Entry for April 04, 2007

(tiếp theo)

This dissertation seeks to demonstrate the intimate link between the Vietnam Syndrome and the US conduct in the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991. In so doing, the first chapter will define the Vietnam Syndrome, emphasizing that Vietnam Syndrome is composed of not only the facet of a ‘psychiatric malaise’ among the American public who advocated non-interventionism but also the practical ‘lesson-learning’ facet on the part of American policy-makers who did not abandon interventionism but insisted that certain criteria be met. While examining the reasons for the emergence of the syndrome Chapter One will also highlight the implications of this phenomenon. And for the purpose of this dissertation, discussion will be centered on how the impact was on the US strategic thinking and Foreign Policy in the years that followed the American debacle in Vietnam.

Chapter Two will provide a case study for the assumptions drawn in chapter one. The main focus of this chapter will be on how the US conduct in the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991 was dictated by the Vietnam Syndrome. To this end, the chapter will present the American perception of the crisis in the Gulf region and their perceived need for a due code of conduct. At this point, the fear of ‘another Vietnam’ among the American public will be discussed as an illustration of how the Vietnam Syndrome revived to govern the choice of conduct of American strategy-makers who were acting both under the public pressure and under the restraints of their own ‘lessons’ learned from Vietnam. In the next step, the chapter will analyze the proposition that the United States conduct during the Gulf Crisis was shaped by the Vietnam Syndrome to such an extent that the whole crisis seemed to have been ‘more about Vietnam than about Kuwait, oil, and Iraq!’[1]

The final chapter of the dissertation provides comments on the statement made by President Bush that the Gulf War had ‘kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.’ In the first step, the chapter will analyze the extent to which the victory in the Persian Gulf helped erase bad memories of Vietnam for the American people and policy-makers. In the next step, however, this chapter will point out that the conduct of the United States during the Gulf Crisis was proved to have embodied rather than defeated the Vietnam Syndrome. By highlighting the differences between the nature of the Vietnam War and that of the Gulf Crisis as well as the specific strategic environment within which the United States maneuvered, this chapter will present another counter-argument to the claim that the Vietnam Syndrome was finally ‘kicked once and for all.’ The chapter will be wrapped up with the confirmation by the American leaders of the persistence of the Vietnam Syndrome well beyond the Gulf Crisis.

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[1] Herring, George C., Preparing not to Re-fight the Last War- The Impact of the Vietnam War on the US Military, cited in Neu, Charles E. (ed.) (2000), After Vietnam: Legacies of a Lost War, The Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore and London, p.75