Tragedy Or Choice in Vietnam? Learning to Think Outside The

Tragedy or Choice in John Garofano Vietnam? Learning to Think Outside the Archival Box A Review Essay

Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins ofthe Vietnam War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000. Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

In 1965, the United States launched a major air and ground war on behalf of a weak ally against an experienced and committed enemy. Policymakers understood that domestic support would not last forever and would likely decrease as casualties mounted. War games and simulations had suggested that Washington might end up isolated internationally. Yet the nation embarked on a war that reduced U.S. power and prestige, claimed the lives of some 58,000 of its citizens, and led to a skepticism of limited war that still shapes civil-military relations and

foreignTragedy or Choice in Vietnam? policy today. Given the risks and uncertainties, why did the United States go to war in Vietnam? After three decades there still is no consensus on this or any number of other basic questions regarding U.S. policy. The exchanges that followed U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s conditional apologia in 1995 demonstrated that neither a central architect nor his critics could agree on 1 whether the war was inevitable or winnable. In 2001, on the thirtieth anniver-

John Garofano is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program at the Robert and Renée Belfer Cen- ter for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

The author wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Smith Richardson Foundation and to thank Ivan Arreguín-Toft, Richard Betts, George Downs, David Edelstein, Douglas Macdonald, William Wohlforth, and three anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this review essay.

1. Robert S. McNamara with Brian VanDeMark, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons ofVietnam (New York: Random House, 1995).

143

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 144

sary of the release of the Pentagon Papers, two participants in that study made diametrically opposed arguments regarding what the documents revealed 2 about policy-makers’ beliefs and intentions. Collectively speaking, historians, political scientists, and policy analysts have not provided the answers sought by President John F. Kennedy when, shortly before his death, he requested a comprehensive review of how the United States got into Vietnam, what Ameri- 3 cans thought they were doing there, and how they could be most effective. The ofªcial record of U.S. thinking about the war is now nearly complete. The Lyndon Baines Johnson and other presidential libraries have declassiªed their public and private holdings, and the National Archives and Records Ad- ministration has opened most of its diplomatic and military records. The For- eign Relations ofthe United States series includes some seventy-ªve print and microªche volumes on the foreign policies of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The nature and abundance of this evidence make it possible to reexamine old debates and theories regarding the U.S. path to war and, by extension, review two competing perspectives on the origins of war in international relations theory. One view, reºected in the overwhelming majority of literature on Vietnam, emphasizes the nonrational aspects of decisionmaking and policy. This perspective, which has sustained several subªelds within the international relations community for more than a quarter-century, emphasizes the role of cognitive limitations and psychological biases, the self-defeating behavior of small groups facing stress and uncertainty, and bureaucratic and organiza- 4 tional barriers to the provision of important information and advice. Analysts who ªnd evidence of nonrational behavior generally believe that U.S.

2. The Pentagon Papers is a compendium of documents that chronicled the making of U.S. policy toward South Vietnam from World War II to May 1968. It was the product of a study originally sanctioned by Secretary of Defense McNamara and eventually leaked to the news media. See Dan- iel Ellsberg, “Lying About Vietnam,” and Leslie H. Gelb, “Misreading the Pentagon Papers,” New York Times, June 29, 2001, p. A27. 3. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifºin, 1978), p. 722. 4. See, for example, Robert Jervis, The Logic ofImages in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970); Graham Allison, Essence ofDecision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Poli- tics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976); Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decisionmaking: A Psychological Analysis ofConºict, Choice, and Commitment (New York: Free Press, 1977); Alexander L. George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy: The Effective Use of Informa- tion and Advice (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980); Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War: The Nature ofInternational Crisis (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); and Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky, eds., Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 145

policymakers in the mid-1960s faced difªcult dilemmas but made bad and 5 avoidable choices. The other view, closely identiªed though not synonymous with realism and currently enjoying resurgence in formal bargaining models, emphasizes the predictable, rational aspects of the road to war. In this view, war is best seen as a conscious, deliberate extension of politics. Analysts working from this perspective tend to view Vietnam as a classic tragedy in which fate, in the form of structural pressures and constraints, determined policy. Three impressive studies, based on the latest trove of archival material, shed considerable light on the value of these two perspectives. Fredrik Logevall’s thesis is captured in the title of his book, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation ofWar in Vietnam. 6 In this well-written account drawing on European as well as U.S. archival material, the author argues that policymakers had sufªcient leeway to withdraw from Vietnam after establishing a politically inclusive, “neutral” government in Saigon. The problem, Logevall believes, lay in intellectual rigidity, particularly during the Johnson administration. In his view, President Kennedy would not have escalated U.S. involvement had he lived to make the decisions of 1965. Notwithstanding the title, David Kaiser makes a related argument in Ameri- can Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins ofthe Vietnam War. 7 This is an am- bitious work, invoking Thucydides, modern theories of generational behavior, and the author’s experiences during the Vietnam period. Kaiser explains in great detail the roots of U.S. policy during the Eisenhower period and carries his narrative through the critical decisions of 1965. He presents a large amount of evidence to support his case that policymakers should have known that disaster would follow escalation. Like Logevall, Kaiser concludes that U.S. policy would have been wiser and more peaceful had Kennedy lived to confront the situation facing Johnson in 1964 and 1965. Both Logevall and Kaiser stress the misperception and misunderstandings behind escalation of the war. Lawrence Freedman takes a different approach in Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam.8 In a superb example of how to integrate archival data

5. For a thorough summary of the mistakes and shortcomings in U.S. policy, see Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998). 6. Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 7. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins ofthe War in Vietnam (Cam- bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000). 8. Lawrence Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (New York: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2000).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 146

with larger political developments, Freedman examines both the structural un- derpinnings of the Vietnam decisions and the unique contributions of individ- ual leaders and policymakers. He explains how Kennedy’s views of great power politics and limited war were refracted by the differing circumstances in the four cases. Freedman hints that Kennedy may have acted differently than Johnson, but the bulk of his analysis, resting on consensus regarding U.S. objectives in Vietnam and the perceived means of accomplishing them, suggests otherwise. I argue that the preponderance of evidence supports the view of Vietnam as a tragedy determined by a combination of structural pressures, entrenched mind-sets, and limited information. The personal preferences and limitations of speciªc presidents and their advisers played a secondary role, and neutralization was not a real policy option in any case. In the end, policymakers were driven to adopt policies that they knew were risky because the costs of not going to war were unacceptable. I highlight the incomplete, ambivalent nature of available information as well as policymakers’ willingness to accept serious risks in order to avoid certain domestic and international disasters. This analysis ªnds relatively little misperception and bias as described by decisionmaking theorists. On the other hand, the analysis also points to serious limitations of the rational view of war, which needs to account better for the mind-sets that policymakers bring to their tasks. In the ªrst section, I summarize the major explanations of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War according to the broad rational-nonrational divide. In the second section, I explain what the books under review contribute to the debate. In the third section, I describe how domestic and international pressures can lead reluctant policymakers to accept the risks involved in going to war. I conclude with implications for theoretical debates and suggestions for future research.

Two Views ofVietnam

The two competing theoretical perspectives on the origins of war are mirrored in the extensive literature on U.S. policy on Vietnam. The vast majority of explanations falls into the nonrational category. Rationalist explanations are found largely in the memoirs of participants and in a few analytical works of lasting value. In this section I provide a brief overview of the two bodies of literature.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 147

war by misperception and misunderstanding Years before the ªghting stopped, Arthur Schlesinger’s “quagmire thesis” held that U.S. policymakers repeatedly but mistakenly took the smallest steps possible to uphold the established national goal of preventing the loss of South Viet- nam to communism. They did so, in this view, without recognizing that they were drawing the United States ever deeper into the very conºict they 9 had sought to avoid. When publication of the Pentagon Papers provided evidence that some individuals were cognizant of the risks of escalation and war, analysts began to use insights from several disciplines to explain why policy-makers had apparently ignored the critical views expressed in these documents. Robert Jervis, for example, explored how cognitive frameworks such as the domino theory could ªlter out dissonant but important information. He also noted that policymakers tended to entertain only mutually reinforcing as- 10 sumptions that supported their positions. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May anticipated the claims of Robert Kaiser (discussed below) in asserting that the Johnson administration suffered from a “misconception” in not believing the “prescient” documents predicting a long, tortuous struggle. Neustadt and May argueded that this would have been corrected if advisers had considered ap- propriate historical analogies such as the U.S. experience in Korea or that of 11 France in Indochina. Incorporating psychological theories that explain how “schemas” or “cognitive scripts” may shape the processing of information, Yuen Foong Khong argued that incorrect, simplistic analogies to Munich and 12 the Korean War hampered decisionmaking on Vietnam. Other analysts viewed U.S. policymakers as emotional beings with inherent motivations to view information and advice in a biased fashion when this would resolve inner conºict or stress. Irving Janis’s “groupthink” thesis holds that under stress, cohesive groups close themselves off from dissenting views. On Vietnam, Janis argued, this group dynamic caused policymakers to remain

9. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Bitter Heritage: Vietnam and American Diplomacy, 1941–1966 (Boston: Houghton Mifºin, 1966); David Halberstam, The Making ofa Quagmire (New York: Ran- dom House, 1965); Townsend Hoopes, The Limits ofIntervention (New York: David McKay, 1969); and Chester L. Cooper, The Last Crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1970), especially chap. 13. 10. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, pp. 9, 128–134. 11. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses ofHistory forDecision Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 75–90, especially pp. 83–85. 12. Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 148

13 blissfully optimistic about the prospects for success. Domestic and bureaucratic factors are frequently combined with this argument about “motivational bias.” Thus Larry Berman argued that President Johnson used his circle of advisers as a cover for decisions that were in fact determined by his agenda for a Great Society. The president avoided making painful decisions and ultimately 14 chose an ill-fated middle road to war, according to Berman. H.R. McMaster’s important work on civil-military relations held that U.S. military leaders lacked both courage and political savvy, allowing politicians to browbeat them 15 into accepting a losing strategy dictated by domestic priorities. In his most recent book, the historian Michael Beschloss even argued that President John- son, unable to resolve the conºicts between his domestic goals and his instincts 16 about the war, knew he was going to lose. Scholars have also explored misguided belief systems that transcend individuals and administrations, such as policymakers’ supposed obsession with reputation and the sanctity of U.S. commitments to its allies. By some accounts, 17 even victory itself was irrelevant. Still other arguments blend domestic, orga- 18 nizational, ideological, and cultural factors. One foreign policymaker has 19 listed some two dozen sources of misperception and misunderstanding.

13. Irving L. Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies ofPolicy Decisions and Fiascoes, 2d ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifºin, 1982). Alexander George made similar arguments based on motivational psy- chology and organizational bottlenecks. See George, Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy, especially pp. 39, 69. 14. Larry Berman, Planning a Tragedy (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982), especially pp. 145–146. Berman also cites a large number of cognitive failures. 15. H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (New York: HarperCollins, 1997). 16. Michael R. Beschloss, Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). 17. Key documents for this school include Assistant Secretary of Defense John McNaughton’s memos claiming that 70 percent of the U.S. motivation to ªght in Vietnam was to “preserve our national honor as a guarantor,” and arguing that the United States should make “the extraordinary efforts of a good doctor” even if Vietnam would ultimately fall. See Pentagon Papers: The Senator Gravel Edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), Vol. 3, p. 695. See also Bruce W. Jentleson, “American Commitments in the Third World: Theory vs. Practice,” International Organization, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Autumn 1987), pp. 667–704; and Jonathan Schell, The Time ofIllusion (New York: Vintage, 1976). 18. On domestic politics, beliefs, and organizational politics, see Jack L. Snyder, Myths ofEmpire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991). On ideology, see Stephen D. Krasner, Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. For- eign Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978). For cultural arguments, see Marilyn B. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990 (New York: HarperCollins, 1991); Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1972); and Loren Baritz, Backªre: A History ofHow American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did (New York: William Morrow, 1985). 19. James Thomson, “How Could Vietnam Happen? An Autopsy,” Atlantic Monthly, April 1968, pp. 47–53.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 149

How accurate are these portrayals of policymakers who supposedly ignored critical information, eschewed unpleasant thoughts, bullied their advisers, and were blinded by power and ideology? If this analysis is on the mark, then the war in Vietnam was not a strategic event in which the loss of blood and trea- sure rationally served policy. Yet among scholars of international relations theory, there is a growing belief that war should be treated as a rational phenomenon.

rational war Classical realists were skeptical that leaders would always discern the national interest and act accordingly; indeed Hans Morgenthau and other realists opposed U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. Still, they considered rationality a 20 necessary assumption for building theory. Contemporary realists are less ambivalent. John Mearsheimer explains that in structural realist theory, “states think strategically about how to survive in the international system. States are instrumentally rational.” They calculate their moves using the best informa- 21 tion available in an uncertain world. An ascendant “bargaining approach to war” further speciªes the extent to which states behave rationally and largely rules out the possibility that they behave nonrationally. Formal theorists such as James Fearon argue that war is always more costly (for both sides) than not going to war, that leaders are risk averse and politically secure at the helm of a unitary state, that the gains from war are limited to what can be extracted from an adversary, and that states are either in a prewar bargaining situation or they are at war. From these assumptions Fearon concludes that war occurs only under one of three conditions: (1) when there is asymmetric (or private) information, which leads to mispercep- tions regarding the chances for victory; (2) when there is a commitment problem, in which state A cannot convince state B that A will not ªght later on; or (3) when an issue is indivisible, meaning that a state is utterly unwilling to compromise. Formal theorists consider private information as the central cause

20. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 52– 57, 67–85, 198–200. See also Hans J. Morgenthau, “To Intervene or Not to Intervene,” Foreign Af- fairs, Vol. 45, No. 3 (April 1967), pp. 425–436. 21. John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), p. 10. See also Robert O. Keohane, “Theory of World Politics: Struc- tural Realism and Beyond,” in Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, 1986), especially pp. 163–165. On the “calculative model” of state behavior, see Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience ofRelative Decline, 1895–1905 (Prince- ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988), especially pp. 12–14.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 150

of war: “Given identical information, truly rational agents should reason to the same conclusions about the probability” of victory. Knowing the likely out- 22 come, they should therefore be able to come to an agreement short of war. Some explanations of Vietnam have approximated the rationalist perspective. Daniel Ellsberg’s critique of the quagmire thesis holds that U.S. policymakers understood the implications of their decisions, yet they were driven by two maxims: Do not lose Vietnam to communism, and avoid a major land war in Asia. Elections in the United States were always at most two years away, and memories of how the “loss of China” debate paralyzed the Truman administration remained vivid for Democrats in the 1960s. A related and more sophisticated argument was presented in one of the most enduring works on U.S. involvement in the war. In The Irony ofVietnam: The System Worked, Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts contended that the overwhelming majority of the political elite supported holding the line on communism. Ultimately the essential domino that had to be preserved was public opinion at home. Furthermore, the political system effectively expressed its views on the price that it was willing to pay; when the costs became prohibitive, the United States began to ªnd less costly strategies and to disengage. Where Ellsberg found clear thinking among policymakers and where other critics of the war saw confusion, misperception, or obsession, Gelb and Betts saw administration ofªcials grappling with uncertainty. Decisionmakers knew only “what they might at worst be getting into, even if most of them chose not to dwell on the 23 odds that the worst would come to pass.”

New Evidence on Old Debates

To demonstrate the relative and absolute values of the two broad perspectives outlined above, I ask four questions of the three books under review: How much did domestic and international politics constrain policymakers? Who made the decisions and why? What was the nature and role of available information? And what would President Kennedy have done had he lived into the middle of the decade?

22. James D. Fearon, “Rationalist Explanations for War,” International Organization, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Summer 1995), pp. 379–414, at pp. 396, 392. For nonformal critiques, see Stephen M. Walt, “Rigor or Rigor Mortis? Rational Choice and Security Studies,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 27–28; and Jonathan Kirshner, “Rationalist Explanations for War?” Security Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Autumn 2000), pp. 153–161. 23. Leslie H. Gelb and Richard K. Betts, The Irony ofVietnam: The System Worked (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1979), p. 130.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 151

how constrained were policymakers by domestic and international politics? In Choosing War, Fredrik Logevall takes aim at Gelb and Betts’s claim that policymakers did not have “real choice” due to myriad domestic and international forces. Logevall argues instead that U.S. leaders “always had considerable freedom about which way to go in the war,” but they wrongly and unnecessarily chose to escalate. Believing structural arguments to be intellectu- ally lazy as well as inaccurate, Logevall maintains that the source of escalation was the “rigidity” that permeated both the presidential advisory system and the U.S. State Department. Additionally, he blames dissenting policymakers for their unwillingness or inability to commit fully to changing policy. His argument centers on the period he calls the “long 1964,” from the assassination 24 of President Kennedy to Johnson’s major escalation in the summer of 1965. There are two problems with Logevall’s argument that the Johnson administration had signiªcant freedom of choice. First, because there is little evidence that decisionmakers themselves felt they had room to maneuver, Logevall’s argument rests on unconvincing assessments of the domestic and international pressures at work. Citing various polls, he argues that throughout 1964 the American public was ill informed and could not have cared less about Viet- nam. The right wing of the Republican Party “was a weaker entity in national politics in mid-decade than is often assumed.” Thus President Johnson could have opted for withdrawal without taking “debilitating heat.” Also, Logevall asserts that congressional hawks were not a threat, suggesting that Johnson could have at least initiated a congressional debate to tease out the pros and cons of maintaining the U.S. commitment; presumably, the doves would have won. The debate could have been “orchestrated...toprovide...both cover and...alternatives not to be found within his small and cloistered team of pol- 25 icy advisers.” This view of an omnipotent president is not new. It was adopted by John- son’s political enemies, by an earlier “imperial presidency” literature, and by critiques of U.S. policy by members of the U.S. military who felt betrayed by national leaders. For good reason, though, it is difªcult to ªnd examples of presidents stirring up national debates to avoid making vital national security decisions, and examples of their emerging from such debates victorious and unscathed are almost nonexistent. As recent decisions on the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S. pursuit of a national missile

24. Ibid., p. 244; and Logevall, Choosing War, pp. xvii–xviii. 25. Logevall, Choosing War, pp. 242–243, 281–282, 288–289, 297, 404.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 152

defense demonstrate, presidents intentionally avoid debates when they will needlessly waste political capital and expose political allies to attacks. Even following the September 11 terrorist attacks in which thousands of Americans died on their own soil while the nation watched on television, President George W. Bush chose not to risk a public debate by asking for a declaration of war. The claim that Johnson could have behaved differently is unconvincing. It is made even more suspect because Logevall does not provide a thorough dis- cussion of the strength of the political right in the Congress or among opinion- making circles. The second problem is that Logevall does not tackle directly the validity of widespread concerns about international communism and its regional incarna- tions. America’s anticommunist Asian allies do not make their brief appear- ance until the middle of the book. Moreover, Logevall does not assess either North Vietnam’s declared aim to communize its neighbors or some neighbors’ warnings that the United States should not become complacent. And he barely mentions the role of Indonesia, which at the time was thought to be even more pivotal than it is today. Logevall never considers the many versions and de- grees of belief in the domino theory, and he largely ignores the Peoples’ Repub- lic of China, which policymakers viewed as being “on the march” in the region. If complex decisions are to be explained convincingly, policymakers’ concerns for communist encroachment, reputation, and bandwagoning need to be addressed. Despite these shortcomings, Logevall rightly points out that most analysts- cum-critics have not provided plausible alternatives from which U.S. policymakers might have chosen. He is to be commended for offering the most extensive treatment yet of the rejected path of neutralization for South Viet- nam. French President Charles de Gaulle called for neutralization in 1963, and the White House spent much of the next several years fending off the sugges- tion from allies, nonaligned nations, and occasionally members of Congress. In the end, however, the case for neutralization falls short. When pushed, proponents admitted that it was essentially a process by which the Govern- ment of South Vietnam (GVN) would submit to reuniªcation with the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). For the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong (VC), this would have guaranteed the achievement of their primary strategic aim since the 1954 Geneva accords—uniªcation, if possible without a costly war. Since the mid-1950s, U.S. policymakers consistently and explicitly rejected this outcome and any strategy that would bring it about. U.S. presidents enunciated a policy of preventing the loss of Vietnam to communism and stated so in policy documents that laid out basic U.S. national security

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 153

strategy. Logevall does not ªnd this particularly problematic. In an extreme use of the bureaucratic politics model, he condemns U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk for not pursuing negotiations with the North Vietnamese despite his heading up the diplomatic branch. But this is a narrow and prescriptively dysfunctional characterization of the role of the State Department. Certainly no one would claim that Secretary of State Colin Powell was required, by virtue of the bureau he headed, to negotiate with al-Qaeda. Rusk, along with most other top advisers, chose not to negotiate a neutralization agreement because they did not want to lose South Vietnam, which neutralization entailed. Below I dis- cuss how the experience of a “neutralized Laos” caused even the most dovish U.S. policymakers to shed any illusions about what neutralization would mean for South Vietnam.

who made the decisions and what explains their choices? Logevall claims that U.S. decisionmakers “did not walk blindly into the Viet- nam quagmire” because they knew that the GVN was terminally weak, that the Vietcong were growing in strength, that Hanoi was determined to pursue a long war if necessary, and that key European allies were not pleased with U.S. policy. They also knew that their political foundation was “ºimsy” and their position “fraught with peril.” Unsure about how to explain U.S. escalation in light of these facts, Logevall concludes that policymakers should have known that American power “was ultimately limited, and that in such a situation, the best option for the administration was to draw up stakes and take its stand 26 elsewhere.” Pulling up deep stakes, however, makes sense only if there is a high likeli- hood of disaster absent such action and if the alternatives are not very costly. Logevall’s evidence that U.S. policymakers should have foreseen disaster is the collective opinions of individuals such as Undersecretary of State George Ball, Michael Forrestal of the National Security Council staff, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Hilsman, Col. Edward Landsdale of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), former Ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, and Brit- ish counterinsurgency specialist Sir Robert Thompson. Logevall claims that these individuals, among others, were “prescient” in advocating disengagement and understood that a military solution would not work for what was an essentially political problem. Yet Logevall does not explain why President Johnson did not take their advice. He refers to decisionmaking “rigidity,” but this amounts to a black box of noncausality.

26. Ibid., pp. 255, 29.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 154

There were good reasons why policymakers might have looked skeptically on minority dissents by midlevel bureaucrats such as those discussed above. Ball, Hilsman, Lodge, and Kennedy’s ambassador-at-large, Averell Harriman, had pushed for South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s removal, a poorly conceived choice that deepened the U.S. commitment more than any ofªcial policy statement could have done. Thompson had argued in 1963 and 1964 that the United States would have to introduce ground troops and force Hanoi’s collapse. Ball, in his famous dissents, speciªcally stated that the United States might succeed where the French had failed. And like George Kennan, Ball warned incorrectly that China would likely intervene once the United States deployed troops. It could be argued that these individuals were clairvoyant, but “prescient” is a peculiarly historical judgment rendered with the beneªt of hindsight. Regarding intelligence, most top policymakers recognized that the GVN and its army were ineffectual. Yet Logevall does not explain why this intelligence went unheeded. Nor does he present fully the weight of opinion in favor of escalation. In other words, he explains what he believes should have happened but not what actually came to pass. Thus he neither dispatches arguments about structural pressures and domestic pressures, nor fully explains the making of U.S. policy. In American Tragedy, by contrast, Robert Kaiser provides two somewhat contradictory explanations for U.S. policy choices in the Vietnam War. Kaiser states that like Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War, he shall write dispas- sionately about the Vietnam War even though he lived through it, and he will explain both its underlying and immediate causes. According to Kaiser, the war’s underlying causes are found in the communist insurgency in the South and in the “reºexive” and superªcial policies of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. The immediate causes were more inºuenced by chance and per- sonality, especially the personalities of Kennedy and Johnson. War in 1965 was “a logical, but not essential, consequence of the previous thirty years of Ameri- 27 can history.” Kaiser begins by making major claims for the explanatory power of William Strauss and Neil Howe’s thesis on the importance of generations and eras in American history. We are told that Dwight D. Eisenhower belonged to the “lost generation” whose members’ experiences during the Great Depression and World War II allowed them to face horrible scenarios “with relative equanim- ity” yet without reevaluating their basic assumptions. Kennedy and most of

27. Kaiser, American Tragedy, pp. 3, 9.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 155

his advisers belonged to the “GI generation” who accepted without question the need to resist communist expansion everywhere, distrusted negotiations, and were consummate bureaucrats dedicated to team play even if this meant coming forward “with virtually identical proposals again and again.” Skeptics such as the journalist David Halberstam were of a “silent generation,” who 28 respected but sometimes questioned the GI generation. Kaiser never makes clear what the generational thesis tells us about either preferences or choices. The groups advising each president were at least par- tially divided on every major policy issue. Presidents took positions different from those of their generational cohort, and they made decisions that are difªcult to categorize as belonging to one or another generational mind-set. Frequently, presidents shaped alliances among advisers and positions that bridged generations. Optimists, pessimists, skeptics, and cheerleaders were— and are—found in each generation. This layer of explanation adds little value to the author’s work. Kaiser’s other explanatory lens, and the one that seems to guide most of his analysis, is more straightforward: Foreign policy ºows downward from the pinnacle of presidential power. His early narrative accords with previous accounts that used the Foreign Relations ofthe United States series and other declassiªed documents to demonstrate that President Eisenhower made a number of critical decisions and statements that set the stage for later U.S. policy in Vietnam—not least of which was giving leaders in developing states a stark choice between the U.S. and Soviet blocs. Kaiser states that where weak countries were allowed to remain neutral, U.S. interests were better served in the long run. But Eisenhower, supported by the Departments of State and De- fense, ignored political and military realities. These early sections of the book should be read closely by anyone interested in the long-running debate on whether Eisenhower was a master at hidden-hand leadership or an affable but ineffective president. Kaiser also injects a refreshing amount of information regarding military plans into the bureaucratic and diplomatic history of this period. By the time Kennedy assumed ofªce, the commitment to defending South- east Asia was relatively ªrm and the options narrow. Yet as an indicator of what might have been, the president is shown single-handedly maneuvering his administration away from almost certain intervention in Laos. Kennedy, whom Logevall treats generously, for Kaiser is something of a hero. Kaiser

28. William Strauss and Neil Howe, Generations: The History ofAmerica’s Future, 1584 to 2069 (New York: Morrow, 1991); and Kaiser, American Tragedy, pp. 8 (n. 3), 33–34, 89.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 156

cites approvingly eloquent but cutting remarks by George Kennan regarding Eisenhower’s nonintellectualism and desire to seek escape in what Kennan called the inane sport of golf. By contrast, a character sketch of Kennedy concludes with Clark Clifford’s claim that the president had an uncanny ability to disassociate himself from the thorniest of problems in order to gain perspective. Kaiser argues that along with Hilsman, Forrestal, the CIA’s Samuel Adams, and U.S. Army adviser John Paul Vann, Kennedy understood that the Viet- cong’s strength derived from popular support in the countryside. The South Vietnamese government was incapable of devising reform programs to attract support, while its army was unable to root out the VCor even to maintain minimal combat effectiveness. In his instructions, queries, and private commu- nications, Kennedy emphasized the civil nature of the war; the importance of political, social, and economic factors; and the need for Vietnamese self- reliance. He “never regarded Southeast Asia as a propitious place to deploy American power” and was angered when George Ball publicly used phrases suggesting an “irrevocable commitment” or that withdrawal was “unthink- able.” And unlike Eisenhower, Kennedy was responsive to allied opposition to 29 a larger war. Kaiser’s is probably the most convincing argument yet regarding the depth of Kennedy’s skepticism of militarizing the conºict in Vietnam. Still, the case would have been strengthened had Kaiser come to terms with evidence that Kennedy was a strong anticommunist who took a personal interest in, and un- precedented steps toward, defeating communism in Southeast Asia. Kennedy created the Green Berets, increased economic and military aid to South Viet- nam, and sent qualitatively new kinds of weapons to the GVN to increase Diem’s chance of winning. Most important, in a series of decisions he increased the U.S. ground presence by tenfold, a step in some ways comparable to Johnson’s escalation in the summer of 1965. As with Logevall’s work and that of so many others, one cannot help but wonder why analysts believe that Johnson, when he said that he wanted to do whatever was necessary to win in Vietnam, revealed his myopia, whereas when Kennedy declared “what helps to win the war, we support; what interferes with the war effort, we oppose,” he somehow evidenced a broader perspective. It may have something to do with Johnson’s impressive body language or the use of idioms such as that express- 30 ing his desire to “nail the coonskins to the wall.”

29. Ibid., pp. 102, 133. 30. Ibid., pp. 254, 398; and Logevall, Choosing War, p. 242.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 157

Kaiser contends that Johnson failed to consider seriously any alternative to war. He did not set broad foreign policy goals that might have offset the exag- gerated value he attached to Vietnam. And unlike Kennedy, Johnson never challenged his advisers’ assumption that the United States needed to defeat communism in Vietnam. In Kaiser’s occasionally talmudic attention to archival evidence, all of this came to a head on December 7, 1964, when a late draft of a national security action memorandum (NSAM) was changed to include the phrase “such troops as necessary” in explaining the U.S. commitment. Kaiser concludes that just as Johnson had little idea how he was going to ªght pov- erty at home when he launched that war, he decided to go to war in Southeast Asia with the stroke of a pen and “without investigating the situation very 31 thoroughly.”

what information did presidents have available to them? If Johnson acted alone and ignored important information, he certainly de- serves all the blame assigned him through the years. Yet Kaiser downplays the extent to which Johnson and his advisers thought about and listened to debates on Vietnam. Johnson had been aware of alternative views on Vietnam at least since 1961, and he read closely Ball’s dissenting opinions in 1964 and 1965. Telephone conversations, released by the Johnson Library some twenty years earlier than stipulated by the president, reveal the extent of his doubt, conºict, and searching as well as his frequent posturing. They buttress the multiarchival research by historian David Barrett, who demonstrated that Johnson received a wide variety of advice both informally and formally. There is more than adequate evidence to deºate the argument that Johnson heard 32 only the views of a closed “Tuesday lunch” group. Arguments about groupthink or bureaucratic or organizational roadblocks do not stand up to the archival evidence. One could still argue that Johnson was a superªcial student of the war or that he simply could not comprehend the available information, as theorists of motivational bias might predict. Like Logevall, Kaiser believes that it should have been clear to U.S. policymakers that withdrawal was a better option than escalation. He conveys well some of the abundant evidence demonstrating that various U.S. programs had made little progress in meeting American ob-

31. Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 380. 32. David M. Barrett, Uncertain Warriors: Lyndon Johnson and His Vietnam Advisers (Lawrence: Uni- versity Press of Kansas, 1993). See also David Humphrey, “Tuesday Lunch at the White House: A Preliminary Assessment,” Diplomatic History, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Winter 1984), pp. 81–101.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 158

jectives. After a couple of years of the “strategic hamlet” relocation program, for example, as many as one-third of the men in the hamlets actively sympa- thized with the VC. Meanwhile the VC maintained full control of the tempo of their attacks. Using newly available U.S. Army reports, Kaiser concludes that nothing the United States did made signiªcant inroads into breaking enemy morale, holding territory populated by South Vietnamese sympathetic to the North, or cutting off Vietcong support, and that Washington should have real- ized this. Yet this evidence is problematic. Notoriously imprecise, incorporating no judgment regarding the political nature of different kinds of attacks, and saying little about the overall impact of attacks on speciªc villages, such reports are of questionable value even now. For example, Kaiser cites the more or less steady numbers that tallied VCattacks on a biweekly basis as clear evidence that the military situation in South Vietnam was deteriorating in 1963. Yet later, in 1964 when VCattacks were well below those of the previous fall, Kaiser does not claim that the war was going better. He argues instead that certain of the attacks were particularly damaging and suggests that the VCmay have been running out of targets. In another instance, Kaiser ªnds ominous an increase in reported VC“terror and sabotage” incidents from 350 for August 1963 to 560 for August 1964 (no data are given on the earlier or later months). What are we to make of such numbers for a country the size of Vietnam, particularly when the numbers of another category, that of “direct” attacks, dropped in similar proportion during the same period? Although Kaiser bemoans the fact, it may have been fortunate that in 1963 and 1964 “no senior ofªcial 33 seemed to be paying much attention” to such ªgures. Other evidence reaching policymakers during these critical years was of equally limited utility. If intelligence summaries were frequently pessimistic, they also wafºed. A National Intelligence Estimate in November 1964 painted a gloomy picture only to conclude that if the United States made clear its deter- mination to win at all costs, the North might reduce its support for the Viet- cong to the point where the GVN could make progress. Such analysis continued at least through April 1965, when another estimate said that things were going badly but then speculated that if U.S. forces could inºict heavy casualties and reverse the tide of battle, the North might seek negotiations. One is reminded of the July 1965 Goodpaster report, which was commissioned to assemble the collective military and political wisdom on the U.S. chances for

33. Kaiser, American Tragedy, pp. 346–347.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 159

victory. It concluded that victory was possible, and perhaps with substantially fewer forces than were then under consideration, although it was hard to say because of intangibles such as political will and a still-undetermined military 34 strategy. Arrayed against such ambiguous information was strong and clear advice from the majority of senior U.S. military and national security advisers. In keeping with a long tradition of getting advice from the commander on the ground, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of the United States Mili- tary Assistance Command—Vietnam, explained in his cables how a major ground commitment would turn the tide of battle and provide the building blocks for a settlement. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Chair- man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Earle Wheeler promised that the insurgency was emerging into a conventional phase of warfare. Echoing military advice given during Korea, Wheeler allayed President Johnson’s fears of massive intervention by the DRV by saying that the more soldiers the enemy put into the ªeld of battle, the more could be eliminated. As presented in these works, the new archival material does not demonstrate that U.S. policymakers wantonly disregarded critical information. Tragically, information about the facts on the ground was ambiguous, and it could provide no rational guidance on how the situation would change after the United States sent in several hundred thousand troops, conducted the war, and gained much more leverage over the South Vietnamese government. Nor have any of the three books under review dispelled arguments about the pow- erful and ubiquitous role of domestic and international concerns. Thus to explain policymakers’ choices, the authors rely instead on their own insights into the inclinations and personalities of leaders. Personal attributes and wishes were largely irrelevant to the policy decisions, however.

what would kennedy have done? Kaiser concludes that had Kennedy lived and won a second term, he would not have escalated in 1965 for three reasons: (1) he always considered Vietnam a liability, (2) he had a broad foreign policy agenda, and (3) he had wisely decided against intervention in Laos. This argument is compatible with that of Logevall, who concludes that Kennedy, without Johnson’s personal insecuri-

34. Ibid., pp. 356, 431. On the Goodpaster report and the role of military advice in use-of-force decisions more generally, see John Garofano, “Deciding on Military Intervention: What Is the Role of Senior Military Leaders?” Naval War College Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Spring 2000), pp. 40–64, at pp. 55–56.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 160

ties and closed decisionmaking environment, would have heeded advice suggesting that South Vietnam was not willing to save itself. Lawrence Freedman’s study suggests otherwise. Kennedy’s Wars is refreshing for its integration of new archival material with evidence long available as well as for its weaving together of ideas, politics, and security concerns. Freedman also helps to explain why policymakers went to war despite great risks and uncertainty. He does so with lively yet concise writing and excellent indexing and bibliographic information. Freedman begins by explaining the intellectual and political history through which both liberals and conservatives in the Democratic Party came to their strong anticommunist position by the end of the Eisenhower period. In the third world, this translated into a concern for ªghting and winning limited wars through variations on the doctrine of ºexible response. When the Demo- crats returned to power, Kennedy appointed those in the most liberal wing of the party to positions abroad, while more militant realists such as Walt Rostow were welcomed in the White House. If the path to Vietnam began in the 1950s, it was ªltered through the administration’s experience with Laos. Freedman makes clear that Kennedy did not decide against intervention on his own. Secretary of State Rusk and Special As- sistant to the President for National Security McGeorge Bundy agreed that the Laotians showed little interest in ªghting and that the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) might well be indifferent, while Secretary of Defense McNamara believed that U.S. casualties would be excessive. The real gap was between the civilians and the military, with the latter wanting something between a major conventional war and nuclear attacks on Hanoi and Peking. The April 1961 Bay of Pigs ªasco only heightened the new president’s skepticism regarding U.S. intelligence capabilities and military planning. Kennedy doubted an intelligence report claiming that America’s weak proxy in Laos could win within three weeks against its better-motivated communist opponents. He forced the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to acknowledge that the enemy could land soldiers twice as fast as the U.S. Army could in an area where it was recommending an insertion of forces. Kennedy stalled until, as Freed- man puts it, procrastination proved the best policy. Still, aware that weakness or indecision would be used against him, he upgraded the U.S. presence in Laos to a uniformed Military Assistance Advisory Group and agreed to further 35 military planning, even as he continued down the diplomatic path.

35. Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars, pp. 198–199, 295, 303.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 161

Then the same political and military leaders turned to Vietnam. In contrast to Laos, Vietnam provided logistical beneªts by virtue of its access to the sea; its status as a functioning, internationally recognized state; and the relatively high quality of many of its ªghting troops. Furthermore, Vietnam seemed the logical place to respond to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s public chal- lenge to take the Cold War to the third world. Thus the decisions made in this period, as much as under Eisenhower or Johnson, were critical. At the latest, NSAM 52 of May 11, 1961, committed the United States to preventing communist domination in South Vietnam. By exploring the administration’s intellectual framework and incorporating domestic and international factors, Freedman explains that Kennedy never seriously entertained a purely diplomatic solution to the war in Vietnam. Mili- tary power and diplomacy were complementary instruments, not alternatives, in Kennedy’s approach to crises in Berlin and Cuba as well as in Vietnam and Laos. Thus in seeking a settlement on Laos, he sent a U.S. battle group to the region and U.S. troops to Thailand. No small steps, these prompted negotiations that eventually produced an agreement that all foreign military assistance to Thailand would cease and all foreign troops would leave the country. It is true that Kennedy was skeptical of a military solution in Vietnam, and he occasionally seemed to side with advisers and friends who believed that the insurgency was rooted in Vietnam’s internal dynamics. Yet by the end of 1961, he acceded to a largely military strategy of helping Diem defeat the commu- nists. Why? The Pentagon, the State Department, President Diem, and even U.S. advisers who saw the causes of insurgency as largely political were all opposed to neutralization because the United States was in a relatively weak position and because, after Laos, Vietnam had become relatively more important. Furthermore, discussions between a Kennedy envoy and the DRV foreign minister showed no basis for proceeding, the Soviets were not interested in helping out, and no trend had yet appeared on the ground. In essence, there were no incentives for a settlement that would serve U.S. interests. Kennedy did not reject the path of a negotiated settlement on Vietnam so much as he never saw the possibility of one. Developments in Laos only reinforced these conclusions. By the October 1962 deadline agreed upon at the Geneva Conference on Laos, Hanoi had withdrawn only 1,500 of its 9,000 troops and few of its technical advisers. Inªltration continued through Laos into South Vietnam. Kennedy was so concerned that his one and only meager diplomatic success was about to fail that he sent Ambassador-at-Large Harriman to hand deliver a letter requesting Khrushchev’s assistance, but the Soviet premier refused. Without great power

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 162

involvement, the cornerstone of his approach to major conºicts, Kennedy knew that Hanoi would not accept a neutral South Vietnam. Meanwhile support within the administration grew for using ground troops or air power to signal to Hanoi that the United States meant business.36 What of Europe’s opposition, to which Kennedy is said to have been more sensitive than Eisenhower and Johnson? Where Kaiser, Logevall, and others treat the allied relationship as a static one, Freedman makes a strong case that by 1964 U.S. and European thinking were worlds apart on several vital issues. For example, Kennedy and McNamara were convinced that in the event of war in Europe, the doctrine of ºexible response would be unable either to control it rationally or to ensure any meaningful victory. For their part, Europeans doubted the willingness of the United States to use nuclear weapons in a war over Europe. Yet in a source of unending frustration to the White House, the Europeans refused to augment the conventional forces that might have de- terred the war in the ªrst place. Other matters, including the Skybolt affair, France’s gambit for leadership of NATO, and the failure of a Multilateral Force 37 only irritated U.S.-European relations. If they could not work together on these issues, it is not surprising that the United States did not accede to half- hearted European opinions opposing intervention in Vietnam. Freedman notes that Kennedy and Johnson had the same political instincts—to avoid both withdrawal and massive escalation—and the same policy guidelines—to get the South to function better through generous aid and training. Any differences in approach between the two presidents were bound to be marginal. The launching of the air war against North Vietnam is a case in point. Logevall and other historians struggle to explain how in the winter of 1965 U.S. policymakers could apparently stand their own prior logic on its head: Earlier they had precluded air strikes because the South was too weak, but now they argued that bombing the North would bolster the South. Freed- man emphasizes that by mid-1964 policymakers were ready to resort to des- perate measures. We might add that when bombing did not work, policymakers looked to where most of them, regardless of their views on the stakes or the sources of insurgency, thought that the war would ultimately be won or lost—on the ground.

36. Ibid., pp. 340–355. 37. U.S. cancellation of plans to sell the Skybolt air-launched nuclear missile to Great Britain dam- aged relations between the two states. Plans for a multilateral force for sharing nuclear weapons with Europe, subject to a U.S. veto, was a long-standing source of contention. De Gaulle’s attempt to place France at the head of a uniªed, somewhat anti-U.S. Europe riled Washington on many oc- casions. The Franco-German Treaty of 1963 spurred Kennedy’s anger at both the French and the Germans. See Freedman, Kennedy’s Wars, pp. 278–280.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 163

Although there is anecdotal evidence claiming that Kennedy would have liked to get the United States out of Vietnam, Freedman notes that nothing points to the 1964 election as the escape route. Kennedy had not made a decision to pull out of Vietnam. Rather he had made an assumption that he would be able to do so after political stability was achieved. Diem’s assassination in October 1963—an excellent treatment of which is found in Kaiser’s volume— and subsequent coups precluded such stability. According to Freedman, Ken- nedy would have confronted “a growing mismatch between his commitment to South Vietnam and the means available to sustain this commitment.”38 He would have faced increasing pressure to hit the North. Kennedy’s strategic vi- sion failed him in the third world by overemphasizing the role of Cold War politics and external support for insurgencies. He seemed to begin to under- 39 stand this, but by that time “he had a lot of ground to make up.” Despite his analysis, Freedman concludes with a feeling that things might have been different had Kennedy not gone to Dallas in November 1963. In par- ticular, if Kennedy had been able to continue listening to the doves and retain his ºexible approach to making decisions, “an efªcient policy-making process would have all but killed off” the strategy of attacking North Vietnam.40 The next section argues instead that consensually held beliefs and political pressures were more important to U.S. policy than were individuals.

Becoming Risk-Acceptant Policymakers

Policymakers take risky decisions to avoid or reverse major losses: They are so cost averse that they will risk everything to avoid losing. George Downs has found this phenomenon of “gambling for resurrection” in a number of inter- 41 vention situations. Downs emphasizes the primacy of domestic pressures; but by the mid-1960s, U.S. policymakers would have found it difªcult to prior- itize domestic over international concerns. North Vietnamese leaders supported communist movements in surrounding countries and avowed their goal of a communist Southeast Asia. Noncommunist states in the region were concerned that a U.S. withdrawal would strengthen their own insurgencies

38. Ibid., p. 413. 39. Ibid., pp. 399, 413, 419. 40. Ibid., p. 410. 41. George W. Downs and David M. Rocke, “Conºict, Agency, and Gambling for Resurrection: The Principal-Agent Theory Goes to War,” American Journal ofPolitical Science, Vol. 38, No. 2 (May 1994), pp. 362–380. See also George W. Downs, “The Lessons of Disengagement,” in Ariel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson, and Larry Berman, eds., Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics ofProtracted Conºict (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), pp. 287–300.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 164

42 and embolden China. Without neutralization as a real option and with ambiguous information regarding what war would bring, the skeptics provided no clear answers. And most of them, like the presidents they served, accepted the risks inherent in the military options. It is instructive in this respect to consider the path of the last inºuential hold- out on deploying ground troops. Gen. Maxwell Taylor opposed crossing this Rubicon until late spring 1965. Yet much earlier he had concluded that it might be necessary as a last resort. Following one mission to Vietnam, he explained that the GVN was ineffective and would likely remain so. He again cautioned that U.S. troops were poorly suited for the terrain and climate and that their use in large numbers would cause resentment and lax military performance by the South Vietnamese army. Taylor nevertheless concluded that “our total world responsibilities and the signiªcance of Vietnam in relationship to them clearly rules out the option” of pulling out. Withdrawal would not, as George Ball had argued, spare the United States a debilitating defeat. Rather it would be defeat itself, the consequences of which “would be disastrous. We therefore would seem to have little choice left” other than to assume even greater 43 responsibilities. Others followed similarly tortuous paths. In private, McGeorge Bundy and his brother William, assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, recognized the weaknesses in the rationale for a major war. Yet in the end, they found the prospects of defeat through withdrawal too costly to accept. We have less of a paper trail regarding Lyndon Johnson’s path to his decision, but what we have is telling. In a lengthy conversation late one afternoon in mid-1964, Johnson conveyed to his old friend and mentor, Senator Richard Russell, why he would gamble: “I don’t believe the American people ever want me to run. If I lose it, I think they’ll say I’ve lost it. ...Atthesame time, I don’t want to commit us to a war. And I’m in a hell of a shape.” Russell, other than saying it was “the damn worst mess” he had ever seen, provided little 44 comfort: “I wish I could help ya. God knows, I do.” The two friends had plenty of company. To relative doves such as Adlai Stevenson, the prospects of ªghting were “shuddering,” yet he told the president that there was no real alternative to war. And from 1964 through early 1968, Eisenhower, Truman, and the so-called Wise Men—those Democratic, Republican, civilian, and military

42. See Douglas J. Macdonald, “Falling Dominoes and System Dynamics: A Risk Aversion Per- spective,” Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Winter 1993/1994), pp. 225–258. 43. Quoted in Logevall, Choosing War, pp. 232–233. 44. Quoted in Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), pp. 369–370.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 165

architects of containment—told Johnson the same thing. Had Nixon won in 1960, it is unlikely that he would have heard, felt, or decided anything different. Governments that fail to win wars are punished severely, as great and regional powers found out in Korea, Algeria, Sri Lanka, and Lebanon, among 45 others. For the Democratic Party, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China and the U.S. failure to win in Korea spelled the end of twenty years of Democratic control of the White House. Johnson thought that all that would be 46 “chickenshit compared with what might happen if we lost Vietnam.” Ana- lysts who disagree and who ªnd wide political leeway massively discount the nature of politics in the United States: Democrats were probably correct in arguing that they would have been savagely attacked in 1968 had they surren- dered in Vietnam without a ªght. McGeorge Bundy and others made this argument to the president, sometimes on a daily basis. When they did propose a peace candidate, in 1972, they were buried in a Republican landslide. It is a mistake to assume that quietude on any political issue is a good indicator of how opposition parties will behave at election time. Kennedy would have faced this reality as well.

Implications for Theory and Research

Lyndon Johnson was the ultimate rationalist. A consummate politician, his way of life was bargaining and his currency was information about friends, situations, and above all opponents. In Vietnam he felt that with a combination of incentives and punishments, he could bring his allies and enemies around to his view of the future. For his part, Ho Chi Minh believed that Americans were a practical people. Before embarking on a major war, they would “take pencil in hand and begin ªguring,” and from this ªguring would come “new sobri- 47 ety” about Vietnam’s importance to them. Ironically, both leaders embraced the rationalist approach to war, and both leaders miscalculated.

45. For six case studies, see Levite, Jentleson, and Berman, Foreign Military Intervention. For quanti- tative evidence that ruling parties in majoritarian democracies are punished when they pursue losing strategies, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Randolph M. Siverson, “War and the Survival of Political Leaders: A Comparative Study of Regime Types and Political Accountability,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 4 (December 1995), pp. 841–855. See also Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair Smith, “Policy Failure and Politi- cal Survival: The Contribution of Political Institutions,” Journal ofConºict Resolution, Vol. 43, No. 2 (April 1999), pp. 147–161. 46. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), pp. 252–253. 47. Young, The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990, p. 89.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 166

The rationalist approach to war cannot explain the miscalculation, however. First and foremost, the approach is not helpful when two states are, so to speak, playing different games. Just as Johnson and Ho tried to make the other ªght his kind of war, analysts try to ªt leaders into frameworks that neglect their underlying political experience and worldviews. The two national leaderships conceived differently of the stakes, the long-term results of ªghting or not ªghting, their abilities to control the ªghting and wartime bargaining, their concern for their legacies, and their appreciation of fortune and chance. In this respect, the “system” by which U.S. political institutions manage intervention situations and possible wars did not work, because it did not inform U.S. leaders of the extent to which they and their enemies held fundamentally different ªrst principles. Bargaining theory’s central emphasis on private information also seems suspect. Symmetry or asymmetry in available information may be irrelevant for leaderships who understand that strategy, mobilization, organizational effectiveness, the introduction of new technologies, and other factors may deci- sively affect the outcome of certain kinds of war. The greater the unknowns in war, and the more adaptable the governments, the less meaningful is hard information. Even if the U.S. and Vietnamese leaderships had shared the same information, they would not have struck a bargain to avoid war. If Ho had accurately predicted the costs that his people would ultimately incur, or that Vietnam would soon move toward market capitalism, it is still unlikely that he would have forgone an attempt to unify the country. For a U.S. administration in 1965, it is possible that clairvoyance would have had an impact if it allowed leaders to prevision Indonesia in the Western camp, China’s and Vietnam’s transitions to market economics and some political openness, or the end of 48 communism as a model for states and insurgencies. But this does not appear to be what rationalists mean by private information. The assertion that virtually all issues are divisible or subject to compromise should also be reconsidered. If the United States could not conceive of compro- mising on Vietnam, and if the likely costs for a primitive society with a rudi- mentary military ªghting the world’s foremost military power did not convince North Vietnam’s leaders to rethink the war option, then very few cases are likely to be good candidates for bargaining analysis. On the other

48. Even so, some argue that the war was necessary to ensure the survival of pro-Western states. See, for example, Walt W. Rostow, “The Case for the War,” Times Literary Supplement, June 9, 1995, pp. 3–5.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 Tragedy or Choice in Vietnam? 167

hand, formal theorists might do well to examine cases in which states go to war over issues that are little contested. Private information may matter more when issues are so divisible that leaderships care little about ªghting. Most issues, however, are resilient to compromise, which is why states confront each other in prewar bargaining situations in the ªrst place. The new evidence does not demonstrate, however, that U.S. leaders were the victims of cognitive or motivational biases or that they made decisions that were hampered by the interaction of domestic concerns and psychological dynamics. They were not “trapped” in a web of self-propagated myths and political machinations. They manipulated, rather than were manipulated by, analogies and stereotypes. They received varied advice and information, but none that offered either a way out or a convincing road to victory through a larger war. Three areas of research may be promising for qualitative analysis. One is the nature and scope of the mind-sets that leaderships bring to decisions on war. Analysts have used exceedingly narrow concepts, such as the presumed obsession with reputation or extreme views of the domino theory, as monocausal explanations for complex decisions. This is an unrealistic approach and unlikely to lead either to theoretical advances or to accurate explanation. U.S. leaders brought to their decisions on Vietnam frequently subtle views of the causes of insurgency, the capacities of Southeast Asian governments, trends in great power relations, the multifaceted nature of the war, and likely domestic political and economic developments. More complete descriptions of such mind- sets should be presented and compared across states and decisions. Second, analysts should explore the interaction between mind-sets; how they frame decisions on war; and the kinds of rules, norms, and decisionmaking processes that allow some governments to reevaluate framing assumptions. Without dramatic trigger events, governments seldom change fundamentally how they view themselves, their opponents, or their options. As with major corporations, extensive rethinking tends only to follow catastro- phes. As the U.S. government begins to consider whether it needs new law to replace the National Security Act of 1947, analysts should assess in a comparative fashion how institutional changes might make mind-sets more permeable and frames of reference more responsive to costs, risks, and information. A third area of research would explain the sources and role of beliefs about costs. Even with years to prepare, a comprehensive estimate of the likely costs was not attempted before the United States embarked on a major ground war in Vietnam. Cautionary ªgures suggested by George Ball, Clark Clifford, and

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021 International Security 26:4 168

others were considered “outrageous” and indeed seem of questionable prove- 49 nance. Policymakers expected the war to be signiªcantly less painful than Korea had been. Why comprehensive assessments are seldom performed and why they are usually inaccurate are two facets worth studying. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his advisers correctly predicted, for example, that public opposition would place limits on Israel’s 1982 incursion into Lebanon, but they overestimated the time available and underestimated the cost in lives to achieve their goals. Cases such as Vietnam and Lebanon raise the question of why democracies frequently produce cost estimates that fail to integrate information and advice from the civilian and military realms. It is possible that further research on mind-sets, on how to pierce their inac- curacies and their more inºexible aspects and on how to produce accurate assessments of costs, may reveal how institutional changes can make war less likely or its outcomes less surprising. Until then, one should not be optimistic about the prospects for affecting how states go to war. It is unlikely that di- vulging any privately held information would have convinced either the United States or the Taliban that war was not necessary and not worth the risks in the fall of 2001. Israel’s policy on the intifada does not appear to be based on hard evidence regarding past trends or results. A decision by China or Taiwan to wage war will not be based on unequivocal evidence regarding either the intentions of the adversary or the likely outcome of taking risky steps, both of which may be clear. In these and other cases, however, the costs of inaction may cause intelligent leaders to embark on risky courses of action. The wise path still involves being brutally clear on what is worth ªghting for, surmising the situation accurately at the outset, anticipating the unexpected, and prepar- ing for the worst.

49. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War: The United States in Vietnam, 1950–1975, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 157. On the sources and impact of charts and presentations used by Ball, see David L. Dileo, George Ball, Vietnam, and the Rethinking ofContainment (Chapel Hill: Uni- versity of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 150.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/016228802753696807 by guest on 29 September 2021