Monsicha Hoonsuwan Critical Analysis U.S.

Interventionism Professor Cardwell 17 November 2010 The Mirage of Anti-Communism in Vietnam War When the U.S. decided to withdraw from Vietnam in 1975, it did so with such a sense of urgency and disappointment that almost no one bothered to look back at what the U.S. left behind: devastation. Vietnam was in dire need of aid. Nine thousand out of 15,000 hamlets, 25 million acres of farmland, 12 million acres of forest were destroyed, and 1.5 million farm animals had been killed in the South. Yet, when the Vietnamese government raised the issue of reparations to President Carter, the U.S. presidents response was indifference: the U.S. does not pay reparations for mistakesno matter how tragic. It had gone into Vietnam with good motives that had later gone wrong; thus, unlike Germany and Japan, the U.S. was not a wrongdoer. In addition, the Vietnam War produced a difficult time in the U.S., too. The war divided the country, shattering the pride of the U.S. people who finally realized that the U.S. couldand didlose the war. Amidst such distress, the question to why the U.S. went into Vietnam in the first place emerged time and time again. In addressing this question, Marilyn B. Young states in her book The Vietnam Wars 1945-1990 that instead of why, one should interpret the question as How the U.S. got to Vietnam. Of course, there are standard justifications such as to preserve stability in France or to secure trade markets in Southeast Asia for Japan. However, Young largely believes that it was to reorganize the post WWII world

according to its principle of liberal capitalism. In other words, the war had nothing to do with salient factors in Vietnam and much to do with the U.S. predisposition to war. Communism containment had little to do with the U.S. decision to go into Vietnam; rather, it was the U.S. desire to prove and maintain its own credibilityits hegemony as the protector of the free world. Young makes it clear in her titling the book Vietnam Wars instead of Vietnam War that in order to answer the crucial how question, one needs to go back before November 1955the official start of Vietnam Warand look at the war from a broader perspective. While the U.S. government refers to Vietnam War as a single occurrence, the Vietnamese saw it as a series of wars fought against colonial powers with the ultimate aim of one independent Vietnam. Hence, for the Vietnamese, the war started with the fight against French colonialism led by Ho Chi Minh of the Viet Minh, a revolutionary leader whose left-leaning ideology was apparent. Convinced of the U.S. commitment to anti-colonialism and the principle of self-determination to all peoples, Ho relentlessly sought to establish ties with the U.S. and appealed for U.S. support in achieving independence for Vietnam. However, the U.S. government refused to lend Ho the help he needed, viewing him as a puppet of Soviet Russia, despite many U.S. officials comments that Ho wasfirst and foremosta nationalist. Hos highest priority was national revolution. Social revolution, in his idea, would later build on that success. The U.S. governments failure to realize the extent in which nationalism triumphed over communism in the case of Vietnam stemmed from NSC-68, the blueprint of U.S. Cold War foreign policy. According to Young, the U.S. government officialsconservative or liberalhad come to accept a set of axioms derived from NSC-68 as being

unquestionable. These axioms include the belief that U.S. intentions are always good and communism is fundamentally bad (p. 27). Hence, Young argues that the U.S. ignored Hos plea not because the U.S. was against self-determination or was not truly committed to self-determination per se, but because the U.S. government believed that a communist could not be a genuine nationalist. Hence, it had no interest in replacing a colonial power with Ho who could not possibly be anything else but a communista proxy of Kremlin. According to Young, Not only did the U.S. government fail to recognize the strong sense of nationalism in Vietnam, it also failed to conceive the fact that Vietnam was one country, and the 17th Parallel was merely an artificial line splitting this country into two states inhabited by people of the same ethnicity. Moreover, Young argues that the U.S. populace struggled to comprehend the fact that the National Liberation Front or Vietcong was not a communist force receiving orders from North Vietnam, but an umbrella organization that included independent non-Communist organizations as well as individuals (p. 70). Determined to oppose Ngo Dinh Diem, the U.S.-installed leader of South Vietnam, and seek peaceful reunification of the North and South, the NLF received increasing support from the people of South Vietnam due to Diems ruthless and unfair regime, which in the end moved people to align with the NLF. The NLF, Young argues, replaced Saigon authority even before the end of 1960. Given that the forces fighting in South Vietnam were from the same country, none of them were fighting in the name of communism; this war clearly was not a war between communism and capitalism as the U.S. government might claim. Young concludes that the war in the South was between contending Vietnamese forces (p. 73), the weaker of which was created by the U.S.

with the lack of popular support. As a result, the U.S. had to contribute at least 400,000 U.S. combat troops to keep the government of South Vietnam in power. There were opportunities for peace, and for the U.S. to disengage itself from the war, Young argues, but the U.S. did not pursue that route. In fact, after the overthrow of Diem, the non-Communist military junta led by Duong Van Minh sought to be a government of reconciliation, promising to work for peaceful coexistence between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The French government was also ready to help negotiate for the neutralization of Indochinese states. At this moment, the prospect of peace seemed high; yet, the U.S. did not want to go down the path of peace or neutralization because it would lead to unification on Communist terms (p. 107), not the U.S. terms. As a response to the juntas conciliatory efforts, the U.S. criticized them for being too soft and reluctant to wage the war in the South and plotted a successful Pentagons coup (p. 108) against Minhs regime, shattering the hope for reunification between Hanoi and Saigon. Moreover, in 1966, UN Ambassador Goldberg stated that the U.S. government was ready to move toward peaceful negotiations and hoped that there would be a reciprocal response in North Vietnam. President Carter also said that the U.S. was still open for unconditional discussions but was not aware of any serious effort the North Vietnamese had made to end the war. When the North Vietnamese took President Carters words seriously and offered concessions, however, the President ignored it completely. This shows that not only did the U.S. not care about the opportunities to end the war, but it also acted as if the North Vietnamese did not want to end it when in fact, it offered realistic concessions. Senator James William Fulbright addressed the ignorance saying, Its a bunch of crap about [U.S. government] wanting to negotiate (p. 182).

For a story as complex and heartrending as the Vietnam War, Young has done a laudable job in keeping the readers interests with her exceptional writing skills. The lack of esoteric terminology and obscure historical allusions make details easier to absorb, even for those who have no prior knowledge of the Vietnam War. Relying heavily on first hand accounts from both the U.S. and Vietnamese side, The Vietnam Wars 19451990 successfully lays down the chronology of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and is a relatively balanced book, although the atrocities committed by the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong are almost never mentioned. The photographs from various sources included in the book are a good addition to understanding the War. Yet, they would have been more useful if, instead of being lumped together into one section of photographs, they were inserted as a part of the text. That way, readers could draw the relevance between the text and the photographs and enhance their understanding of the war. As Young signed her books preface in August 1990, Iraqi troops had just invaded Kuwait in the start of what would be known as the Persian Gulf War. Not long after, however, the U.S.-led coalition force authorized by the U.N. would enter Iraq. Watching the event unfolding, Young admitted the unwanted conclusion (p. x) that the primary instrument of U.S. foreign policy is war; the U.S. fights wars to impose its will on other sovereign nations regardless of the will of those nations people. This pattern continues today with the war in Iraq, confirming Youngs fear that the U.S. people will continue to ask why they are involved in such warsthe question often raised about Vietnam. Why, then, has the U.S. not yet learned from its past mistakes?