Theory Meets Practice: The Case of the Vietnam War

Klinger, Janeen M.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_5

Janeen M. Klinger²

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Abstract

This chapter uses the Vietnam War as a case study to show the problematic nature of applying deterrence, coercion and modernization theory to the war. The chapter provides a historical narrative that, among other things, captures the evolution of U.S. policy from President Eisenhower to the Kennedy and Johnsons administrations. The chapter discusses U.S. strategy in terms of two aspects of the war: the conventional military one conducive for applying deterrence and coercion, and the pacification program more conducive for using some aspects of modernization theory. The chapter also describes the role of various theorists turned policy entrepreneurs like Walt Rostow from MIT and Thomas Schelling from RAND.

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Notes

1.
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2.
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3.
Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (New York: Viking, 2002), 56.
4.
Benjamin T. Harrison and Christopher L. Mosher, “John McNaughton and Vietnam the Early Years as Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1964–1965,” History 92 (2007): 498.
5.
Benjamin T. Harrison and Christopher L. Mosher, “The Secret Diary of McNamara’s Dove: The Long-Lost Story of John T. McNaughton’s Opposition to the Vietnam War,” Diplomatic History 35 (June 2011): 532, 507, 521–522.
6.
John Prados, Keepers of the Keys: A History of the National Security Council from Truman to Bush (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc. 1991), 211.
7.
Quoted in Chester L. Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1970), 167.
8.
Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1967), 501. Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 262. Dean Rusk later refuted the idea of withdrawal after the 1964 election because it cynically suggested that American troops were being committed for domestic political purposes—something he believed no president would do. Mann, 283.
9.
Brian VanDeMark, Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 8. Mann, 254, 228.
10.
Gardner, 65.
11.
Mann, 283. Arthur M. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, Co. 1965), 549.
12.
Hilsman, 130.
13.
Hilsman, 146.
14.
Schlesinger, 332.
15.
Schlesinger, 547. Gardner, 47.
16.
David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (Cambridge, MA: the Belkap Press, 2000), 312–313.
17.
Andrew Brittle, “PROVEN, Westmoreland and the Historian,” Journal of Military History 72 (October 2008): 1263–1264. McAllister, 95–97. McAllister also distinguishes a third revisionist school of thought that sees Westmoreland’s tactics as necessary because the presence of North Vietnamese main force units left him no choice.
18.
Dale Andrade and James H. Whilbanks, “Cords/Phoenix: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Vietnam and for the Future,” Military Review (October 2006) Supplemental Special Edition: 80.
19.
Cooper, 40, 49.
20.
George A. Carver, Jr. “The Real Revolution in South Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs 43 (April 1965): 392. Bert Cooper, John Killigrew and Norman LaCharité, Case Studies in Revolutionary Warfare, 1941–1954 (Washington, D.C.: Special Operations Research Office, American University, 1964), 8.
21.
Cooper, 56.
22.
Figures on the amount of American aid to France vary. Those supplied by Chester Cooper, 62, are slightly higher than those provided by Roger Hilsman, 100.
23.
Mann, 49.
24.
Quoted in David L. Anderson, Trapped by Success: The Eisenhower Administration and Vietnam, 1953–1961 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 29.
25.
Prados, 227. Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 255.
26.
Anderson, 67, 45, 53.
27.
Anderson, 32, 70.
28.
William Bundy, “The Path to Vietnam: Ten Decisions,” Orbis 11 (Fall 1967): 650. Cooper, 112–113.
29.
Cooper, 146.
30.
James M. Carter, Inventing Vietnam: the United States and State Building, 1954–1968 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 64, 88. Anderson, 75,140–141. Christopher T. Fisher, “Nation-Building and the Vietnam War: A Historiography,” Pacific Historical Review 74 (August 2005): 448.
31.
Anderson, xiii. Later, when Lyndon Johnson consulted with Eisenhower about the bombing campaign, Eisenhower was willing to express more hawkish views than he did when he was president. See VanDeMark, 78.
32.
Anderson, 207–208.
33.
See: Seymour J. Deitchman, The Best-Laid Schemes: A Tale of Social Research and Bureaucracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1976), 4.
34.
Schlesinger, 586.
35.
David Milne, America’s Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008), 56.
36.
Schlesinger, 591, 593.
37.
William Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964), 62.
38.
Schlesinger, 510–511.
39.
Hilsman, 363.
40.
Kaufmann, 61, 62,
41.
Hilsman, 78.
42.
John Lodewijks, “Rostow, Developing Economies and National Security Policy,” in Economics and National Security: A History of Their Interaction, ed. Craufurd D. Goodwin (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 297.
43.
Seymour J. Deitchman, Limited War and American Defense Policy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969).
44.
Hilsman, 415.
45.
The House of Representatives, subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Report no. 4 “Behavioral Sciences and the National Security,” with part ix of the hearings on winning the cold war (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, December 1965), 72.
46.
Deitchman, The Best Laid Schemes, 65. For an example of SORO research see: Bert Cooper, et al., Case Studies in Insurgency and Revolutionary Warfare, 1941–1954.
47.
Deitchman, The Best Laid Schemes, 67.
48.
This was reported to the House Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, 30. Quoted in Report of the House Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, 5r.
49.
George Parker, “Knowing the Enemy: A Reporter at Large,” The New Yorker 82 (December 18, 2006): 60–69. Downloaded on August 19, 2017 from, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/12/18/knowing-the-enemy
50.
Schlesinger, 590. Hilsman, 47.
51.
Mai Elliott, RAND in Southeast Asia: A History of the Vietnam War Era (Santa Monica, CA: the RAND Corporation, 2010), 14. Elliott also notes that because RAND personnel joined the Defense Department, they were able to serve RAND’s own interest to broaden its contacts beyond the Air Force.
52.
Preston, 7, 47. Prados, 99.
53.
Anderson, 60–61, 106.
54.
Carter, 54.
55.
Stephen T. Hosmer, Sibyelle O. Crane, “Counter-Insurgency: A Symposium, April 16–20, 1962” RAND Corporation, R-412-1. Downloaded on June 5, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2006/R-412-1
56.
Wallace J. Thies, When Governments Collide: Coercion and Diplomacy in the Vietnam Conflict, 1964–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 232–233.
57.
Thies, 233. See also, Anderson, 176.
58.
Gardner, 54.
59.
Mann, 274. Cooper, 115–117. For a more sympathetic appraisal of Diem’s leadership, see Philip E. Catton, “Counter-Insurgency and Nation-Building: The Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961–1963,” The International History Review 21 (December 1999): 918–940. RAND’s analyst, Charles Wolf Jr. also had a positive view of Diem. See Elliott, 7–8.
60.
Ellsberg, 192.
61.
Frank Leith Jones, Blowtorch: Robert Komer, Vietnam and American Cold War Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2013), 139.
62.
Preston, 170–171. Robert McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1995), 170.
63.
Walt Rostow, “Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas,” in The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him, ed. T.N. Greene (New York: Fredrick Praeger, 1962), 59.
64.
The Vietnam Hearings with an introduction by J. William Fulbright, Chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations (New York: Random House, 1966) 180.
65.
Joseph J. Zasloff, “The Role of North Vietnam in the Southern Insurgency,” RAND Research memorandum, RM 4140 July 1964. Downloaded on June 8, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memorandum/2008/RM4140.
66.
Hilsman, 428.
67.
Elliott, 49, vi, vii. Unless otherwise noted, analysis of the RAND motivation and morale studies is drawn from Mai Elliott’s history of RAND. Elliott also notes that RAND’s work on Vietnam was closely linked to its institutional interest in expanding its influence by broadening its client base beyond the Air Force.
68.
J.C. Donnell, Guy J. Pauker, and Joseph Zasloff, “Viet Cong Motivation and Morale, 1964: A Preliminary Report,” RAND, March 1965, RM-4507/3 ISA. Downloaded on June 12, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memorandum/2006/RM4507.3
69.
Elliott, 46.
70.
Ellsberg, 255–256.
71.
Elliott, 64.
72.
Elliott, 89–93. Elliott also suggests that there were rumors that Gouré was chosen to continue the motivation and morale studies because he would get the results the Air Force wanted, 99.
73.
Leon Gouré, A.J. Russo and D. Scott, “Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study, June–December 1965,” RAND Memorandum RM-491102 ISA/ARPA February 1966. Downloaded on June 14, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memorandum/2006/RM4911-2
74.
Elliott, 126, 157.
75.
Deitchman, The Best Laid Schemes, 235–237, 340–341.
76.
Elliott, 164,169, 172.
77.
Quoted in Ekbladh, 202.
78.
Cooper, 199.
79.
Elliott, viii.
80.
Daniel Ellsberg, “Some Lessons From Failure in Vietnam,” RAND Corporation, July 1969. Downloaded on June 17, 2017 from www.rand.org/pubs/papers/p.4036.html
81.
Stephen Peter Rosen, “Vietnam and the American Theory of Limited War,” International Security (Fall 1982): 83–113.
82.
Prados, 161.
83.
Deitchman, Best Laid Schemes, 28, 46.
84.
See for example, William Kaufmann, “The Requirements of Deterrence,” in Military Policy and National Security, ed. William Kaufmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 132.
85.
Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), vii, 169.
86.
Thomas Schelling, “Nuclear Strategy in Europe,” World Politics 14 (April 1962): 427.
87.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 144–145.
88.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, vii.
89.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 151.
90.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 83.
91.
Harrison and Mosher, “John T. McNaughton and Vietnam: The Early Years as Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1964–1965,” 505.
92.
Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), 126.
93.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 166.
94.
Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 333. Prados. 214.
95.
Robert A. Pape Jr., “Coercive Air Power in the Vietnam War,” International Security 15 (Fall 1990): 114.
96.
Gardner, 162.
97.
Rosen, 93.
98.
Milne, 9. Although both Hilsman, 50 and Schlesinger 445, claimed the motive for moving Rostow was to “re-vitalize” the State Department.
99.
Schlesinger, 337. Gardner, 57.
100.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 48. Thies, 55.
101.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 48.
102.
Mann, 555. Gardner, 42–43. For a current military view that argues the case of civilian interference, see H.R. McMaster, Dereliction of duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Lies that Led to Vietnam (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997). Robert Pape dismisses charges of civilian constraints as a myth. Pape, 121.
103.
Preston, 147.
104.
Gardner, 118.
105.
Thies, 75.
106.
For a discussion drawing on historical data that suggest that policy-makers may have been on firm ground in making this assumption, see John E. Mueller, “The Search for the ‘Breaking Point’ in Vietnam: The Statistics of a Deadly Quarrel,” International Studies Quarterly 24 (December 1980): 497–519.
107.
Pape, 104, 115.
108.
Rosen, 88.
109.
Elliott, 67.
110.
Cooper, 263.
111.
Prados, 219.
112.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 85. Thies, 218–219.
113.
Thies, 12–13, 39.
114.
Cooper, 228.
115.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 84.
116.
Cooper, 239.
117.
So claimed an advisor to the NLF in 1997. Preston, 172.
118.
Cooper, 261.
119.
Quoted in Thies, 129.
120.
Robert H. Johnson, “Escalation Then and Now,” Foreign Policy 60 (1985): 137–138, 134, 143.
121.
Pape, 123–124.
122.
Prados, 205. William Bundy later claimed the outcome of the games was dismissed because they were run by theorists and not policy-makers. Kucklick, 186.
123.
Elliott, 69.
124.
Johnson, 141. Milne, America’s Rasputin, 32.
125.
Prados, 241.
126.
Mann, 308. Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 52. Schelling Arms and Influence, 172.
127.
Hilsman, 139.
128.
Thies, 39, 85. Bernard Fall drew a different conclusion than Seaborne, and suggested that the North Vietnamese did fear US bombing because it posed a danger of Chinese intervention and occupation. See Bernard Fall, “The Master of the Red Jab,” The Saturday Evening Post (November 24, 1962): 21.
129.
Milne, America’s Rasputin, 138.
130.
Mann, 357.
131.
Cooper, 5. Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 60.
132.
Schelling, Arms and Influence, 174.
133.
Hilsman, 422–423. Richard Pfeffer, ed., No More Vietnams? The War and the Future of American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row Publishers 1968), 4. Anderson, 186.
134.
Hilsman, 424.
135.
So argues Richard Schultz, “Coercive Force and Military Strategy: Deterrence Logic and the Cost-Benefit Model of Counter-insurgency Warfare,” Western Political Quarterly 32 (December 1979), 445–446.
136.
Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf, Jr., Rebellion and Authority: An Analytical Essay on Insurgent Conflicts (Chicago: Markham Publishing Company, 1970), 30, 150, 19.
137.
Leites and Wolf, 155, 149.
138.
Leites and Wolf, 155.
139.
Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 132.
140.
Ron Robin, The Making of the Cold War Enemy: Culture and Politics in the Military Industrial Complex (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 193–195.
141.
Hilsman, 43.
142.
Deitchman, Best Laid Schemes, 296, 115–116.
143.
Cooper, 202. Mueller, 504.
144.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 68.
145.
Alexander L. George, David K. Hall and William E. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy: Laos, Cuba, Vietnam (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1971), xi. Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 79. Elliott, 68.
146.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 290.
147.
Kalevi Holsti, The State, War and the State of War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 84–87.
148.
Deitchman, Limited War and American Defense Policy, 40.
149.
Milne, America’s Rasputin, 79 and footnote on 264.
150.
Schlesinger, 521–522.
151.
Michael E. Latham, The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and US Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011) 137–138.
152.
Kimber Charles Pearce, Rostow, Kennedy and the Rhetoric of Foreign Aid (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001), 118. Schlesinger, 588.
153.
Pfeffer, 29. Johnathan Nashel, “The Road to Vietnam: Modernization Theory in Fact and Fiction,” in Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–1966, ed. Christian G. Appy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 151–152. Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘Nation-Building’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 167. Catton, 935.
154.
Lucian W. Pye, Guerrilla Communism in Malaya: Its Social and Political Meaning (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 343–345. Hilsman, “Internal War: The New Communist Tactic,” 31. The assumption that modernization can eliminate political instability and extremist violence still permeates US foreign policy as is evident by President Bush’s response to the September 11 attacks. See Lael Brainard, “The Millennium Challenge Account and Foreign Assistance: Transformation or More Confusion?” Downloaded on July 6, 2016 from http://www.brookings.edu/research/articles/2003/03/spring-development=brainard
155.
Jefferson P. Marquis, “The Other Warriors: American Social Science and Nation Building in Vietnam,” Diplomatic History 24 (Winter 2000), passim.
156.
Gardner, xii, 52.
157.
Albert P. Williams, Jr. “South Vietnam’s Development in a Post War Era: A Commentary on the Thuc-Lilienthal Report,” Asian Survey 11 (April 1971): 353.
158.
Gilbert F. White, “Vietnam: The Fourth Course,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (December 20, 1964), 9.
159.
Douglas C. Dacy, Foreign Aid, War and Economic Development: South Vietnam, 1955–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 3.
160.
Carter, 94.
161.
Milton C. Taylor, “South Viet-Nam: Lavish Aid, Limited Progress,” Pacific Affairs 34 (Autumn 1961): 246. Dacy, preface. Carter, 89.
162.
Taylor, 251. Carter, 92.
163.
Dacy, 28. Taylor, 243, 256, 253.
164.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 129–130.
165.
Dacy, 237.
166.
Dacy, 7. Cooper, 157–158. Catton, 921. Joseph J. Zasloff, “Rural Development in South Vietnam: The Agroville Program,” Pacific Affairs 35 (Winter 1962–1963): 331, 334, 338. Zasloff based his assessment of the agrovilles on investigations in 1960 as part of a project organized by the Michigan State University Group.
167.
Catton, 938–939.
168.
Milne, America’s Rasputin, 104.
169.
John C. Donnell and Gerald C. Hickey, “The Vietnamese ‘Strategic Hamlets’: a Preliminary Report,” RAND Corporation, RM-3208 September 1962. Downloaded on June 6, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_memorandum/2006/RM-3208 Gerald C. Hickey, Window on a War: An Anthropologist in the Vietnam Conflict (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2002), 93.
170.
Cooper, 227. Hilsman, 440–441, 464.
171.
McAllister, “Who Lost Vietnam? Soldiers, Civilians and U.S. Military Strategy,” 111.
172.
Pfeffer, 205. Final Report on Hamlet Evaluation Study, May 1, 1968. Downloaded on June 1, 2017 from www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/02/839821
173.
Jones, 164. Hickey, 9, 209, 151, 6. Holsti, 87–89. For an elaboration of the extent of divisions within Vietnamese society, see Gerald C. Hickey, “Accommodation in South Vietnam: The Key to Socio-political Solidarity,” RAND. October, 1967. Downloaded on June 28, 2017 from www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2008/p3707.pdf
174.
Dacy, 7, 112.
175.
Jones, 102.
176.
Gardner, 48. Hickey, Window on a War, 7, 69.
177.
Cooper, 160. Carter, 113. Mann, 197.
178.
Stanley Karnow, “The Edge of Chaos,” The Saturday Evening Post (September 23, 1963): passim. Hilsman, 471, 475.
179.
Quoted in Preston, 120.
180.
Hilsman, 502. This mixed message on conditions in Vietnam was mirrored in other reports as well. In January 1963, the CIA characterized the Viet Cong as increasing the effectiveness of its forces, while General Harkins and Ambassador Nolting reported them as weakening. Mann, 276.
181.
Fall, 19–21.
182.
Cooper, 216–217.
183.
Preston, 123. Hilsman, 486–487.
184.
Hickey, Window on a War, 104.
185.
McNamara, 78. Gardner, 114. Warner, 837.
186.
Thies, 26.
187.
Warner, 838.
188.
Logevall, 293.
189.
Cooper, 253.
190.
W.W. Rostow, “The Case for the Vietnam War,” Parameters (Winter 1996–1997): 39–50. Downloaded on February 11, 2013, from www.Carlisle.army.mil/USAWC/parameters/articles/96 winter/rostow
191.
Thies, 62.
192.
Harrison and Mosher, “The Secret Diary of McNamara’s Dove: the Long Lost Story of John T. McNaughton’s Opposition to the Vietnam War,” 520–521.
193.
Gardner, 164.
194.
James McAllister, “‘A Fiasco of Nobel Proportions’: the Johnson Administration and the South Vietnamese Elections of 1967,” Pacific Historical Review 73 (November 2004): 634.
195.
Van Der Mark, 150.
196.
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197.
Quoted in Carter, 232.
198.
Gardner, 42. Kai Bird, The Color of Truth, McGeorge Bundy and William Bundy, Brothers in Arms: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 146. Pfeffer, 133. Walter A. McDougall, “Commentary: The Cold War Excursion of Science,” Diplomatic History 24 (Winter 2000): 124.
199.
Elliott, 26–27. Johnson, 145.
200.
Kaplan, 335.
201.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 234, 259.
202.
Thies, 282.
203.
Engerman, Know Your Enemy, 236.
204.
Prados, 127. Van Der Mark, 190.
205.
Cooper, 228–229. Hilsman’s resignation is disputed, and Dean Rusk said he fired him because LBJ blamed him for the coup against Diem.
206.
Preston, 397.
207.
Look Magazine, “What Should We Do Now? Five Experts Give Their Answers,” (August 9, 1966): 24–31.
208.
Prados, 6–7.
209.
Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, 184. Milne, America’s Rasputin, 166.
210.
Cooper, 415.

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Janeen M. Klinger

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Klinger, J.M. (2019). Theory Meets Practice: The Case of the Vietnam War. In: Social Science and National Security Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11251-6_5
Published: 08 February 2019
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