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You can see the failure of American leadership and an inability to engage in global crises in a decisive manner since Vietnam due to our inability to get over o

by Zafira 6y ago

You can see the failure of American leadership and an inability to engage in global crises in a decisive manner since Vietnam due to our inability to get over our incompetence and total misunderstanding of the political situation during the war there. I have a strong suspicion that American foreign policy wonks still don't understand why we failed in Vietnam; why applying the lens of containment and the same policy everywhere was an asinine idea cloaked in arrogance that has haunted us for decades because of our inability to accept our mistakes. I think this refusal manifests itself as a steady refusal to engage in well-reasoned policy engagements and wasted opportunities to exert US influence in a positive direction. You see this in the way we celebrated "liberating" Grenada. You see it with the weak humanitarian effort in Somalia. You see it with the increasing reliance on air power and a failure to have firm policy objectives when we do commit land troops.

mtgx 6y ago
Your suspicion is likely correct considering Hillary Clinton said henry kissinger was her mentor during her 2016 campaign.
goodcanadian 6y ago
You see this in the way we celebrated "liberating" Grenada. A nitpick, but Grenada celebrates the US liberation with a Thanksgiving Day holiday, on October 25: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada Appearances at the time were misleading. It is one of the few interventions that I think the US got right.
tsimionescu 6y ago
The USA had an almost resounding success in Vietnam in its true objectives - it completely destroyed the (somewhat) functional North Vietnamese socialist state, and prevented any kind of spread of that idea in the area. It's true that 50 years later Vietnam is now a relatively well-functioning state again, but after the war in Vietnam there was no other attempt in the area. The real failure in Vietnam was not retreating soon enough, and letting public opinion turn against the war - that did have a huge effect on future US public opinion about other wars, and could have been avoided if they had finished it earlier. To be clear, I am extremely opposed for what they did in Vietnam and consider that the amount of war crimes and the fundamentally inhumane objectives are to be condemned. But it is pretty clear that the rational objectives that the architects of the war had set were achieved relatively quickly and efficiently, and with long-lasting effects. This was not a blunder. Neither were Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter. The real blunders of US foreign policy have been the reinstatement of the Shah of Iran (which led to the Iranian revolution), and the continued failures of taking down Iran and Cuba.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  Even in terms of containment, the Vietnam war was a huge failure, shortly after Laos and Cambodia went communist, directly supported by the Vietnamese communists. I have no idea how you can reasonably claim that the war "prevented any kind of spread of that idea in the area", or that the "rational objectives" were achieved "relatively quickly and efficiently".
- notahacker 6y ago
  The North Vietnamese state successfully expanded to southern Vietnam, Vietnamese-trained revolutionaries took over neutral Laos after and largely because the US dropped as much ordinance on it as Europe during WWII and Vietnam successfully invaded Cambodia and installed its still current leader after Cambodia infamously disastrous experiment with a unique homegrown variant of socialism. And it wasn't as if Vietnam would have been on course to be a superpower without the bombs. The only part of US Indochina strategy that worked was pumping Thailand full of money. Ironically, dangling that carrot could probably have tempted Vietnam into more "market reforms" and fewer collective farms a lot earlier, given that Ho Chi Minh was fond of quoting the Founding Fathers as well as Marx and appealed to the US when he was fighting his anticolonialist war.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Domestic policy is the real problem. US foreign policy is always an extension of domestic policy anyway.
Spearchucker 6y ago
Well put. There was a book from ages ago called The Ugly American which caused a big stir in US political circles because of the way it decried US foreign policy. It contrasted the US approach (dinner parties in the Embassy) withe the Russians - who learned the local languages, respected local cultural nuances and customs, and taught locals how to more effectively till their lands. That contrast caused a huge stir in Washington but nothing changed. Americans (forgive my generalization) still prefer dropping bombs to building schools. Hammer, rather than quill.
- neither_color 6y ago
  Yet the USSR is long gone and we're still here.
  - danparsonson 6y ago
    That's not an endorsement of US foreign policy
  - scottlocklin 6y ago
    Looking pretty path dependent at this point. Don't mistake luck for good policy.
- learc83 6y ago
  > who learned the local languages, respected local cultural nuances and customs The US is the only country who requires every single Foreign service officer to learn the local language before being stationed in a country. The Foreign Service Language institute is the most prestigious language school in the world. US foreign policy has plenty of problems, but leaning the local culture and language is not one of them. The Foreign Service and our embassies and consulates are on of the shinning successes of US foreign policy (among many failures).
  - Spearchucker 6y ago
    My apologies if I got that wrong. Can you provide any references though? I understand from my own research that the ability to speak a foreign language is not mandatory for a posting. Wikipedia only mentions knowledge of a foreign language as influencing an applicant's chances of getting the posting he or she requested, not as a requirement.

by Zafira 6y ago

mtgx 6y ago

Your suspicion is likely correct considering Hillary Clinton said henry kissinger was her mentor during her 2016 campaign.

goodcanadian 6y ago

You see this in the way we celebrated "liberating" Grenada. A nitpick, but Grenada celebrates the US liberation with a Thanksgiving Day holiday, on October 25: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_Day#Grenada Appearances at the time were misleading. It is one of the few interventions that I think the US got right.

tsimionescu 6y ago

The USA had an almost resounding success in Vietnam in its true objectives - it completely destroyed the (somewhat) functional North Vietnamese socialist state, and prevented any kind of spread of that idea in the area. It's true that 50 years later Vietnam is now a relatively well-functioning state again, but after the war in Vietnam there was no other attempt in the area. The real failure in Vietnam was not retreating soon enough, and letting public opinion turn against the war - that did have a huge effect on future US public opinion about other wars, and could have been avoided if they had finished it earlier. To be clear, I am extremely opposed for what they did in Vietnam and consider that the amount of war crimes and the fundamentally inhumane objectives are to be condemned. But it is pretty clear that the rational objectives that the architects of the war had set were achieved relatively quickly and efficiently, and with long-lasting effects. This was not a blunder. Neither were Iraq or Afghanistan for that matter. The real blunders of US foreign policy have been the reinstatement of the Shah of Iran (which led to the Iranian revolution), and the continued failures of taking down Iran and Cuba.

throwaway2048 6y ago
Even in terms of containment, the Vietnam war was a huge failure, shortly after Laos and Cambodia went communist, directly supported by the Vietnamese communists. I have no idea how you can reasonably claim that the war "prevented any kind of spread of that idea in the area", or that the "rational objectives" were achieved "relatively quickly and efficiently".
notahacker 6y ago
The North Vietnamese state successfully expanded to southern Vietnam, Vietnamese-trained revolutionaries took over neutral Laos after and largely because the US dropped as much ordinance on it as Europe during WWII and Vietnam successfully invaded Cambodia and installed its still current leader after Cambodia infamously disastrous experiment with a unique homegrown variant of socialism. And it wasn't as if Vietnam would have been on course to be a superpower without the bombs. The only part of US Indochina strategy that worked was pumping Thailand full of money. Ironically, dangling that carrot could probably have tempted Vietnam into more "market reforms" and fewer collective farms a lot earlier, given that Ho Chi Minh was fond of quoting the Founding Fathers as well as Marx and appealed to the US when he was fighting his anticolonialist war.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Domestic policy is the real problem. US foreign policy is always an extension of domestic policy anyway.

Spearchucker 6y ago

Well put. There was a book from ages ago called The Ugly American which caused a big stir in US political circles because of the way it decried US foreign policy. It contrasted the US approach (dinner parties in the Embassy) withe the Russians - who learned the local languages, respected local cultural nuances and customs, and taught locals how to more effectively till their lands. That contrast caused a huge stir in Washington but nothing changed. Americans (forgive my generalization) still prefer dropping bombs to building schools. Hammer, rather than quill.

neither_color 6y ago
Yet the USSR is long gone and we're still here.
- danparsonson 6y ago
  That's not an endorsement of US foreign policy
- scottlocklin 6y ago
  Looking pretty path dependent at this point. Don't mistake luck for good policy.
learc83 6y ago
> who learned the local languages, respected local cultural nuances and customs The US is the only country who requires every single Foreign service officer to learn the local language before being stationed in a country. The Foreign Service Language institute is the most prestigious language school in the world. US foreign policy has plenty of problems, but leaning the local culture and language is not one of them. The Foreign Service and our embassies and consulates are on of the shinning successes of US foreign policy (among many failures).
- Spearchucker 6y ago
  My apologies if I got that wrong. Can you provide any references though? I understand from my own research that the ability to speak a foreign language is not mandatory for a posting. Wikipedia only mentions knowledge of a foreign language as influencing an applicant's chances of getting the posting he or she requested, not as a requirement.