979). Many Americans that were pro

the involvement of U.S in Vietnam at the beginning understood that it was a mistake. The Nixon

doctrine declared officially that the U.S would be very careful in the future in selecting in which

conflict to get involved. In the future, the United States would be probable to perform its foreign

relations within a narrower idea of the national interest. The experience in Vietnam would make

U.S think twice before engaging in a military conflict. For example, in the case of Angola, the

U.S intervention was limited, even though the Soviet Union and Cuba had posed themselves in

the civil war in Angola (Holsti & Rosenau, 1979). The foreign aid would be switched off from

military aid to humanitarian programs. Another lesson to be learnt is whether the U.S should

engage in unilateral conflicts. The conflict in Vietnam exceeded the civil war nature and turned

to be an international conflict, because it aimed to contain communism to be spread in Europe or

other parts. But how comes that the U.S was there in the first place and no other European

country engaged in the war? Also the Vietnam War taught Americans that the belief systems

should be revised and that the domestic constraints on foreign policy were necessary. In a survey

when Americans were asked about the performance of leaders during the war, 60 % of them

answered that they had given the presidents excess trust on conducting foreign policy (Holsti &

Rosenau, 1979). The loss of 50,000 people and 150 billion dollars spend made Americans think

more critically about how much confidence should be giving to the presidents in making

decisions in the international arena. The Vietnam War put a big question mark on the

responsibilities and morality of the American leaders and the belief system was weakened. The

leaders sometimes did not take decisions according to the public opinion, but they acted

stubbornly in fulfilling their goals without analyzing carefully the consequences. For example,

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during the presidency of Johnson, the debate whether the escalation should have taken place or

not was discouraged. His dream about Great Society was more important that any disapproval or

advice from the CIA for withdrawing (Stoessinger, 2007).

To sum up, the Vietnam War is a critical event in the American history, because it was

the cause for many changes to take place in the international arena and in the foreign policy of

U.S. The war in Vietnam, except from being the longest war ending in failure in American

history, is was the war that caused more divergences among the public opinion. The Vietnam

war made Americans be conscious that their political system had many flaws, which made

America vulnerable even in the international system. Thus, the foreign policy of America was re-

considered and it was altered in many aspects. U.S. decided to select the international conflicts

where it would get involved. Also it decided that it would avoid unilateral conflicts, meaning that

U.S. does not want to lose her people for protecting the world. Last, the belief system in America

was weakened and the public opinion constraint leaders to not take decisions in foreign policy

without advise. But despite the fact that Vietnam War was a failure with high costs, still it is

worth the experience, meaning that the Vietnam War is considered as a template for reminding

America and its leaders to be more carefully when taking decisions in the international area,

because a second Vietnam will definitely underscore the credibility of United States.

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References

Crowell, L. (1996). Review: Thinking about the Vietnam War. The Journal of Military History, 60(2), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2944411

Garofano, J. (2002). Tragedy or choice in Vietnam? Learning to think outside the archival box: A review essay. International security, 26 (4), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3092105

Holsti, O., & Rosenau, J. (1979). Vietnam, consensus, and the belief systems of American leaders. Cambridge university press, 32 (1), Retrieved on January 26, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2010081

Lunch, W., & Sperlich, P. (1979). American public opinion and the war in Vietnam. University of Utah; Western political science association, 32 (1), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/447561

Malkasian, C. (2004). Towards a better understanding of attrition: The Korean and Vietnam wars. The journal of military history, 68 (3), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3396732

Mueller, J. (1980). The search for the “breaking point” in Vietnam: The statistics of a deadly quarrel. International studies quarterly, 24 (4), Retrieved on January 15, 2010 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600287

Stoessinger, J. (2007). Why Nations go to war. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.

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http://www.jstor.org/stable/2600287






Vietnam War: End of the war. (2000-2007). The Columbia electronic encyclopedia. Retrieved on 2010, January 30 from http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0861797.html>

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http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0861797.html

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