A Short Discussion of the Potential for Complete American Victory in the Vietnam War from a MoralPsychological Perspective

By Cameron Hoppe May, 2012 http://cameronhoppeproject.blogspot.com Twitter: @CameronHoppe

Any portion, or the entirety, of this work may be used for any commercial or non-commercial purpose provided that appropriate attribution is given to its author and (more importantly) to the authors referenced within it. Acknowledgement: Special thanks to Dr. Kyle Longley of Arizona State University and Dr. Robert M Price of Colemon Theological Seminary

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Background The series of events popularly characterized in the United States as the Vietnam War began on August 2, 1964 with the Tonkin Gulf incident, and ended on March 29, 1973 when the last American combat soldier left the Republic of Vietnam (RVN) (Herrring, 2002; Rosenblatt, 2001). In reality, American involvement in Vietnam began nearly two decades before the murky events that occurred in the Tonkin Gulf. August 14, 1945 marked the official end of hostilities between Japan and the World War Two Allies, with Emperor Hirohito accepting the allied demand for unconditional surrender. Despite the end of hostilities, however, many areas held by Japan had no allied forces positioned within them. As a result, Japanese troops stationed in those areas typically surrendered to whatever local authorities asked them to do so. Vietnamese freedom-fighters and political activists, organized as the Indochinese Communist Party and the Vietminh, began post-haste to take control of local governments across Vietnam. The entire process of gaining political control of the nation took 19 days. On September 2, Ho Chi Minh assumed the Presidency in Hanoi and declared Vietnamese independence, quoting from the American Declaration of Independence as he did (Duiker, 1995). Complete independence was short-lived. The French government, eager to reassert its global position following the humiliation of World War Two, demanded that Vietnam return to colonial rule. Lacking the geographic positions and economic strength to seize Vietnam entirely, the French government was forced to negotiate with the new Vietnamese government. This eventually led to the Ho-Sainteny agreement, signed on March 6, 1946. According to the agreement, the French recognized the independence of the northern portion of Vietnam, to be known as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). In exchange, approximately 25,000 troops were allowed to remain in the DRV under French leadership, but with an agreement that they would leave and that France would relinquish command of remaining Vietnamese units by 1951 (Tucker, 1999). Furthermore, electoral referenda

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were to be held throughout Vietnam on the subject of unification, with individual provinces also having the option of submitting to French rule. While the Ho-Sainteny agreement provided a basis for further discussions, the quality of the relationship between the two nations declined quickly. Ho Chi Minh traveled to France in order to further negotiations and secure lasting cooperation. However, the negotiations quickly collapsed, with France declaring the southern portion of Vietnam an independent state under French protection (Tucker, 1999; Duiker, 1995). Over a short period of time mutual animosity broke into complete military hostility. The Vietminh and the DRV government pursued a protracted peoples war modeled after Maos Chinese Communist Revolution (Duiker, 1995). The DRV and Vietnminh eventually gained material support from the Chinese Communist government, while the French sought US assistance beginning in 1948 and began receiving US assistance in 1950 (Herring, 2002). Following several years of fighting, France sought a negotiated peace with the DRV. In spite of having won many military operations and shown battlefield superiority on most occasions, the French had eventually been politically and militarily defeated. The United States demanded at the peace negotiations that Vietnam be split between North and South with the DRV retaining control of the northern regions, while areas in the southern region would be nominally led by the Emperor Bao Dai, who had been installed as the head of state by French authorities. In reality, the South would be heavily advised and economically supported by the United States (Duiker, 1995). The southern state became known as the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). The United States, with Eisenhower as President, eventually decided to install Ngo Dinh Diem as head of the RVN government. He was chosen mainly for three reasons: his strong personal opposition to Communist ideology and politics, his proven competence as an organizational leader, and his commitment to Vietnamese independence (Herring, 2002). However, due to the extreme lack of

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political society in the RVN, agitation by the DRV and its allies in the RVN, and the personal failings of Diem and his closest political allies, the Diem regime was not capable of bringing political unity or economic prosperity to the RVN (Duiker, 1995). These difficulties lasted through the Kennedy administration, culminating in a military coup and assassination of Diem on November 1, 1963 (Herring, 2002). The Diem regime was succeeded by several military juntas, while the political situation in the DRV remained relatively stable. The successive leaders of the RVN were not any more successful in achieving political unity than Diem had been. At the same time, military conflicts between the DRV, DRV-allied revolutionaries in the South (referred to collectively here as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), and the RVN continued to escalate. Furthermore, the presence of American forces in the RVN and Tonkin Gulf had increased from 900 in December of 1960 to more than sixteen thousand by the time of the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Following the events in the Tonkin Gulf, American military action in Vietnam escalated quickly, to a peak of 543,000 troops in 1969 (Herring, 2002). In spite of vicious fighting, American military action was not sufficient to bring about the capitulation of the DRV leadership to American demands. Over a period of four years following peak deployment, the United States withdrew all its military manpower. DRV forces captured Saigon, the capital of the RVN, on April 30, 1975, bringing an end to the War in Vietnam (Herring, 2002). The Vietnam War is often characterized by academic and popular historians as a defeat for the United States, and it must have seemed such at the time. Whether or not this is an accurate characterization is a subject for debate. It certainly destroyed Johnsons signature anti-poverty programs (the Great Society), and stymied the effectiveness of Nixon. An entire generational mindset was molded by the conflict over the war, and it continues to show itself in Baby Boomer political approaches to this day. Regardless of what economic and psychological costs were extracted by the

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conflict, American military forces exited at a pace dictated by American decision makers and were not harassed by DRV or NLF forces as they left. Furthermore, Americas national security interests were not severely harmed, nor was its international economic or cultural position endangered by the conflict. Nonetheless, many have argued that a total American victory was possible in Vietnam, and most argue that tactical changes in Americas political and military approach would have been sufficient to alter the ultimate outcome. What these arguments neglect are the powerful economic, social, political, and military driving forces against which American policy in Vietnam was attempting to make progress. Instead, it is highly unlikely that tactical or strategic alterations in the American approach would have been able to secure a situation that served Americas immediate objectives. Moral Underpinnings of the Conflict Decisions made by political leaders, particularly those elected in democratic states, are often made from a personally amoral basis. Notwithstanding, a nations political decision making, on the whole, is a manifestation of its collective moral psychology. Systems of personal morality are ultimately neural systems that allow individuals to make decisions that are strategic to their individual survival, and usually to their reproductive success as well. This is because systems of morality allow individuals and groups to simplify complex interacting systems into personal perspectives and imperatives, reducing the amount of time and energy required for productive, strategic decision making. Neural tissue is extremely expensive from a biological standpoint, consuming 20% of the oxygen supply in humans, and therefore expensive to build and change as well (Hudler). For the vast majority of the period of human evolution, societies and environments did not change rapidly, so the rigid accumulation of moral values was not detrimental to individual human beings, and may have been beneficial in many cases. This kind of neural rigidity did not reduce survival opportunity, and freed physiological resources for additional child-bearing. The cumulative effect of these factors over several thousand generations, is that political and moral assumptions on which a nations political decision

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makers and voting public operate are often not synchronous with the global and national situations and challenges they confront. A second general aspect of moral systems important to the events in Vietnam is the mythology and historical traditions to which they become attached. Much of the common understanding of human events, in the United States, is based on the Deuteronomic philosophy of history, as laid-out in Deuteronomy 28:1 and 28:15: (1) And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe and to do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. (15) But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.(BibleGateway.com) In the context of the Cold War, this principle became definitive in the American mind. The very fact of Americas prosperity in the world was easily seen as proof that the nation was founded upon and guided by Divine principles, and that spreading those principles was an appropriate national goal (Jewett, 2003). In Vietnam, however, the United States had few economic or security interests that were independent of national psychology. In this way, the American basis for intervention in Vietnam became a purely moral exercise based in a largely ahistorical mythology. The Vietnamese moral mythology, however, was adapted for successful propagation biologically as individuals and sociologically as a populationin the unique climatic and regional-political environment in which it was situated. Much of Vietnamese mythology was based on resistance to Chinese rule, a situation which began in the early first century BC and continued in one form or another for 1500 years. Vietnamese mythological heroes such as the Trung Sisters, Tran Hung Dao, and Le Loi, are all remembered as figures who violently resisted Chinese rule (Duiker, 1995).

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At the same time, Chinese rule over Vietnam brought with it introduction and indoctrination into Confucian philosophy and ethics through a quasi-public educational system. The Confucian tradition was never replaced, being retained through the French Colonial Era. The result of these two effects was that in the Vietnamese Communists and their allies, America had acquired an enemy with a cultural tradition of cooperating with an occupier during the day while resisting it at night (Duiker, 1995). A third factor influencing the Vietnamese revolutionary mindset was the historical phenomenon known as the March to the South. This was not primarily a military action, but a slow growth and spread of the northern Vietnamese population through the Campa region and into the Mekong Delta. The main driver of this 300-year series of events was population growth requiring new agricultural land to support it (Tucker, 1999). In fact, by the time of the conflict the Mekong Delta was supplying 70% of the rice cultivated in both the North and the South combined. One of the main consequences of this national narrative was that unification of Vietnam was based real material needs for survival as a population. There was an immediate economic component, toothe North could not produce the rice its population needed, and the South lacked cultural, educational, and industrial infrastructure. These effects constituted a major force against which American leaders had to contend. While most American moral values were based on European and Middle Eastern traditions, those traditions did not exist in the DRV or the RVN. Attempts to transplant them met with failure. The national mythology and social psychology in Vietnam was based on survival as a unified nation-state, combined with protracted resistance to foreign intervention. It is highly doubtful that tactical military changes would have been able to alter the popular moral mythologies of either nation. From the perspective of individual psychology, the DRV and NLF had stronger moral motives than did the United States.

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Assumptions Made By Americas Political Leadership Because political beliefs stem from moral reasoning, they are underlined by the assumptions of the believer. These assumptions often go unquestioned, including those made by political leaders. There were several assumptions made by American Presidents and their administrations. Erroneous assumptions led to policy mistakes beginning with President Roosevelt, and continued through the Nixon administration. Roosevelt is noted to have believed the Vietnamese people to be genetically less valuable than North Americans and Europeans and did not believe they were capable of functioning as an independent nation. Truman extended this reasoning basis into his administration, stating that he had no desire to alienate Americas European allies in the nascent Cold War (Herring, 2002). An even more important development during the Truman administration was the Domino Theory. It basically stated that if any one nation in a region adopted a communist form of government, all nations in that area were made more susceptible to communist revolution. As a result of this, Truman laid out his foreign policy doctrine to Congress in 1947, stating I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures (Truman, 1947). The domino theory became entrenched in Americas foreign policy establishment. The American establishment at the time assumed that systems of democratic capitalism or social democracy were both superior to authoritarian communism in terms of human rights and standards of living. The assumptions underlying the domino theory were, first, that this was true in all situations and social contexts, and second, that people living in foreign lands would not be able to discern this for themselves. In this way, the domino theory is rooted in a primarily racist outlook. This holds up well when one examines the way in which a version of the domino theory was used to advance the idea of invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

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The Eisenhower administration never critically examined the assumptions made by Roosevelt and Truman in respect to Vietnam and Indochina. Furthermore, they assumed that strong military tactics and resolute application of them would be sufficient to bring about a French victory in Vietnam. Throughout Eisenhowers administration the French were admonished to act aggressively against their Vietminh opponents. In addition, Eisenhowers team assumed that American actions could have prevented the defeat of the Chinese Nationalist government by Maos Chinese Communist Party, and extended this point of view into their dealings with France and Vietnam (Herring, 2002). Following the French defeat, Eisenhower continued with his assumption, reasoning that the French had not been sufficiently aggressive. Taking on a quasi-Deuteronomist view of the United States, he assumed that the application of force, resources, and American Will would be sufficient to establish the RVN as an independent nation. What this ignored was the fact that there was little native political organization within the RVNthe only significant political organization being done in South Vietnam was by the DRV and the NLF (Duiker, 1995). Kennedys assumptions in foreign policy were directly informed by those of Eisenhower and Truman. Specifically, he believed that if the United States did not deliberately, vociferously, conspicuously protect liberal democracy that the whole worldwould begin to move toward the Communist bloc (Herring, 2002). In this viewpoint the world is seen in apocalyptic terms with the brave Americans standing as the foremost defenders of freedom and democracy. At this point it becomes clear that American involvement in Vietnam had little to do with concrete national interests. Americas motives were stemming from what Nietzsche described as a purely moral system (Nietzsche, Kaufmann, 1968). Even more disconcerting was his judgment of international Communism as a monolithic system. Because of this assumption, he saw the Soviet Union and Peoples Republic of China as natural allies, rather than as the natural opponents they had been for centuries. This led Kennedy to

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approve additional military escalation and increased political and economic commitments in Vietnam, while rejecting French attempts to de-escalate the conflict (Herring, 2002). The assumptions of Johnson and Nixon in regard to the Vietnam conflict were similar to each other. Both believed that American military power could be applied effectively against the DRV and the NLF, and that the Army of the RVN could then hold the geographic South. Additionally, they believed that terror bombing civilian populations in the North would force the DRV leadership to seek a negotiated peace under conditions favorable to their administrations. They believed this in spite of the fact that the tactic had proven completely ineffective as a political tool in WWII. Their assumptions proved to be false. The DRVs strategy of protracted war and methods of political organization were successfully adapted to shifting American tactics. The population in the North and DRV-allied fighters in the South responded to terror bombing by digging tunnels and trenches that allowed them to survive it (Duiker, 1995). Each time American and RVN forces gained an upper hand in the conflict, the DRV and southern revolutionaries managed to increase political organization or secure public relations victories, allowing them to perpetuate the conflict. A final assumption underlying the decisions of all the American administrations was faith in American military action. This was a belief founded on the victories secured in the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the partial victory taken from certain defeat on the Korean Peninsula. This led each administration to believe that the prior administration had simply failed to bring sufficient force to bear against their Vietnamese opponents. The result was that each administration escalated the conflict and gained some measurable progress. In every case, this was followed by a leveling off of troops and adaptation by the DRV and NLF until the next administration took office. There would then be further military escalation, leveling off, and adaptation. The pattern showed an obvious logarithmic relationship with time, as demonstrated in Figure 1.

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Figure1: Semi-log plot of American troop levels in Vietnam vs time in years, Dec 1960 Apr 1969. Created in Graphical Analysis. This pattern demonstrates that each administration enacted an increase in troop levels by a full order of magnitude relative to the one before it. Following the Tet Offensive, this pattern was broken as Johnson began to seek a negotiated settlement with the DRV. This presents a major problem for those who argue that further escalation could have led to an American victory: the next level of escalation in the pattern would have required an American troop presence of 2.45 million in the RVN. While this is

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slightly less than the peak American troop levels WWII, it would have required a complete economic reordering within the United States to accomplish. The second major problem with which they must contend is the radicalizing nature of threats that are perceived to be existential. For example, Johnson and Nixon both recognized the political threat war protesters posed to their administrations, and saw it as existential. They reacted in ways that were otherwise contrary to their expressed democratic values. In a similar sense, the bombing and hunger experienced by the Vietnamese population weakened the influence of non-Communist Nationalists and Social Democrats, while strengthening that of the Communist ideologues. This led to marginalization of moderate Southern revolutionaries by hard-liners within the Northern government (Tang, 1985). Second to the moral basis and motivation of each side in the conflict, the decisions and assumptions of American political leaders were of utmost importance to the outcome of the conflict. Because each administration came to office with incomplete and outdated assumptions, and failed to question the assumptions and implications of its predecessors, the adjustments that would have been needed for victory were not even imagined. Conclusion Many arguments have been made that the US could have achieved total victory in the Vietnam War, but these arguments are of limited historical validity. First, the primary assertion that the American experience in Vietnam constituted a defeat is not unassailable: it is not the only reasonable conclusion. Americas geopolitical position and eventual hegemony were not threatened by the course of events in Vietnam. Proponents of the defeat argument also fail to address the psychological driving force that led the DRV and NLF to persevere in the conflict; namely that Vietnamese national identity demanded unification as a survival imperative, and it had for 300 years prior to American involvement.

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They also must address the Vietnamese traditions of resistance to foreign rule, and the moral mythology adopted by the population. Some, such as Stephen Morris, argue that continued support of RVN military operations after 1973 would have allowed the US to secure an independent state in the South (Morris, 2005). What Morris fails to address is the lack of a political structure in the RVN, and that its social elite was incapable of meaningfully uniting competing groups. It can be argued that interference by the North was the biggest reason for this, but all nations experience political tampering by groups outside their borders. The bottom line is that the political leadership of the RVN was neither astute nor strong, and did not deserve to be followed. William Colby argues that the US could have secured a political victory by more aggressively supporting the Diem regime or by replacing Diem with his brother, Nhu (Manning, 1989). Colby admits that the military strategy in Vietnam was insufficient to obtain total victory. He also admits that the type of democracy demanded by the Johnson and Nixon administrations was not realistic. What he does not address are the objective economic and cultural needs of North and South Vietnam, and how the two regions had become mutually dependent. This dependency was the main source of the Vietnamese will to fight. Nietzsche posited that purely moral systems end in nihilism (Nietzsche, Kaufmann, 1968), and this thesis is demonstrated by the American experience in Vietnam. The United State chose, as a nation, to pursue the conflict for purely moral and mythical reasons, and failed to decide on realistic and acceptable outcomes. When the least desired outcomes surfaced, the American public and political establishment experienced a painful moment of national psychology followed by a period in which national identity was questioned. Trust in the Federal Government and faith that national problems could be successfully addressed through the political process fell dramatically, effectively ending the post-WWII paradigm of social cooperation. Following the end of American deployment in Vietnam, It

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was another eight years before a new national paradigm arose, in the form of politically skeptical conservatism.

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References 1. Herring GC. Americas Longest War, The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, Fourth Edition. Published by McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2002: page 142 2. Rosenblatt RA, Cooper RT. Last Soldier to Leave Vietnam Is Feared Dead. Published by The Los Angeles Times, September 16 2001. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/2001/sep/16/news/mn46461 3. Duker WJ. Sacred War, Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam. Published by McGrawHill, Inc, 1995: pages 47-52 4. Tucker SC. Vietnam. Published by The University Press of Kentucky, 1999: pages 44-46 5. Ibid, Tucker, 1999: page 45 6. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: page 56 7. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 62-66 8. Ibid, Herring, 2002: pages 21-22 9. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 90-92 10. Ibid, Herring, 2002: page 59 11. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: page 252 12. Ibid, Herring, 2002: pages 80-128 13. Ibid, Herring, 2002: page 133-135, 182 14. Ibid, Herring, 2002: page 336 15. Hudler EH. Brain Facts and Figures. Published by The University of Washington. Retrieved from http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html#blood 16. Deuteronomy 28 (King James Version). Published by BibleGateway.com. Retrieved from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+28&version=KJV

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17. Jewett R, Lawrence JS. Captain America and the Crusade against Evil. Published by Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003: pages 277-281 18. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 6-8 19. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 143-145 20. Ibid, Tucker, 1999: pages 11-13 21. Ibid, Herring, 2002: pages 9-11 22. Truman HS. Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Turmans Address Before a Joint Session of Congress, March 12, 1947. Published by Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library. Retrieved from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp 23. Ibid, Herring, 2002: pages 38-42 24. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 252-253 25. Ibid, Herring, 2002: page 79 26. Nietzsche F, edited by Kaufman W. The Will to Power, Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. Published by Vintage Books, 1968: page 16. 27. Ibid, Herring, 2002: page 121 28. Ibid, Duiker, 1995: pages 201 and 204 29. Tang, TN. A Viet Cong Memoir. Published by Vintage Books, 1985: pages 195-198, 234-239 30. Morris SJ. The War We Could Have Won. Published by The New York Times, May 1, 2005. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01morris.html?pagewanted=1 31. Manning R. We Could Have Won Vietnam. Published by The New York Times, November 12, 1989. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/12/books/we-could-have-wonvietnam.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm 32. Ibid, Nietzche, Kaufmann, 1968: page 16