Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [53]
Under the weight of Vietnam, however, conscription collapsed. Americans withdrew from the federal government the authority to order citizens to serve in uniform. President Nixon accepted that verdict and ended the draft. He anticipated—as events soon showed, correctly—that doing so would undercut the antiwar movement and thereby enable him to continue the war under the guise of seeking “peace with honor.”
So, beginning in 1973, the U.S. military became an “all-volunteer” force. Power projection now became dependent in part at least upon the Pentagon’s ability to induce sufficient numbers of qualified young Americans to volunteer. Given the existing antimilitary climate, this alone seemed likely to oblige policy makers in Washington to demonstrate greater self-restraint. That the transformation of a people’s army into a professional force had the potential to produce just the opposite effect—decision makers gaining a free hand to use a military over which the American people had forfeited any ownership—was a prospect few anticipated.
Vietnam adversely affected the remaining two elements of the national security triad as well. The humiliating withdrawal from Southeast Asia made the need for a continuing U.S. troop presence elsewhere the subject of debate. Senator Mansfield, for example, questioned the need to garrison U.S. troops in Europe. “I believe it is time,” he argued, “for us to insist that the European nations themselves take on the primary military and financial responsibilities for their defense.”19 For years thereafter Mansfield persisted in this effort, which struck at the very heart of the proposition that defending the United States against the communist threat required the quasi-permanent forward positioning of U.S. forces around the globe.20
Most severely challenged of all was the triad’s third element: the penchant for global interventionism. Vietnam seemed to have exhausted the nation’s appetite for liberating the oppressed, subverting unfriendly governments, or otherwise meddling in the affairs of far-off countries. Responding to this “Vietnam syndrome,” Congress acted to curtail the authority of the commander in chief. The War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973 over a Nixon veto, stated that the president could “introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated” only in response to a direct attack, a declaration of war, or “specific statutory authorization.”21 No longer could the chief executive act first and then seek permission later or maneuver Congress into a situation in which it seemingly had no choice but to rubber-stamp war policies concocted in the White House. This, at least, was what the sponsors of the resolution hoped to accomplish.
Soon thereafter came the Hughes-Ryan Act of 1974, requiring the president to provide Congress with advance notification of planned covert activities. The following year two investigative committees—one in the House, chaired by Representative Otis Pike, Democrat of New York; a second in the Senate, chaired by Frank Church, Democrat of Idaho—launched highly publicized hearings that reviewed the whole record of covert actions since the 1940s. These investigations eventually resulted in the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, curbing domestic intelligence collection and mandating more thoroughgoing congressional oversight of sensitive intelligence activities. In the wake of Vietnam, the barriers to intervention, whether overt or covert, had risen appreciably. For any president inclined to surmount those barriers, so too had the political risks involved.
FAHGETTABOUDIT
In sum, failure in Vietnam seemingly left the Washington rules in tatters. That within five years of Saigon’s fall they were well on their way to reconstitution qualifies as remarkable. That within another decade the American credo and sacred trinity had been fully restored deserves to be seen as astonishing. In retrospect, what distinguishes the legacy of Vietnam is