On Fighting a Limited War-n Exchange The Need for Prudence
LIEBER, ROBERT J.
On Fighting a Limited War?An Exchange The Need for Prudence With the Vietnam war moving inexorably toward a settlement, a serious examination of the broader lessons of the U.S. involvement there...
...And by identifying its interests with the relatively ephemeral political regimes in these areas, the United States only invites future Vietnams...
...Yet if we aim at all costs to prevent the establishment of a Communist government, then our willingness to accept a peaceful settlement, free elections, and possibly a coalition government contradicts our objective...
...Roche himself concedes the "cold fact" that American youth has a "genuine grievance...
...The Vietnam policy thus became unpopular, but it remained sound...
...Yet persistent conflict and upheaval seem to be the destiny of huge portions of Asia, Africa and Latin America for well into the forseeable future...
...He casually tosses off American deaths in Vietnam as inconsequential, commenting that the war has killed fewer Americans in the last six years than die annually from drunken driving...
...can accomplish...
...I hope that the next time we undertake a limited war, we will be able to find a more generous opponent...
...While Bundy today finds that the burdens of Vietnam have become excessive and that our commitment can safely be reduced to 100,000 men, he shares with Roche an unwillingness to challenge the 1965 decision to commit American combat troops to Southeast Asia...
...There are different kinds of power, and some things that power simply cannot achieve...
...self-determination, potential oil wealth, starvation, and even genocide...
...it bears no relation to reality...
...in any case, war (as General Gavin notes) is not a morality play...
...involvement would therefore include, for example, Europe...
...But the problems facing over half the world do not have any relation to the East-West conflict...
...These problems have a distinctly North-South character—anti-colonialism, economic development, nation-building, the turmoil of social upheaval...
...And to say that one who opposes military intervention but favors the Peace Corps is not an isolationist, somehow seems to beg the point...
...and has stated flatly that "if China should try to extend its military power beyond the limits the Chinese empire had reached about a century ago, it ought to be stopped...
...Since I am still thinking my way along, I am hardly in the mood to argue strongly with Robert Lieber, who has taken about 1500 words to say "Be prudent...
...While this is only marginally incorrect, it is more pertinent that among U.S...
...Historians will record that since the Second World War the President took one of the boldest and most just decisions made by any American President...
...As Hans Morgenthau and Senators McCarthy and Fulbright also seem to suggest, I think the notion of limited war must be applied with far greater restraint than has heretofore been the case...
...it simply means a less ambitious view of what the The purpose of my article was to stimulate some discussion on what seems to me to be the neglected dimension of the war in Vietnam...
...and Soviet Union, or where the government we are aiding has the will and ability to defend itself...
...Before doing so, however, let me dispose of some subsidiary points...
...This conception diverges entirely from the view of those who now oppose the Vietnam war only because it did not succeed...
...Regrettably, the recent Republican and Democratic platforms provided no fundamental re-examination of U.S...
...To assert, as he does, that "the new liberal McCarthyism . . . loosed more hate in the United States than 'old Joe' could ever have dreamed of" may satisfy his frustration at the way the Johnson Administration was destroyed...
...There are three major reasons why limited wars must be restricted in the underdeveloped world...
...Robert J. Lieber is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California in Davis...
...The second fundamental restriction on the applicability of limited war concerns the limits of various types of force...
...The problem is that we need the cooperation of the enemy to move the war, and to date Ho Chi Minh has proved most uncooperative...
...John Roche's essay, "Can a Free Society Fight a Limited War...
...Roche dismisses much of the Vietnam criticism as lunatic...
...Yet why should Vietnam be seen as a testing ground at all...
...foreign policy...
...NL, October 21, 1968), offers some highly interesting arguments...
...I am a strong believer in prudence myself, and I am sure that limited war would work brilliantly if the theater of operations were, say, the island of New Caledonia...
...Thus it may be no more possible to prevent the overthrow of a Southeast Asian government than to deter a sneeze with a machine gun, for the application of force cannot deter instability...
...Fewer limited wars do not mean isolationism...
...involvement there has begun...
...and by the first six months of 1968 it was the largest single cause of death in this age group...
...Lieber and others that Lyndon Johnson did not restrain the Soviets by threatening to send the Peace Corps to the Middle East...
...Since the choice between nuclear annihilation and surrender must be avoided, I do not dispute Roche's justification of the principles of flexible response and limited war...
...The Mor-genthau-McCarthy-Fulbright approach entails not opposition to foreign involvement, but rejection of the global interventionism of Lyndon Johnson and Dean Rusk...
...Finally, since we are not clear about our objectives we find great difficulty in applying the doctrine of limited war to the conditions of the Third World...
...The root problem, he contends, is that the restrained nature of this kind of conflict generated massive frustration and unrest within the U.S...
...Their objectives in the underdeveloped world were irreconcilable with their desire to avoid the role of "world policeman...
...Recently, Israeli Deputy Premier Yigal Allon said: "The word of President Johnson in the Six-Day War played a historic role by warning the Soviet Union that its military intervention would cause a global confrontation...
...in 1967 it caused more deaths than cancer, heart disease, pneumonia and TB combined...
...In addition, the McCarthy movement actually channeled dissent into orderly political activity...
...The turmoil and violent change which have marked the underdeveloped world are bound to continue, and the decision remains to be made as to whether the United States ought to discard its commitment to peaceful December 16, 1968 15 change or its preference for not policing the world...
...It finds Britain, the Soviet Union and Egypt supporting the Federal government, while Portugal, France and (apparently) China are aiding Biaf-ra...
...Whatever else it implies, it provides neither a blanket justification for our own record in Vietnam nor for a future role as world policeman...
...Moreover, I don't know anyone in the Johnson Administration who would disagree with him...
...The notion of limited war grew out of the East-West nuclear confrontation...
...By Robert /. Lieber Roche is at his most provocative in dealing with the domestic climate...
...As Gati points out, a leading proponent of the limita-tionist approach, Walter Lippmann, has identified himself as a neo-isolationist who supports "economic assistance, technical assistance, the Peace Corps [and] cultural exchanges," and also approves collective military action to defend vital American interests but opposes unilateral military intervention in Asia and Africa...
...I would argue that the strategy of limited war has a severely limited applicability...
...According to Roche, we are fighting to contain aggressive totalitarianism...
...On the other hand, if we merely aim to insure self-determination and deter aggression, then all the talk of stopping totalitarianism is really illusory...
...As Professor Karl Deutsch has said, you cannot deter behavior that has a high autonomous probability of occurrence...
...At most, Communist vs...
...In sum, while the principle or limited war remains tenable, it must be applied with great care where the underdeveloped world is involved...
...This attitude is appropriately characterized by the term "limita-tionist," applied in a recent article by Charles Gati (World Politics, October 1968...
...Let me be specific...
...taliatory nuclear power of the U.S...
...For Roche to identify McCarthy's supporters with the far smaller number of genuine revolutionaries or anarchists is to adopt the classification scheme of Mayor Daley and his Chicago Police Department...
...It revolves around his assertion that Vietnam presents a major challenge to stability and constitutes a "crucial testing ground" for wars of national liberation and our ability to cope with such liberators...
...Israel, South Korea, Japan and perhaps India...
...non-Communist confrontations tend to occur here in a context of overriding local disputes...
...I was, however, surprised to find Lieber citing Professor Hans Mor-genthau as a proponent of more restrained limited war...
...Our one consolation is that our adversaries have, over the past decade, found themselves even less able to work their will in this climate...
...Roche asserts that the strategy of limited war constitutes the essential liberal alternative to the choices of nuclear war and/ or capitulation, and he finds that it was necessary for the United States to apply its power in Vietnam in the interests of international stability and world order...
...males ages 15-34, the Vietnam war in 1966 was responsible for more deaths than any single disease...
...The theaters for U.S...
...The doctrine of limited war is largely applicable where there is danger of direct confrontation between the U.S...
...Indeed, the exercise of great prudence in setting priorities is likely to prove the most effective policy for America's interests, since this is more likely to result in our achieving success in the endeavors that we do ultimately undertake...
...What, then, is the proper role of limited war, and how can a willingness to specify international commitments be reconciled with criticism of the Vietnam war...
...The quarrel between Communism and capitalism may have almost as little direct relevance for these areas as conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Europe in the 16th and 17th century have for us today...
...In the less developed areas of the world which seem to warrant American backing, the emphasis should be placed on political support and military hardware, rather than on combat troops...
...If our vital interests appear to be at stake there, this is due to the repeated public declarations of our leaders rather than the actualities of the situation...
...America possesses a great deal of the former, but the latter sort is harder to come by...
...The first has to do with relevance...
...I would argue (and will someday) that the alleged "globalism" of Johnson and Rusk is largely a creation of their critics...
...Roche implies the lunatic abuse with which he claims the "college elite" assaulted Lyndon Johnson is characteristic of all who fail to find the Administration's defense of American involvement convincing...
...I disagree over the scope of their application...
...by the reU.S...
...In particular, this confusion has characterized America's role in Vietnam...
...Substantially restraining our willingness to fight limited wars does not mean isolationism...
...Fond as I am of cultural exchanges, I want to assure Mr...
...This is hardly isolationism...
...Unfortunately, Administration proponents of limited war resemble the child spoken of in Abraham Kaplan's Law: "Given a hammer, he finds that everything he encounters needs hammering...
...I think that this particular "hammer" is a relatively specialized tool to be used selectively, not applied mdiscriminately...
...Roche, in approving our involvement, invites comparison with McGeorge Bundy and other critics of Vietnam whom he takes to task...
...The exclusion of Vietnam may seem cynical, but Roche notes with approval President Kennedy's judgment that Laos was one of the worst places in the world to try to match Communist military pressure...
...Time, April 22, 1966...
...The power to devastate terrain, burn villages and defoliate jungles is not the same as the power to "win the hearts and minds of the people...
...For example, how does one fit Nigeria into the East-West framework...
...Morgenthau has opposed the war in Vietnam as an example of futile "peripheral containment...
...For young men Vietnam therefore became painfully relevant...
...With most of what Lieber says on the need for wisdom, I have no dispute whatsoever...
...The civil war there involves tribalism, national unity vs...
...Both parties shared the same fundamental contradiction...
...But Roche's fundamental argument concerns the role of limited war as the necessary alternative to nuclear war or capitulation...
Vol. 51 • December 1968 • No. 24
