Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [54]
American elites, civilian and military, reacted to defeat in Vietnam much as German elites, civilian and military, did after the Great War of 1914 to 1918. Priority number one was to identify scapegoats. In both countries, stab-in-the-back theories flourished, Jews and leftists being blamed in Germany, liberals, academics, and biased media being singled out for abuse in the United States. Priority number two was to begin the hard work of reversing the war’s apparent verdict. In each country, this undertaking met with considerable success, at least in the short term.
In the case of both Germany and the United States, a bitter defeat thought to mark a historical turning point turned out to be nothing of the sort. Fifteen years after the armistice of 1918, Germany was back, its ambitions bigger than ever, its confidence in the German soldier restored. Fifteen years after the fall of Saigon, the same could be said of the United States. By 1990, Washington had reasserted its claims to global leadership. Indeed, as the Cold War wound down, those claims became all the more expansive. The United States now donned the mantle of “sole superpower,” having seemingly vanquished all challengers. Furthermore, Americans rediscovered the allure of garrisoning the planet, once again reconfigured the armed forces for global power projection, and restored military intervention to its status as preferred foreign policy option.
How to explain this turnaround? A large measure of credit belongs to those who bent themselves to the task of discerning and reinterpreting the lessons of failure. In post-1918 Germany, that work fell primarily to the officer corps, which reached conclusions that meshed (for a time) with the ambitions of the Nazi Party. In the United States, the search for lessons also preoccupied the officer corps, which reached conclusions that proved compatible (for a time) with the preferences of the permanent foreign policy establishment.
In the end, though, the views of the officer corps—both German and American soldiers were primarily intent on restoring the prestige and autonomy of the military profession—mattered less than those of the civilian elites.22
Elite concern elevated one issue above all others: repealing the outcome already decided on the field of battle. True in Germany during the 1920s, this was true as well in the United States during the late 1970s and 1980s.
Consider just one classic expression of elite opinion: The Vietnam Legacy: The War, American Society, and the Future of American Foreign Policy, a volume published in 1976 under the auspices of the august Council on Foreign Relations. The book collected the perspectives of twenty-four observers, described by Anthony Lake, who presided over the project, as “authors of diverse backgrounds and points of view.” Lake, who by resigning in protest from Nixon’s National Security Council staff had demonstrated what in Washington passed for independence and integrity, added that the essays produced by this diverse group “differ in style, in substance, and in method of expression.”23
In fact, a more accurate description of the group would be clubby and of its findings homogenized. The roster of contributors assembled by Lake was all-white, all-male, and with only two exceptions—a British academic and a French journalist—consisted entirely of Americans. The group included name-brand politicians (Senators Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota and John Tower of Texas), once-and-future high-ranking officials (Richard Holbrooke and Paul Warnke), well-known academics (Ernest May and Edward Shils), and prominent journalists (Leslie Gelb and Irving Kristol), along with various representatives of the think-tank world. They were, to a man, eminently respectable and eminently reliable, known quantities who could be counted on to confine their disagreements to matters where disagreement was deemed permissible. If tempted to rock the boat,