US-Vietnam Conflict & Unipolar-Multipolar World Social Sciences Essay

US-Vietnam Conflict & Unipolar-Multipolar World 1
US-VIETNAM CONFLICT & UNIPOLAR-MULTIPOLAR WORLD
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1. WHY WAS THE US UNABLE TO WIN THE VIETNAM CONFLICT?
Typically, conflict is central to rise and fall of nations. The US, a world superpower, has been engaged in several key conflicts for different strategic purposes including, yet not limited to, assertion of military/political influence; elimination of potential military, political and/or economic anti-US hegemony; and supporting allies to fend off existing and/or potential threats. In Vietnam, US has a mixed, if not a failed, intervention still lingering in US memory decades on. The US had clearly a superior military power to communist forces in South Vietnam and, for that matter, local forces. A combination of factors contributed, however, to an unprecedented damage not only to US war casualties yet, more critically, to US pride as a superpower. If anything, Vietnam War is, in hindsight, a case in point of a major world power’s failure to invest military, political and diplomatic assets wisely in order to achieve victory in a war easily winnable should a more judicious approach to war had been adopted. For one, justifying war in a remote country has, more or less, been a mainstay in US politics. The justification of US failure to achieve victory in Vietnam War cannot, however, rely only on grounds of remoteness. The US has, in fact, gone to war in numerous instances in remote places – including, most notably, in Europe during WWII – only to change war power balance dramatically in favor of one or more allies. To justify why US was unable to win Vietnam War needs, however, a closer analysis of historical context, geopolitical landscape and forces at play defining course of war. This paper aims, accordingly, to explain if and when possible why US, superior as was militarily and politically, failed to achieve victory in a winnable war by exploring underlying factors, forces at play and geopolitical dynamics prior to, during and after conflict.
US-Vietnam Conflict & Unipolar-Multipolar World 3 The Vietnam War was a materialization of a bipolar world. Developing into a full-scale “hot war,” Vietnam War was a battlespace US and USSR competed over against a background of
global dominance. In justifying war, any war, politicians, military planners, national security advisors and intellectuals mobilize domestic and global public opinion in order to “sell” war and, once initiated or engaged in, sending forces to remote lands becomes a matter of national unity. Similarly, Vietnam War was sold by major intellectuals, including most notably Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, as a matter of authority in US foreign policy and governing institutions in late 1960s and early 1970s (Gawthorpe, 2018). That is, war, including Vietnam War, according to Huntington – and, by extension, a long string of intellectuals – was a means to an ultimate end of global hegemony and dominance. The on-ground realities in Vietnam and beyond proved, however, not only to show a consistent failure of US military, political and, by war’s end, diplomatic intervention yet also a pattern so typical of great power intervention in wars in remote places (Jervis, 2015). The initial political, followed by military and, finally, diplomatic intervention, is, more specifically, a pattern great powers, including France, have adopted – and failed – in addressing emerging military, political and/or ideological risks in proxy, or satellite, countries. Understood in such context, an intuitive question of why US ultimately failed to win Vietnam War arises.
There are, in fact, many rationales offering plausible grounds as to why US failed dramatically in Vietnam. For current purposes, however, one overarching rationale can be accepted: indecision. By “indecision” is meant US failure to identify clearly political and military aims of Vietnam War. For one, ideological competition against USSR was an overarching goal. Then again, specific political and military objectives in Vietnam were lacking, it all present. On ground,
US-Vietnam Conflict & Unipolar-Multipolar World 4 Vietnamese had a very patriotic cause to defend and fight for. Moreover, US chose to intervene in South Vietnam only, a military (and political) choice diluting efforts to win Vietnam War at full scale and in all possible focus and commitment (Quora Contributor, 2014). This characterization of Vietnam War gives way to a wider understanding of Vietnam War in context:
The key to the American and allied defeat in Vietnam, however, lay in the failure of the political aims of the war, rather than the military struggle. From March 1965, when the first American combat forces arrived in Vietnam and the collapse of South Vietnam seemed imminent, the South Vietnamese Government could claim little real legitimacy to rule Vietnam. As former North Vietnamese Army Colonel Bui Tin argued, American military involvement managed to delay the communist defeat of South Vietnam, but the Americans and their allies were never able to establish the national consensus they had hoped to create: ‘Rather they eroded it.’ [emphasis added] (Ekins, 2016)
The lack of political consensus, in Washington and among political leaders in South Vietnam, was, accordingly, a materialization of US indecision about Vietnam War. This is perhaps best captured as follows:
The United States had entered the war with laudable ambitions: to resist communist aggression and subversion, and to secure the independence of an emergent, democratic Republic of South Vietnam.
But frustration ensued as the war dragged on into a stalemate, followed by disillusionment and despair as it became a costly quagmire from which the US could neither withdraw honourably nor achieve a decisive victory[emphasis added]. (Ekins)
US-Vietnam Conflict & Unipolar-Multipolar World 5 The state of US indecision about Vietnam War extends, moreover, to perceptions about mortality and sacrifice in war in US psyche. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC represents, more specifically, argues Sylvester (2018), a site of re-curations refusing effacement of mortality and disrupting associated military myths. That is, Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC serves to memorize pain and loss in war against a state emphasis on US invincibility and superior military power. This reframes, in fact, Vietnam War into an anomaly in a “consistent” history of US military success and raises, more critically, questions about US military might.
In balance, indecision is suggested as an acceptable rationale explaining US failure to win Vietnam War. Failing to muster political and military efforts, US was unable to interpret a clear overarching goal of defeating Communism into successful on-ground military and political actions in Vietnam War.
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REFERENCES
Ekins, A., 2016. Vietnam: A winnable war? In: D. Marston & T. Leahy, eds. War, strategy and
history: Essays in honour of professor Robert O’Neill. Canberra, Australia...