The Cold Warrior Who Never Apologized - The New York Times
The Cold Warrior Who Never Apologized - The New York Times
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From: Paul Mooney <pjmooney@me.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 11:48 PM
To: VSG <Vsg@u.washington.edu>
Vietnam ‘67
The Cold Warrior Who Never Apologized
Jonathan Stevenson
SEPT. 8, 2017
Walt Rostow, third from left, speaking to Lyndon Johnson in the Oval Office in 1967. Between them, in the background, is Robert McNamara. LBJ Presidential Library
As Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, wrote in his book “Dereliction of Duty,” the early stages of the Vietnam War caught America’s military leaders flat-footed. Having gone through World War II and Korea, they were all ready for a conventional war. But insurgencies and unconventional warfare were something else. As a result, they were inordinately acquiescent to the wishful thinking of their civilian overseers — and no one thought more wishfully about the war than Walt Whitman Rostow.
A Yale Ph.D. and a Rhodes scholar, Rostow left his academic perch at M.I.T. to join the State Department under John F. Kennedy; he was later Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser during the center-cut of American involvement in Vietnam, from April 1966 to January 1969. More than anyone else, he epitomized the overweening confidence of the civilian strategists of the era — he was the best and the brightest of “the best and the brightest.” He could lay distant claim to operational warfighting competence, having selected bombing targets as a major in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. But like many other prominent civilian strategists of the day, he was by training and disposition an economist and a technocrat.
In his 1960 book “The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto,” Rostow posited that robust growth was a nation’s best insurance against the political emergence of Communism, and cast growth as a multistage process that depended crucially on a “takeoff” period propelled by rapid expansion in key segments of an economy. Though criticized as tendentiously Western-centric, the book attracted Kennedy’s attention. In a matter of months, Rostow moved from holding forth in the academy to planning America’s strategy in Vietnam, tightly guided by his ideas about economic development.
Most leading civilian strategists, who were so inventive and authoritative on nuclear strategy, steered a safe middle course between withdrawal and escalation in Vietnam, and did not enunciate big strategic concepts to guide the prosecution of the war. Rostow was different. He believed that the Vietcong were impeding South Vietnam’s advancement to the takeoff stage, and that the United States therefore needed to expend all necessary military and diplomatic means to stop the Vietcong’s guerrilla infiltration. This was a neatly packaged but narrow vision that both opened the door to expansive military action but also reduced it to an adjunct of politics and economics.
Along those lines, Rostow reflexively argued for a “flexible response” when it came to military escalation, from ratcheting up the role of military “advisers” — that is, embedded Special Forces — in the early 1960s, to bombing North Vietnam starting in 1965, to steadily increasing the United States’ expeditionary combat presence in the mid- and late 1960s. Directly defeating the enemy was never the goal; military action was just a way to apply pressure, to maximize psychological intimidation — what came to be known as the “Rostow thesis.”
But crucially, Rostow didn’t actually know much about fighting a war. Any soldier could have told him that increased bombing or troop levels were not the same as, say, increasing food aid. Nor could one rely on data in the same way when it came to war. Rostow was one of the most avid followers of the weekly body counts, equating the number of enemy reported killed with military progress, as if he were reading the latest reports on grain production.
In November 1967, an increasingly wary Robert McNamara, the secretary of defense, raised the idea of reassessing the war effort, shifting greater combat responsibility to the South Vietnamese — the policy that would become known as “Vietnamization” under President Richard Nixon — and a bombing halt. Rostow agreed to the first two measures, but opposed the third, and President Johnson sided with him.
Despite McNamara’s crisis of confidence — he departed the Pentagon in February 1968 — Rostow continued to comb through intelligence reports looking for reassuring factoids. During the Tet offensive he denied even the possibility that the surprise attacks had provided a psychological shot in the arm to the Vietcong, concentrating instead on the huge casualties American and South Vietnamese forces had inflicted on them. “This is a great victory for our side,” he told a colleague while they sat in the White House Situation Room. The ensuing 24-day battle for Hue, an agonizing engagement that American forces would also tactically win, drove home the strength of the enemy’s determination and staying power. But Rostow never saw the battle that way.
To the end, Rostow remained not just a supporter of the president, but a crutch. As David Halberstam wrote of Rostow in “The Best and the Brightest”:
He became the president’s national security adviser at a time when criticism and opposition to the war were beginning to crystallize, and he eventually served the purpose of shielding the president from criticism and from reality. He deflected others’ pessimism and rewarded those who were optimistic. It was not contrived; it was the way he was.
The upshot was that Rostow’s status as designated administration hawk in chief induced in him a preoccupation with bureaucratic politics and buoying morale that impaired his strategic objectivity as American frustrations in Vietnam mounted. He, more than any of Johnson’s other advisers, was consumed with showing the press and the American public “light at the end of the tunnel.”
The historian David Milne has called Rostow “America’s Rasputin.” He was not alone as an early advocate for flexible response and a deepening commitment in Vietnam. But long after McNamara and others turned against the war, even as evidence mounted against the Rostow thesis, he remained steadfast.
And while in the ensuing decades most of the advisers, including McNamara, admitted that they were wrong, Rostow, who died in 2003, pointedly refused to apologize for the war or second-guess himself.
He remained a Cold Warrior until the end. In 1986 he superficially attributed the fall of Saigon to Congressional budget cuts. And he continued to insist that the war was worthwhile. Joining a wave of historical revisionists, he argued that the war had bought time for other Southeast Asian nations to consolidate Western-leaning governments and subdue Communist influences — in other words, that the domino theory was right. Like many of Kennedy’s brain trust, Rostow was initially praised for his pragmatic, technocratic liberalism — but in his determination to impose his sterile ideas on the complicated realities of Southeast Asia, he proved to be as ideologically committed as the Communists he so adamantly opposed.
Paul Mooney | Freelance Journalist | Berkeley (510) 984 8780 | pjmooney@me.com | www.pjmooney.com | Twitter @pjmooney | Skype pjmooney
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From: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 6:10 AM
To: Paul Mooney <pjmooney@me.com>, VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
This article is nicely done, covers a great deal of factual history, but ends with a section that again goes with the "everybody knows" narrative about the war, one facet of which is that the Domino Theory was pure hogwash.
"he argued that the war had bought time for other Southeast Asian nations to consolidate Western-leaning governments and subdue Communist influences — in other words, that the domino theory was right"
Apparently Cambodia and Laos don't count for anything, nor the statements by Le Kuan Yew and other leaders in the region that the exhaustion of the communist drive in Viet Nam had saved everyone there from the tide of communist aggression of the 1960s.
Secondarily, attributing the final defeat of RVN to the reduction of promised military aid by Congress is not a trivial "superficial" argument, as anyone who examines the facts of what resources the ARVN still had by '75 versus the massive levels of aid that Russia had showered on Hanoi. When Le Duan said in a speech that "the Americans will not come back now even if we offer them candy", it showed exactly how both he and Moscow had thought things out, and seen a green light for their drive to finally conquer the South.
It was a two year preparation for the '75 invasion, using thousands of Russian trucks running down the HCM Trail to build the huge camps in Laos and Cambodia to stage the men and material for the invasion. One could make a parallel with the buildup in England for years to get ready for the D-Day invasion. They won because in the end they could bring far more power to bear in focused attacks than the ARVN, spread out across the country and short of resources, could resist very long. The NVA generals deserve full credit for a very well planned and executed campaign.
R J Del Vecchio
Independent Researcher
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 11:48 AM
To: Deo Huu <deochienhuu@gmail.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
One benefit of having relatives and friends in both sides of the Vietnam War is we can hear from both sides!
A friend of mine who was the commanding officer of a small ARVN ship told me about difficulties they faced after the 1973 Paris Peace Accord, especially in months leading to April 30th, 1975.
Another friend who was an anti-war activist in the US said of their success in stopping military supplies worth hundreds of million dollars shipped to South Vietnam in those final years.
Calvin Thai
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From: Nhan Ngo <nhan@temple.edu>
Date: Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 12:27 PM
To: phuxuan700@gmail.com
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I believe there are many sides to this part of the history.
Reading the speech of President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu on April 23, 1975 (?) seems to suggest President Nixon and Kissinger
had no heart to continue, and the lack of US aids/support gave him reasons to resign… President Thiệu and his delegation
did come to the US to mobilize US support right after the 1973 Paris Agreement and failed.
Right after the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement, the Union of Vietnamese in the US, on the other hand, argued that the US must
cut aids to the RVN. This position was adopted by many US anti-war organizations.
On the other hand, there are evidence that the 1973 Paris Peace Agreement, at least from the PRG figures I met, did want
to leave space for a US role in the political arrangement through its support for the RVN… for many reasons… among which
was the 1972 US-China Joint Communiqué in Shanghai.
Cheers,
Nhàn
Temple University
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 9, 2017 at 9:53 PM
To: Nhan Ngo <nhan@temple.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
You brought up two good points:
1. There were sides within side in the Vietnam War.
2. NFL/PRG figures' expectation was not the same as DRV leaders'.
Some people may think "Vietnam won" in the war against American imperialism.
The following excerpt is from the memoir of Truong Nhu Tang, PRG Minister of Justice:
"On May 15, 1975, I was standing on the official dais reviewing the first Victory Day parade in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon until several months earlier). The crowd marching by waved the flags of both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Hanoi) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (Viet Cong). The troops, though, bore only the North’s colors. I asked the four-star general standing next to me where were the famous Viet Cong Divisions 1, 5, 7, and 9. The general, Van Tien Dung, commander-in-chief of the North Vietnamese army, answered coldly that the armed forces were now “unified.” At that moment I began to understand my fate and that of the NLF. In Vietnam we often said: “Take the juice of the lemon and throw away the peel [“vắt chanh bỏ vỏ”].” On that dais the years of communist promises and assurances revealed themselves for the propaganda they were. Victory Day celebrated no victory for the NLF, or for the South."
When the truth comes out, it is that Le Duan and his lieutenants won, the Vietnamese people lost!
Calvin Thai
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From: phuxuan700@gmail.com <phuxuan700@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 6:44 AM
To: Nhan Ngo <nhan@temple.edu>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
*Resent for proper addressing*
Anh Nhàn brought up two good points:
1. There were sides within side in the Vietnam War.
2. NFL/PRG figures' expectation was not the same as DRV leaders'.
Some people may think "Vietnam won" in the war against American imperialism.
The following excerpt is from the memoir of Truong Nhu Tang, PRG Minister of Justice:
"On May 15, 1975, I was standing on the official dais reviewing the first Victory Day parade in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon until several months earlier). The crowd marching by waved the flags of both the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Hanoi) and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (Viet Cong). The troops, though, bore only the North’s colors. I asked the four-star general standing next to me where were the famous Viet Cong Divisions 1, 5, 7, and 9. The general, Van Tien Dung, commander-in-chief of the North Vietnamese army, answered coldly that the armed forces were now “unified.” At that moment I began to understand my fate and that of the NLF. In Vietnam we often said: “Take the juice of the lemon and throw away the peel [“vắt chanh bỏ vỏ”].” On that dais the years of communist promises and assurances revealed themselves for the propaganda they were. Victory Day celebrated no victory for the NLF, or for the South."
When the truth comes out, it is that Le Duan and his lieutenants won, the Vietnamese people lost!
Calvin Thai
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From: Ngo Thanh Nhan <nhan@temple.edu>
Date: Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 6:46 AM
To: "phuxuan700@gmail.com" <phuxuan700@gmail.com>, VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear Anh Calvin,
Oh, I've read your reply this morning.
The interview of Chị Mai gives us a lot to think, esp. from the points
of views of the anti-war movement in the US. Did they "win"?
Thanks,
Nhan
Temple University
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From: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 9:25 AM
To: Ngo Thanh Nhan <nhan@temple.edu>, phuxuan700@gmail.com, VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
They "won" both in Vietnam, where the communists assumed power, but in the US, where the communists managed to pervert the country into what we see now. Whether they have won the final victory in the US remains to be seen.
"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who
reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he
whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." - Thomas Jefferson
Paul Schmehl (pschmehl@tx.rr.com)
Independent Researcher
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From: Dien Nguyen <nguyendien519@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 6:41 PM
To: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
>>in the US, where the communists managed to pervert the country into what we see now.
Hello Paul,
I am sorry I don't understand. Do you mean "the communists" are to blame for Trump, the NRA, white supremacists, etc. in the US now? And also which communists: Vietnamese? American? international?
Nguyễn Điền
Independent Researcher
Canberra
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From: Ben Quick <bnquick74@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 12:05 AM
To: Paul Schmehl <pschmehl@tx.rr.com>
Cc: VSG <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I have a feeling this thread, which so far has been incredibly informative for me is about to spiral out of reasonable discussion into an ideological black hole. As I sit on a stool in a Da Nang coffee shop popular with the young affluent Vietnamese, watching Vespas and BMW sedans try to out maneuver each other on a busy road and twenty-somethings walk down the stairs of a fancy high rise condominium complex across the street, I have a very hard time taking that kind of sentiment seriously, Paul. I really don't want this thread to be closed. Please.