The Viet Nam War

Visiting the War Remnants Museum in Saigon, I can only feel that the Vietnam War was a terrible, terrible mistake. With great bloodshed, it accomplished nothing.

But whose mistake? America's, or Vietnam's? After all, if the Viet Minh and Viet Cong had just laid down their arms, wouldn't the country be in about the same position today--but more prosperous?

It seems to me the crucial factor that tripped the Americans up--that they did not understand, that led them to make wrong decisions--was the Asian issue of face. Even if the Vietnamese believed in the American system, face was against the Americans. And a Vietnamese will die rather than lose face.

The problem was originally with the French. Vietnam might be content to accept French tutelage so long as France had prestige internationally--so long as it had face. But when France was beaten by Germany and Japan, and had to have Vietnam handed back to it by Britain and China, it lost all face in Vietnamese eyes. For Vietnam, a return to French control would then be a terrible loss of face for Vietnam, especially in comparison to the Japanese and Chinese. Intolerable.

The US then had the misfortune and lack of savvy to back the regime France left behind. It was never going to go right with the Vietnamese. Korea was a very different story: there the Americans were clearly the victors over Japan, and so there was some prestige for Korea in accepting American patronage.

Had America understood face, they would probably have, wisely, stood back and let the French fail on their own, and bit their tongue and accepted the new Vietnamese Communist government. They could have won it over--Vietnam and China do not make natural allies.

But that was a mistake Eisenhower made. Not Johnson, not Kennedy, and not Nixon. I suspect when the chips all fall, history will see Eisenhower as a great bungler of American foreign policy.