UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) ‘Whose Vietnam?’ - ‘Lessons learned’ and the dynamics of memory in American foreign policy after the Vietnam War Beukenhorst, H.B. Publication date 2012 Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Beukenhorst, H. B. (2012). ‘Whose Vietnam?’ - ‘Lessons learned’ and the dynamics of memory in American foreign policy after the Vietnam War. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:25 Sep 2021 2. Haig’s Vietnam and the conflicts over El Salvador When Ronald Reagan took over the White House in 1981, he brought with him a particular memory of the Vietnam War largely based on the pivotal war experiences of his generation: World War Two and the Korean War. As Colin Powell, himself a prominent member of the Vietnam cohort, observed: “One thing became apparent in the Reagan Administration: the World War II generation was back in the saddle.”1 Foreign policy, in particular, was dominated by the old guard, with General Alexander Haig as secretary of state and Caspar Weinberger leading the Defense Department. However, differences on how to remember the Vietnam War and which lessons it presented for foreign policy existed not only between the generations but also within them. Particularly in the early phases of the administration, confusion on the ‘right’ way to remember the Vietnam War influenced Reagan’s foreign policy to a substantial degree. That impact will be addressed in this chapter by focusing on Alexander Haig, who, as Reagan’s first secretary of state, provides a good illustration of the complex dynamic between personal, institutional, and collective memories of the Vietnam War that existed in this period. Alexander Haig experienced the Korean and the Vietnam Wars from within the Army. Unlike Reagan, Haig experienced these wars not only from the home-front but from the battlefield as well. In the later phases of the Vietnam War, Haig joined the top echelons of the Nixon administration, where he became part of the civilian management of the war in the White House. Haig brought to the Reagan administration a unique mix of personal interpretations of those events, but the public associated him also with some of the negative aspects of the final phase of the war like the Cambodian incursion and the so-called Christmas bombings of Hanoi. In the Reagan administration, Haig’s role was supposed to be that of the experienced foreign policy specialist at the State Department to compensate for the incoming president’s inexperience in that field.2 Reagan and Haig were both highly motivated to correct the damage the Vietnam War had done to the international stature of the United States. This shared sentiment created the impression that their ideas on foreign policy were the same as well, which, as I will illustrate, they were not. 1 Colin Powell and Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 257. 2 Editorial, “The Vague General Haig,” The New York Times, December 17, 1980, Section A, p. 34 and David Rosenbaum, “Man in the news; Steely Veteran of Nixon days,” The New York Times, December 17, 1980, Section A, p. 1. 67 A series of circumstances forced Haig to resign after little more than a year. One fundamental disagreement with Reagan and other key figures from the administration revolved around the interpretation of lessons from the Vietnam experience and how they should be applied in foreign affairs. As a result, Reagan’s first foreign policy actions incited an intense dynamic between personal, institutional, and public memory of the Vietnam War. In these early years, Alexander Haig was often at the center of that debate. In order to understand the position of Haig in these discussions, it is important to establish the ideas that Haig took from Vietnam, how he interpreted the lessons of that war, and how they clashed with other recollections at various levels. Haig’s formative experiences The successes in the life of Alexander Haig came not through intellectual brilliance but by virtue of hard work and loyalty to his superiors. According to Haig himself, he attained his work ethic after the death of his father at the age of ten, in the middle of the Great Depression. He called the experience one of the two most influential events of his life - next to the Vietnam War.3 Brought up in a conservative Roman Catholic family, Haig went to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he graduated 214th in a class of 310. He was not - in the words of foreign policy specialist Leslie Gelb - a “conceptualizer, and idea man,” but excelled as an organizer, “who makes the trains run on time, who takes care of messy situations, who settles matters without having to bother the boss.”4 After West Point, he went to occupied Japan in 1947 where he served on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur, who would later become one of Ronald Reagan’s heroes for his forceful stance during the Korean War. Haig went to Korea with MacArthur, where he would experience actual combat in several campaigns that earned him two Silver Stars and a Bronze Star. Haig called MacArthur “one of the finest leaders I have ever known.”5 Upon his return to the United States, Haig obtained a position at the Pentagon, as a military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. At the end of 1965, as 3 Maureen Dowd, “Haig, the Old Warrior, in New Battles,” The New York Times, November 21, 1987, p.7. 4 Leslie Gelb, “How Haig is Recasting His Image,” The New York Times, May 31, 1981, Section 6, p. 23. 5 Alexander M. Haig Jr. and Curtis Zimmerman, Pillars of Success (Sevierville, TN: Insight Publishing, 2006), 17. 68 the Vietnam War continued to increase in intensity, he requested a return to combat duty. As a battalion commander in Vietnam he earned the second-highest military decoration, the Distinguished Service Cross, for leading troops in the Battle of An Loc in 1967. His official Army citation accompanying the award gives an impression of the actions for which he was honored although one should take into account the usual hyperbole common to such statements. It read in part: When two of his companies were engaged by a large hostile force, Colonel Haig landed amid a hail of fire, personally took charge of the units, called for artillery and air fire support and succeeded in soundly defeating the insurgent force ... the next day a barrage of 400 rounds was fired…Heedless of the danger himself, Colonel Haig repeatedly braved intense hostile fire to survey the battlefield. His personal courage and determination, and his skillful employment of every defense and support tactic possible, inspired his men to fight with previously unimagined power. Although his force was outnumbered three to one, Colonel Haig succeeded in inflicting 592 casualties on the Viet Cong.6 As the Nixon administration took office in 1969, the new National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger brought Haig onto his staff. Again flourishing in the position of aide to the top leadership, Haig would soon become Kissinger’s most trusted advisor, increasingly active in the background on all the prominent issues. As the ending of the Vietnam War had top priority by that time, Haig assisted on highly sensitive issues like organizing the secret bombings on Cambodia; the final, severe air-raids on North Vietnam known as the Christmas bombings; and persuading South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu to accept the peace settlement with the North. Kissinger rewarded him with a meteoric rise from colonel to major general, a rank seldom held by an officer who had never commanded a division, after which he briefly left the White House to serve as vice chief of staff of the army. In May 1973, Haig was called back to the White House to take over as chief of staff, where he got deeply involved in the problems that Nixon brought upon himself. In January of that year, five men were convicted of breaking into the office of the Democratic National Committee located in the Watergate complex. Unknown at the time, they were ordered by Nixon’s Attorney General John Mitchell and Haig’s 6 General Orders No. 2318 (May 22, 1967) U.S. Army Headquarters, Vietnam. See for the full citation Haig’s page in the website of The Military Times: http://militarytimes.com/citations-medals- awards/recipient.php?recipientid=4574 . 69 predecessor Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman to disrupt the 1972 election campaign of the Democratic Party. Nixon ordered a cover-up of the events, but Congressional investigations started and the legal net around the President slowly closed. As a substitute for Haldeman, who was forced to resign, Haig’s name soon became widely known as the scandals of the Nixon administration unraveled.