Signalian
PDF THINK TANK: CONSULTANT
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2015
- Messages
- 10,608
- Reaction score
- 305
- Country
- Location
Wars: Battle of the Narratives
History has recorded that since time immemorial, nations and states have fought wars to either physically subjugate the other or impose their ideology. If one was to look at the Napoleonic Wars closely fought throughout nineteenth century in which major powers who were pitted against Napoleon’s forces were in one way or the other imperialists. They had colonies spread over a major part of the globe and the wars waged were to protect their territories occupied by brute force and also to enlarge their colonies, and thus illegal under any law. Taking the opinion of the general masses on issues of war and peace during the 19th century could be overlooked and understood; periods of empires, where the opinion of the citizens had little importance. Napoleon's France had a 'sham' parliament, and the press was rigorously policed, and so was the assembly. Europe was experiencing upheavals, and people were demanding more power from their legislatures. At the same time, the focus was mostly internal; it still gave significant leeway to the governments to focus on developments abroad and, in this case, efforts to protect their colonies and contain Napoleon’s grand ambitions to enlarge French territories and install satellite kingdoms.
Historians have dubbed World War I as ‘unnecessary’ ‘because the original dispute that triggered the conflict was limited, and it could be reasoned that much of the war could have been avoided if Russia and Germany had simply kept themselves out of the ‘matter.' However, World War II was dubbed 'necessary' to stop German and Japanese imperial ambitions to enlarge their territories. World War II, even though it was fought to stop Germany and Japan from 'enslaving' other nations, had colonizers on both sides. The legislatures and the nobility in the warring states, who had the required influence over their governments and the decision on war, did little to stop the wars, as they continued to benefit from the economy mostly built on loot and plunder from the colonies. The result of these wars has been the precious loss of human lives.
The 1949 victory of the Communists in China reinforced the U.S.’ fears of a 'domino' impact in the Indo-China region and, in this case, Vietnam.
The 20th and 21st centuries recorded a bizarre irony. While the Western World has learned a bitter lesson about the destruction wars bring to the states and their people, it continues to focus on improving the lives of its people. The other side of the globe saw the ugly face of wars in the developing world, most of them brought by the powerful Western states on weak grounds of threat to them or their ideology and way of living. There is no denying the fact that the United States’ contribution to the Second World War in defeating the German and Japanese forces and in the post-war years to developing impressive international political and financial institutions reflected the fruits of freedom. The United States took on an active role in rebuilding the war-torn cities in Europe left in the wake of this unprecedented conflict, and the Marshall Plan remains a monumental example that remains replicated. So it was no surprise that the Cold War, i.e., the ‘ideological war’, gave the United States the opening to browbeat any state which supported or had any sympathy for communism akin to totalitarianism. The Vietnam War was one such war dubbed as an ideological war.
The Soviet Union, which had fought in the last war against fascist and imperialist forces, had no qualms about invading Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet invasion again allowed the U.S. to 'bleed' the USSR, and the war had definite ideological overtones. The United States, which never forgave the USSR for its 1979 offensive, invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The powerful executive made the U.S. Congress and the people believe that the wars being fought far away from its shores threatened the U.S. In the context of regional rivalry in the Persian Gulf, the region saw Saudi Arabia pitted against Iran, and Yemen became the battleground. In the Gulf region, legislatures are weak, and the people generally are not used to expressing their opinion and remain content with the policies of their rulers and the government. Pakistan knows very well the aftermath of the consequences of the two Afghan Wars, and when invited to jump into the ‘Yemen cauldron’ opted to consult the people, who advised staying away from it.
The Vietnam War: A Miscalculation
Mistaken Enemy
The end of the Second World War in 1945 also witnessed the termination of the U.S.-Soviet Union’s war alliance; it was an ‘artificial’ coalition of ideologically opposing states brought together out of necessity to defeat the forces of fascism unleashed by Germany and Japan, which was one of the most dangerous and destructive forces of the 20th Century. The U.S.’ preoccupation soon after the post-war years was focused on the ‘prevention’ of communism. The Containment Doctrine became formally enshrined in the 'rollback' of communism and was quietly added by the executive in the National Security Policy 68. The 1949 victory of the Communists in China reinforced the U.S.’ fears of a 'domino' impact in the Indo-China region and, in this case, Vietnam. For some historians, the U.S. is a modern liberal nation whose ideological mooring was anchored primarily on the principles of individualism and democracy and had genuine concerns about the Soviet Union as a communist nation that aggressively supported its ideology based on the principles of collectivism and dictatorship. The presence in the region of certain precious minerals is important to it as a raw material for many of the products it was manufacturing was another concern for which the U.S. was unwavering in its commitment that they do not fall into Communist hands. President Nixon justified the ‘U.S. having waged the Cold War against Communism around the world… as an ideological conflict with profound moral consequences’. This seems to be a relatively weak argument, as the threat of Communism did not directly impact the U.S. being physically out of the reach of that ideology. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) was an anti-communist investigation in the early years of the Cold War that found little or no proof of Communists’ activities in the U.S.
From the end of the Second World War until the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China conflict issues, the U.S. focused on critical support to France's effort to retain control over its colony. This U.S.’ policy support to strengthen colonialism was dichotomous, as it had in 1783 decisively defeated the British colonial forces and became a ‘beacon’ of light and freedom to states groaning under the colonial rule. However, in this case, morality took a back seat in its zeal to fight communism in all its forms. The United States’ vital contribution to its allies in winning the Second World War over the Axis Powers in 1945, followed by the U.S.-led United Nations (UN) forces’ relative success in holding off the Communist-led North Korean invasion of South Korea during the period 1950-1953, gave a false smugness to the United States to commit ‘an error in judgment’ and in its blind ideological support to contain communism in 1954 and entered the Vietnam ‘boiler.’
Vietnam was already on fire, and a conflict was raging between Communist-led North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954 and was determined to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China, who were also assisting their ideological 'brethren.' The South Vietnamese Government, on the other hand, was resisting to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. This was the early period of the Cold War, and the U.S. had already sent military advisers to South Vietnam, even though in small numbers throughout the 1950s, followed by a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. All wars and conflicts need introspection, like the finances need an audit. The author has represented Pakistan in Vietnam for over three years and can support the joy of any tourist visiting Vietnam, particularly Americans, who are welcomed with open arms, reflecting an error of judgment by successive U.S. administrations. During the war, North Vietnamese leadership's foresight and wisdom were reflected in convincing its people that they were fighting a 'misguided' U.S. Government and not its people. Thus it was counterproductive for the U.S. to goad Vietnamese Communists to dispense with its ideological war and accept Western ideological mooring of democratic dispensations, so failingly being pushed by the South Vietnamese leadership in the 1950s.
The 1964 President Johnson Administration's advice to the U.S. Congress was ‘misdirected’ which called to approve the Tonkin Bay Resolution ‘authorizing the administration to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force to aid any South East Asian State, was a decision that the Congress members later regretted, as the policy had failed. While public opinion in the form of street protests against U.S.’ involvement in the Vietnam War had begun in 1964, the misguiding of the U.S. Congress by the administration 'undermined' the domestic basis of the U.S. Foreign Policy consensus that had existed for nearly two decades and that was U.S. Foreign policy's greatest strength; the Tonkin affair proved to be a major administration error in the conduct of the war.
In the conduct of foreign policy, as it pertained to involvement in a war in which the U.S. was bombing civilians in a far-off land, and its soldiers were losing lives, the legislature and public opinion were on the same page. Senator Edward Kennedy, a scion of the famous Kennedy family, was one of the known U.S. Legislators who regularly visited South Vietnam, met the local leadership, the U.S. Ambassador, and the U.S. forces, and had detailed discussions with all. By 1968, Senator Edward Kennedy and his brother Senator Robert Kennedy had a far better understanding than other stakeholders in the country of the 'quagmire' in which the U.S. administration had put its forces in an 'unwinnable' war. It was now pitted against the U.S. legislature (Senate and Congress) and the public, who opposed the war. Senator Edward Kennedy, in 1968, after he had met Lyndon Johnson, the then U.S. President, and found his unconvincing arguments to keep U.S. forces in Vietnam, publically declared that the war the U.S. was fighting was a ‘perversion of the original idea and the fundamental validity of the war was being squandered in the streets’ where returning veterans of the Vietnam War were burning their draft cards.
The fundamental validity was being questioned in the streets. In the context of foreign policy, the U.S. compass, too, was flawed. Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 was focused on his presidential candidature and traveled to France, Germany, and Italy to have a better understanding of the point of view of the leadership of U.S. allies; he was not surprised to be told frankly that the 'American course in Vietnam was wrong and it was harming U.S.’ relations with Europe.'
The Vietnam-era U.S. legislature compiled an impressive record in challenging flawed presidential decisions. Between 1964 and 1975, many legislators forced discussion of difficult questions about the mission, publicly challenged the administration's core arguments, and used budgetary mechanisms to pressure the Pentagon to halt the war. Several liberal Democrats started in the mid-1960s as some of the most vocal critics of escalation in Vietnam; by the early 1970s, they were wielding the power of the purse. The link between public opinion and public policy is of special importance in representative democracies, as we expect elected officials to care about what voters think; the Congress members handling the Vietnam War increasingly reflected public opinion in the form of anti-war street protests. President Nixon, during whose term the Vietnam War experienced domestic upheavals and war tribulations, was critical of the U.S. Congress for having enacted the War Powers Act 1973, as it limited the President's power to conduct foreign policy and admitted 'because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War.'
The Vietnam War may have been in his mind when President Nixon wrote that ‘in a representative system, public opinion does matter and is close to a famous saying, ‘Foreign policy is a domestic policy with its hats on. Presidents and Congress members who ignore it do so at their electoral peril.’ Walter Isaacson, one of the biographers of Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s Secretary of State and one of his main advisers on security issues, especially the Vietnam War, was very critical of him, especially of his weak argument that the U.S.’ withdrawal from Vietnam would undermine the country’s position and its ‘credibility’. 'The biographer considered the credibility argument in the case of Vietnam was based on the ‘dubious’ premise, as pursuing a futile embroilment, the U.S. squandered the true sources of its influence and its credibility,' i.e., moral authority, its sense of worthy purpose, and, its reputation as a reasonable and sensible player. Regretfully, Kissinger is unwilling to accept that entering the Vietnam War was a 'quicksand.' Instead, in his book, Years of Renewal, he blames idealism, which had ‘propelled America into Indo-China and the exhaustion caused us to leave.'
(To be continued…)
The writer holds a Masters in Political Science (Punjab University) and Masters in Diplomatic Studies (UK). He has served in various capacities in Pakistan’s missions abroad and as an Ambassador to Vietnam and High Commissioner to Malaysia. He is on the visiting faculty of four mainstream public universities in Islamabad and Adviser to the India Centre at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.
E-mail: shahidkiani53@gmail.com
www.hilal.gov.pk
History has recorded that since time immemorial, nations and states have fought wars to either physically subjugate the other or impose their ideology. If one was to look at the Napoleonic Wars closely fought throughout nineteenth century in which major powers who were pitted against Napoleon’s forces were in one way or the other imperialists. They had colonies spread over a major part of the globe and the wars waged were to protect their territories occupied by brute force and also to enlarge their colonies, and thus illegal under any law. Taking the opinion of the general masses on issues of war and peace during the 19th century could be overlooked and understood; periods of empires, where the opinion of the citizens had little importance. Napoleon's France had a 'sham' parliament, and the press was rigorously policed, and so was the assembly. Europe was experiencing upheavals, and people were demanding more power from their legislatures. At the same time, the focus was mostly internal; it still gave significant leeway to the governments to focus on developments abroad and, in this case, efforts to protect their colonies and contain Napoleon’s grand ambitions to enlarge French territories and install satellite kingdoms.
Historians have dubbed World War I as ‘unnecessary’ ‘because the original dispute that triggered the conflict was limited, and it could be reasoned that much of the war could have been avoided if Russia and Germany had simply kept themselves out of the ‘matter.' However, World War II was dubbed 'necessary' to stop German and Japanese imperial ambitions to enlarge their territories. World War II, even though it was fought to stop Germany and Japan from 'enslaving' other nations, had colonizers on both sides. The legislatures and the nobility in the warring states, who had the required influence over their governments and the decision on war, did little to stop the wars, as they continued to benefit from the economy mostly built on loot and plunder from the colonies. The result of these wars has been the precious loss of human lives.
The 1949 victory of the Communists in China reinforced the U.S.’ fears of a 'domino' impact in the Indo-China region and, in this case, Vietnam.
The 20th and 21st centuries recorded a bizarre irony. While the Western World has learned a bitter lesson about the destruction wars bring to the states and their people, it continues to focus on improving the lives of its people. The other side of the globe saw the ugly face of wars in the developing world, most of them brought by the powerful Western states on weak grounds of threat to them or their ideology and way of living. There is no denying the fact that the United States’ contribution to the Second World War in defeating the German and Japanese forces and in the post-war years to developing impressive international political and financial institutions reflected the fruits of freedom. The United States took on an active role in rebuilding the war-torn cities in Europe left in the wake of this unprecedented conflict, and the Marshall Plan remains a monumental example that remains replicated. So it was no surprise that the Cold War, i.e., the ‘ideological war’, gave the United States the opening to browbeat any state which supported or had any sympathy for communism akin to totalitarianism. The Vietnam War was one such war dubbed as an ideological war.
The Soviet Union, which had fought in the last war against fascist and imperialist forces, had no qualms about invading Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet invasion again allowed the U.S. to 'bleed' the USSR, and the war had definite ideological overtones. The United States, which never forgave the USSR for its 1979 offensive, invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The powerful executive made the U.S. Congress and the people believe that the wars being fought far away from its shores threatened the U.S. In the context of regional rivalry in the Persian Gulf, the region saw Saudi Arabia pitted against Iran, and Yemen became the battleground. In the Gulf region, legislatures are weak, and the people generally are not used to expressing their opinion and remain content with the policies of their rulers and the government. Pakistan knows very well the aftermath of the consequences of the two Afghan Wars, and when invited to jump into the ‘Yemen cauldron’ opted to consult the people, who advised staying away from it.
The Vietnam War: A Miscalculation
Mistaken Enemy
The end of the Second World War in 1945 also witnessed the termination of the U.S.-Soviet Union’s war alliance; it was an ‘artificial’ coalition of ideologically opposing states brought together out of necessity to defeat the forces of fascism unleashed by Germany and Japan, which was one of the most dangerous and destructive forces of the 20th Century. The U.S.’ preoccupation soon after the post-war years was focused on the ‘prevention’ of communism. The Containment Doctrine became formally enshrined in the 'rollback' of communism and was quietly added by the executive in the National Security Policy 68. The 1949 victory of the Communists in China reinforced the U.S.’ fears of a 'domino' impact in the Indo-China region and, in this case, Vietnam. For some historians, the U.S. is a modern liberal nation whose ideological mooring was anchored primarily on the principles of individualism and democracy and had genuine concerns about the Soviet Union as a communist nation that aggressively supported its ideology based on the principles of collectivism and dictatorship. The presence in the region of certain precious minerals is important to it as a raw material for many of the products it was manufacturing was another concern for which the U.S. was unwavering in its commitment that they do not fall into Communist hands. President Nixon justified the ‘U.S. having waged the Cold War against Communism around the world… as an ideological conflict with profound moral consequences’. This seems to be a relatively weak argument, as the threat of Communism did not directly impact the U.S. being physically out of the reach of that ideology. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) was an anti-communist investigation in the early years of the Cold War that found little or no proof of Communists’ activities in the U.S.
From the end of the Second World War until the 1954 Geneva Conference on Indo-China conflict issues, the U.S. focused on critical support to France's effort to retain control over its colony. This U.S.’ policy support to strengthen colonialism was dichotomous, as it had in 1783 decisively defeated the British colonial forces and became a ‘beacon’ of light and freedom to states groaning under the colonial rule. However, in this case, morality took a back seat in its zeal to fight communism in all its forms. The United States’ vital contribution to its allies in winning the Second World War over the Axis Powers in 1945, followed by the U.S.-led United Nations (UN) forces’ relative success in holding off the Communist-led North Korean invasion of South Korea during the period 1950-1953, gave a false smugness to the United States to commit ‘an error in judgment’ and in its blind ideological support to contain communism in 1954 and entered the Vietnam ‘boiler.’
Vietnam was already on fire, and a conflict was raging between Communist-led North Vietnam, which had defeated the French colonial administration of Vietnam in 1954 and was determined to unify the entire country under a single communist regime modeled after those of the Soviet Union and China, who were also assisting their ideological 'brethren.' The South Vietnamese Government, on the other hand, was resisting to preserve a Vietnam more closely aligned with the West. This was the early period of the Cold War, and the U.S. had already sent military advisers to South Vietnam, even though in small numbers throughout the 1950s, followed by a large scale beginning in 1961, and active combat units were introduced in 1965. All wars and conflicts need introspection, like the finances need an audit. The author has represented Pakistan in Vietnam for over three years and can support the joy of any tourist visiting Vietnam, particularly Americans, who are welcomed with open arms, reflecting an error of judgment by successive U.S. administrations. During the war, North Vietnamese leadership's foresight and wisdom were reflected in convincing its people that they were fighting a 'misguided' U.S. Government and not its people. Thus it was counterproductive for the U.S. to goad Vietnamese Communists to dispense with its ideological war and accept Western ideological mooring of democratic dispensations, so failingly being pushed by the South Vietnamese leadership in the 1950s.
The 1964 President Johnson Administration's advice to the U.S. Congress was ‘misdirected’ which called to approve the Tonkin Bay Resolution ‘authorizing the administration to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force to aid any South East Asian State, was a decision that the Congress members later regretted, as the policy had failed. While public opinion in the form of street protests against U.S.’ involvement in the Vietnam War had begun in 1964, the misguiding of the U.S. Congress by the administration 'undermined' the domestic basis of the U.S. Foreign Policy consensus that had existed for nearly two decades and that was U.S. Foreign policy's greatest strength; the Tonkin affair proved to be a major administration error in the conduct of the war.
In the conduct of foreign policy, as it pertained to involvement in a war in which the U.S. was bombing civilians in a far-off land, and its soldiers were losing lives, the legislature and public opinion were on the same page. Senator Edward Kennedy, a scion of the famous Kennedy family, was one of the known U.S. Legislators who regularly visited South Vietnam, met the local leadership, the U.S. Ambassador, and the U.S. forces, and had detailed discussions with all. By 1968, Senator Edward Kennedy and his brother Senator Robert Kennedy had a far better understanding than other stakeholders in the country of the 'quagmire' in which the U.S. administration had put its forces in an 'unwinnable' war. It was now pitted against the U.S. legislature (Senate and Congress) and the public, who opposed the war. Senator Edward Kennedy, in 1968, after he had met Lyndon Johnson, the then U.S. President, and found his unconvincing arguments to keep U.S. forces in Vietnam, publically declared that the war the U.S. was fighting was a ‘perversion of the original idea and the fundamental validity of the war was being squandered in the streets’ where returning veterans of the Vietnam War were burning their draft cards.
The fundamental validity was being questioned in the streets. In the context of foreign policy, the U.S. compass, too, was flawed. Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 was focused on his presidential candidature and traveled to France, Germany, and Italy to have a better understanding of the point of view of the leadership of U.S. allies; he was not surprised to be told frankly that the 'American course in Vietnam was wrong and it was harming U.S.’ relations with Europe.'
The Vietnam-era U.S. legislature compiled an impressive record in challenging flawed presidential decisions. Between 1964 and 1975, many legislators forced discussion of difficult questions about the mission, publicly challenged the administration's core arguments, and used budgetary mechanisms to pressure the Pentagon to halt the war. Several liberal Democrats started in the mid-1960s as some of the most vocal critics of escalation in Vietnam; by the early 1970s, they were wielding the power of the purse. The link between public opinion and public policy is of special importance in representative democracies, as we expect elected officials to care about what voters think; the Congress members handling the Vietnam War increasingly reflected public opinion in the form of anti-war street protests. President Nixon, during whose term the Vietnam War experienced domestic upheavals and war tribulations, was critical of the U.S. Congress for having enacted the War Powers Act 1973, as it limited the President's power to conduct foreign policy and admitted 'because of the unpopularity of the Vietnam War.'
The Vietnam War may have been in his mind when President Nixon wrote that ‘in a representative system, public opinion does matter and is close to a famous saying, ‘Foreign policy is a domestic policy with its hats on. Presidents and Congress members who ignore it do so at their electoral peril.’ Walter Isaacson, one of the biographers of Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s Secretary of State and one of his main advisers on security issues, especially the Vietnam War, was very critical of him, especially of his weak argument that the U.S.’ withdrawal from Vietnam would undermine the country’s position and its ‘credibility’. 'The biographer considered the credibility argument in the case of Vietnam was based on the ‘dubious’ premise, as pursuing a futile embroilment, the U.S. squandered the true sources of its influence and its credibility,' i.e., moral authority, its sense of worthy purpose, and, its reputation as a reasonable and sensible player. Regretfully, Kissinger is unwilling to accept that entering the Vietnam War was a 'quicksand.' Instead, in his book, Years of Renewal, he blames idealism, which had ‘propelled America into Indo-China and the exhaustion caused us to leave.'
(To be continued…)
The writer holds a Masters in Political Science (Punjab University) and Masters in Diplomatic Studies (UK). He has served in various capacities in Pakistan’s missions abroad and as an Ambassador to Vietnam and High Commissioner to Malaysia. He is on the visiting faculty of four mainstream public universities in Islamabad and Adviser to the India Centre at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.
E-mail: shahidkiani53@gmail.com
Legislatures, Public Opinion and Foreign Policies’ Interdependence: Vietnam, Afghan and Yemen Wars (Part I)
Wars: Battle of the Narratives History has recorded that since time immemorial, nations and states have fought wars to either physically subjugate the other or impose their ideology. If one was to look at the Napoleonic Wars closely fought throughout nineteenth century in which major powers who...
