SEASON’s GREETINGS from the Bear’s Den on Mount Ogden…
Good Morning… It is Monday, 9 December 2019 and Humble Host is taking a well-deserved holiday break. Before I take leave, here are two “homework assignments” on AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY for readers who get tired of football, politicians, winter weather and rug rats… Humble Host guarantees you will enjoy a 46-minute North Vietnamese propaganda war film produced in 1971 to glorify the brave village north of the DMZ named Vinh Linh. A more vivid example of the limits of aerial bombardment as an instrument of foreign policy would be hard to imagine.. Watch “Vinh Linh: The Steel Rampart” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lbSilH7qkc
A second assignment for your consideration is a Doctoral Dissertation by David L. Prentice titled: ENDING AMERICA’s VIETNAM WAR: Vietnamization’s Domestic Origins and International Ramifications, 1968-1970. This is an on-line 500-pager well worth the time of any participant or student of the Vietnam war who retains an interest in passing the most important lesson learned from our 1961 to 1973 “unending war” in Southeast Asia on to younger generations. Specifically, how to get out of a war that can’t be won. Which, unfortunately, was a lesson not learned or ignored as our nation embarked on a war in Afghanistan in 2001 that continues today and has become the longest war in American history. There is no end in sight. Perhaps our current exit strategy in Afghanistan reflects Vietnamization in the form of “Afghanization,” and we have learned something from the Vietnam experience. Specifically, in Vietnam, “when ‘the long-route’ policy of providing Saigon with a ‘decent chance’ of survival for a ‘decent interval’ after a negotiated settlement, U.S. forces could leave Vietnam.” It seems to Humble Host that this is the policy now in effect in Aghanistan. See end notes below (“SHH! EVEN IF WE ARE LEAVING AFGHANISTAN, JUST DON’T TELL THE TALIBAN”)
(Webmaster note: Many of the arguments made by Prentice in his dissertation are also in his book Unwilling to Quit: The Long Unwinding of American Involvement in Vietnam)
Author David Prentice makes the case for ending a war –exit strategy– by using Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird’s “Vietnamization” as the preferred alternative to either abandoning the fight or the choice of Henry Kissinger of “a savage bombing campaign,” that the author refers to as “mad schemes.”… Unfortunately, after four more years of fighting, and the loss of an additional 20,000 American warriors KIA, it was LINEBACKER I and II–“savage bombing” operations and mining of North Vietnam harbors– that finally brought DRV negotiators back to the peace talks in Paris… Prentice avoids inclusion of these “mad schemes” in his 500-page argument for the Laird strategy…
Humble Host presents the Abstract of Prentice’s serious but captivating arguments for the Laird solution on how to end a war as opposed to the Kissinger “Savage Attack.” I quote:
“America’s exit from Vietnam was as contingent, complicated and agonizing as its decision to pursue war in Indochina, and this dissertation focuses on the critical period–1968-1970. Based on research at eight domestic and foreign archives, I argue that the perception of a crumbling home front drove U.S. policymaking and that America’s allies and enemies appreciated and reacted to this domestic context and decision-making. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson concluded he had little choice but to cap U.S. troop strength, stop bombing North Vietnam, and begin negotiations, but he drew the line at unilateral withdrawals and kept military escalation on the table.
“Hence, the battle over America’s exit strategy occurred during Richard Nixon’s first year in office. During 1969, three individuals–Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and Melvin Laird–plotted, schemed and wrangled over Nixon’s Vietnam strategy. The allure of victory remained strong as Nixon and Kissinger devised an elaborate plan to threaten and then launch a savage bombing campaign against North Vietnam to compel the capitulation before time ran out at home. Secretary of Defense Laird argued the domestic front would not tolerate such a mad scheme. Instead, Laird developed what became America’s exit strategy, Vietnamization–the strategy of improving South Vietnamese military capabilities while withdrawing American troops. Though overlooked by historians, Laird’s Vietnamization defeated Kissinger’s militant strategy to halt U.S. troop reductions and escalate the war. By the end of 1969, Nixon sided with Laird, hoping Vietnamization could win the war at home and abroad.
“Vietnamization’s domestic origins reflect only part of the story, and this dissertation establishes its international context as well. Foreign officials understood U.S. policymakers had changed course to abate pressure at home. Whereas both the North and (surprisingly) South Vietnamese greeted Vietnamization with confidence, Australia and Great Britain worried it could be an early symptom of a global American retreat. They feared humiliation in Vietnam would create an isolationist lobby that would curtail U.S. commitments world wide. Nevertheless, they judged Nixon’s resolve and Vietnamization positively. The Nixon administration was holding the line in the United States and South Vietnam, but all understood that Vietnamization marked the beginning of the end of America’s Vietnam War.”… End quote…
A LESSON IN AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY… Humble Host uses the foregoing as a springboard for a brief lesson from the American experience in exiting endless wars. MADMAN DIPLOMACY, SAVAGE OPERATIONS AND DUCK HOOK defined: “Walk softly, carry a big stick and keep your adversaries and allies guessing.”
MADMAN DIPLOMACY explained. Humble Host goes to the flyleaf of NIXON’s NUCLEAR SPECTER: The Secret Alert of 1969, Madman Diplomacy, and the Vietnam War by William Burr and Jeffrey P. Kimball. I quote: “In their initial effort to end the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger attempted to lever concessions from Hanoi at the negotiating table with military force and coercive diplomacy. They were not seeking military victory, which they did not believe was feasible. Instead, they backed up their diplomacy toward North Vietnam and the Soviet Union with the Madman Theory of threatening excessive force, which included the specter of nuclear force. They began with verbal threats then bombed North Vietnamese and Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia (OPERATION MENU), signaling that there was more to come. As the bombing expanded, they launched a prevously unknown mining ruse against Haiphong, stepped-up their warnings to Hanoi and Moscow, and initiated planning for a massive shock-and-awe military operation referred to within the White House inner circle as DUCK HOOK. Beyond the mining of North Vietnamese ports and selective bombing in and around Hanoi, the initial DUCK HOOK concept included proposals for ‘tactical’ nuclear strikes against logistics targets and U.S. and South Vietnamese ground incursions into the North. In early October 1969, however, Nixon aborted planning for the long-contemplated operation. He had been influenced by Hanoi’s defiance in the face of dire threats and concerned about U.S. public reaction, antiwar protests, and internal administration dissent. In place of DUCK HOOK, Nixon and Kissinger launched a secret global nuclear alert in hopes that it would lend credibility to their prior warnings and perhaps even persuade Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi. It was to be a ‘special reminder’ of how far President might go. The risky gambit failed to move the Soviets, but it marked a turning point in the administration’s strategy for exiting Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger became increasingly resigned to a ‘long route’ policy of providing Saigon with a ‘decent chance’ of survival for a ‘decent interval’ after a negotiated settlement and U.S. forces left Indochina. (VIETNAMIZATION) Burr and Kimball draw upon extensive research in participant interviews and declassified documents to offer a history that holds important lessons for the present and future about the risks and uncertainties of nuclear threat making.”…Unquote…
FOR A TOTAL IMMERSION in the Burr/Kimball explanation of THE MADMAN STRATEGY and the formerly classified sources now available to researchers in the National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 517 that they brought to their book, Humble Host suggests a perusal of this material at…
Humble Host surmises high and timely interest in the foreign policy of the United States as being executed by President Donald Trump… Read a short article in the 6 December 2019 THE PATRIOT POST by Brian Mark Weber titled “OUTSIDE-THE-BOX FOREIGN POLICY”…. read at…
https://patriotpost.us/articles/67203-outside-the-box-foreign-policy-2019-12-06
Then read the short OpEd from the pages of the 3 December 2019 WASHINGTON EXAMINER by LTGEN RICHARD P. MILLS, USMC (Ret) titled:
“SHH! EVEN IF WE ARE LEAVING AFGHANISTAN, JUST DON’T TELL THE TALIBAN”… This is a super short summary of our current strategy for exiting Afghnaistan, or as it might be called, “AFGHANIZATION”… Read at…
“Walk softly, carry a big stick, and keep your adversaries and allies guessing.”…
Have a Merry Christmas and a jolly good time welcoming in 2020. While you are at it, why not pay a visit to The Wall of Faces and leave a remembrance for the old mates whose names are thereon?… Type in the name of the fallen mate, friend or family member who is memorialized there… “Leave A Remembrance”… You’ll be glad you did…As long as they are remembered they shall not perish…
Lest we forget… Bear