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Impacts of Vietnam Syndrome
As the Vietnam War was considered to have resulted in ‘the most divisive and traumatic upheaval in the United States since the Civil War (1861-5),’[1] the profundity of the Vietnam Syndrome was undeniable. The internal cohesion of the nation was torn while the significance of the defeat was monumental in terms of the failure of a policy and technology. Meanwhile, in the post- Vietnam period, the United States was not about to abandon its perceived strategic interest in the world. Hence, ‘potential replicas of Vietnam existed everywhere, and the United States would have to confront them.’[2] No doubt, the Vietnam Syndrome played a major role in shaping the outlook of the American politics and the conduct of the US administrations.
The Vietnam Syndrome, as described earlier, had an immense psychiatric impact which led to attitude of averting interventionism. Indeed, every new military involvement after 1975 evoked the shades of Vietnam. For instance, in the case of Nicaragua, opposition from Congress, some parts of the military and the majority of the public,[3] prevented the Reagan administration from either invading Nicaragua or supporting an anti-government group (the contras) in order to overthrow a hostile government. In Congress, Democrats ‘cried “no more Vietnam”’[4] and Secretary of Defense Weinberger opposed intervention on the ground that it might lead to an ‘involuntary escalation’ akin to that in Vietnam.[5] As Melanson argues, ‘largely because of the limits imposed by fears of another Vietnam, the Reagan administration pursued a policy toward Nicaragua [in the fashion of]… bogus secrecy and limited support for proxies…’[6]
Vietnam Syndrome forced Reagan to take similar measures in Grenada. Anxious to destabilize Maurice Bishop’s Communist regime, but constrained by the American public’s aversion to military intervention, the Reagan administration had resorted to methods such as deterring international investment in Grenada. It was only when Bishop had been assassinated and his regime replaced by the Revolutionary Military Council, which instigated a curfew, that the administration seized its opportunity. On the pretext of rescuing the 1,000 American medical students in Grenada, Reagan was able to authorize a military invasion, which took place on 25 October 1983 and lasted only three days. Initially, most Democrats and some Republicans in Congress were against Reagan’s action, introducing a resolution to invoke the 1973 War Powers Act. They only agreed to lend their support to the President when success of the operation and the minimal number of American casualties became apparent. This was described by Mueller as a ‘rally-round-the flag’[7] effect, in which the public rallies around the President in patriotic support during the initial stages of military intervention. The support, however, declines should the war gets protracted since this effect will soon be superseded by the Vietnam Syndrome.
Parallel to the psychiatric malaise, the Vietnam Syndrome had its practical consequence which led to attempts to restore national confidence and to avert the syndrome itself. In fact, every president, upon his taking office, set for himself the goal of dispelling the shades of Vietnam. President Gerald Ford firmly believed that ‘lessons of the past of Vietnam have already been learned- learned by presidents, learned by Congress, learned by American people.’[8] With that in mind, Ford and many Americans looked upon his handling of the incident, which happened on May 12, 1975 when US merchant ship SS Mayaguez was seized by Khmer Rouge gunboats near the Cambodian-held island of Pulou Wei, as the greatest political victory of his administration and considered that it contributed to the healing of the nation that the president deemed his most important priority. Despite the remaining questions and anxieties about the Mayaguez crisis[9] and the moral legitimacy of US foreign policy, Ford felt confident in his belief that ‘the American people are getting out from under the trauma of our problems in Vietnam.’[10] Ford recalled in his memoirs that ‘the gloomy national mood began to fade.’ He believed that ‘many people’s faith in their country was restored.’[11]
In his first significant foreign policy speech as president, given at the University of Notre Dame, Jimmy Carter observed, ‘the Vietnamese War produced a profound moral crisis, sapping worldwide faith in our policy and our system of life, a crisis of confidence made even more grave by the covert pessimism of some of our leaders.’[12] While acknowledging that his predecessor had done much to begin ‘to heal our land,’[13] Carter had made clear throughout his election campaign that he did not believe Ford’s administration had done enough to restore American confidence. Therefore, Carter was determined that his administration’s foreign policy should be as open and accountable as possible. Above all, Carter found it ‘urgent to restore the moral bearings of American foreign policy.’[14] Carter committed his administration to building ‘international policies which reflect our own precious values.’ This would ensure a revival of American self-confidence and provide the rest of the world with ‘affirmation of our Nation’s continuing moral strength and our belief in an undiminished, ever-expanding American dream.’[15]
By the time of the 1980 election, 83% of Americans agreed that Carter was ‘a man of high moral principles.’ However, less than a third of those polled believed that Carter was capable of translating his principles into policies that could move the nation forward. Only 31% believed that Carter had ‘strong leadership qualities.’[16] What the American wanted and needed was someone who personified strength and confidence. To find such leadership they turned to the retired Hollywood actor and former governor of California, Ronald Reagan. The main objective of Reagan’s foreign policy was to restore the United States’ national pride and strength and one of the goals the Reagan administration set out in order to achieve this end was to restore faith and pride in the US military by redefining the Vietnam War and restoring the willingness to employ force abroad. As early as his first Inaugural Address, Reagan included Vietnam in a list of places where American heroes had fallen to preserve the principles of their nation. In honor of the Vietnam veterans, Reagan made clear that ‘no one should doubt the nobility of the effort they made.’[17]
Despite his rhetoric, however, Reagan was not able to lay to rest the ghosts of Vietnam. Through his rehabilitation of the Vietnam veteran and his willingness to talk about the war, Reagan did contribute to a process of coming to terms with the Vietnam War that occupied much of American thought and popular culture throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. But as McCrisken points out, ‘in his determination to finally put Vietnam behind Americans, Reagan offered an unrealistic reinterpretation of the war that diminished the importance and significance of many of the debates over the meaning and consequences of Vietnam and its effects on American society.’[18] Reagan himself also showed the ambivalence when, one the one hand, he declared that the success of the American invasion of Grenada had “reversed the Vietnam Syndrome”, and on the other, stated the success in Grenada did not mean that the US would now apply military force elsewhere because ‘I can’t foresee any situation that has exactly the same things that this one had.’[19] As Arnold Isaacs has observed ‘the real war in Vietnam was… more complicated and more ambiguous than Ronald Reagan ever seemed to understand. And so was the task of vanquishing Vietnam’s legacy.’[20]
So if this task of ‘vanquishing’ the Vietnam Syndrome had not been fulfilled under the Reagan administration, it had to be handed over to the succeeding administration. How did the syndrome come to govern the conduct of the Bush administration during the Gulf Crisis? Was the syndrome finally kicked once and for all? These questions will be answered in the next chapters of the thesis.
[1] Simons, Geoff (1998), op cit, p. xvii
[2] Kolko, Gabriel (1994), op cit, p.538
[3] Melanson, Richard (1991), Reconstructing Consensus: America Since the Vietnam War, New York: St Martin’s Press, p.154
[4] Moss, George Donelson (2002), op cit, p.444
[5] Melanson, Richard (1991), op cit, p.177
[6] Ibid., pp.175-5
[7] see Mueller, John E. (1973), War, Presidents and Public Opinion, New York and London: Wiley
[8] Ford, ‘The President’s News Conference of May 6, 1975,’ Public Papers, 1973, p.641, cited in McCrisken, Trevor B. (2003), op cit, p.47
[9] For more information on the Mayaguez incident, see McCrisken, Trevor B. (2003), op cit, pp.46-53
[10] Ford, ‘Interview with European Journalists, May 23, 1975,’ Public Papers, 1975, cited in McCrisken, Trevor B. (2003), op cit, p.53
[11] Ford, Gerald R. (1979), ‘A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford’, New York: Harper & Row, Ibid.
[12] Carter, ‘University of Notre Dame: Address at Commencement Exercises at the University’, May 22 1977, Public Papers 1977, Ibid, p.57
[13] Carter, ‘Inaugural Address of President Jimmy Carter, January 20, 1977’, Public Papers, 1977, Ibid, p. 56
[14] Public Papers, 1977, Ibid, p.57
[15] Ibid.
[16] Morris, Kenneth E. (1996), Jimmy Carter: American Moralist, Athens, GA and London: University of Georgia Press, p.287
[17] Reagan, ‘Proclamation 4841- National Day of Recognition for Veterans of the Vietnam Era, April 23, 1981’, Public Papers, Ibid., p.103
[18] McCrisken, Trevor B. (2003), op cit, p.104
[19] Reagan, ‘Appointment of Donald Rumsfeld,’ Ibid., p.119.
[20] Isaacs, Arnold R. (1997), Vietnam Shadows: The War, Its Ghosts, and Its Legacy, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, p.49
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