tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/robert-mcnamara-15288/articlesRobert McNamara – The Conversation2018-04-17T10:43:09Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/951572018-04-17T10:43:09Z2018-04-17T10:43:09ZSyria bombing has troubling echoes of Vietnam’s Operation Rolling Thunder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/215165/original/file-20180417-163971-1uxi6c3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A B-52 releasing a 'bomb train' over targets in Vietnam in 1967.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/vietnam-war-b52-stratofortress-from-third-238058197?src=ksIy5sN7M_Qhqea6NlGapw-1-21">Shutterstock/EverettHistorical</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The latest bombing campaign in Syria bears a remarkable and worrying resemblance to one of history’s most infamous and flawed military interventions. <a href="https://thevietnamwar.info/operation-rolling-thunder/">Operation Rolling Thunder</a> was the aerial assault on North Vietnam which lasted from 1965 to 1968. It was a massive bombardment, hugely destructive and, ultimately, ineffectual. </p>
<p>Because for all the staggering tonnage of bombs dropped (643,000 tons), <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/opinion/vietcong-generals-atrocities.html">the ruthless communist regime</a> in North Vietnam – careless of the lives of its people and secure in its support from the USSR and China – was neither deterred nor materially prevented from prosecuting its war against America’s doomed client state in South Vietnam.</p>
<p>One of the reasons for the aerial campaign’s failure was that it was planned around a wholly flawed strategy, based upon an utter miscalculation of how the targeted regime would respond to the bombing. That situation now appears to be repeating itself in Syria.</p>
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<span class="caption">F-8 aircraft release bombs on North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam in June, 1972.</span>
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<h2>‘Bomb them back into the stone age’</h2>
<p>It is often assumed that the US pursued an unrestricted bombing campaign against North Vietnam, a view captured most graphically in General Curtis LeMay’s often quoted threat to “<a href="https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/curtis-lemay">bomb them back into the stone age</a>”. It did not. The policy underpinning the bombing campaign was devised by US Secretary of Defence <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?pagewanted=all">Robert McNamara</a> and President Lyndon Baines Johnson – and it was based on “graduated escalation”. </p>
<p>North Vietnam would be encouraged to enter negotiations by a decrease in the intensity and frequency of air raids and punished for any aggressive action by a commensurate increase. It was a policy that, 30 years later, MacNamara himself would describe as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/us/07mcnamara.html?pagewanted=all">wrong, terribly wrong</a>”. </p>
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<p>In Hanoi, the waxing and waning of the bombing was perceived not as strength but as weakness, much as the periodic flinging of cruise missiles at a restricted number of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43769332">targets in Syria</a>, interspersed with long periods of inaction, probably seems to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2007/07/200852518514154964.html">Bashar al-Assad</a>. </p>
<h2>Fear of a superpower confrontation</h2>
<p>Furthermore, the bombing itself, besides not delivering the intended political dividends, had little material impact on North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war. Johnson, with good reason, was terrified that the conflict might escalate into a superpower confrontation because of the Chinese and Soviet presence on the ground. For much of the war, therefore, no attacks could be made on the harbour at Haiphong, for fear of hitting Soviet ships. So, these could carry on supplying Hanoi with war materials essentially undisturbed.</p>
<p>China was even more of a concern. A deep buffer zone along the North Vietnamese border with China was, for most of the conflict, off-limits to air attack. And, by 1967, some <a href="http://alphahistory.com/vietnamwar/chinese-and-soviet-involvement/">170,000 Chinese troops</a> were serving in North Vietnam. Some were killed in US air raids but fear of causing significant casualties to Chinese forces caused further restrictions to the bombing campaign. </p>
<p>For two months in 1965, US aircraft were not allowed to attack a formidable belt of surface-to-air missile launch sites that were under construction for fear they might <a href="http://archive.vva.org/archive/TheVeteran/2006_01/featureSAM.htm">trigger a Chinese or Soviet military response</a>. These missiles would eventually shoot down the fighter of <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/01/28/john-mccain-prisoner-of-war-a-first-person-account">Senator John McCain</a> and hundreds of other US servicemen.</p>
<h2>What is the strategy?</h2>
<p>The presence of around <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20151108215752/https://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/08/us-mideast-crisis-syria-russia-idUSKCN0SX0H820151108">4,000 Russian troops</a> in Syria today <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-14/russia-slams-cowardly-syria-strike-but-escalation-fears-fade">is exercising a similar influence</a> on the conduct of air strikes. </p>
<p>There are other depressing similarities, too. What, strategically, is the purpose of the air strikes against Syria? As in Vietnam, one intention seems to be to change the behaviour of a brutal and repressive regime. The purpose of air strikes, we have been <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43767156">told by the US president</a> “is to establish a strong deterrent against the production, spread, and use of chemical weapons”. However, given that his last missile strikes against Assad seem to have failed to have any such deterrent effect, why assume this one will? </p>
<p>Another rationale is UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/world/syria-airstrikes-collective-action-a-clear-message-against-use-of-chemical-weapons-says-theresa-may-5137304/">extraordinary claim</a> that “hitting these targets with the force that we have deployed will significantly degrade the Syrian regime’s ability to research, develop and deploy chemical weapons”. </p>
<p>The very notion that a missile strike by four of the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33772093">RAF’s elderly Tornados</a> would have a significant effect on Syria’s capacity to wage chemical warfare is arrant nonsense. And if more chemical weapons attacks do now occur in Syria, where will our policymakers go? Will they escalate the pressure – firing more missiles, expending more blood and treasure as America did in Vietnam, to no purpose? </p>
<p>The concern here is not <a href="https://theconversation.com/syria-could-a-new-foreign-military-intervention-be-illegal-94838">the legality of the air strikes</a> on Syria, a valid question though that is. Rather, now that the decision has been taken to engage in military action, the citizens of the UK, the US and France surely have a right to know why, exactly, it is being done? What is our strategy here and how should we gauge if it has been achieved? </p>
<p>The fear is that world leaders do not have a very convincing answer. Perhaps they have no answer at all. The echoes of Rolling Thunder are there to be heard by those who will listen. Sadly, those in charge so far seem to be deaf to them. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gervase Phillips does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The bombing in Syria is based on a flawed strategy – just as Operation Rolling Thunder was during the Vietnam War. But will world leaders learn the lessons of history?Gervase Phillips, Principal Lecturer in History, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/891192017-12-14T13:29:34Z2017-12-14T13:29:34ZNetflix CIA conspiracy documentary Wormwood: how to find truth while tearing up the rules<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/199223/original/file-20171214-27593-1b34on0.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Frank Olson under the microscope. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.netflix.com/en/only-on-netflix/165779">Netflix</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>First things first: <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80059446">Wormwood</a>, Errol Morris’s new six-part CIA conspiracy series on Netflix, is a documentary. But this did not appear to be the view of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which <a href="http://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/wormwood-errol-morris-oscars-netflix-documentary-1201897145/">deemed</a> it ineligible for the Oscars’ documentary category. </p>
<p>One can see how some might reach this conclusion. This story of Eric Olson and his decades-long investigation into his scientist father Frank’s mysterious death plunge from a New York hotel window in 1953 uses reenactment sequences featuring recognisable, excellent actors like Peter Saarsgard, Molly Parker and Bob Balaban. </p>
<p>It is a story about an alleged government cover-up, CIA involvement and drugging victims with LSD. This is all given stylistic emphasis with clips from Laurence Olivier’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040416/">Hamlet</a> and near kaleidoscopic split-screen interview sequences. As such, the series’ form matches the hallucinatory and byzantine characteristics of its protagonist’s quest for truth. </p>
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<p>Yet the Academy’s objection has little to do with the reenactments – in fact, actors in reenactments <a href="http://variety.com/2017/film/in-contention/errol-morris-wormwood-netflix-oscar-chances-1202593066/">are eligible</a> for acting nominations. Rather the issue is Wormwood’s serialised format. After the <a href="http://oscar.go.com/news/winners/o-j-made-in-america-is-the-2017-oscar-winner-for-documentary-feature">Best Documentary Feature</a> win earlier this year for OJ: Made in America, the Academy <a href="http://deadline.com/2017/04/oscars-academy-new-documentary-eligibility-rules-disqualify-o-j-made-in-america-1202064536/">disallowed</a> multi-series nominations. </p>
<h2>What a documentary is</h2>
<p>Critics have muddied the waters too, <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/12/netflix-wormwood-trailer.html">saying</a> Wormwood is “not quite a documentary and not quite a drama”. But treating Wormwood as docudrama disregards much of the history of documentary. Fictional elements have played a key role in truth telling in the genre, starting with when Louise Lumière <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-era-of-fake-news-honest-documentary-makers-have-never-mattered-more-80595">instructed his</a> workers to exit his factory for a second time as he filmed them in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQeIRLxaM4">celebrated 1895 short</a>. </p>
<p>Even if one disregards <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013427/">Nanook of the North (1922)</a> as documentary for casting Inuit man Allakariallak in the title role, plenty other examples with fictional elements should be included. Ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch involved his participants in the production of their own stories in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051942/">Moi, Un Noir (1954)</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0196879/">La Pyramide Humaine (1960)</a>. He believed the stories people told for themselves revealed far more than interviews or observation. And Sarah Polley’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2366450/">Stories We Tell (2012)</a> emphasises the ways such stories construct a life. </p>
<p>Hoaxes, too, can reveal valuable things in a documentary. <a href="http://beautifultrouble.org/case/the-couple-in-the-cage/">The Couple in the Cage (1992)</a> chronicles the response of audiences to Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gomez-Peña’s tour as “undiscovered Amerindians”, granting insights into deep and continuing colonialism in museums, art galleries and indeed documentary. </p>
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<p>One can see similar playful revelations even in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0443453/">Borat (2006)</a>, where Sasha Baron Cohen’s provocations as the eponymous reporter expose Americans’ response to an Eastern other. This fake newsman yields real information. </p>
<p>And the list of documentaries that challenge a reliance on shaky handheld, fly-on-the-wall footage or authoritative voiceover continues. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1185616/">Waltz with Bashir (2008)</a> uses animation to depict filmmaker Ari Folman’s investigation into his repressed memories. In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2852470/">The Missing Picture (2013)</a>, Rithy Panh uses clay figurines to help recall a childhood of extreme loss in the Cambodian genocide. Joshua Oppenheimer’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375605/">The Act of Killing (2012)</a> (Morris was executive producer) chronicles men producing and performing in a film about the genocide in which they took an active role. </p>
<h2>Morris major</h2>
<p>Wormwood therefore shares a lot with the documentary tradition, in both its experimentations and its preoccupations with an elusive truth. Additionally, it is <a href="http://errolmorris.com">Errol Morris</a> all over. </p>
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<span class="caption">Errol Morris.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Errol_Morris_by_Bridget_Laudien.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Eric Olson stands at the centre of the story, his life and obsessions having been shaped by the loss of his father. A trained clinical psychologist, he has drawn on a collage method as a means of repairing trauma and its distorting effects on the memory. </p>
<p>These fervent pursuits make Eric a familiar figure within the Morris oeuvre – predominantly documentary and typically compelling. The American filmmaker has delivered a range of eccentrics and experts including the residents of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083281/">Vernon Florida (1981)</a>; the execution designer and Holocaust denier in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192335/">Mr Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A Leuchter (1999)</a>, and the delightful photographer Elsa Dorfman in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5952468/">The B-Side (2016)</a>. </p>
<p>More familiar might be Morris’s character studies of US secretaries of defence Robert McNamara (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/">The Fog of War, 2003</a>) and Donald Rumsfeld (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2390962/">The Unknown Known, 2013</a>), both of whom are deemed responsible for leading the nation into unpopular wars. </p>
<p>Wormwood also shares with other Morris productions a preoccupation with piecing together a history. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0896866/">Standard Operating Procedure (2008)</a>, for instance, tells of the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq while addressing how digital photographs can become evidence, both for documentaries and trials. This calls attention to a larger system that decides on what is a crime (and not standard operating procedure). </p>
<p>Similarly, Morris’s break-out film, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096257/">The Thin Blue Line (1989)</a>, reconstructed the shooting death of police officer Robert Woods by scrutinising evidence, reports and testimonies; and using them alongside reenactments. </p>
<p>These experimentations with documentary style highlighted the challenge of recovering the past, though Morris <a href="http://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/recovering_reality.php">emphatically stated</a> that the film was not a disavowal of the truth. There is the fact of an occurrence. Someone was shot. Someone pulled the trigger. Not everything is a matter of perspective. Astoundingly, The Thin Blue Line aided in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/us/26adams.html">exoneration</a> of Randall Adams (below), who had been imprisoned for the crime. </p>
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<p>Wormwood takes up similar pursuits with delirious flourish, resulting in a multi-layered experience. “I was told that your father has had an accident,” says Eric during an interview. “But that was the cover story told by the CIA”. </p>
<p>The reenactments echo and sometimes anticipate details that appear in onscreen reports or congressional testimonies. Each fact offers itself to necessary scrutiny over its origins, how it came about, whether it is corroborated, and generally its status as evidence. </p>
<p>The series encourages the viewer to watch with a critical gaze. But it neither rushes to the kind of reactionary scepticism that leads people to cry “fake news!”, nor trusts unquestioningly anything that appears as an authoritative fact. Wormwood achieves what all the best documentaries do: it challenges the idea that filmmakers can only establish facts through techniques like straight observation or an authoritative voiceover, but without for a moment compromising its commitment to uncover the truth. </p>
<p><em>Wormwood premieres on Netflix on December 15.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89119/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leshu Torchin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Errol Morris’s new series is not a traditional documentary, but it’s doggedly committed to discovering what happened to Frank Olson.Leshu Torchin, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/844032017-09-22T00:37:32Z2017-09-22T00:37:32ZHow an economic theory helped mire the United States in Vietnam<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187128/original/file-20170921-21037-1o4ru9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rostow, front right, visited Vietnam in 1961.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Fred Waters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Questions of how the U.S. got mired in the Vietnam War and whether it was ultimately winnable have <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/vietnam-war-documentary-43367">fascinated historians</a> for half a century – most recently in <a href="http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-vietnam-war/watch/">Ken Burns’ new 18-hour documentary</a>. </p>
<p>A little-remembered aspect of the debacle is the important role played by a prominent economic historian named <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/1591985">Walt Whitman Rostow</a>, whose theories on economic development helped persuade Americans – and two presidents – that the fight in Vietnam was right and that we must prevail.</p>
<p>The Burns documentary, from what I have seen, does not dwell much on economics, my area of expertise. But this was an important part of why Americans were there. </p>
<h2>Rostow’s rise</h2>
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<span class="caption">Rostow, left, looks over a map with Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor in 1961 ahead of their trip to Vietnam to observe and evaluate the political and military situation there and report back to President Kennedy. From his earliest days at the White House, Rostow urged more involvement in the Vietnam.</span>
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<p>Rostow came to prominence in the 1960s after his theories on economic development <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/1591985">caught the eye</a> of the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy, who was campaigning for president. </p>
<p>In 1960, Rostow, then a professor at MIT, published an influential book called “<a href="http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=1107710529">The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto</a>.” The book describes how an economy transitions through five distinct stages of development, from basic (little use of technology, like much of central Africa and South Asia in the mid 20th century) to advanced (characterized by high levels of mass consumption, such as the U.S. or France). </p>
<p>Rostow believed economic development was a universal process that would generally occur in all countries albeit with unique national characteristics – that is, except under communism, where he believed the process would be much inhibited. He described communism as a “cancer” of economic development.</p>
<p>Communism, therefore, had to be forcefully resisted to protect a given country’s economic prosperity and freedoms and, ultimately, American national security and well-being as well. </p>
<p>Rostow’s view that economic development could be used to resist the spread of communism attracted Kennedy, who brought the professor to the White House as an adviser on national security. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187074/original/file-20170921-20964-kyij2p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sen. Gale McGee shows President Johnson, Press Secretary Bill Moyers and Rostow (second from left) the route he took on his recent trip to Vietnam, in 1966.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charles Tasnadi</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout his time in government, Rostow was one of both Kennedy’s and then Johnson’s most hawkish advisers. From the start he urged a prominent American role in Vietnam to thwart the spread of communism, and he remained steadfast even as others, such as Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, increasingly saw the war as unwinnable. </p>
<p>Rostow, who left the White House in 1969 after serving three years as national security adviser, viewed the American loss in Vietnam as a military failure rather than one of political judgment. Even many years after the war, he believed the U.S. could have prevailed in South Vietnam with just a little more determination.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187125/original/file-20170921-20991-1edop26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">President Johnson poses with members of his staff, including Rostow, front right, during his final weeks in office in 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:President_Johnson_posing_with_staff_1969.jpg">LBJ Library/Yoichi R. Okamoto</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Communist Asia prospers</h2>
<p>I met Rostow some years after the war, in the early 1980s, when he was one of my dissertation advisers at the University of Texas at Austin. We’d sometimes discuss the war and his economic theories. </p>
<p>Rostow believed that communism meant unyielding one-party control of key pillars of an economy, which would surely stifle freedom and prosperity. It would also impede transitioning to more advanced stages of development. He argued faster growth would help stave off the threat, which is why he ensured economic aid was <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Foreign-Aid-War-Economic-Development/dp/0521021316">part of the White House strategy</a> to win the war. </p>
<p>When I knew him, the rise of Asia’s communist countries including <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html">China</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphjennings/2017/03/23/east-asias-5-fastest-growing-countries-in-2017/#7a4041805ac6">Vietnam</a> had not yet occurred, and he saw little evidence that would have refuted his beliefs about communism and the “Stages of Growth.” Their economies didn’t begin their sharp rise until China led the way in the mid- to late 1980s. </p>
<p>He assured me, however, that South Vietnam would have prospered much earlier had communism been successfully repelled, just as <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/29/chung.koreas/index.html">South Korea began to flourish</a> after its war. </p>
<p>Perhaps, but the <a href="http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsinglobalisation/2016/09/why-did-china-grow-so-fast.html">recent success</a> of Asia’s communist economies does show that one-party rule can succeed in bringing about prosperity, at least more than we once thought. And as a result, the global economy’s center of gravity is shifting toward Asia. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/187124/original/file-20170921-20964-1ud1sif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rostow died in 2003.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Walt_Rostow_1968.jpg">LBJ Library photo by Yoichi R. Okamoto</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<h2>The consummate hawk</h2>
<p>In the end, however, Walt Rostow was unrepentant. </p>
<p>Rostow was of the generation that boasted its willingness to <a href="https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Inaugural-Address.aspx">“pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship”</a> in the defense of liberty. And he was one of those who really believed it. </p>
<p>This always struck me as peculiar not simply because it is extreme, but because economists are trained to think in terms of optimization or balance, not maximization at the extreme. </p>
<p>His “Stages of Economic Growth” is not widely studied in the United States these days, although some of the terms he coined, such as economic takeoff, are still used to refer to the rapid and catalyzing acceleration of economic growth. American economists today tend to avoid such grandiose socioeconomic theories, preferring instead to appreciate the complexity of forces at work in economic development and pursue more rigorous mathematical methodology. </p>
<p>To me, a significant problem with “Stages” was the subtitle, which <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/216686961_Stages_of_Growth_Revisited">I took issue with in a paper I wrote in 1993</a> on South African economic development. Particularly in light of the success of countries like China and later Vietnam, “A Non-Communist Manifesto” became ideological dead weight, inseparable from the economic theories he forged supported by data. </p>
<p>Despite its weaknesses, “Stages of Growth” had strengths, such as its multidisciplinary nature and embrace of technology, which is <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2015/june/what-drives-long-run-economic-growth">what really drives development</a> in the long run. Unfortunately, the weight of his focus on communism ultimately was too much of a liability and undermined its legitimacy. This is true in politics more broadly as well as health care (<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447380/">my speciality</a>), where ideologically driven special interests polarize and paralyze. </p>
<p>Rostow, who died in 2003, would have been better served without the ideological baggage. And this goes for the rest of us. We all too often fail to come together for pragmatic ends because of ideological conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84403/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Hilsenrath receives funding from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa.
I received funding from the Human Sciences Research Council in South Africa in 1984. It helped fund some research referred to in this piece.</span></em></p>Walt Rostow argued communism was incompatible with economic development and was influential in persuading Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to get more involved in Vietnam.Peter Hilsenrath, Joseph M. Long Chair in Healthcare Management & Professor of Economics, University of the PacificLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/384102015-03-06T11:05:00Z2015-03-06T11:05:00ZThe choice: LBJ’s decision to go to war in Vietnam<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/73951/original/image-20150305-3321-1emdf86.JPEG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">LBJ and his troops in Vietnam</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lyndon_Johnson_greets_American_troops_in_Vietnam_1966_2.JPEG">US Information Agency </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, during the first six months of 1965, Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. </p>
<p>His vice-president, Hubert Humphrey <a href="http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/vietnam/showdoc.php?docid=64">advised</a> him against it. So did his long time mentor and friend, Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. Inside the administration, Undersecretary of State George Ball also made the case for restraint. </p>
<p>The war, they said, would have to be limited in scope. The job, therefore, couldn’t be finished which would mean an open-ended commitment.</p>
<p>Communist China made it clear that it would not permit an invasion of North Vietnam. For fear of provoking an all-out war with the communist superpowers, the Johnson administration would forswear not only an invasion but also any attempts to sponsor an anti-communist insurgency in the North. </p>
<p>The state of South Vietnam was in many ways artificial. Instead of a nation with a unique history, South Vietnam was a political compromise, the creation of the Great Powers (the US, the Soviet Union, China, France and the United Kingdom) at the <a href="http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/7/geneva-conference-of-1954">1954 Geneva Conference</a>. </p>
<p>The flag of Vietnamese nationalism had been captured by the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and his followers in the north: it would not be easily wrested from them. </p>
<p>Indeed, George Ball predicted that the United States would eventually have to put half a million troops in Vietnam, a prediction which Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara vehemently rejected. </p>
<p>During the intense debated that occurred within the foreign policy establishment in the spring and summer of 1965, Johnson himself was frequently the leading dove. </p>
<p>In conversation with Dick Russell, he said, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I don’t think the people of the country know much about Vietnam and I think they care a hell of lot less.” </p>
</blockquote>
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<p>Shortly after, he vented to adviser McGeorge Bundy in a now <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Taking_Charge.html?id=soYmluPdF5cC">familiar</a> monologue: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I don’t think it’s [South Vietnam] worth fighting for and I don’t think that we can get out. It’s just the biggest damned mess that I saw…What the hell is Vietnam worth to me?…What is it worth to this country? …this is…a terrible thing that we’re getting ready to do…” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>But in February 1965 Johnson approved <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/operation-rolling-thunder">Operation Rolling Thunder</a>, the aerial assault on North Vietnam. And in July he agreed to the dispatch of two combat divisions to Vietnam. </p>
<p>Why?</p>
<h2>Containing communism</h2>
<p>In April 1964 US intelligence reported that substantial numbers of regular North Vietnamese troops were infiltrating into South Vietnam via the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/268322/Ho-Chi-Minh-Trail">Ho Chi Minh Trail</a>.</p>
<p>The CIA predicted that if Washington and its allies did not act, South Vietnam would fall within the year. American intelligence and Foreign Service operatives on the ground began requesting new assignments. </p>
<p>Johnson believed that if he permitted South Vietnam to fall through a conventional North Vietnamese invasion, the whole <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/kennan">containment </a>edifice so carefully constructed since World War II to stop the spread of communism (and the influence of the Soviet Union) would crumble. </p>
<p>There were also domestic considerations. </p>
<h2>Negotiating with southerners and living in shadow of JFK</h2>
<p>In the spring and summer of 1965 Johnson was laboring to get through Congress some of the most controversial of his Great Society programs: the Voting Rights Act, federal aid to education, and Medicare, among others. </p>
<p>Both the education bills and Medicare were civil rights measures in their own right, making federal funding to schools and hospitals dependent on desegregation. </p>
<p>Johnson, a southerner himself, worked to persuade congressmen and senators from the former Confederacy to acquiesce in, if not actively support, passage of these measures. </p>
<p>The South was both the most segregationist region of the country and the most hawkish on foreign affairs. Johnson <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674026995">believed</a> he could not ask the region to accept both the demise of Jim Crow and the loss of South Vietnam to the communists. </p>
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<p>Matters were further complicated by the fact that right-wingers led by FBI Director J Edgar <a href="http://todayinclh.com/about/">Hoover</a> and Alabama governor George Wallace were trying to portray the civil rights sit-ins and demonstrations as communist inspired. </p>
<p>Furthermore, Johnson was acutely aware that he was JFK’s successor. </p>
<p>The American commitment to South Vietnam was one of Kennedy’s legacies. Johnson saw no evidence that President Kennedy had intended to deescalate. Johnson had chosen to keep on Kennedy’s foreign policy team – McNamara, Bundy, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. They were unanimous and vehement in their advice to stay the course in Vietnam (although McNamara would very <a href="https://archive.org/details/TheFogOfWarElevenLessonsFromTheLifeOfRobertS.Mcnamara">publicly</a> do a mea culpa years later.) </p>
<h2>The gamble</h2>
<p>LBJ was a nation-builder. The Great Society comprised more than 1,000 pieces of legislation and forever altered the social and political landscape of America. </p>
<p>Johnson was reluctant to intervene in South East Asia but once strategic and politic exigencies seemd to demand it, he began to develop a not unreasonable vision for the future of South Vietnam, one that helped him stay the course. In thinking about Vietnam, the model LBJ <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9050.html">had in mind</a> was South Korea. </p>
<p>Here was a nation born under the direst of circumstances. After a devastating war with the North (1950-1953) and one of the lowest living standards in the world in 1950, South Korea had by 1963 emerged from military rule and in 1965 was already beginning to see real economic gains. So why couldn’t South Vietnam follow this model? </p>
<p>The war was, however, impossible to win as Ball and Humphrey had predicted. </p>
<p>Out of fear of a great power confrontation with the Soviet Union, the United States fought a limited war, with the South China Sea to the east and the open borders of Laos and Cambodia to the west. </p>
<p>The Soviets supplied North Vietnam by sea. The North Vietnam Army and the underground Vietcong were free to move in and out of their sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia. Never during the ten-year-long Second Indochinese war did a government emerge in Saigon worthy of the support of the people of South Vietnam. The regimes that followed in the wake of Ngo Dinh Diem, who was ousted in a <a href="http://www2.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/">coup</a> in 1963, were particularly weak and corrupt.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A message to the White House in 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vietnam_War_protestors_at_the_March_on_the_Pentagon.jpg">LBJ Library</a></span>
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<p>In the end, Johnson understood. </p>
<p>At a post-retirement dinner in New York with McNamara, Bundy, and other former aides in attendance, LBJ accepted full responsibility. Looking at his former defense chief and national security adviser, he <a href="http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/Krim-A/Krim3Addendum.pdf">said,</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You know, I want you fellows to know everything that went wrong in Vietnam that’s being criticized, it was my decision, not yours…” </p>
</blockquote>
<p>What if Johnson had heeded Humphrey’s advice and his own doubts? </p>
<p>South Vietnam would have fallen to the communists much sooner than it did, saving thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lives. </p>
<p>But segregationists and red-baiters might well have blocked the civil rights achievements of the Great Society, prompting racial conflict at home that would have made Detroit seem like a picnic. </p>
<p>There are no easy choices when you are chief executive of a nation which is both a democracy and the most powerful nation on earth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38410/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Randall B Woods does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Fifty years ago Lyndon Johnson made the decision to Americanize the conflict in Vietnam. Why?Randall B Woods, Distinguished Professor, John A. Cooper Professor of History, University of ArkansasLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.