Vietnam: The Retrospect: What Are the Lessons of Vietnam?

David Fromkin and James Chace

From Foreign Affairs, Spring 1985

Summary:  When the helicopter rose in flight from the roof of the doomed U.S. embassy in Saigon a decade ago, Americans hoped they had finally left Vietnam behind them. For years afterward there was a widespread effort in the United States to put the Indochina experience out of mind. In the late 1970s, Mike Mansfield, the professor of Far Eastern studies who became U.S. Senate majority leader and then ambassador to Japan, told an English radio audience:

David Fromkin, an international lawyer, is the author of The Independence of Nations and The Question of Government. James Chace is an editor of The New York Times Book Review. He was managing editor of Foreign Affairs from 1970 to 1983, and is the author of Endless War and Solvency, among other works.

When the helicopter rose in flight from the roof of the doomed U.S. embassy in Saigon a decade ago, Americans hoped they had finally left Vietnam behind them. For years afterward there was a widespread effort in the United States to put the Indochina experience out of mind. In the late 1970s, Mike Mansfield, the professor of Far Eastern studies who became U.S. Senate majority leader and then ambassador to Japan, told an English radio audience:

It seems to me the American people want to forget Vietnam and not even remember that it happened. But the cost was 55,000 dead, 303,000 wounded, $150 billion. With some of us it will never be forgotten because it was one of the most tragic, if not the most tragic, episodes in American history. It was unnecessary, uncalled for, it wasn?t tied to our security or a vital interest. It was just a misadventure in a part of the world which we should have kept our nose out of.

Today the desire to forget Vietnam seems to have given way to a desire to learn about it?specifically to learn how to avoid getting involved in such disastrous misadventures again. The last decade has witnessed not merely a resurgence of interest in America?s Indochina experience as such but also in the possible parallels that can be drawn to it in Central America, the Middle East and elsewhere. Increasingly one hears appeals to the lessons of Indochina?generally if inaccurately referred to as the lessons of Vietnam?in support of or in opposition to current foreign policy initiatives around the world. Thus, Senator Gary Hart, when he charged in the 1984 presidential primary campaign that former Vice President Mondale misunderstood the crisis in Central America, claimed that "At the heart of the difference is, perhaps, the lesson of Vietnam . . . Mr. Mondale . . . has not learned the lesson of Vietnam." In reply, Mondale said that "Hart has learned the wrong lesson from Vietnam."

There are certain undisputed practical lessons that can be drawn from the long history of American involvement in Indochina?s affairs, but most of these are of an operational character?those relating to the techniques and technologies of warfare?and as such lie outside the realm of this article. We propose to direct our attention solely to the question of whether or not the Indochina experience can provide lessons about where and in what circumstances America ought to intervene militarily in foreign conflicts.

Can one draw lessons?in this broad policy sense?from history? Some professional historians say no, and even those who say yes caution that it must be done with the utmost care. Politicians often misuse historical analogies; policymakers frequently misinterpret history and see parallels to current situations in past situations that were fundamentally different. Yet history often does offer guidance: thus, British delegates to the Versailles Conference in 1919 profited from a study prepared for them of the peace negotiations at the Congress of Vienna a century earlier.

It also serves as a warning, for history affords insights neglected at one?s peril. American isolationists in the 1920s and 1930s failed to perceive that the historical circumstance that had made American isolation possible?the invincibility of the British navies guarding our ocean frontiers?had come to an end in 1916-17 during the German submarine campaign. Had members of the isolationist America First Committee understood why this country could not stay out of the First World War, they would have understood why it should not and would not stay out of the second.

The future is unpredictable, and even history is uncertain and subject to revision by successive generations of historians. Yet to the extent that we now agree as to what should have been done at junctures in the past?as we are in general agreement that England and France ought not to have appeased Hitler at Munich, that the lesson of Munich is the need to oppose totalitarian dictators?history provides us with a common point of departure for public discourse about policy issues facing us today. It gives us an area of agreement about the past from which to build toward agreement about the present and future.

The underlying condition for using historical episodes as a unifying metaphor enabling us to better understand new situations is that a consensus about the past must exist. Otherwise, illuminating though the past may be for each individual in arriving at a private understanding of events, it does not help in persuading others so as to arrive at a common understanding.

There is no question about what the central lesson of Munich is, only about whether or not it applies in a given situation. With increasing frequency we are told what Vietnam ought to have taught us about ourselves, about our allies and adversaries, and about the proper means and ends of American foreign policy. The assumption seems to be that Americans share a common understanding of what happened in Indochina and what we ought or ought not to have done there. But is that assumption true?

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