Robert McNamara Has Died
July 6th, 2009
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Robert McNamara is best known as the defense secretary for US Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He has been called the “architect” of the Vietnam war. In general, this has lead to a negative perception of McNamara, as his policies of limited battle, convoluted rules of engagement and measures of progress, such as the “body count” lead to stalemates, long drawn out conflict and a very unpopular and bloody war.
It’s a real tragedy that McNamara was appointed to the position of secretary of defense, because the reality is that he was a brilliant man and an excellent manager in non-military roles, but he was totally unqualified to lead the military in conflict. Before serving as secretary of defense, McNamara had been known for his brilliant leadership of the Ford Motor Company. McNamara and others known as the “Whiz Kids” reformed the company and instituted new management policies based on mathematical analysis and improved efficiency. He pioneered the use of computers in business and in doing so, he turned the company from dire financial straights to a booming success. (GM could really use him now).
After serving as secretary of defense, he would move onto the World Bank where he also instituted revolutionary reforms, including the introduction of policy analysis. McNamara also helped shift the focus of the World Bank toward the reduction of poverty and introduced some of the first attempts to use financial analysis and planning in an attempt to improve stability and growth of impoverished countries.
What McNamara’s life has demonstrated more than anything else is that the logic, analysis and management that can bring enormous returns to business cannot necessarily be applied to war successfully. Military conflict is a dirty, chaotic practice and involves a greater amount of cultural influence, political feedback and other factors that make it far different than other pursuits. McNamara’s tenure as Secretary of Defense did include some achievements in improving the efficiency and reducing costs at the DOD in areas related to procurement and other non-combat management areas, but this was far overshadowed by his inability to lead effectively during a conflict.
Also, you should watch “Fog of War” it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen.
Robert McNamara was 93 years old. And I bet I’m one of the only people in the US who feels a little bad about his death, although that is probably because most don’t know much about him aside from his role in Vietnam. Another thing many probably do not know is that McNamara was not just a brutal war lord as he helped end segrigation in the military, worked in numerous roles toward the reduction of poverty and in recent years has been critical of US policies in Iraq and elsewhere – above all else, insisting that the world learn from the mistakes made during his time at the Department of Defense.
War is best left to the generals.
(McNamara was an officer during World War II, but that was poor preparation for a role like Secretary of Defense. He should have just stayed in the buisiness world. His previous military experience was in tactical management but not stratigic.)
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July 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Wasn’t the Vietnam War unwinnable though, because nothing would have broken the Vietnamese Communists’ will to fight except the conquest or nuclear destruction of North Vietnam itself, either of which would have led to World War III?
I don’t understand why hostile US public opinion is blamed for the defeat, given that the nondemocratic Soviet Union found itself in the exact same predicament in Afghanistan (with Pakistan as the North Vietnam analogue)…
Quote Comment
July 6th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
George Carty said:
Perhaps, but it was McNamara and Johnson who decided to escalate US involvement from military advisers to a full blown ground war with tens of thousands of troops and major combat operations. Once that happened, the US was in a bad position and even having a bad hand, it could have been played better.
George Carty said:
There was never a clear goal in sight. Crushing the North was never really shown as a clear and consistent plan. The other thing was that the US could have at least destroyed the NVA and the North’s airforce enough to make them unable to do much damage on a large scale and didn’t – largely because of poorly thought out policies.
There’s no point in sitting there spinning your wheels. What probably could have been done would have been some more decisive actions in the beginning that could have driven things to the bargaining table. If the Paris Peace Talks had been forced by better stratigic command years earlier, it would have been a more favorable situation.
By the time of the accords, it was so clear that the US wanted out that the US was not in a good position to negotiate strongly. The unpopularity of the war assured that there was not a lot of bargaining power.
I believe that the best way to have delt things once the situation had reached full combat would have been to use overwhelming force to force the North to sue for peace and in doing so make some capitulations that could have included things like international oversight and a guarantee of limits on the spread of communism.
As it was, the start-stop-start-stop campaign took far more lives than decisive and quick action probably would have.
However, McNamara and Johnson also failed to recognize that they were fighting a war that was not entirely conventional. They had two forces to oppose: The unorganized Vietcong and the NVA.
As things went, by the time of the peace accords, there wasn’t enough capital on the US side to really enforce things. Public opinion precluded a continuing presence like in South Korea which is what really would have been needed.
I suppose one could say it comes down to the fact that many in the country just wanted communism. They got it. Today their standard of living is number 109 out of 177 countries surveyed. Their economic freedom and press freedom according to the UN ranks near the bottom of all countries. Their human rights marks from numerous organizations (The US State Department, the United Nations, Amnesty International) are so bad that they make China look good. Their justice system is based on military courts.
There are over 30,000 political prisoners in Vietnam. Violations of press laws (publishing pro democracy literature for example) is punishable by death. Torture is practiced by the military and the judicial system (and I don’t mean torture like water boarding or making you wear women’s panties on your head. They will tear the flesh off of your body while you’re alive and conciseness or burn your genitals off with a blow touch)
In the end, attempts to drag the country, kicking and screaming, to capitalism and democracy failed. They insisted on their own undoing and now suffer in the bed they made.
Quote Comment
July 6th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
George, the Vietnam War was not unwinnable–the basic problem was that US policy wasn’t designed to win it. It was designed to make the US appear resolute in the face of Soviet pressure by escalating our commitment to the ground war–which made it impossible to win, since we could never apply force before they did, and impossible to withdraw, since our commitment would always go up. We were essentially fighting a defensive war in a foreign country.
You must understand from a non-European perspective that we started off as a Third World country, although the term was not used at that time (pre ~1900). US strategy has always been to respond with overwhelming force when attacked or threatened–we rarely took the strategic offensive, even when we took the tactical offensive. Example: World War II–we didn’t get into the war until attacked, and even then, we fought on the terms of those who had joined earlier. As a result, we didn’t achieve any objectives as such–pre-WWII, we were thinking that we had been attacked, so now we mobilize our almost-nonexistent military and send them off to a battlefield where the attacker is defeated. We didn’t think in terms of attacking somebody else without provocation to achieve a strategic goal, even though many millions of lives could have been saved in the 20th century if the US had recognized the European imperialists’ weaknesses in about 1929 and seized European colonies around the world–and we also didn’t precisely define the terms “attack,” “mobilize,” “battlefield,” or “defeat.” Think about WWII strategically–the Western Allies in general but especially the US got into a war on Germany’s and Japan’s terms. Free Poland and prop up Chiang Kai-Shek–why? What strategic goals were accomplished thereby? Sure, we prevented Germany and Japan (or, more precisely, the governments of Germany and Japan, since “Germany” is a line on a map and “Japan” is a set of islands with a line drawn around them) from achieving their objectives, but that’s a pretty expensive way to restore the status quo (and why is the status quo in your/my/our interests? etc…). After WWII, we tried to fight that same type of defensive war, but with a smaller military, not at full-throttle, and constantly and sustainably. In doing so, we didn’t put up a viable alternative to communism, we didn’t control our occupation zone in Europe as well as the Soviets (i.e., we treated the Western European governments as allies, not puppets, when we could have established puppets, greatly weakening our ability to check imperial behavior–France, in 1960, thought it was independent, and Poland didn’t, thus they didn’t check with us before attempting to retain their colonies, leading those colonies, which naturally thought they had checked with us, to think we were in favor of France’s position), and we didn’t have a worldwide strategy to defeat communism–we just put our fingers in various dikes until the whole thing came down, leaving us looking like the grumpy naysayers trying to stop the Third World’s revolution(s). All in all, we lost sight of the goal–the American Revolution was conducted and the United States as an organization was formed in order to unite the subjects of European imperialism against those European governments and provide an alternative to the international system, and when the opportunity arose, we didn’t remember that we were supposed to do it. Likewise with supporting Israel: Is it in our strategic interest? No. Is it the kind of activity we want to encourage? Not really. Why are we doing it? We don’t know…
Don’t get me wrong, George, I know you’re British, and I don’t have anything against you, or the British people, or British culture, or the piece of geography, it’s just the ethnic-nationalist mode of politics (that the US was formed as an alternative to) that I don’t like. Now, however, there’s little hostility toward Europe on the part of Americans; we’ve forgotten our roots, adopted the European model of the nation-state, and joined the club.
In that environment of reacting to events, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we could get pulled into a war for “moral reasons” without a clear understanding of how we were going to get out of it. It can be seen even at the end of WWII–look at how the surrender of Japan was handled. Did we have any idea before about August 15, 1945 what we wanted Japan to do, what political goal the war with Japan was going to achieve? “Unconditional surrender” is not a goal–what are you going to do after the surrender? It was hopelessly confused, and the only reason WWII isn’t looked at as a defeat on the level of Vietnam was that the Axis armies surrendered on the way to us (and I mean all of the Western Allies here) not meeting any of our objectives. We kept Western Europe from going communist, lost Eastern Europe (including Poland), lost China, and alienated the Third World, most of which went socialist or communist in some form or another, or ended up with dictators who “played” the US strategically in order to stay in power, generally by calling themselves anti-communist. That’s a pretty serious grand strategic failure.
Add to all that the fact that we had no ability to militarily defeat the Red Army–they had 300 divisions to our 40, were better-equipped, and just as well-led–and if Stalin had so desired, he could have kept on going in Europe in 1945 and taken all of it. In WWII, we distracted the Wehrmacht long enough for the Soviets to win the war, and everyone in a policymaking capacity knew it. We couldn’t, in 1945, really put down a Soviet-instigated communist revolution across the Third World. At best, we could look irrational and ready to fight them wherever they went, and wave our nuclear weapons, so that it would appear to the Soviets that cleaning our clocks would be more trouble than it would be worth–rather like North Korea today. In that frame of mind, going into Vietnam just deep enough to make the Soviets realize that they won’t sweep away anyone they don’t like makes sense. Even if we lose, the Soviets don’t advance, and time is on our side, because the Soviet system is so inefficient. Delay losing Vietnam for 15 years, and they might not get into Africa before communism falls.
Think, for a moment, of the Soviet Union as the US’s evil twin–both were federations, both were anti-imperialist, both were democracies (in the case of the USSR, in the literal sense only), and both had roughly the same core competencies–the difference being that when the decision had to be made to create a government with no competing factions and the attendant capacity for the abuse of power or a constitutionally-limited government with many factions to balance each other and check each other’s expansion of their own power, the USSR chose the former and the US the latter. Since a socialist economy is much more efficient than a capitalist economy at providing a required set of goods to one big customer–say, the army–it doesn’t make sense as a capitalist to engage your socialist evil twin in a contest over who can create the biggest command economy to provide your conventional army with armaments. Socialism can’t provide for people, so engage them there: who can build the richest, deepest, powerhouse economy?
So we could have gotten into Vietnam to win–but a win wouldn’t have done much, and to McNamara’s credit, a loss didn’t do much in the other direction. We could have done it without causing World War III–China wouldn’t have come to Vietnam’s aid given Vietnam’s longstanding hostility toward China (China actually invaded Vietnam later!), and if we had invaded North Vietnam and quickly defeated the NVA in a conventional war, the Soviets wouldn’t have had the guts to directly attack an American-occupied area–and given the mostly rural nature of Vietnam, nuclear weapons wouldn’t have done much (in fact, like good guerrillas, they focused on controlling the countryside before choking off the cities, so we would have been destroying our own base of support). So let’s say we do this, and we have Vietnam. Then what?
Afghanistan shows exactly what we might have been able to do in Vietnam, to win on our terms. First, we would have had to attract Vietnamese and other Third World students to America to study, and establish student organizations on those campuses devoted to federalism and the free market. We would be creating a revolutionary spirit centered around Adam Smith’s ideas, and exporting it back to the Third World. Muslims in Afghanistan, of course, did not have to take this step, because Islam was entrenched there as an idea already.
Next, we let North Vietnam conquer South Vietnam–or establish a firmly federalist, free-market government (not just an anti-communist dictator) in South Vietnam, as firm on those principles as North Vietnam was firm in their principles. This was done in Afghanistan–Pakistan was as anti-Soviet as the government of Afghanistan was pro-Soviet.
Then, we establish our equivalent of the Viet Cong to go into North Vietnam, draw Soviet advisors in, get the Soviet government to commit to enormous expenses, and wait. This was done wildly successfully in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan demonstrated that unconventional wars are winnable and that we’d learned how to do it.
Quote Comment
July 6th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Maybe I should bite my tongue here, but I’ll just point out something that has not been mentioned: The Vietnam war was not just a US situation. Of course the South Vietnamese fought against the North but so did Australia, South Korea, New Zealand, Thailand and the Philppines.
The US was the largest foreign intervention force, but South Korea was very large too in their commitment and they committed more and lost more proportionally to their size and economy. What I mean by that is although the US had larger presence and expenditure, the South Koreans spent a larger portion of their citizens and wealth in the fight.
Of course, this was all after the French washed their hands of it all.
I just want to point this out to give it some more context to the international aspects.
Quote Comment
July 6th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I also think history has been unkind to Robert McNamara. To some extent he was handed the damp end of the stick by people that should have known better, and this part of his career will taint the memory of one of America’s great corporate leaders. His only error was not to have seen that what was needed in Vietnam was leadership, not management. He should have realized that he was well out of his waters sooner than he did.
Quote Comment
July 6th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
Fog of war is a very good documentary but it is a little slanted too. I agree with DV8 that he was not the kind of leader needed. He was a manager and a damn good one but he wasn’t the kind to take command and have the strong will and leadership that fighting a war needs. Still, he was a brilliant man when it came to managing companies and he won’t be remembered for that.
When Kennedy offered him the job he said he wasn’t qualified but Kennedy insisted. He could have done much good as secretary of the Treasury or Commerce or Fed Chairman something.
He might have done okay if Johnson had been a strong leader. There needed to be at least one decisive and sharp leader at the top. There weren’t any.
I have no idea why Kennedy and later Johnson thought he was the man for the job.
Quote Comment
July 7th, 2009 at 8:25 am
It may be sad that he will be remebered badly, but I believe it is well deserved. Good deeds can be completely wiped out by very bad ones. If he was as brilliant as claimed, he should have refused to take on a job he was not qualified to do, even more so when peoples lives are on the line.
He may have done good things in buisness, but the fact that many people died because of his poor judgement should not be forgotten. I think thousands of lives far outweigh improved buisness efficiency.
Truely smart people know when they should quit.
Quote Comment
July 7th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
What broke the South Vietnamese will to fight?
Quote Comment
July 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
There is an interesting article on the Vietnam War.
” And,
the US was defending the Republic of Vietnam from an invasion.
Whatever the US administrations and military leaders did wrong,
THAT was not one of them.”
Quote Comment
July 8th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
drbuzz0 said:
Regarding that point, it must be said that the US military lost the war on the ground. Bad tactics, a lack of a real understanding of the nature of war, sycophants in key positions, and arrogance all played a role–even in Korea, they couldn’t win a conventional war on the ground. By the time General Patton died in a car crash in 1945, his tactical doctrine had been adopted across the army due to its extraordinary success in Europe in WWII, leaving his successors to implement it; unfortunately, Patton was an extreme egotist and surrounded himself with sycophants, who stepped into the gap but were totally unable to run the army. He was a European-model general and a poor strategist, and even if his successors had mastered his tactics, they weren’t thinking flexibly enough. Look at the statement at the beginning of the movie Patton, which of course is a composite of many different statements but is made up of direct quotes:
Totally wrong. Enemy casualties don’t win battles, and battles don’t win wars. If killing the enemy strikes at the enemy’s strong point, it will win the war, but if it doesn’t, it won’t. Of course, if you can wipe the enemy out, you will win the battle, but again, what political goal does winning the battle accomplish? Also, on a modern battlefield, it’s rather difficult to wipe the enemy out.
First, it’s impossible to ignore the irony of Patton’s grandfather having been killed fighting for the Confederacy, in light of this statement–it is entirely possible for Americans to lose a war, if the enemy accomplishes their objectives. Second, there has been an anti-war movement in every single war the United States has been involved in. Certainly some Americans thought it would be a good idea to lose those wars. Political will should not be taken for granted.
The Wehrmacht was very successful given the circumstances by being an “army of leaders.” Training in the German army emphasized individual action and initiative, how to take command if your superiors are killed or separated from you, and the importance of understanding your commanders’ intentions, not just the action you are to take–a training doctrine adopted in the US army only after Patton’s proteges retired. Situations change on a battlefield, of course, and failing to tell subordinates what needs to get done rather than what they are to do results in confusion. Also, verbally abusing your subordinates doesn’t exactly foster a team spirit.
No they didn’t–they might have had the best food, but the Soviets had the best equipment, the Japanese had the best fighting spirit, and the Germans had the best soldiers in terms of training–and the last thing they needed was overconfidence. They needed to have an honest assessment of their capabilities.
Bloodthirst gets in the way of making rational decisions about how to apply force.
No, they won’t, and they didn’t know what to do when it happened. American training in WWII was atrocious, almost as bad as Soviet training. The only people left in training assignments were the people who were so incompetent that they were losing battles against the troops that the Germans couldn’t be bothered to send to the Eastern Front. There was zilch in the way of psychological training in how to handle combat stress, not channel it into violence against civilians, etc. “Kill kill kill” is not training.
Leaving aside the strange simile, defense is a very useful posture to take when it will achieve an objective. For example, had we intervened against Western Europe in 1929 as suggested in #3, we would not have been ready for a full-scale war, but neither would they. The objectives for the first ~18 months would therefore be to buy time, jettison ballast (as the South would probably be against such an intervention, and the region isn’t terribly militarily valuable, and the Europeans would be looking for allies and to weaken us, it might not be a bad idea to try to provoke some of the more Nazi-inclined southern governments, particularly Mississippi, to attempt another secession), get the Europeans to use themselves up while achieving as few of their objectives as possible and allowing them to think they’re succeeding, and mobilize our own effort. Taking the traditional European route into the US–a pincer move from Montreal and Buffalo to Albany while attempting to take Detroit, then moving into New York City while trying to take the capital through an amphibious assault–and assuming there’s some sort of KKK-instigated civil war going on in the South, it’s not worth it to try to restore order in the South. Place those troops in a hedgehog system (where the main body of the army withdraws, leaving small forces inside cities and other strong points, which bog down the enemy long enough for the enemy to outrun their supply lines, allowing the main force to defeat the enemy in detail) in the North, stronger in the Maine-New Hampshire-Vermont sector, weak in northern New York, stronger around Detroit, stronger in the Minnesota-Upper Peninsula area, very weak in the plains, stronger on the edge of the badlands, weak in the badlands themselves, weak in the Rockies, stronger around the Seattle area, a well-equipped mobile corps-sized force in the Southwest to defend against a Mexican invasion, the best troops in Texas to protect the oil, and a trench system in Louisiana, East Texas, Arkansas, either Missouri or Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia (the Appalachians obviously excepted). During the “phony war” that would almost certainly happen before the Europeans would think themselves capable of an attack, evacuate important war industries out of Detroit, Buffalo, and Seattle, build as many submarines as possible to sink European supply ships and troop transports going to Canada, rally people against Nazism (including many Europeans, such as the many valuable Jewish scientists who would be looking to get out), invite the Indian National Congress to Washington to issue their declaration of independence (and start talking about their joining the Union), and send the Marines out of the Philippines into the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, and Burma to get more manpower and establish bases from which Australia can be bombed, and the army into Afghanistan (through China, with Chiang Kai-Shek’s permission in exchange for American aid and advisors against the communists) to restore the Kemalist government that had been deposed in a British-backed coup in 1928. Then, when the Europeans attack, they’ll attack where the US army is thinnest, take Albany, and move toward New York City, at which point they’ll be crawling through Michigan, wandering around the plains looking for something of strategic value, and barely advancing in New England and the mountainous areas (since they would lose a large number of ships in Atlantic convoys, they wouldn’t be able to mount a serious amphibious operation to take Washington; since the South would be on their side, negating any need to land when they can just use Charleston, they probably wouldn’t try, and even if they did, the capital can be moved to Cleveland or somewhere else out of their reach). Then turn New York City into Stalingrad and wait for the winter, when the automotive factories that had been moved out of Detroit would have produced enough tanks (and more importantly, trucks, and even more importantly, that the aircraft factories that had been moved out of Buffalo and Seattle could resume limited production) for a classic blitzkrieg-style offensive to cut off the Europeans in the plains and around New York City, then from northern Pennsylvania and Vermont toward Oswego, and finally, up the St. Lawrence toward Quebec and behind the people who have invaded Maine. In the West, the force that surrounded the Europeans in the plains could then take Winnipeg, cutting Canada in two, and once the Mexican army had outrun their supply lines and been bagged in the Southwest, move the best troops out of Texas and into Alaska (which would admittedly take a while, several months at least). Those troops (ideally under the command of Gen. Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who not only hated Stalin and might have defected once it was clear his life was in danger but also was experienced in operations in Siberia) could go around the northern end of the Rockies and sweep across northwest Canada, then, leaving a small force to attack the rear of the Japanese or Australians or whoever would be holding the Canadian Rockies, join up with the people who have taken Winnipeg and attack east into the industrial core of Canada, and mop up anybody left north of the St. Lawrence. At that point, we’d hammer the maritime provinces and the Canadian Rockies, which would take the better part of the next two years, but they would no longer be a threat. As for the South, the only competent US officers who would probably leave would be Fox Conner (who was a skilled diplomat and could keep the Racist Coalition together) and Beetle Smith, who was a decent staff officer but not a battlefield commander–meaning they wouldn’t have been able to mount a serious offensive, and since they’re ballast anyway, we wouldn’t need to try to retake it at the beginning. We could next move into China–at Chiang Kai-Shek’s invitation only, of course–and defend it against the Japanese, who would desperately need the resources after being cut off from Britain by the Malaya-Burma operation and the Winnipeg operation, and the British and French, who would try to attack China in the rear so that the Japanese could take enough of China to be able to continue to fight. The Nationalist government, of course, would do nothing, and we would spend our time trying to win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people as a “third way” that was neither the oppressive Communists nor the corrupt Nationalists. The European-Japanese (“Allied?”) attack would throw us into disarray tactically, because we would really have no front-line troops in China at the beginning, but our strategy wouldn’t change. We would be redeploying from Canada to China during the main Allied offensive, which would probably allow the French, who would be coming up from Indochina, to get behind the Nationalists and cut off their escape to the west. Essentially, by the time we would get there in any force, Chiang Kai-Shek’s government would have ceased to exist. With them out of the way, we then get our choice of counterattack–the Japanese had the worst equipment, the British would be most exposed, and the French would be numerically weakest–which would depend on the degree to which the Japanese Navy could take the Chinese ports (the Royal Navy would not be involved, since we would have taken Singapore), since we would have to deploy wherever we could reach. Of course, also, at this time (mid-1932), the army in Afghanistan would be cut off, but not before its long supply lines across China would tempt the British to go farther into China than they really should in order to cut them. Basically, we would redeploy from Canada, defeat the Allies in detail, use our war economy to start mobilizing China, and then move into India. While we’re mopping up the British in India, we hit the beaches in Morocco, strike quickly across the desert, take Cairo, and turn south into sub-Saharan Africa, where we take the interior lines (not difficult, it’s only the Belgians), and push the Europeans into South Africa and a few pockets on the coast. After that, it’s a matter of linking up in Iraq or thereabouts, invading Australia and Western Europe, and crushing whatever is left of the Confederacy, with the war in South America being self-contained after ~1931. The war would be over by mid-1937, just in time to go to war with the Nazi-Soviet alliance–and we could have, if we had mobilized the Third World. But you’ll notice most of that strategy puts the US on the tactical defensive–it’s only after we’re ready that we start attacking–while we still control the direction of the campaign.
The upshot? We could now have a bully pulpit from which to explain the US Constitution to the Third World, and to say, “Look at the communists, and look at us. While the communists sat around and sipped tea and smoked cigarettes and talked, we attacked, and ended European imperialism. Who represents your interests? The Union transcends ethnic differences to bring together people oppressed by imperialists, to create a New World where disputes are resolved peacefully, through politics, not armed conflict, and where everyone is represented at the table. We’re not a colonial power–imagine if India were represented equally in the British Parliament. It would be 90% Indian! The British would never allow that! And we’re prepared to go forward on that basis, enthusiastically–in thirty or forty years, after integration is complete, and when the first people born in Africa and Asia and South America can run for President, you will run the United States!”
Now, of course, Stalin was an expert in throwing monkey wrenches into coalitions, and given that the Arab world would have only been occupied by the US military for (depending on the place) 6-30 months when the second phase of WWII would start, resulting in it being the least Americanized, and due to our liberal policies in a VERY conservative region, we would probably be on the other end of a jihad in short order–but that would unite the rest of the Third World better than anything else; South America won’t fight for Islam, the Hindus in India certainly won’t, and Africans have been attacked and invaded by Arab armies enough times over the last ~1,000 years to not much like them either; the battleground, once again, would be China, specifically, the degree to which we could sustain improvements in standard of living so that the Communists wouldn’t have any credibility. In that environment, we’d have a shot at keeping Vietnam (and the rest of the Third World!) free. If we act like another outside power intervening in their business, as we did, they’re just going to see our involvement through the lens of their prior experience.
drbuzz0 said:
I doubt there were many people in Vietnam who wanted communism as such. Think about all the people even in the US who think not about the ideas being discussed, but about what their friends are doing. Every time you write a post about the establishment environmental movement being misguided, some of them show up and talk about how they’re sure that the environmentalists are all nice people, and they really care, so why don’t you care, just like all the other popular people? Given the level of education in Vietnam (i.e., that most people in Vietnam had no idea what communism is), wouldn’t it be much more likely that they’re just picking sides among personalities?
Clearly, we had to stand up to communism, but we didn’t make the case very well. What happened in Cambodia later shows why–I don’t see how people can look at those skulls and say that communists want to make the world a better place, and it’s the thought that counts. The socialist system, simply put, rewards bad behavior. If you create a system where there are no checks and balances, somebody is going to run away with all the power, and an analysis that doesn’t take into account what kind of results a system creates and what behavior it rewards is pointless–look at the argument in Plessy v. Ferguson. The Supreme Court said that the fact of separation itself was not a violation of equal protection, therefore government-imposed segregation was constitutional–but failed to look at the consequences of segregation, namely that if you create a system where two groups are separated and law-abiding citizens don’t cross the line (because it’s against the law), the only people you’ll see from the other side, assuming you’re a law-abiding citizen, are criminals and the occasional simpleton. By the 1950s, it was a common belief (though by no means a universal one) on each side of the race line that they were 90% of the country’s population and that all people on the other side were criminals or other disreputable characters. So what segregation created was a situation where there was mistrust on both sides that would explode when mixed–mistrust that was entirely based on misinformation–and of course, the minority loses when there’s a showdown, all other things being equal. Why can’t socialists give us an analysis of the consequences of their proposed line of policy? Why can’t they come up with an analysis more sophisticated than Plessy?
Gordon said:
Strategically, the US was making the policy on the anti-North Vietnam side after the French left, no?
Gordon said:
Yep–the French and Viet Minh framed the conflict. Once the conflict was established, we could only take sides. Unless we want to get into conflicts in the future where we can only take sides in somebody else’s war–in which case they would be making our strategy–we’ll have to be strategically proactive (not tactically preemptive, necessarily) in order to get our enemies (and our allies) into a position where the conflict decides some objective of ours, as in the WWII scenario above. Of course, that applies to everyone, not just the US, but the US, being a former Third World country, has historically been on the strategic defensive and it’s hard for us to switch gears.
Q said:
Commerce would be my vote. He could have been another Herbert Hoover–in good ways and bad ways. Great administrator, brings efficiency, good at getting industries to work together on improving quality, production standards, etc., but a poor leader and a moral coward.
Michael Ejercito said:
They weren’t organized to fight. North Vietnam organized a war economy, indeed a war society. People in South Vietnam were applying their energies elsewhere.
Michael Ejercito said:
We needed to be in Vietnam, but adopting a defensive posture was a mistake. I agree with the point of the linked article, as long as that’s not what the guy meant.
BTW, sorry for the (very) long comment.
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July 8th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
This would imply the U.S. lost the First World War.
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July 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Michael Ejercito said:
How did Germany achieve its objectives in WWI? Granted, they did on the Eastern Front, and they avoided total annexation, but they lost in the West, and when they lost in the West, all the gains in the East were lost and the government fell apart. If they had kept some of their gains in the East after Versailles, there might be a case for a strategic tie, but when the government that undertook the war was removed from power as a result of the war, that’s the biggest strategic defeat possible.
The US didn’t achieve many objectives in WWI, but then again, we didn’t have many objectives. I don’t see how we didn’t achieve what we fought for in WWI, which, again, was not much. Everybody who got into WWI got in with no idea how to get out–that’s why Versailles was conducted: in order to find something to do with the postwar situation. Versailles had no systematic program of action toward a goal; it was a list of things that everybody around the table agreed would be a good idea, and hey, why don’t we do these things while we’re at it?
Did the outcome of WWI advance the US’s strategic goals? Sure! Four powerful empires were overthrown, and the next war was set up in such a way that the US could play a central role if it wanted to, and achieve its objectives. Basically, WWI weakened Europe to the point where we were a major player. The peace, of course, was fumbled; there should have been no Versailles; we should have dictated terms, to everyone including our allies. We didn’t. We lost a golden opportunity to achieve some more objectives, because of Wilson’s insistence on granting Britain and especially France and Italy more status at the table than they had earned, but that doesn’t mean it was a net setback.
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July 8th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I particularly admire Robert McNamara because he’s openly admitted mistakes and worked to document those errors to prevent people from repeating them.
He was an emprical person driving to make changes based on available data and evidence.
Yes, was in part responsible for a huge number of unessesary deaths, but since, he has worked to prevent that from ever happing again.
Instead of being someone like Kissenger who only works to advance his “legacy”.
I’ve got a longer article on my views on the blog porition of my Skeptic comic strip site.
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