The Vietnam War lasted ten years, cost America
58,000 lives and over a trillion dollars, adjusted for inflation. It brought down a president, stirred social
unrest and ended in defeat. No one in hindsight believes fighting a losing
war is ever worth the cost. Consequently, the Vietnam War is usually written
off as a colossal strategic blunder and a humanitarian disaster. Yet historical appraisals might have been
much different had the Vietnam War followed the pattern of the Korean War which the United
States fought for almost identical reasons – the defense of freedom in Asia. The U.S. had military advisors in Vietnam
during the 1950’s, but didn’t become involved in a major way until 1963. President John F. Kennedy firmly believed
in the “domino effect,” the foreign policy theory that vulnerable nations without help
would fall one after another, like dominos, to external communist aggression. Kennedy thus hoped to stop Soviet and Chinese-backed
communist invasions in the manner President Harry Truman had in Korea by taking a stand
in Vietnam. As with Korea, it was a war the United States
did not seek. As with Korea, Vietnam presented no “imperial”
advantages: no natural resources or resources of any kind that the United States needed
to protect or wished to obtain. As with Korea the aggressor was a communist
government in the North intent on taking control of the South; and its military crossed an
internationally recognized border to do so. Following Kennedy’s assassination in November
of 1963, President Lyndon Johnson vastly escalated America’s role in 1964. But even as he did so, Johnson prosecuted
the war with deep ambivalence, authorizing significantly more troops and money for the
war, but never pushing for total victory. In contrast, the North Vietnamese never wavered. They ignored every one of Johnson’s many
offers to negotiate a settlement. By 1971, the war was at a stalemate, neither
side able to establish a clear advantage. The President, Richard Nixon, pursued a two-prong
strategy -- to turn over combat operations to the South Vietnamese, and to bomb North
Vietnam. The effort brought the communists to the Paris
Peace Talks. And by 1973 the North agreed to a general
settlement, establishing two autonomous Vietnamese nations, one communist, one non-communist -- in
the manner of North and South Korea. However, the Watergate scandal, the subsequent
resignation of President Nixon, and the Democrats sweeping congressional victory in the 1974
mid-term election all helped to convince the North Vietnamese that America would not enforce
the peace agreement. They were right. Without U.S. air support and material aid,
the South Vietnamese had no chance against the North. Well supplied by the Soviet Union and the
Chinese, the communists gained full control over the country in April 1975. The war proved far more costly than Korea
because the geography and landscapes of Vietnam were far more conducive to insurgency operations. There were also far more restrictions placed
on American commanders than during the Korean War. And the United States in the 1960s was a far
less conservative and cohesive country than America of the 1950s. Yet despite the long ordeal and terrible costs,
South Vietnam was saved in 1973 -- only to be lost in 1975. The US defeat in Vietnam was a political choice,
not a military necessity. Had the U.S. protected an independent, but
vulnerable South Vietnam in 1973-4, that country would have mostly likely followed the model
of South Korea. Millions of Southeast Asians would not have
become boat people and refugees, or been sent to gulags and reeducation camps. A viable U.S. backed democratic Vietnam would
have stabilized the region and almost certainly prevented the neighboring Cambodian genocide
in which one fifth of that country, 2 million people, were slaughtered by its communist
leadership. And much of the bitterness over the war on
both sides of the American political spectrum, still with us today, would have vanished. And for the communist Vietnamese, the instigators
and aggressors of the terrible conflict, what was it all for? Today, ironically, the Vietnamese government
aspires to nothing more than the capitalist affluence that it once reviled. I’m Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution
for Prager University.
Oh that's convenient. I was never aware the Vietnam war was as clear cut as a simple "commies against the people" situation. I'm sure raiding villages, killing civilians, burning down whole communities for VC ties can also be explained away very easily. Thanks, PragerU for ridding the world of such complicated and annyoing things as nuance or objectivity.
Let's see... a video by Prager U about the Vietnam War. I bet this is unbiased and informative and not at all reductive in a fashion similar to soviet propaganda.