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Rethinking Camelot
JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture
Noam Chomsky
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Rethinking Camelot
JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture
Noam Chomsky
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Explores JFK’s role in US invasion of Vietnam and a reflects on the political culture that encouraged the Cold War.
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VietnamkriegChapter 1
From Terror to Aggression
1. The Doctrinal Framework
To understand Kennedyâs war and the aftermath it is necessary to attend to the thinking that lay behind the policy choices. Kennedy planners adopted doctrines already established. Too much independence (âradical nationalismâ) is not acceptable; the ârotten appleâ effect of possible success enhances the need to eliminate the âinfectionâ before it spreads. The Indochina wars are only a special case, which happened to get out of hand. In this general context, independent nationalism was unthinkable, and was never seriously entertained as an option.
By 1948 Washington planners recognized that the nationalist movement was led by Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh. Ho was eager to cooperate with the United States, but not on the required terms of subordination. Furthermore, top policymakers feared, Vietnamese independence might fan âanti-Western Pan-Asiatic tendencies in the region,â undermining the âclose association between newly-autonomous peoples and powers which have been long responsible [for] their welfareâ; in Indochina, the responsible authority was France, whose tender care had left the countries devastated and starving. Chinese influence, in contrast, must be excluded âso that the peoples of Indochina will not be hampered in their natural developments by the pressure of an alien people and alien interestsâ; unlike the US and France.
The US right to restore the âclose associationâ is axiomatic. It follows that any problems that arise can be attributed to illegitimate nationalist aspirations. On these assumptions, the CIA warned in September 1948 that âThe gravest danger to the US is that friction engendered by [anticolonialism and economic nationalism] may drive the so-called colonial bloc into alignment with the USSRâ: Third World nationalism is the cause of the âfriction,â not imperial concerns. The traditional âcolonial economic interestsâ of the industrial countries must prevail if âfrictionâ interferes with US global plans. Southeast Asia would have to remain under âits traditional subordination,â Melvyn Leffler observes, reviewing a broad scholarly consensus.1
The major concern was Japan, the âsuperdominoâ (John Dower). Internally, the old order had to be restored and Japan protected from what the State Department called the âconcealed aggressionâ of the Russians, referring to internal political developments that might threaten business rule. And Japan had to be deterred from independent foreign and economic policies, from âthe suicide of neutralismâ (General Omar Bradley) and accommodation to China. The only hope for achieving these goals, George Kennan argued, lay in restoring for Japan âsome sort of Empire toward the South.â In effect, the US must provide Japan with its wartime âco-prosperity sphere,â now safely within the US-dominated world system, with no fear that US business interests would be denied their proper place.2
The guiding concerns are articulated in the public record as well. Outlining the âfalling dominoesâ theory in a news conference on April 7, 1954, President Eisenhower warned that Japan would have to tum âtoward the Communist areas in order to liveâ if Communist success in Indochina âtakes away, in its economic aspects, that region that Japan must have as a trading area.â The consequences would be âjust incalculable to the free world.â Walter LaFeber observed in 1968 that âThis thesis became a controlling assumption: the loss of Vietnam would mean the economic undermining and probable loss of Japan to Communist markets and ultimately to Communist influence if not control.â Eisenhowerâs public statements expressed the conclusion of NSC 5405 (January 16) that âthe loss of Southeast Asia, especially of Malaya and Indonesia, could result in such economic and political pressures in Japan as to make it extremely difficult to prevent Japanâs eventual accommodation to communism.â Communist domination of Southeast Asia âby whatever meansâ would âcritically endangerâ US âsecurity interests,â understood in the usual sense. The âloss of Vietnamâ would therefore be of great significance; that it is ours to âloseâ is again axiomatic.3
Given such doctrines, it is clear why the diplomatic settlement at the1954 Geneva conference was regarded as a disaster. Washington reacted vigorously. A few days after the accords were signed, the National Security Council decreed that even in the case of âlocal Communist subversion or rebellion not constituting armed attack,â the US would consider the use of military force, including an attack on China if it is âdetermined to be the sourceâ of the âsubversionâ (NSC 5429/2; my emphasis).
This wording, repeated verbatim annually through the 1950s in planning documents, was chosen so as to make explicit the US right to violate the basic principles of the UN Charter, which bar any threat or use of force except in resistance to âarmed attackâ (until the UN Security Council acts). The same document called for remilitarizing Japan, converting Thailand into âthe focal point of U.S. covert and psychological operations in Southeast Asia,â undertaking âcovert operations on a large and effective scaleâ throughout Indochina, and in every possible way undermining the Geneva accords.
This critically important document is grossly falsified by the Pentagon Papers historians, and has largely disappeared from history.4
Recall that âsubversion,â like âconcealed aggression,â is a technical concept covering any form of unwelcome internal political development. Thus the Joint Chiefs, in 1955, outline âthree basic forms of aggressionâ: armed attack across a border (aggression in the literal sense); âOvert armed attack from within the area of each of the sovereign statesâ; âAggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.â An internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way, are forms of âaggression,â which the US has the right to combat by arbitrary violence. The assumptions are so ingrained as to pass without notice, as when liberal hero Adlai Stevenson, UN Ambassador under Kennedy and Johnson, declared that in Vietnam the US is defending a free people from âinternal aggression.â Stevenson compared this noble cause to the first major postwar counterinsurgency campaign, in Greece in 1947, where US-run operations successfully demolished the anti-Nazi resistance and the political system and restored the old order, including leading Nazi collaborators, at the cost of some 160,000 lives and tens of thousands of victims of torture chambers, and a legacy of destruction yet to be overcome (along with great benefits to US corporations). Similar premises are adopted routinely by apologists for state violence; thus Sidney Hook condemned the âincursionsâ of the indigenous South Vietnamese resistance, praising the US for using armed might to counter these crimes despite the âunfortunate accidental loss of lifeâ in such exercises as saturation bombing by B-52s in the densely-populated Delta.5
The character of the intellectual culture is indicated by the reaction to such thoughts.
In accordance with the plans laid out in NSC 5429/2, Washington moved at once to subvert the Geneva settlement, installing a client regime in the South: the GVN (RVN), which regarded itself throughout as the legitimate government of all Vietnam. With US backing and guidance, the GVN launched a massive terrorist attack against the domestic population and barred the planned 1956 elections on unification, which were the condition under which the resistance had accepted the Geneva accords. The subversion was recognized to be successful: as Kennedyâs chief war manager Robert McNamara observed while once again rejecting diplomatic options in March 1964, âOnly the U.S. presence after 1954 held the South together under far more favorable circumstances, and enabled Diem to refuse to go through with the 1954 provision calling for nationwide âfreeâ elections in 1956.â6
The facts are described with fair accuracy by US military intelligence. A 1964 study observes that after the Geneva agreements of 1954 that âpartitionedâ Vietnam, the DRV (North Vietnam) relocated 100,000 people to the North, including 40,000 military personnel, leaving behind âSeveral thousand political agitators and activistsâ and some military forces âwith orders to remain dormant.â âIn 1956, the US-backed president of the RVNâNgo Dinh Diemâblocked the referendum called for by the Geneva Agreements which was to decide the form of government that would rule over a reunited Vietnam. The Communists, who saw their hopes for a legal takeover of the whole country vanish by this maneuver, ordered their dormant âstay behindsâ to commence propaganda activities to put pressure on the new and inexperienced government of the RVN,â perhaps hoping âto overthrow the government without having to resort to military activity.â By 1957, they âinstituted a program of proselytizing RVN armed forces officers and men to the VC cause,â also following âthe standard Communist tactic of infiltrating and subverting legal political parties.â In 1958-1959, âhaving achieved a degree of popular support in the rural areas through pressure, argument, terror and subversion,â the VC began to organize guerrilla groups among the local populace, later supported by southerners returning from the North (all military infiltrators being âveterans of the French Indo-China War who had served in the area now governed by the RVNâ through 1963, this MACV [Military Assistance Command, Vietnam] Intelligence Infiltration Study reports).7
It is only necessary to add a few minor corrections. The Geneva agreements did not âpartitionâ Vietnam but separated two military zones by a temporary demarcation line that âshould not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary,â pending the unification elections of 1956 that were the heart of the accords. Intelligence is adopting âthe standard US tacticâ of denouncing political action that is out of control as subversion. The US client regime was carrying out wholesale terror to block such âsubversionâ and destroy the anti-French resistance, finally compelling the latter to resort to violence in self-defense. JFK raised the level of the US attack from international terrorism to outright aggression in 1961-1962. Apart from Americans, the only non-South Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam were US mercenaries, primarily South Korean and Chinese. That aside, US intelligence has the story more or less straight.
Well after regular US bombing of North Vietnam began in February 1965, North Vietnamese units were detected in border areas or across the border, though Korean mercenaries alone far outnumbered North Vietnamese as of March 1966 and matched their numbers until the Tet Offensive (also, incidentally, providing 20 percent of South Koreaâs foreign currency revenue and thus helping to spark the later economic miracle). There were also Chinese forces, namely mercenaries from Chiang Kai-Shekâs army introduced by Kennedy and Johnson, six companies of combat infantry by April 1965. North Vietnamese regular units, estimated by the Pentagon at about 50,000 by 1968, were largely in peripheral areas; US mercenary forces, in contrast, were rampaging in the heartland, as was the US military itself. Korean mercenaries, who were particularly brutal, reached 50,000 by 1969, along with another 20,000 âFree Worldâ and over a half-million US troops.8
Washingtonâs principled opposition to political settlement continued without change. From the early 1960s, there was intense concern over French President Charles de Gaulleâs proposals for neutralization, as well as initiatives towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict by Vietnamese on all sides, including the Diem regime and the Generals who replaced it. A political settlement might have extended as far as neutralization of Laos, Cambodia, and South Vietnam, as advocated by the National Liberation Front (the âViet Congâ of US propaganda). As discussed above, the US was adamantly opposed to any such possibility. Fear of neutralization was one factor in the Kennedy-inspired coup that overthrew Diem, and considerable pressures were exerted to bring de Gaulle to retract his initiatives, which appeared still more threatening in the context of Kennedyâs concerns about his role in promoting the âsuicide of neutralismâ in Europe.
Franceâs position on Vietnam was explained by Foreign Minister Couve de Murville, in response to a request (April 1964) to clarify what France meant by the term âneutrality.â Couveâs reply was: âQuite simply, the Geneva Agreements of 1954,â which he interpreted as meaning âthe division of Viet-Nam with a commitment by both sides not to accept military aid from outside (sic) and not to enter into military alliancesâwhich is really neutrality.â âThe South Vietnamese people are out of the game,â Couve added. âAll you have is a professional army supported from outside.â9
The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations knew very well that the generals are âall we have gotâ and that âWe are at present overwhelmingly outclassed politicallyâ (Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, January 1964). That is precisely why Washington always regarded diplomacy as anathema: lacking political support, the US could put forth no credible negotiating position. So the story continues right through to the end.10
The basic reasoning about diplomacy is stated clearly in the internal record. As the US position was collapsing in 1964 and calls were mounting for an attack against the North, William Bundy wrote that diplomacy could be considered âAfter, but only after, we have established a clear pattern of pressure hurting the DRV and leaving no doubts in South Vietnam of our resolveâ (his emphasis). First force, then diplomacyâa last resort, if we are sure that we are powerful enough to win.11
For similar reasons, opposition to negotiations and diplomacy has been a characteristic US policy stance in Latin America and the Middle East, and remains so, as documented in extensive detail elsewhere. Commentators assume as a matter of course that diplomacy is a threat to be avoided. The principle is considered uncontroversial, a truism, perhaps even more so than in the past. In January 1993, when the West alleged that Iraq was moving missiles within its territory contrary to US wishes (but in accord with UN resolutions), the United States demanded that they be removed. In response, Iraq called for negotiations on all disputed issues, âAn exchange that recalls the maneuvering before the gulf war,â the New York Times reported, highlighting these words. âThe ultimatum and Iraqâs reply today recalled the maneuvering before the Persian Gulf War, in which the allies set a firm deadline for Iraqi compliance while Baghdad sought unsuccessfully to fend off military action with diplomatic tactics,â the front-page story reported. Pursuit of peaceful means as required by international law and the UN Charter is a crime that Washington must resolutely resist, keeping to the weapon of violence, in which it reigns supreme; that is unquestioned dogma.
It is natural that those who are militarily strong but politically weak will prefer the arena of violence. Apparent exceptions typically reflect the failure of force or perceived advantage. The solemn obligation to pursue peaceful means is notable by its absence in affairs of state. It is part of the responsibility of the cultural managers in every society to cloak such facts in pieties about the high ideals and nobility of leaders, and to reshape the facts for public consumption.12
States are not moral agents; those who attribute to them ideals and principles merely mislead themselves and others.
Public rhetoric reflecting the guiding policy doctrines sometimes rose to near-hysteria. In June 1956, Senator John F. Kennedy stated that:
Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the Keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike. Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and, obviously, Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the red tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam... Moreover, the independence of Free Vietnam is crucial to the free world in fields other than the military. Her economy is essential to the economy of all of Southeast Asia; and her political liberty is an inspiration to those seeking to obtain or maintain their liberty in all parts of Asiaâand indeed the world. The fundamental tenets of this nationâs foreign policy, in short, depend in considerable measure upon a strong and free Vietnamese nation
âwhich was then enjoying its âinspiring political libertyâ under the Diem dictatorship, a Latin American-style terror state dedicated to the murder and torture of people committed to the Geneva settlement and other forms of âconcealed aggression.â13
Kennedy kept to these extremist doctrines. As he prepared to escalate the war to direct US aggression in late 1961, he warned that âwe are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influenceâ; if the conspiracy achieves its ends in Laos and Vietnam, âthe gates will be opened wide.â âThe complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history [and] Only the strong...can possibly survive,â Kennedy railed, outraged in this case by Cubaâs unconscionable defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Until the end he held t...