The Foreign Service Journal, September 2021

20 SEPTEMBER 2021 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL steppingstone for China’s thrust into Southeast Asia.” The Pentagon Papers show that McNamara knew as early as 1967 that the war was unwinnable, but he didn’t say this publicly. When confronted with this fact later, McNamara at first said that he had kept quiet out of respect for the president he served, Lyndon Johnson. But even after becoming president of the World Bank and Nixon was in the White House, McNamara stayed quiet, attended Georgetown dinner parties and enjoyed his summers on Martha’s Vineyard while Americans and Viet- namese continued to fight and die. His interviews in the 2003 film “Fog of War” suggest that McNamara went to his grave tormented by the choices he had made. Standing Alone Under Secretary of State George Ball took a different path. He urged President John F. Kennedy to remember France’s defeat at Dien Bien Phu and not to intervene in Vietnam. Then, under Presi- dent Johnson, he argued against the 1964-1965 bombing of North Vietnam. In February 1965, he wrote a detailed, forceful memorandum (reprinted in The Pentagon Papers ) to the president analyzing the situation in South Vietnam. He predicted (correctly) that escalating the conflict would be disastrous for the United States. As a “remonstrating official,” Ball stood alone. Other senior advisers told the president what he wanted to hear. Johnson had concluded, as Stanley Karnow quotes him in Vietnam: A History (Viking Press, 1983): “Losing the Great Society was a terrible thought, but not so terrible as the thought of being responsible for America’s losing a war to the Commu- nists.” The other advisers fell in line and agreed with the president that he should double down in Vietnam. Bombing commenced on March 2, 1965. America paid a heavy price for that choice. President Johnson adhered to a domino theory that would not have withstood the scrutiny of people who understood Asia’s history. Their voices were not heard because in the zeal to rid the government of communists, McCarthy and his allies drove out people whose expertise in Asia was badly needed. During President Bill Clinton’s administration, as the United States nor- malized relations with Vietnam, I saw firsthand how the president provided opportunities for debate and the airing of different views on important national security matters. I also saw firsthand during Barack Obama’s administration that the president sought out inde- pendent views. Presidents Clinton and (HarperCollins, 1978) what happened to the United States during the next decade, as the Cold War became Americans’ focus and McCarthyism had a significant influence on our political culture. White showed how decimating the team of For- eign Service Asia experts— people who would have known about the history of enmity between Vietnam and China—left the State Department unprepared for the coming conflict in Southeast Asia, and contributed directly to the debacle of our engagement in the Viet- namWar. Many of those whose knowledge would have caused them to remonstrate had been removed from office. In the 1960s and 1970s, as the war in Vietnam dragged on, the United States experienced the disaster that can occur when officials do not know enough to remonstrate or, worse, choose not to do so. In 1995 Robert McNamara admit- ted that, as U.S. secretary of defense, he had known we were losing the war in Vietnam but did not say so. He publicly expressed his shame over the war’s conduct in In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (Vintage Books, 1996) and what many referred to as his “mea culpa” tour. In a meeting with his former neme- sis, General Vo Nguyen Giap, McNamara acknowledged that the United States “gave short shrift to Vietnam’s strong nationalist tradition and aspirations,” Chester L. Cooper reported in the June 29, 1997, Washington Post . McNamara added that Americans “were held in thrall by the Domino Theory and our conviction that Vietnam was a potential This carving in Hanoi’s 1,000-year-old Temple of Literature reads: “Virtue and talent are the soul of the state.” DAVIDSHEAR