The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked by Leslie Gelb is a review that American bureaucratic institutions prevailed across the Vietnam War.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara appointed Leslie Gelb, following the death of John McNaughton to discover the history of American involvement in Vietnam. This top secret project Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force began in 1967 and became known as The Pentagon Papers after Dan Ellsberg leaked the study to the New York Times.
Understanding Gelb’s views and insights of the war you must acknowledge Gelb worked on CINCPAC OPLAN 37-64 known as Operation Rolling Thunder.
Readers should be well versed in the pre-World War II history of Indochina including American efforts via financially support in the French desire post-1946 to re-enslave the peoples of Indochina.
Gelb’s efforts well document the lost years of the American war 1966 to 1968. Interesting how Gelb viewed LBJ not finding consensus among his advisors on how to proceed …. victory was clearly understood as not achievable by 1965. Yet General Westmoreland could not convince LBJ that 480,000 more men would swing the tide of the war.
Gelb’s opinion of Operation Marigold brought refreshed insights that I did not easily recall from the Papers. The backdrop of a secret tunnel to establish peace via the Polish embassy detailed how intense the effort was in the White House set against the Air Force commitment to Gelb’s own Operation Rolling Thunder clipped any real chance at peace by December 1966. The war would continue for almost ten more years.
Gelb makes a solid case in the long view that US origins trace back to pre-World War II and President FDR. And from Truman, to Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson to Nixon and finally to Ford all held the same predictable position:
There was much to suggest that Vietnam was special, however. Heavy US strategic investment in the country highlighted this, though it did not cause it. US actions betokened more than the mere granting of aid to another country in distress.
The record of the US military and economic assistance to fight communism in Indochina, detailed in chapter 2, tells the story quite clearly. The investment was made heavily and steadily. From 1945 two 1951 US aid to France totaled over $3.5 billion. From 1955 to 1961 US military aid of all kinds averaged about $200 million a year. This made South Vietnam the second largest recipient of such aid, topped only by Korea. By 1963 South Vietnam ranked first among recipients of military assistance. In economic assistance they followed only India and Pakistan. On a per capita basis Vietnam ranked behind only Laos throughout this period.
In late 1953 Indochina was granted the highest military aid priority giving it precedence for equipment over every Allied nation and the US Armed Forces as well. It did not possess the largest military assistance advisory group, because of Geneva restrictions, but it had the only MAAG, headed by a Lieutenant General.
By 1958 South Vietnam how was the largest us overseas economic aid mission anywhere. These little touches_The more essential fact that’s South Vietnam, if not in American creation, was certainly a total dependent. It would neither have to come into being nor survived without a massive US support. Saigon’s rulers heading nowhere else to turn, and everyone knew it.
Evidence from memoirs support this view and give some indication how far Presidents were prepared to go to save Vietnam. The place to start is with The Roosevelt Administration, for a greater degree than any other successors, except the Johnson Administration, it had to act on his words about Southeast Asia.
In the summer of 1941, months before the Pearl Harbor attack, the State Department issued the following:
“In the light of previous developments, such steps are now being taken by the government of Japan endanger the peaceful use by peaceful nations of the Pacific. They tend to jeopardize the procurement by the United States of essential materials such as tin and rubber which are necessary for the normal economy of this country in the consummation of our defense program.… the steps which the Japanese government has taken also endanger the safety of all other areas of the Pacific, including the Philippines Islands.”
But in the warm planning for the war injury and its actual conduct the United States accorded the south east Asian theater the lowest priority. In practice this man balls that the area would be lightly defended in that little effort would be expanded to recapture it.… the Roosevelt administration was in the resources blind, and it had to be tough with itself in deciding what was important. It had to establish priorities. In doing so, it through into sharp relief the contrast between into words and deeds… pres. Truman did not want to lose the Korean War but was prepared to do so. In the fall of 1950 after the successful Chinese intervention in Korea, Truman approved a joint memo of the State Department in the Defense Department that said if the Chinese rejected he sees fire can continue their offensive, the UN forces might be compelled to evacuate Korea.…Eisenhower’s thinking about Indochina seems to be a puzzle. On the one hand, he talked about the loss of Indochina resulting in foaming dominoes around the world. And on the other hand, he failed to”save” Indochina by intervening for the French at Dien Bien Phu.
Sherman Adams, Eisenhower’s assistant, provided an answer to the puzzle:
“If the Communists had pushed on within offensive after the fall of Dien Bien Phu, instead of stopping into green to stay out of southern Vietnam, Laos in Cambodia, there was a strong possibility that the United States would have moved against them. A complete communist conquest of Indochina would have had far graver consequences for the last then a red victory in Korea.”
Eisenhower was prepared to lose Vietnam about the 17th parallel but was deadly serious about stopping the Vietminh advance at that point.
For a period after the Geneva conference, Eisenhower can be said to have been uncertain about Vietnam but by 1960, when the Laotian crisis wasn’t full swing it can be presumed, he was even more likely to do it of the still greater American steak in South Vietnam.
pgs. 191-196
Many have written about the long standing position that US support for French desires to re-enslave the peoples of IndoChina forced America into the position taken that would lead to a national nightmare:
Korea definitely changed the relatively laws a fair attitude towards Indochina. Korea made Indochina appear is another front in an Asia wide Communist assault––in the soul that could spread to Europe. Andy Europe throughout the Truman administration what’s considered the keystone of American security, Franco – American relations and a strong France – in– Europe being the backbone of the resurgent Europe. Friends, then, had to be helped in Indochina in order not to be a weekend in Europe.
These same considerations persisted into the Eisenhower administration. Indeed the linkages to French policy and anti- China policy became even stronger, until the French said”no more” at Geneva. Then, the dominating factor became the need for alliances — pacts-mania, the critics called it — to prevent any further communist inroads.…for Kennedy, Vietnam came wrapped up in a bundle of problems. One more pressing than the next, they range from Cuba to Berlin to Laos to Khrushchev’s speech on the wars of national liberation. Vietnam seem to be the test case for the new Communist challenge to the under developed world — the great, obscure areas. And then for Johnson, Vietnam itself emerged as the dominant event and issue, coloring American relations with the rest of the world.
pgs. 198-199
So how does Gelb formulate ‘The System Worked’ in this book? His view of ‘working’ focuses on two schools of thought: The Win School vs. The Reformist School. I found his conclusions a bit distant:
The system facilitated decision-making in means to reach the end of containment; that remained virtually unchallenged within the executive branch. This system facilitated decision-making on ways to keep the costs of commitment as low as possible; the problem was the progressive inflation of the lowest possible costs of preventing communist victory. The bureaucratic system did what it was supposed to do: means to a given end. The political system did what is democracy usually does: produce a policy responsive more to the majority into the center then to the minority or to the extremes of opinion. In strategic thought, from that of the limited war theorists to the counterinsurgency specialists, did what it was supposed to do: support the general policy worldwide containment with specific ideas and programs for containment in Vietnam.
pg. 354
Gelb provides significant background to the Pentagon Papers. It is well worth your time.