The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2015

56 JULY-AUGUST 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL • Negotiated settlements of continuing conflicts have no intrinsic life of their own. With communist adversaries, such agreements must be backed by strength and the will to use it. When an agreement no longer serves their interest, they will ignore it if it is not enforceable. Since Hanoi’s goal remained unchanged after January 1973, it followed that the Paris Agree- ment could not be successful without our readiness to force compliance or to continue high levels of military support to the GVN. (This does not mean that all agreements with all com- munist states are inherently unworkable—obviously, in areas where there is a confluence of sustained interests, agreements can be reached which communist states will maintain.) Limitations on Our Ability to Influence Events • Clearly, Vietnam demonstrated that the effectiveness of modern military technology is severely limited in uncon- ventional conflicts. Neither massive firepower, nor ingenious gimmickry, can insure [ sic ] success. Their selective use, on a piecemeal basis, adds to their ineffectiveness. • In addition, if we ever again undertake a direct military involvement in such a conflict, we should guard against shifting from a supportive to a primary role, as we did in Vietnam begin- ning in 1965. • Moreover, we should avoid situations such as developed in Vietnam in which the indigenous defending forces became second-class citizens in their own country; as our own military role grew, ARVN’s [the South Vietnamese Army’s] declined, a situation which was not reversed until we began Vietnamization and the withdrawal of our forces. • We should recognize that large expeditionary forces, by their very nature, will not adapt to the conditions of an uncon- ventional conflict. Instead, the tendency will be to transform an unconventional war to a conventional one, while fundamental political aspects of the conflict are progressively ignored. • We should admit our own imperfect understanding of the political dynamics of foreign (particularly Asian) societ- ies. In Vietnam we persistently looked at political conditions, and made our judgments from what was basically a Western perspective. • Since our ability to understand the politics of countries such as Vietnam is limited, it follows that our attempts to manipulate political forces may well fail. We should not assume, as we did in 1963, that we know what is best for a country and proceed, as in the overthrow of [President Ngo Dinh] Diem, to precipitate a situation with unknown and possibly disastrous consequences. Nor should we take the opposite tack—allying ourselves too rigidly with a leadership whose diminishing mandate we may not be able to perceive. International Aspects of Bilateral Commitments • We should more realistically assess our ability to maintain international support for difficult undertakings, recognizing at the outset that we may be operating alone, that other govern- ments—because of limited resources, differing political percep- tions or divergent national interests—will not support our efforts in any meaningful way. Through strenuous efforts we elicited some tangible support from a few of our friends for our policies in Vietnam but this was not sustained. • Moreover, we should bear in mind the possibility of under- takings such as Vietnam actively damaging our relations with other allies. • We should not expect, in the event of another situation like Vietnam, that the major communist powers will help pull our chestnuts out of the fire. At best, our bilateral relationships with the PRC [Peoples Republic of China] and the Soviet Union may encourage a passive response from them—whether things are going well for us (as in 1972), or badly (as in 1975). • We should expect that the major communist powers will support local subversion and wars of liberation, particularly if they perceive no adverse effect on their relations with us or on their direct interests. The Management of Commitments • If we were ever to become involved again in an effort of the magnitude of Vietnam, we could make things somewhat easier for ourselves by improving the ways we attempt to manage our involvement. It can be argued that, in addition to having very little control over what South Vietnam did, we were never in firm control of our own resources, whether military, economic or political. A diffusion of responsibility and control compounded our difficulties. • We should guard against biased intelligence and analysis to support policy goals, as happened in Vietnam particularly dur- ing the height of our involvement. Related to this, we should be wary of “advocacy reporting” from our missions and within the bureaucracy at home. A particularly virulent form of “localitis” affected many capable and dedicated individuals working in or on Vietnam. They were intensely committed to a worthy goal, but personal commitment sometimes blurred judgment. • We should devise more effective ways of bridging the gap between the expert level and the decision-making level of the government. Cogent judgment was often obscured as informa-