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By Henry A. Kissinger

Not too long ago, former President
Gerald Ford and I were reminiscing about
his Presidency and our respective experiences in gov-
ernment service. And we concluded that the
high points have a way of becoming blurred
with the passage of time. But we had shared one
experience that will never lose its immedia-
cy: the pain and anguish of the day when the
last Americans and a pitiful band of refugees
were evacuated from the roof of the U.S.
American embassy in Saigon.

Movies and television present
great crises as times of in terms of frenetic activity, with
showing images of officious aides ripping telephones off the
hook and shouting instructions to scurrying
subordinates. In reality, crises are distin-
guished by a the stillness born of induced by the awareness
that choices are narrowing. The number of
 decision-makers those involved in decisions shrinks to those still in a
position to affect events, their solitude mag-
nified because, the more severe the crisis,
the fewer volunteers there are willing to assume
responsibility.

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APR 18 00 05-GIFT EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

7-4

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Thus it was that! On that final day in April 1975, Ford and I were quite alone: he in the Oval

Office; I in the Security Advisor's suite down the hall, interrupted only by the periodic phone calls as the Pentagon reported the departure of each helicopter. For a month, we had referred the interdepartmental debates that marked the end of the tragedy: whether to speed up the withdrawal of the last few Americans to avoid needless risks, or to stretch it out to permit the maximum numbers of Vietnamese to escape; whether to give up on requests to the Congress for aid that would never reach Vietnam, or maintain the request so that America would not

be perceived as having stabbed an ally in the

back, during its [adversity]. Ford and I had fought for slow extrication and keep the aid request alive, continuing the request to the Congress, and the

President had prevailed. Now that debate was overwhelmed by events. We had

become spectators of a drama events we could no longer influence, suspended between a pain we could not still and a future we were not yet in a position to shape.

For those who have lived through the

------- End of column -------

final day, any account must appear frag-

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mentary, and dominated by the perspective
from their particular vantage point of wherever the author found himself as chaos engulfed
two decades of sacrifice. For those who were
spared the anguish, the passions will seem
incomprehensible. And historians are no

↑ consumed

help, since their accounts only replicate [accounts] have replicated the
bitter schisms of the period. Radical critics
and less so conjure up repeat their taint of bloodthirsty leaders pursuing a
war to satisfy twisted psychologies. The
right either ignores the war as a liberal aber-
ration or sublimates it in reflexive student anti-communism (often the zeal of "neo-conserva-

↑ generally

↑ American

↑ their

↑ blames the defeat on lack of ideological Zeal (The mantra

↑ radical side while the war was going on and
who have their own reasons for avoiding its
memory). Reluctant to come to grips with
the most traumatic experience of the past
half century, Americans find it difficult to
draw the real lessons from what was done to
this country—and what we did to our-
selves— America did to itself during that sad period.

↑ anti-war

Let me tell you therefore concentrate on
only one aspect of the Vietnam tragedy:

what it did to American exceptionalism—
the faith in the universality of our values
and the impact this has had on the conduct
of U.S. American foreign policy.

↑ That will be my subject here.
For one of the most important
casualties of the Vietnam tragedy
was

↑ uniqueness

↑ which was submerged in a debate
about their nature.

↑ This controversy has had a profound
impact ever since.

↑ ever since.

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Entering Indo-China and Leaving It

It was what has been described as—
"the greatest generation" that entered Indo
China in the heyday of American exception-
alism, in pursuit of the strategy that had
already with which it had stabilized the post-World War II
world, rebuilt Europe, restored Germany
and Japan to the community of nations and
arrested the Soviet advance into Europe and
in Korea. A mixture of the experiences of
World War II and a philosophy drawn from
the New Deal, this American strategy concentrated on
stopping Soviet aggression and removing
communist opportunities for internal
upheavals by promoting economic and
social progress in regions under U.S.
American protection.

Though the conduct of the Cold
War is often presented as reflecting a nearly

--------- End of column ---------

unanimous consensus, there was always
significant dissent opposition, especially in the intel-
lectual and academic communities. They
argued either that the communist threat was
exaggerated or that the United States was

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associating with too many questionable
regimes to sustain its claim as a defender of
liberty. But their critique was confined to
the wisdom of specific policies, not to the
validity of the American experience.

With By the advent of the Kennedy
Administration, this policy was given its
most sweeping formulation in the new pres-
ident's inaugural address—his promise _to the effect_ that
the United States would "bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, to assure the survival and
success of liberty." At the time there was vir-
tually no opposition to that open-ended
commitment, or to the conventional wis-
dom that Indo China was an essential out-
post in the defense of liberty.

In the interregnum between their
terms, presidencies. President Dwight Eisenhower rec-
ommended to his successor military inter-
vention in Laos if North Vietnamese pres-
sure continued. Within a month of his inau-
guration, Kennedy sent Marines to
Thailand, adjoining Laos. He recoiled from
intervening directly (though the CIA under-
took was used for covert measures). But in 1962, when
Hanoi opened a supply line to South

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Vietnam through Laotian territory and
intensified the guerrilla war, Kennedy sent
sixteen thousand U.S military "advisers" to
South Vietnam in 1962. President Lyndon Johnson
escalated this commitment until it reached
over five hundred thousand, by the time he
left office. Initially, there was no significant
opposition, either within or outside the
Administration, to that massive deploy-
ment. Though later on the decision was blamed on
Johnson later on, it was in fact Kennedy's
closest advisers—McGeorge Bundy, Robert
McNamara and Dean Rusk—who urged the
escalation.

By the end of the Johnson
Administration, frustration had set in. The
strategy that had worked in every previous
-------- End of column --------

American war—of wearing down the adver-
sary by attrition—could not succeed against
guerrillas defending no specific territory
and therefore in a position to choose when
and where to fight. Nor could any of the
non-communist countries of Indo China be-
called a democracy, out or reward to make clear, why this is relevant? For those who had
made the decision to send American troops,
growing self-doubt compounded despair

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about the entire political process triggered by the assassination of their hero, John F. Kennedy.

While the leaders were seized by emotional turmoil, the critics challenged went ever further toward challenging the very essence of American foreign involvement. The arguments that the war was unwinnable and that its cost of the war exceeded its benefits escalated almost as rapidly as the U.S. American deployment. At first The initial argument of the doubters dwelled on dealt with how to find an honorable way out. But within months, American exceptionalism began to turn on itself. The proposition that morality, there was little moral difference between Hanoi and Saigon, and the ethical nature of justification for the wars The protesters increasingly argued that the ultimate cause of the crisis was not errors in judgment but a moral rot at the core of the American way of life. The victory of the communists in Indo China, which three administrations of both parties had sought to prevent for nearly two decades, became for the radical protesters a desirable national catharsis.

The critique expanded from the worthiness of America's allies to challenging the worthiness of America itself, and its conduct not only in Vietnam but around the world globally.

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Vietnam became turned into the first war in which
prominent Americans visited the enemy

capital to oppose their own country during highly publicized visits.

By the time Richard Nixon

became President, the battle lines were
drawn. The demoralized Establishment,

which had launched us into the quagmire,

abdicated from the task of extrication, leaving the field to the protesters or joining them

in attacks on the argument that extrication was prevented above all by the short-sightedness and warped mentality of the new

administration. America's leaders. The radical protesters, certain of their moral superiority, saw no need

for restraint in the methods they used to
pursue their ends aims. Indeed, they dismissed

considered rules of conduct as the invention of a system

they meant to overthrow. Through By street
demonstrations and deliberate subversion

of undermining all authority, from universities to the U.S

government, which they blamed for America's alleged crimes, they sought to wreck any poli-

cy designed to vindicate in Vietnam the values on which
America's post-World War II policy had

been based.

Nixon, who inherited this
impasse, lacked the human qualities to tran-
scend it, if indeed it was possible to do so.

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Still, for all his railing against the
Establishment, he too Nixon was a product of "the
greatest generation." And he sought to
implement what he understood to be the
demand of the moderate critics for an honorable
withdrawal. Starting with the first negotia-
tions with the Vietnamese Politburo member Le
Duc Tho, Nixon offered a timetable for
withdrawal and a variety of formulas to per-
mit the people of South Vietnam a genuine
choice. What Nixon would not accept—and
what, until the end, Hanoi never ceased
demanding—was the abandonment of all the
millions who, relying in reliance on the words of our
predecessors, had thrown in their lot with
the United States.

When a negotiated solution
seemed unattainable, Nixon proceeded uni-
laterally to implement his campaign
promise to extricate America from Vietnam.
In the process, he reduced U.S. American casualties
from twelve hundred a month at the end of
the Johnson Administration to thirty a
month at the end of Nixon's first term. And
he unilaterally reduced American troops
from the five hundred fifty thousand he found to thirty
thousand.

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Many of the stages in this process were highly controversial and they deserve fuller treatment than this article permits. But it is symptomatic of the schism Vietnam created in America that so much of the literature on Vietnam focuses on the charge that he needlessly prolonged the war and sacrificed American lives, implying that there was some honor-able way out that he refused to take The-

issue is not historical justice toward individual presidents, but historical justice toward a national tragedy. Mistakes should be debated and lessons learned. But when self-flagellation turns into assaults on the good faith of all leaders, the ability to build a coherent national purpose ultimately suffers. America owes itself an objective assessment of the that Vietnam experience, which after 25 years has not yet happened.

The political schism was sharp-ened by a similar split in the intellectual community. When I was in graduate school, intellectuals rarely achieved high positions in government. If they wanted to affect poli-cy, they had to write lengthy papers on longer-range issues. The Kennedy

A balanced judgement on Vietnam is not a question of

of historical truth about a national tragedy — the precondition of a stable national purpose

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Administration awakened their taste for political power. After Kennedy's assassination, they sought to shape policy-making the immediate issues from the outside, in the process dividing into two groups — job applicants and revolutionaries. The job applicants replicated the debates of the policymakers; and the revolutionaries, the arguments of the protest movement. In either case, they contributed little to helping —

> America overcome the tragedy of Vietnam.

## Vietnam's Legacy

Vietnam broke the fusion of ideology and strategy that underlay in American exceptionalism. Though its principles continue to be affirmed by all sides, its application is now subject to profound dispute. Since the Vietnam war, there have been three main camps: currents in among American foreign policymakers:

- Advocates of continuing to adapt 
  *adaptations* of the Cold War strategy of the 1950s and 1960s.

- The Members of the protest movement, who came to high office in the Clinton Administration.

and

immediate policy discussions

first within the government

and after Kennedy's assassination

sidelines. In the process they divided

accentuated America's schisms rather than help overcome them.

8

adapting

8

to new circumstances.

Vietnam

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- And, a new generation that does not remember and has not experienced the Vietnam schism, and now faces a world radically different from the one that formed either the Cold Warriors or the both the Cold War and the Vietnam protesters perceptions.

When Under the impact of Vietnam, liberals and intellectuals retreated from the field of strategy and redefined exceptionalism in terms of "soft issues" which could be achieved without the use of military power. As a result, traditional American strategy became largely the provenance of conservatives and neo-conservatives. Always uncomfortable with commitments on distant battlefields, the American right concentrated on rigorous anti-communism and vigilance in maintaining the strategic balance, especially with respect to arms control negotiations. And during the Reagan Administration, against a Soviet adversary weakened by decades of overextension, it achieved great successes.

Yet with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the need for a national strategy adapted to the post-Cold War world has

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baffled many conservatives. In the aftermath of Reagan, some of his disciples

emphasize his rhetoric the rhetorical side of his efforts while forgetting at the expense of the hard-headed strategy with which he pursued the 1980's equivalent of a containment policy.

neglecting

They seem torn (especially in the neo-conservative group) between searching for a new danger to replace some equivalent danger to the Soviet Union, in opposition to which all foreign policy can be

organized, and pursuing or the pursuit of American exceptionalism in a global crusade. But China is the target for much of this effort. But it is as yet too weak, its ideology too national, and its potential danger too distant to allow foreign policy to be organized around it, on this basis or to be the

or vindicating

for democracy

catalyst for a new balance of power reconciled with a concert of powers. And pursuit of hegemony has always exhausted any country attempting it both domestically and eventually internationally. To be

true to itself, America must always stand for democracy; but to shape the world, it must also be able to understand both its interests and their limits, and not recoil from defining either.

needs

8

The conclusions that many in much of the liberal community—including in the Clinton

Administration—have drawn from the

Vietnam war present a profound, as exemplified by the Clinton Administration by far the greatest challenge to American foreign policy. This school of

many in

and in the liberal community,

traditional

They

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thought it treats the Cold War as a misunderstanding, if not an American creation. It

recoils before the concept of national interest and shrinks before the use of power

unless it can be presented as being in the service of some "unselfish" cause—that is to say, no

more in the interest of America than of any—

one else. On many occasions and many conditions, President Clinton has apologized for American actions that stemmed from

for what he derogatorily describes as Cold War

obsessions (preoccupations). But the Cold War was not imaginary; profound issues of survival and national purpose were involved. And this

the denigration—often quite inaccurate—of the actions of U.S. American presidents from Eisenhower

to Bush must raise doubts about American constancy, even on the part of the

paradoxically even with respect to the Administration offering the apology.

Apologies for fifty years of American history are matched by uneasiness with the use of American power. This is illustrated by In

Kosovo, for example, the argument that the

conflict transcended pure absence of a purely American interest

was one of the ultimate justifications for the enterprise. But six months later, our reluctance to

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apply the Kosovo principles to Chechnya
for fear of Russian power—proved that even-
universalists must learn the maxim that for-
eign policy is the art of the possible. Or con-
sider the difference between the Clinton
Administration's attitude toward Iraq and

toward Kosovo. The Clinton Administration's attitude is [further evidenced] by the differential treatment of [its] two military operations in
1998-99. In December 1998, Iraq
inflicted a strategic defeat on us by expelling
the U.N. inspectors placed there as a condition
for ending the Gulf war. The

Administration responded by bombing for
four days. But three months later, it bombed
Yugoslavia for seventy eight days in pursuit
of what was perceived as a humanitarian
interest. In each chase, the conduct of oper-
ations was undertaken with a reluctance to
accept casualties that ultimately conveyed
to the American public the absence of any

vital interest. For Americans surely would not recall from casualties in defense of their vital interests.

from P16

What Vietnam has

bequeathed to the new generation is two
new forms of exceptionalism: one in search
of riskless applications, another in quest of a
strategy. It is not that this generation is
obsessed by the debates of the Vietnam war,
with which it is largely unfamiliar. Nor does

A where civilian casualties
were fargreater.

The foreign policy of the self-proclaimed moralists had returned full circle to the famous maxim that foreign policy is the art of the possible and the science of the relative - leaving this time with a touch of hypocrisy.

a (actually mights to reduce
casualties)

a nonstop

a and to our adversaries.

From page 17

a focal point for its

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----- End of column -----

it have feelings of guilt about a doctrine of
self-interest, which it pursues strenuously
in its economic activities. But it has little
knowledge of history or of national policy
and hence lacks a sense of direction in the
international political arena.

In the globalized economic world,
the post-Cold War generation looks to Wall
Street as mine did to service in Washington.

This is not only a question of financial
remuneration but, in part, also reflects
reluctance to enter a calling now marked by
vicious personal attacks and the prospect of

waging battles that leave too many victims, and in which too many political disputes only to become the
object of criminal prosecution. are transmuted into matters of criminal law.

abduction from politics can lead to threatening American exceptionalism with an erratic reliance on a world that runs itself by

automatic economic forces. Indeed, such

reliance is only possible to believe this because our world
has in fact been freed to a large extent from the dangers of general war. And in such a world, the

post-Cold War generation (whether

immersed in the protest movements or the business
schools) is tempted to define national interest

in terms of instructing the rest of the

It is tempted by the Clintonian
Concept of riskless global gratification
butresses by a belief that the hard-
headed pursuit of economic self-interest
ultimately produces a globalized system
of general reconciliation.

views

differences in

more and more

to
p15

subject

so limited an approach
to international politics
will lead America into

an approach

of American leaders

graduated from the

finds it possible to imagine
that foreign policy consists

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world, it the nation state is breaking down, either into hitherto ethnic entities subgroups or by joining larger regional groupings. And the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction represents a political challenge faced by no previous society.

Yet If our new generation of national leaders is embarrassed to deal with the concept of national interest or with the unapologetic use of power as a last resort, it will achieve not moral elevation but progressive paralysis. Certainly any concept of national interest would not be American if it did not flow from our derive motivation from America's democratic tradition or its concern with collective security. But we must also be prepared to face up to some hard questions imposed by reality. What, for our survival, must we seek to prevent no matter how painful the means? What, to be true to ourselves, must we seek to accomplish no matter how small the attainable consensus or and, if necessary, on our own alone? What wrongs is it essential that we right? Which are beyond our capacity or not consistent with compelled by the national interest?

We will not have overcome the shadow of Vietnam legacy—or be able to meet our new challenges — until we can achieve a

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national consensus on these issues. And this
requires mutual respect among the dis-
putants and a conviction, nearly lost in the
Vietnam period, that we <u>they</u> are engaged in a
common enterprise rather than a fight to
the finish. Our political leaders may be able-
to evade these issues during the presidential
<u>national</u> campaign that is about to begin. But the
winner will not be able to escape them once
he enters the Oval Office.

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By Henry A. Kissinger

Not too long ago, former President Gerald Ford and I were reminiscing about his Presidency and our respective experiences in government service. And we concluded that the high points have a way of becoming blurred with the passage of time. But we had shared one experience that will never lose its immediacy: the pain and anguish of the day when the last Americans and a pitiful band of refugees were evacuated from the roof of the U.S. American embassy in Saigon.

Movies and television present great crises as times of intense frenetic activity, with showing images of officious aides ripping telephones off the hook and shouting instructions to scurrying subordinates. In reality, crises are distinguished by a sense of induced by the awareness that choices are borrowing. The number of disappearing decision-makers those involved in decisions shrinks to those still in a position to affect events, their solitude magnified because, the more severe the crisis, the fewer volunteers they are willing to assume responsibility.

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NOTICE: This document may contain classified information.

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be perceived as having stabbed an ally in the back, during the [adversity]... Ford and I had fought for slow extrication and keep the aid request alive, continuing the request to the Congress, and the

become spectators of a drama and we could no longer influence, suspended between a pain

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from their particular vantage point of wherever the author found himself as chaos engulbed

and classically conjure up regal, meagre, and bloodthirsty leaders pursuing a

ration or sublimates it in reflexive anti-communism (often the seal of "neo-conserva-

tive" converts to conservatism who, in reality, were had been on the

selves—America did itself during that sad period.

Let me say, therefore, concentrate on

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It was what has been described as--
"the greatest generation" that entered Indo
China in the heyday of American exception-
alism, in pursuit of the strategy that had
already with which it had stabilized the post-World War II
world, rebuilt Europe, restored Germany
and Japan to the community of nations and
arrested the Soviet advance into Europe and
in Korea. A mixture of the experiences of
World War II and a philosophy drawn from
the New Deal, this American strategy concentrated on
stopping Soviet aggression and removing
communist opportunities for internal
upheavals by promoting economic and
social progress in regions under U.S.
American protection.

Though the conduct of the Cold
War is often presented as reflecting a nearly
---------- End of column ----------
unanimous consensus, there was always
significant dissent opposition, especially in the intel-
lectual and academic communities. They
argued either that the communist threat was
exaggerated or that the United States was

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FROM:

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With the advent of the Kennedy Administration, this policy was given its most sweeping formulation in the new president's inaugural address—his promise to the effect that the United States would “bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.” At the time there was virtually no opposition to that open-ended commitment, or to the conventional wisdom that Indo China was an essential outpost in the defense of liberty.

In the interregnum between their terms, presidencies. President Dwight Eisenhower recommended to his successor military intervention in Laos if North Vietnamese pressure continued. Within a month of his inauguration, Kennedy sent Marines to Thailand, adjoining Laos. He recoiled from intervening directly (though the CIA undertook was used for covert measures). But in 1962, when Hanoi opened a supply line to South

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Vietnam through Laotian territory and intensified the guerrilla war, Kennedy sent sixteen thousand U.S military "advisers" to South Vietnam in 1962. President Lyndon Johnson escalated this commitment until it reached over five hundred thousand, by the time he left office. Initially, there was no significant opposition, either within or outside the Administration, to that massive deployment. Though later on the decision was blamed on Johnson later on, it was in fact Kennedy's closest advisers—McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk—who urged the escalation.

By the end of the Johnson Administration, frustration had set in. The strategy that had worked in every previous ------ End of column ------

American war—of wearing down the adversary by attrition—could not succeed against guerrillas defending no specific territory and therefore in a position to choose when and where to fight. Nor could any of the non-communist countries of Indo China be—

called a democracy, until a reward to make clear why this is relevant? make For those who had

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While the leaders were seized by emotional turmoil, the critics challenged went ever further toward challenging the very essence of American foreign involvement. The arguments that the war was unwinnable and that its cost the war exceeded its benefits escalated almost as rapidly as the

U.S. American deployment. At first The initial argument of the doubters dwelled on dealt with how to find an honorable way out. But within months. American exceptionalism began to turn on itself. The proposition that morally, there was little moral difference between Hanof and Saigon underlie the ethical moral justification for the war. The protesters increasingly argued that the ultimate cause of the crisis was not errors in judgment but a moral rot at the core of the American way of life. The victory of the communists in Indo China, which three administrations of both parties had sought to prevent for nearly two decades, became for the radical protesters a desirable national catharsis.

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By the time Richard Nixon

became President, the battle lines were drawn. The demoralized Establishment, which had launched us into the quagmire, abdicated from the task of extrication leaving the field to the protesters or joining them

conditional rules of conduct as the invention of a system.

demonstrations and deliberate subversion
of undermining all authority, from universities to the U.S
government, which they blamed for America's alleged crimes. they sought to wreck any poli-
cy designed to vindicate in Vietnam the values on which

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Still, for all his railing against the
Establishment, he too Nixon was a product of "the
greatest generation." And he sought to
implement what he understood to be the
demand of the moderate critics for an honorable
withdrawal. Starting with the first negotia-
tions with the Vietnamese Politburo member Le
Due Tho, Nixon offered a timetable for
withdrawal and a variety of formulas to per-
mit the people of South Vietnam a genuine
choice. What Nixon would not accept—and
what, until the end, Hanoi never ceased
demanding—was the abandonment of all the
millions who, relying in reliance on the words of our
predecessors, had thrown in their lot with
the United States.

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Administration awakened their taste for political power. After Kennedy's assassination, they sought to shape policy-making, the immediate issues, from the outside, in the process dividing into two groups — job applicants and revolutionaries. The job applicants replicated the debates of the policymakers; and the revolutionaries, the arguments of the protest movement. In either case, they contributed little to helping — America overcome the tragedy of Vietnam.

## Vietnam's Legacy

Vietnam broke the fusion of ideology and strategy that underlay American exceptionalism. Though its principles continue to be affirmed by all sides, its application is now subject to profound dispute.

- Advocates of continuing to adapt to the strategies of the Cold War strategy of the 1950s and 1960s.

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- And, a new generation that does not remember <u>and has not experienced</u> the Vietnam schism, and now faces a world radically different from the one that formed either the Cold Warriors or the <u>both the Cold War and the Vietnam</u> protesters <u>perceptions</u>.

When...Under the impact of Vietnam, liberals and intellectuals retreated from the field of strategy and redefined exceptionalism in terms of "soft issues" which could be achieved without the use of military power. As a result, traditional American strategy became largely the provenance of conservatives and neo-conservatives. Always uncomfortable with commitments on distant battlefields, the American right concentrated on rigorous anti-communism and vigilance in maintaining the strategic balance, especially with respect to arms control negotiations. And during the Reagan Administration, against a Soviet <u>an</u> adversary weakened by decades of overextension, it achieved great successes.

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(4)

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FROM:

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baffled many conservatives. In the after-

emphasize his rhetoric the mémoire side of his efforts while forgetting at the expense of the
hard-headed strategy with which he pur-
sued the 1980's equivalent of a containment policy.

They seem torn (especially in the neo-con-

new danger to replace some equivalent danger to the Soviet Union, in
opposition to which all foreign policy can be
organized, and pursuing - or the pursuit of American excep-

catalyst for a new balance of power reconciled with a concert of powers. And pursuit of hegemony has always exhausted any country
attempting it both domestically and, eventually, internationally. To be

and their limits, and not recoil from defin-
ing either.

The conclusions that many in round of the
liberal community - including in the Clinton

Administration - have drawn from the

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FROM:

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apply the Kosovo principles to Chechnya—
for fear of Russian power—proved that even-
universalists must learn the maxim that for
eign policy is the art of the possible. Or con-
sider the difference between the Clinton
Administration's attitude toward Iraq and

toward Kosovo. The Clinton Administration's attitude is [further evidenced] by the differential treatment of its two military operations in
1998-99. In December 1998, Iraq

vital interest. For Americans surely would not recall from casualty in defense of their vital interests,
from P16 What Vietnam has

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FROM:

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Yet If our new generation of national leaders is embarrassed to deal with the concept of national interest or with the in dealing with those problems unapologetic use of power as a last resort, it will achieve not moral elevation but progressive paralysis. Certainly any concept of national interest would not be American if it did not flow from our inherent motivation from America's democratic tradition or its concern with collective security. But we must also be prepared to face up to some hard questions imposed by reality. What, for our survival, must we seek to prevent no matter how painful the means? What, to be true to ourselves, must we seek to accomplish no matter how small the attainable consensus or and, if necessary, on our own alone?
What wrongs is it essential that we right?
Which are beyond our capacity or not permitted with the national interest?
We will not have to overcome the shadow of Vietnam legacy—or be able to meet our new challenges — until we can achieve a

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national consensus on these issues. And this
requires mutual respect among the dis-
purants and a conviction, nearly lost in the
Vietnam period, that we ~~they~~ are engaged in a
common enterprise rather than a fight to
the finish. Our political leaders may be able
~~to evade these issues during the presidential~~
national campaign that is about to begin. But the
winner will not be able to escape them once
he enters the Oval Office.

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APR-19-2000 22:50

By Henry A. Kissinger

Movies and television present great crises as times of in terms of frenetic activity, with showing images of officious aides ripping telephones off the hook and shouting instructions to scurrying subordinates. In reality, crises are distinguished by a the stillness born of induced by the awareness that choices are narrowing. The number of decision-makers those involved in decisions shrinks to those still in a position to affect events, their solitude magnified because, the more severe the crisis, the fewer volunteers there are willing to assume responsibility.

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Office; I in the Security Advisor's suite down
the hall, interrupted only by the periodic phone
calls as the Pentagon reported the departure
of each helicopter. For a month, we had ref-
ereed the interdepartmental debates that
marked the end of the tragedy: whether to
speed up the withdrawal of the last few
Americans to avoid needless risks, or to
stretch it out to permit the maximum num-
bers of Vietnamese to escape; whether to
give up on requests to the Congress for aid
that would never reach Vietnam, or main-
tain the request so that America would not
be perceived as having stabbed an ally in the

back during its [adversity]. Ford and I had fought for slow extra-
tion and kept the aid request alive, continuing the request to the Congress, and the
President had prevailed. Now that debate
was overwhelmed by events. We had

For those who have lived through the
End of column

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and less so, conjure up repeat their litany of bloodthirsty leaders pursuing a
war to satisfy twisted psychologies. The
right either ignores the war as a liberal aber-
ration or sublimates it in reflexive the student-anti-communism (often the zeal of "neo-conserva-

tive" converts to conservatism who, in reality, were had been on the
radical side while the war was going on and
who have their own reasons for avoiding its
memory). Reluctant to come to grips with
the most traumatic experience of the past
half century, Americans find it difficult to
draw the real lessons from what was done to
this country—and what we did to our-
selves— America did to itself during that sad period.

consumed

generally

American

blames the defeat on
lack of ideological zeal
(The mantra

anti-war

That will be my subject here.
For one of the most important
Casualties of the Vietnam tragedy
was

uniqueness

which was submerged in a debate
about their value.

ever since.

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It was what has been described as-
"the greatest generation" that entered Indo
China in the heyday of American exception-
alism, in pursuit of the strategy that had
already with which it had stabilized the post-World War II
world, rebuilt Europe, restored Germany
and Japan to the community of nations and
arrested the Soviet advance into Europe and
in Korea. A mixture of the experiences of
World War II and a philosophy drawn from
the New Deal, this American strategy concentrated on
stopping Soviet aggression and removing
communist opportunities for internal
upheavals by promoting economic and
social progress in regions under U.S.
American protection.

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DEPT:

PG:

With the advent of the Kennedy Administration, this policy was given its most sweeping formulation in the new president's inaugural address—his promise to the effect that the United States would bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty." At the time there was virtually no opposition to that open-ended commitment, or to the conventional wisdom that Indo China was an essential outpost in the defense of liberty.

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called a democracy, nor could any of the
made the decision to send American troops,
growing self-doubt compounded despair

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While the leaders were seized by emotional turmoil, the critics challenged went ever further toward challenging the very essence of American foreign involvement. The arguments that the war was unwinnable and that its cost of the war exceeded its benefits escalated almost as rapidly as the U.S. American deployment. At first The initial argument of the doubters dwelled on dealt with how to find an honorable way out. But within months, American exceptionalism began to turn on itself. The proposition that morally there was little moral difference between Hanoi and Saigon undercut the ethical moral justification for the war. The protesters increasingly argued that the ultimate cause of the crisis was not an errors in judgment but a moral rot at the core of the American way of life. The victory of the communists in Indo China, which three administrations of both parties had sought to prevent for nearly two decades, became for the radical protesters a desirable national catharsis.

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By the time Richard Nixon

considered rules of conduct as the invention of a system.

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Many of the stages in this process were highly controversial and they deserve fuller treatment than this article permits. But it is symptomatic of the schism Vietnam created in America that so much of the literature on Vietnam focuses on the charge that he needlessly prolonged the war and sacrificed American lives, implying that there was some honorable way out that he refused to take. The

---

End of column

---

The political schism was sharp-
ened by a similar split in the intellectual
community. When I was in graduate school,
intellectuals rarely achieved high positions
in government. If they wanted to affect poli-
cy, they had to write lengthy papers on
longer-range issues. The Kennedy

of historical truth about a
national tragedy - the
preservation of a stable
national purpose

→ to
p. 11

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protesters perceptions.

When Under the impact of Vietnam, liberals and intellectuals retreated from the field of strategy and redefined exceptionalism in terms of "soft issues" which could be achieved without the use of military power. As a result, traditional American strategy became largely the provenance of conservatives and neo-conservatives. Always uncomfortable with commitments on distant battlefields, the American right concentrated on rigorous anti-communism and vigilance in maintaining the strategic balance, especially with respect to arms control negotiations. And during in the Reagan Administration, against a Soviet an adversary weakened by decades of overextension, it achieved great successes.

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neglecting

or vindicating

for democracy

especially if we wish to have allies with us

catalyst for a new balance of power, reconciled with a concert of powers. And pursuit of hegemony has always exhausted any country attempting it, both domestically and eventually internationally. To be

needs

8

The conclusions that many in most of the liberal community—including in the Clinton

8

and many in the liberal community—

11

traditional

They

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----- End of column -----

unless it can be presented <u>present it as being in the service of</u>
some "unselfish" cause—that is to say, no
<u>more in the interest of America than of any</u>

- one else. On many occasions and many con-
tinents, President Clinton has apologized
for American actions that stemmed from

obsessions, preoccupations. But the Cold War was not
imaginary; profound issues of survival and
national purpose were involved. And this

Apologies for fifty years of
American history are matched by uneasi-
ness with the use of American power. This is illustrated by In

conflict transcended pure absence of a purely American interest
was one of the ultimate justifications for the enter-

- price. But six months later, our <u>reluctance to</u>

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Apply the Kosovo principles to Chechnya, for fear of Russian power, proved that even universalists must learn the maxim that foreign policy is the art of the possible. Or consider the difference between the Clinton Administration's attitude toward Iraq and

Administration responded by bombing for four days. But three months later, it bombed Yugoslavia for seventy eight days in pursuit of what was perceived as a humanitarian interest. In each chase, the conduct of operations was undertaken with a reluctance to accept casualties that ultimately conveyed to the American public, the absence of any

vital interest. For Americans surely would not recoil from casualties in defense of their vital interests.

From P16

be before and

where civilian casualties were far greater

indicating the

of self-proclaimed morality revealed itself in traditional forms

with a touch of hypocrisy

(actually nights to reduce casualties)

nonstop

and to our adversaries.

From page 17

a focal point for its

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world, it the nation state is breaking down, either into hitherto ethnic entities subgroups or by joining larger regional groupings. And the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction represents a challenge faced by no previous society.

Yet If our new generation of national leaders is embarrassed to deal with the concept of national interest or with the unapologetic use of power as a last resort, it will achieve not moral elevation but progressive paralysis. Certainly any concept of national interest would not be American if it did not flow from our derive motivation from America's democratic tradition or its concern with collective security. But we it must also be prepared to face up to some hard questions imposed by reality. What, for our survival, must we seek to prevent no matter how painful the means? What, to be true to ourselves, must we seek to accomplish no matter how small the attainable consensus or and, if necessary, on our own alone?
What wrongs is it essential that we right?
Which are beyond our capacity or not concerned with compelled by the national interest?

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national consensus on these issues. And this
requires mutual respect among the dis-
putants and a conviction, nearly lost in the
Vietnam period, that we <u>they</u> are engaged in a
common enterprise rather than a fight to
the finish. Our political leaders may be able
to evade these issues during the presidential
<u>national</u> campaign that is about to begin. But the
winner will not be able to escape them once
he enters the Oval Office.

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APR 18 '00 04:51PM EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATION

P.3

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DEPT: VER # 1

By Henry A. Kissinger

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Thus it was that On that final day in April 1975, Ford and I were quite alone: he in the Oval Office; I in the Security Advisor's suite down the hall, interrupted only by the periodic phone calls as the Pentagon reported the departure of each helicopter. For a month, we had referred the interdepartmental debates that marked the end of the tragedy: whether to speed up the withdrawal of the last few Americans to avoid needless risks, or to stretch it out to permit the maximum numbers of Vietnamese to escape; whether to give up on requests to the Congress for aid that would never reach Vietnam, or maintain the request so that America would not be perceived as having stabbed an ally in the back, during its [adversity]. Ford and I had fought for slow extrication and keep the aid request alive, continuing the request to the Congress and the President had prevailed. Now that debate was overwhelmed by events. We had become spectators of a drama events we could no longer influence, suspended between a pain we could not still and a future we were not yet in a position to shape.

---

End of column

---

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It was what has been described as the so-called "the greatest generation" that entered Indo China in the heyday of American exceptionalism, in pursuit of the strategy that had already, with which it had stabilized the post-World War II world, rebuilt Europe, restored Germany and Japan to the community of nations and arrested the Soviet advance into Europe and in Korea. A mixture of the experiences of World War II and a philosophy drawn from the New Deal, this American strategy concentrated on stopping Soviet aggression and removing communist opportunities for internal upheavals by promoting economic and social progress in regions under U.S. American protection.

unanimous consensus, there was always significant dissent opposition, especially in the intellectual and academic communities. They argued either that the communist threat was exaggerated or that the United States was

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Vietnam through Laotian territory and
intensified the guerrilla war, Kennedy sent
sixteen thousand U.S military "advisers" to
South Vietnam in 1962. President Lyndon Johnson
escalated this commitment until it reached
over five hundred thousand by the time he
left office. Initially, there was no significant
opposition, either within or outside the
Administration, to that massive deploy-
ment. Though later on the decision was blamed on
Johnson later on, it was in fact Kennedy's
closest advisers—McGeorge Bundy, Robert
McNamara and Dean Rusk—who urged the
escalation.

called a democracy, nor would it be clear why this is relevant? For those who had
made the decision to send American troops,
growing self-doubt compounded despair

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EDITORIAL HUNTINGTON

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While the leaders were seized by emotional turmoil, the critics challenged the very essence of American foreign involvement. The arguments that the war was unwinnable and that its cost at the war exceeded its benefits escalated almost as rapidly as the

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By the time Richard Nixon
became President, the battle lines were
محاربة دينية

drawn. The demoralized Establishment,
which had launched us into the quagmire.

abdicated from the task of extrication,
and the field to the protesters or joining them

in attacks on the argument that extrication was prevented, above all by the short-sightedness and
warped mentality of the new

------- End of column -------

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APR 18 '00 04:53PM

EDITION ADMINISTRATION

ID=212 4215882

P09/18

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Many of the stages in this process
were highly controversial and they deserve
fuller treatment than this article permits.
But it is symptomatic of the schism Vietnam
created in America that so much of the literature
on Vietnam focuses on the charge that he needlessly pro-
longed the war and sacrificed American
lives, implying that there was some honor-
able way out that he refused to take the

---

--- End of column ---

issue is not historical justice toward individ-
ual presidents, but historical justice toward
a national tragedy. Mistakes should be
debated and lessons learned. But when self-
flagellation turns into assaults on the good
faith of all leaders, the ability to build a coher-
ent national purpose ultimately suffers.

America owes itself an objective assessment
of the fact that Vietnam experience, which after 25
years has not yet happened.

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Administration awakened their taste for political power. After Kennedy's assassination, they sought to shape policy-making. The immediate issues from the process, dividing into two groups — job applicants and revolutionaries. The job applicants replicated the debates of the policymakers; and the revolutionaries, the arguments of the protest movement. In either case, they contributed little to helping America overcome the tragedy of Vietnam.

PK
10

## Vietnam's Legacy

Since the Vietnam war, there have been three main camps: currents among American foreign policymakers:

- Advocates of continuing to adapt to adaptations of the Cold War strategy of the 1950s and 1960s.

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PG:

When Under the impact of Vietnam, liberals and intellectuals retreated from the field of strategy and redefined exceptionalism in terms of "soft issues" which could be achieved without the use of military power. As a result, traditional American strategy became largely the provenance of conservatives and neo-conservatives. Always uncomfortable with commitments on distant battlefields, the American right concentrated on rigorous anti-communism and vigilance in maintaining the strategic balance, especially with respect to arms control negotiations. And during in the Reagan Administration, against a Soviet adversary weakened by decades of overextension, this group achieved great successes.

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